“Not necessarily. Barry Switzer ran a rouge program at Oklahoma…”
Thank god it was at Oklahoma running a red program at Texas would get you run out of Austin on a rail. Spellcheck doesn’t always save the fat fingering typist for substituting a similar word of a totally different meaning.
I think either we double down on the B1G or go all UofC there is no middle ground. Right now I am leaning towards the latter.
If you have an older car in need of major repairs you consider getting rid of it. With a full coaching/staff search in at least 2 sports. A full AD staff replacement plus possible presidential replacement, along with “needing” a new football stadium it might be time to junk our foray into big time athletics.
This sounds like 1972-73, when NU considered dropping Athletics. I think the Faculty Senate almost voted to do that.
But then they got serious about Football, and Gary B… and the rest was history. They doubled the endowment, Fixed up Dyche and called it Ryan, and finally built the Fitz-Mahal on the lake (where Chi Phi and Beta used to be).
The end result was Alums walking around the country wearing NU gear, proud of their school for both Academics AND Athletics.
I as at NU during the early 70’s when the only NCAA championships were in Women’s Fencing and Debate. I worked at Oklahoma (KGOU-FM) at the end of the Lacewell/Switzer era when there were bumper stickers that said “Stamp Out Organized Crime - Fire Switzer” around Norman.
My son played football at a D-III school that added football to even out the male-female numbers of what had been a Women’s College. They still turn out kids with really good academic degrees AND they play football on Saturday.
Like it or not, the Major Sports contribute to the atmosphere at Major Academic Colleges and Universities. Even the Ivies, especially Yale, and Harvard make a big deal about their Football programs. Their presence helps get the alumni to open their wallets and contribute to both the teams, and their academic programs. (It was parodied in the show “How to Succeed in Business” - “Grand Old Ivy”)
What we are seeing right now in the media, are all of the people with an Axe to grind against any and all athletics at NU, and it is getting U-G-L-Y
What is meant by doubling down in the B10? Are you referring to Fitz’ belief that we should not go all out with NIL and find big money for top recruits ? Therefore we should now do that if we are to stick around?
I’m told that someone had approached Fitz several months ago and said he understood the going rate for a top QB would easily run $1mm in NIL money ,and that he could come up with the money; Fitz told him that he didn’t want a kid with that motivation
I think we need to either be serious about football or out of the B1G as the landscape has changed.
Do we really want to have 80s levels of football because aren’t willing to spend the money?
We have money rolling in via TV contracts and we have rich alumni that are willing to spend big $ on athletics why aren’t we buying the best players that can make it into Northwestern?
My requirements for football players:
Not criminals
Real students
Can play football
I won’t violate our educational reputation or have bad kids representing Northwestern.
I don’t know how one defines ‘bad kids’ anymore. What were the players who perpetuated the ‘traditions’ that got Fitz fired?
I don’t think Northwestern has had a problem with players who weren’t ‘real students’, and I think the number of athletes skating through by taking do-nothing classes is a lot lower than most people think, even at the football factories. As I’ve noted before, if you go to an orthopedic surgeon almost anywhere in the country there’s a pretty good chance he’s a former football player.
But as is so often the case, it is the extreme cases, like the player at Ohio State who wondered why he even needed to attend classes, that draw the attention.
As to whether they can play football, does their win-loss record speak to that?
Northwestern is by no means the first program that had to replace more than one head coach at the same time.
My concern is that the AD is the guy who hired the baseball coach they just fired, which doesn’t speak well of Dr. Gragg’s ability to hire someone who creates a positive atmosphere.
And building a positive atmosphere in the football program is at least as important as finding a way to win games right now.
If NU has to depend on the President of the University to fire the football coach and then possibly oversee hiring his replacement, what does that leave for the AD to be doing?
Mike Kafka
Dave Clawson
Willie Fritz
Mike Elko
Matt Campbell
Jim Leonhard
Tommy Rees
Chris Creighton
Derek Mason
Jeff Monken
Ken Niumatalolo
Charles Huff
David Shaw
David Braun
I have heard rumbling or 2 out here in the Bay for david Shaw ,the former Stanford HC who stepped down when he felt he couldn’t deliver for Stanford with the new NIL landscape while maintaining their high academic / character standards (Not many Christian McCafreys out there to carry you). Maybe he would be interested in the challenge of picking up the pieces in Evanston
Seems like Shaw has already said he can’t produce a competitive team in the NIL/Transfer Portal era, why would Northwestern want someone who’s already said he couldn’t produce a competitive team?
Maybe history (or more accurately our memory of it) just gets fuzzy over time, but I thought the specific issues that Switzer got fired for were not the ones that made Oklahoma a rogue program, but made him a rogue coach (due to his extracurricular activities), and a lot of the excesses occurred or started under previous coaches. But it seems that’s probably true of the hazing ‘traditions’ at NU, too.
Competing in the Big Ten has always been hard, starting next year it’s going to be even harder, because EVERYBODY gets at least one conference game against the two long-time Pac-12 powerhouse additions.
A 9-0 conference mark has been hard to achieve, it’ll be even harder next year.
Looking at the list of 14 names for the new head coach, I don’t think there’s a slam dunk name on it. The timing for finding a new coach has never been more critical, as the new coach is probably going to have to rebuild the 2024 recruiting class from the ashes, and with little time to do it. Matt Rhule seems to have done a pretty good job of that at Nebraska, Deion Sanders has probably established an all-time record for roster revisions at Colorado. But those are exceptional people doing exceptional things.
I wonder how many current players are looking at the transfer portal? They’ve got 3+ weeks to enter it.
I’m not sure I would classify UCLA as a long time powerhouse. Certainly on balance ,a solid team over the years but with a lot less national titles and Rose Bowls than their cross town rivals (Btw it gives me no pleasure to say that!)
True, UCLA doesn’t quite have the pedigree that USC does (grumble grumble), but they’ve got more national championships than most Big Ten schools do, more times being top 10 rated, and more Heisman Trophy winners, too.
They won’t be an easy win on any Big Ten team’s schedule, and that’s not why anybody wanted them in the conference.
When Nebraska was added, they didn’t talk about how lousy the Huskers had played since the Solich firing, they talked about how great they were in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.
Tough to say, but if Northwestern wasn’t already a Big Ten member, any suggestion that they be added would be laughed at.
