College Football Offseason 2023

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Looks like Kliff is headed to help out USC. They take a top 5 offense in college football and add another big name offensive coach. Iowa makes no coaching moves with their bottom 5 offense. Should be a fun season for one of those teams.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Clocks will run after first downs in college football

[Andy]

33 minutes ago, Ding Dong Johnson said:

Clocks will run after first downs in college football

Outside of the final 2 minutes of each half (for those who don't bother clicking).

In my experience, it seems like many clock operators in the sport were either curtailing or outright ignoring the clock stoppages anyway outside of close-and-late situations, so that's fine.

[UMFan83]

Welp I know how Andy feels now.  Michigan's first game this year is an exclusive Peacock broadcast.  I hate streaming sports soooooooo much

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Send it all to streaming so I can drop this silly YouTube TV nonsense. I'd much prefer a 4k Peacock game to the horsefeathers they broadcast live.

[Andy]

18 hours ago, UMFan83 said:

Welp I know how Andy feels now.  Michigan's first game this year is an exclusive Peacock broadcast.  I hate streaming sports soooooooo much

Washington @ MSU is also going to Peacock in week 3, the same week NBC proper put Syracuse @ Purdue in primetime. It's like they're trolling people.

[Old Style]

This Johnny Football doc could be incredible. 

 

[jersey cubs fan]

Patty Fitz really screwed the pooch, eh?

[Old Style]

 

[gflore34]

Well, there's a flip, the past decade plus it was the Illini with the fucked up football program, not anymore.

[CubinNY]

13 hours ago, Old Style said:

 

Could see that one coming from a mile away. 

[Derwood]

What coach in their right mind would want to go to NU and have to clean up that mess?

[jersey cubs fan]

20 minutes ago, Derwood said:

What coach in their right mind would want to go to NU and have to clean up that mess?

How hard of a job would that be to clean up?  Show up day one and tell the players not to pretend to rape their teammates.

 

it’s a big ten head coaching job, a million coaches would want it. 

[Outshined_One]

It's always darkly funny to me when you have a college football head coach trying to dodge consequences.

During the good times?  Coach knows everything that's happening at all times and demands accountability from his players and subordinates.  Coach is the eyes, brains, and face of this program. The buck stops here!

During the bad times?  Eh, Pat is more of a figurehead than anything else.  Boys will be boys, ya know?

[Andy]

1 hour ago, Derwood said:

What coach in their right mind would want to go to NU and have to clean up that mess?

As Andy Staples pointed out, any B1G or SEC job, even the lesser ones, is going to be preferable to any other job going forward just because they have more money than God at this point.

I don't think NW will get some superstar, but the idea they could get, say, Dave Clawson, who has done a great job at academically focused Wake Forest without the resources NW has and is about to have, isn't crazy.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Andy

[Ding Dong Johnson]

14 hours ago, jersey cubs fan said:

Patty Fitz really screwed the pooch, eh?

I didn't realize there were dogs involved too.

[Outshined_One]

54 minutes ago, Ding Dong Johnson said:

I didn't realize there were dogs involved too.

Considering the news today that the baseball program has its own hazing/bullying issues, I wouldn't count those chickens before they're hatched.

[UMFan83]

2 hours ago, jersey cubs fan said:

How hard of a job would that be to clean up?  Show up day one and tell the players not to pretend to rape their teammates.

 

it’s a big ten head coaching job, a million coaches would want it. 

There are legitimate challenges at Northwestern that other Big Ten schools don't have to deal with but like you said its a Big Ten job and not very difficult to clean up the mess.  The school also has brand new facilities for football that compete with the best of the conference and are in the process of doing a massive upgrade of their home field which should make them more attractive to recruits.  I don't think they'll be able to get an elite name but should have no problem getting an up and coming coach that can succeed.   The tough thing of course is the timing, roughly a month before training camp starts.  Might have to do an interim this year, take their lumps for a season (lumps that were probably already coming) and hire next offseason.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

18 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

massive upgrade of their home field which should make them more attractive to recruits

Come play in front of as many as 35,000 really comfortable spectators! 

