On the heels of a five game losing streak, Maryland has fired its DC.
Mike Nolan
With UCLA and to a lesser extent Purdue’s success the seat is pretty hot under Locksley and Schiano.
Based on what Maureen is reading the MSU’s fanbase primary concern is that Fitz is a dinosaur who can’t handle the NIL/transfer portal world. If that is the case you have 2 obvious choices: Give him a 3-4 years and he will right the ship and get them back to bowl games peaking out at the 8 win plateau. At that point either hire a General Manager do handle NIL/transfer portal and relieve him of those duties OR transition him out nicely for a NIL/transfer portal guru coach. I think Fitz will be agreeable to either scenario as he won’t be the first coach(David Shaw, Dabo Sweeney, etc.) to realize that the new world isn’t right for him.
I am surprised they didn’t hire a GM when he took the job.
NU added someone to handle NIL, etc. Last year, right? It seems to be the way things are headed in the B1G & other power conferences.
GoB1G Cats
rsl
According to the MSU website, MSU did hire a general manager for football, Brian Gasser, who is also in his first year. He was at Toledo the last 3 years but was also an offensive analyst for Fitz in 2022.
My concerns about Fitz haven’t changed, I thought he was not in step with the evolution of the on-field game his last few years at Northwestern, and was slow to figure out how to handle the transfer portal and NIL. (It is worth noting that Northwestern brought in more players through the transfer portal this year, 17 if I remember correctly, than in the last 6-8 years combined.)
Whether he can succeed at MSU remains to be seen, but I think they’ll give him 2-3 years on the job.
I think Matt Campbell will survive to 2027 as well, their last 5 games are all winnable, but I’m not so sure about Locksley, as they could easily go 0-5 to finish the year.
I stand corrected about MSU and the GM. I didn’t Fitz would give up control.
Maureen is convinced if Fitz were still NU’s coach he couldn’t share the control with Chip Kelly. Braun seems to have a smaller ego than many head coaches. Kind of the Randy Walker shucky-darn homespun antics without being as old school hard.
Fitz’ game plan always seemed to be a knock out Defense and after that score just enough points to win.
Similar to the Old Ravens, who won a Superbowl with a team that went severalgames without a TD.
What NU did for Braun (assume with his blessing) is hire a an expensive but very talented pair of offensive minds to take over that part of the game. Our OC is down on the field, right? That puts him in a more equal position with the Head Coach, and lets him talk to the O when we don’t have the ball. (Just like our former DC)
Not sure if Mac is down on the field, or upstairs, but the present O is working and I like our chances going forward.
Go B1GCats!
rsl
The TV was showing Tim McGarigle up in the booth, but I think Chip Kelly is down on the field.
I think Chiles has been a great addition to the team, but I don’t think he has another year of eligibility, though to be honest I don’t really understand what the eligibility rules are now (and neither do the courts.)
I agree that Fitz would never have made the Chip Kelly hire, David Braun is smart and confident enough to know his job is to do whatever it takes to build a winner, there’s enough shared glory in winning to go around.
Maureen floated Bryce Underwood as a replacement if Chiles has no more eligibility or decides to go the NFL route. Obviously we wouldn’t pay that much, but as Chiles’ better experience in Evanston shows maybe Chip Kelly and Jerry Neuheisel are failed QB redeermers.
There are going to be a ton of QBs who are 2nd on the depth chart ready to move to another school for 2027. The success of QBs like Chiles and Raiola (at Nebraska’s expense) will just increase the number of QBs who would rather test the waters elsewhere. I think QBs will WANT to come to Northwestern to work with Chip Kelly, let’s hope we can keep him around a while!
FWIW, AI thinks Chiles has another year of eligibility under the 5 in 5 rule.
Ryan Day & Chip Kelly have a long history together going back to when Kelly coached Day as a qb at New Hampshire. Day’s son is a qb. He has committed to NU. I assume Day & Kelly talked before Day’s son committed to NU. Given that assumption, I’m guessing Kelly is planning on sticking around for a while.
Re:Underwood
I will simply say the Ellison family seems to be overpaying for a lot assets recently. I just hope Chiles can remain healthy at least through the end of the season. Generally doesn’t
take the slide or out of bounds route as he strives for the extra yard or two 
Harry
IMHO NIL has so scrambled the whole deck that eligibility doesn’t really matter.
If the Cats go farther this year than anyone expects, they will become this year’s Indiana.
That leaves Chiles with a bunch of choices.
IMHO, this is looking more and more like MLB when Bill Veeck and Rolland Hemond debuted their “Rent-a-player” strategy. It was a lot of fun to watch all those good players cycle through the south side and gave us the great 1977 Southside Hitmen team. But in his case, when the rest of the league realized they could do the same thing, the rental prices got too expensive and Bill had to sell the team.
Unclear how this will eventually sort out at the college level. But my guess is the price of talented HS players will go down and the price of proven experienced players will go up. In particular I think star player costs will price in the expectation that they will only stay one year.
At some point that is going to start filtering down to the coaching and recruiting staffs too. Wouldn’t be surprised to see at least some of these activities outsourced to companies who recruit players and negotiate contracts as a service.
Jeff
Good analysis. To paraphrase the commercial with Arthur C Clarke, we can expect the future of football to be completely unexpected and fantastic. This weekend was a good a demonstration of the parity that is (finally) creeping into college football. And the Dodgers and Mets have demonstrated that money isn’t the ultimate answer in sports.
I’ve been amused by the complaints coming out of Texas about how Arch Manning is being so abused by the media and fans.
I call BS. If his name was Arch Jones, he wouldn’t have been recruited by Texas in the first place, or at least not with the lofty expectations (and NIL) he got.
Are we approachng the day when college players will forgoe the NFL because they’ve got enough money banked from 5 years of NIL?