lol, yeah, the guy that did my Dad’s valve replacement looked all of 20 years old when I met him. He did a great job, though.
Next coaching announcements
- Thread starter jensberg
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It has to do with having a very young staff, from top to bottom. This is a particular concern to me during an era where we have no trust, faith, or inherent support in the athletic director and the president.
That being said, I will once again state I don't consider it to be a dealbreaker, but certainly a concern.
Far less than it has to do with being the president of a university.
I feel the opposite way; coaching staffs are getting younger on average of late with a lot higher turnover. Finding a team of young coaches eager to prove themselves feels like the best route as we look to a way forward. Maybe we lucked into a guy in Braun that views this as a destination where you can coach at the highest level with a comparable level of resources to major programs while having reasonable expectations, and maybe he'll have the success to stick around here. Maybe not.
Braun's got 2 years to get things all ready for when the team returns to the new Ryan Field, so these next 2 years are where the staff has to put it all together.
Over the past 10 years, something like half to 2/3s of the Big Ten has gone through at least 3-4 HCs.
Only really us, Iowa, and Penn State were "stable" programs; maybe Ohio State to an extent since Ryan Day inherited the program from Meyer.
That's about it, and I think upheaval will happen more often at most programs in the future, so I don't think that having a young staff all around is a huge issue.
Honestly, I would prefer our program to be much more unstable. Much more like the serious football schools who fire their coaches for fielding below average units even after a year. No tolerance for incompetence. Sure beats countless years of bottom decile performances.
I like Braun and am very hopeful that he can bring this prorgam forward. But, in 3 or 4 years if he doesn’t have us in an upward trajectory and contending for titles, I hope we go in a different direction.
To be clear, this means higher performing guys will leave for greener pa$tures. I'm OK with this, it better than the alternative (sucky assistants)
IF that happens at NU, then I guess that one could say that NU will just become a coaching development program and nothing else. We will never hit the top plateau if we become a revolving door developmental coaching program.
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Not necessarily. Hypothetically, if Lujan's office is like Walker/Wilson 2.0 and he then gets a HC position, for instance, that's a good thing.
That's not necessarily true. We may very well be able to offer competitive enough salaries to keep our top people here.
And for some of these people I believe that our environment and expectations trump over a somewhat higher salary eleswhere.
We will see. Money speaks, but it is not always the last word.
Here's the thing, yes we can offer a HC upwards to $8-10 million a year, and we likely will eventually. If Braun has some great seasons and becomes a hot commodity, it'll be he who gets that first here.
We can offer OC/DC up to $1+ million and likely will eventually.
But I'm not sure we'll get into bidding wars like some of these programs do; LSU just offered Mizzou's DC $2.5 million to take him away after he just signed an extension with Mizzou.
If somebody comes offering crazy money, I think we'll just look for somebody else, but we can match most "reasonable" offers.
We can offer OC/DC up to $1+ million and likely will eventually.
But I'm not sure we'll get into bidding wars like some of these programs do; LSU just offered Mizzou's DC $2.5 million to take him away after he just signed an extension with Mizzou.
If somebody comes offering crazy money, I think we'll just look for somebody else, but we can match most "reasonable" offers.
My point is that you will have no continuity if you have guys keep skipping town every 3-5 seasons. Playing constant Russian roulette with a coaching carousel isn't going to build the program in the long run. You will have more kids bolt the program if it becomes unstable. Woody made OSU what it is, Bowden with FSU, Bear with 'Bama. Fitz was on track to join them, but his hubris and not hiring the best assistants available derailed him and the program. Nothing beats stability. Fitz really dropped the ball even without the hazing garbage.
If we ever get to the point where our assistant coaches are being offered offered $2.5 million dollars to go somewhere else it will mean that we have become a true powerhouse in football. I seriously doubt that it will ever happen, but one can always hope..
If our coordinators or even head coaches are consistently being hired by “bigger” programs (which, in that new world of college football, would most likely mean top-tier B1G or SEC teams), then it will have meant we won a lot of ball games. That’s not a bad thing, just means you have to consistently make the right replacement hiring decisions (which is difficult).
The top four tenured CFB coaches have zero national championships. Only two of the top 15 have national championships.
And despite a top five tenured coach and many national championships, alabama will have few carry overs from their two deep next season.
This tells me that coaching longevity is not important like it was in the JoePa days and that every team should expect lots of departures. The college game has shifted - recruiting starts in high school and carries on until no longer eligible. It does not stop once the player arrives on campus.
So to coach today, you must plan for recruiting (retaining) the guys you want to keep and retain information on the guys you lost out on.
It would really just be for one side of the ball as the D will be Braun's no matter who the DC happens to be (which is why it's so important to hire an Xs/Os guy for the top spot).
And one can mitigate the changes on O by keeping the template/playbook the same with OCs just adding on/changing some stuff like what Bama does.
Meant after the program has a good system/scheme in place.
There's no need to change the system/scheme entirely with every coordinator change.
Even with Braun's D, they still use a good part of Hank's syatem.
UM had 2 different DCs in the past 3 seasons, but kept the same system.
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I agree with parts of what you said, but I disagree with more parts of it. I don’t want our program to be unstable. I want us to value players and coaches and relationships and people. Even in the new world of college football, I think it’s best for Northwestern to differentiate itself by stability.
That doesn’t mean we should be happy with sucking. But it does mean that we won’t fire Braun after 1-2 bad years if he has shown us that he has skills and abilities that can lead us to be .500 plus in the big ten and occasionally compete for championships. Especially if he is doing things the right way ie developing and educating young men.
You obviously hate Ohio st but in some bizarre way you sometimes want to try to make us more like Ohio St. I hope I’m not the only one that thinks that’s dumb. Because I don’t want to be like Ohio St, or anyone in the SEC. I want to be Northwestern.
I want to be more like Ohio State in terms of football (winning, beating the shit out of lesser teams) and in the locker room (no car wash bullshit). I want us to be Northwestern off the field and in the classroom (student athletes, go to classes, take own exams, write own papers, graduate, stay out of jail).