[Derwood]

There should be some sort of sanctions/scholarship losses as well

[champaignchris]

Illinois went through similar circumstances with Beckman and handled things about as badly as things could possibly be handled. 
 

They waited to fire Beckman until a couple weeks before the start of the season, despite the investigation beginning towards the end of the prior season. 
 

They let the AD stay on until the middle of the football season before deciding to fire him, too. 
 

They didn’t immediately hire a replacement AD, but instead let their interim AD extend the interim head coach one year. 
 

Then, just before the start of spring practice, they finally hired their new AD and forced him to decide whether to go another season with a lame duck interim or try to make a long term hire outside the normal coach hiring cycle. 
 

Illinois basically lost three recruiting classes and ended up with Lovie Smith as head coach. He wasn’t able to fill out his staff with great options because of the off-cycle hire and wasn’t able to improve the staff in his second season because he had to assure his original staff that they’d get more than one season to get them there in the first place. So by his third season he was still trying to rebuild his staff while coaching essentially a ju-co team of only freshmen and sophomores. 
 

Smith got a lot of criticism for his time at Illinois - much of it deserved - but he moved that program from full on dumpster fire to a merely bad football program. 
 

So, to not repeat the mistakes Illinois made, NW got a good start by dumping Fitz now instead of waiting longer. Now, NW needs to fire its AD immediately and have the new AD in place well before the hiring cycle for a new HC starts in November. 

[Old Style]

 

[CubinNY]

14 hours ago, champaignchris said:

Illinois went through similar circumstances with Beckman and handled things about as badly as things could possibly be handled. 
 

They waited to fire Beckman until a couple weeks before the start of the season, despite the investigation beginning towards the end of the prior season. 
 

They let the AD stay on until the middle of the football season before deciding to fire him, too. 
 

They didn’t immediately hire a replacement AD, but instead let their interim AD extend the interim head coach one year. 
 

Then, just before the start of spring practice, they finally hired their new AD and forced him to decide whether to go another season with a lame duck interim or try to make a long term hire outside the normal coach hiring cycle. 
 

Illinois basically lost three recruiting classes and ended up with Lovie Smith as head coach. He wasn’t able to fill out his staff with great options because of the off-cycle hire and wasn’t able to improve the staff in his second season because he had to assure his original staff that they’d get more than one season to get them there in the first place. So by his third season he was still trying to rebuild his staff while coaching essentially a ju-co team of only freshmen and sophomores. 
 

Smith got a lot of criticism for his time at Illinois - much of it deserved - but he moved that program from full on dumpster fire to a merely bad football program. 
 

So, to not repeat the mistakes Illinois made, NW got a good start by dumping Fitz now instead of waiting longer. Now, NW needs to fire its AD immediately and have the new AD in place well before the hiring cycle for a new HC starts in November. 

With the stuff coming out about the baseball program, they really do have to clean house immediately. 

[Andy]

18 hours ago, Derwood said:

There should be some sort of sanctions/scholarship losses as well

Why? I don't understand why every bad thing that happens in a college sports program needs to be addressed with pointless things like scholarship losses. The NCAA is not a crime-solving organization, this is not an NCAA rules issue, and the only people hurt by scholarship losses are whichever 18-year-olds don't get a football scholarship as a result of them.

[Derwood]

1 minute ago, Andy said:

Why? I don't understand why every bad thing that happens in a college sports program needs to be addressed with pointless things like scholarship losses. The NCAA is not a crime-solving organization, this is not an NCAA rules issue, and the only people hurt by scholarship losses are whichever 18-year-olds don't get a football scholarship as a result of them.

You don't think years-long "look the other way" behavior that puts student athletes at risk deserves some sort of department sanction? Do you think the AD should lose their job?