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Seems to me a super league wouldn't be big enough to feed the demand for college football games on a weekly basis. The obvious question would be how do the broadcasters split up the pie and schedule the games. There are still many many fans who will watch their college team play on Saturday afternoons, so there is still plenty of money to be made.

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gocatsgo2003 said:

Jackson isn’t going to let NU remain a dinosaur, based on everything I’ve heard. We might not ever be truly cutting edge, but we aren’t going to be lagging nearly as much as we have historically.

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My concern is it isn't up to Jackson alone, the broader institution, trustees, and general council's office can continue to cause all kinds of little problems.

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AdamOnFirst said:

I'd say that's a slightly pessimistic realist take, or pessimistic on Braun. The actual pessimist take is NU will continue to talk an okay game but continue to be steps behind other schools institutionally at adapting to the ever-evolving state of play in college athletics and our series of bizarre self-imposed restrictions will continue to prevent us from climbing out of the conference basement regardless of coach. NU is frequently seemingly run by the dumbest group of smart people around, and despite Jackson's upgrades it's unclear to me if wide swaths of Northwestern's institutional infrastructure even recognize how any of this works now.

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Jackson isn’t going to let NU remain a dinosaur, based on everything I’ve heard. We might not ever be truly cutting edge, but we aren’t going to be lagging nearly as much as we have historically.

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gocatsgo2003 said:

Basically, yeah.

The optimist’s take is that Braun can piece together a bowl team this year, thus saving his job and building a little momentum into 2026 on top of the stadium opening/unveiling. That could/should/would make recruiting a bit easier, both in the portal and for HS kids.

The pessimist’s take is that Braun again flounders to a 3- or 4-win season, gets canned, and Jackson uses his football-heavy network to bring in a more established coach. While that could improve our longer-term trajectory, it could/should/would make recruiting more difficult in the short-term absent a home run hire.

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I'd say that's a slightly pessimistic realist take, or pessimistic on Braun. The actual pessimist take is NU will continue to talk an okay game but continue to be steps behind other schools institutionally at adapting to the ever-evolving state of play in college athletics and our series of bizarre self-imposed restrictions will continue to prevent us from climbing out of the conference basement regardless of coach. NU is frequently seemingly run by the dumbest group of smart people around, and despite Jackson's upgrades it's unclear to me if wide swaths of Northwestern's institutional infrastructure even recognize how any of this works now.

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AdamOnFirst said:

Oh. Okay. So we pretty much agree on the facts and disagree about the implications.

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Basically, yeah.

The optimist’s take is that Braun can piece together a bowl team this year, thus saving his job and building a little momentum into 2026 on top of the stadium opening/unveiling. That could/should/would make recruiting a bit easier, both in the portal and for HS kids.

The pessimist’s take is that Braun again flounders to a 3- or 4-win season, gets canned, and Jackson uses his football-heavy network to bring in a more established coach. While that could improve our longer-term trajectory, it could/should/would make recruiting more difficult in the short-term absent a home run hire.

gocatsgo2003 said:

I’m saying that (i) I don’t think that the situation is materially different from the bulk of the Fitz years and (ii) I don’t think we should be surprised recruiting under Braun isn’t going as well as the tail end of the Fitz years for a lot of reasons.

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Oh. Okay. So we pretty much agree on the facts and disagree about the implications.

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AdamOnFirst said:

So I've been reading through each guy's offer list as he commits and following it pretty closely, and this is a pretty bad list, with only 2-3 exceptions that look like high 3 stars. You saying you think they're better?

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I’m saying that (i) I don’t think that the situation is materially different from the bulk of the Fitz years and (ii) I don’t think we should be surprised recruiting under Braun isn’t going as well as the tail end of the Fitz years for a lot of reasons.

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gocatsgo2003 said:

We aren’t “surviv[ing] purely on no-name diamonds in the rough.”

QB O’Brien — no other P4 offers, committed early
RB Morris — Arizona, Boise State, Boston College, Cal, Stanford, Washington, and other non-P4s
WR Reinke — Iowa, Stanford, and other non-P4s
WR McDuffie — no other P4 offers
OL Burbach — Iowa State, Minnesota, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt, and other non P-4s
OL Jakubczak — no other P4 offers, camp offer
DL Zalewski — no other P4 offers
DL Lorek — no other P4 offers
LB Curry — Iowa State, Kansas State, Louisville, Pitt, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, West Virginia and other non-P4s
LB Reilly — Cincinnati, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Wake Forst, West Virginia, and other non-P4s
DB Davis-Ray — Kentucky, Michigan State, Minnesota, Purdue, Stanford, and other non-P4s
DB Kinney — Arizona State, Maryland, Minnesota, and other non-P4s

So… yeah, there are probably more “diamonds in the rough” on that list than ideal, but we’re not exclusively living in that world.

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So I've been reading through each guy's offer list as he commits and following it pretty closely, and this is a pretty bad list, with only 2-3 exceptions that look like high 3 stars. You saying you think they're better?

gocatsgo2003 said:

We aren’t “surviv[ing] purely on no-name diamonds in the rough.”

QB O’Brien — no other P4 offers, committed early
RB Morris — Arizona, Boise State, Boston College, Cal, Stanford, Washington, and other non-P4s
WR Reinke — Iowa, Stanford, and other non-P4s
WR McDuffie — no other P4 offers
OL Burbach — Iowa State, Minnesota, Texas Tech, Vanderbilt, and other non P-4s
OL Jakubczak — no other P4 offers, camp offer
DL Zalewski — no other P4 offers
DL Lorek — no other P4 offers
LB Curry — Iowa State, Kansas State, Louisville, Pitt, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, West Virginia and other non-P4s
LB Reilly — Cincinnati, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Wake Forst, West Virginia, and other non-P4s
DB Davis-Ray — Kentucky, Michigan State, Minnesota, Purdue, Stanford, and other non-P4s
DB Kinney — Arizona State, Maryland, Minnesota, and other non-P4s

So… yeah, there are probably more “diamonds in the rough” on that list than ideal, but we’re not exclusively living in that world.

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It is pretty clear that this current class is, at least on paper, as weak as we've had in some time. I don't think it should be a surprise. Northwestern has historically always been difficult to recruit to. But, on top of that, we have a program that has been pretty lousy in three of the last four seasons, including the most reason season. We have a young head coach who is relatively unknown. He doesn't even have any P4 assistant coaching experience to draw from. On top of that, his main assistants are also very young and untested. No high level recruit is going to take a chance on this.

In the end, though, one of two things is going to happen. Either Braun and the guys are going to have some success this coming season which will turn some heads and maybe bring some buzz to this program among recruits, or it is going to be another rough season in Evanston. In the latter case, I fully expect the new AD will want to make a change heading into the new stadium and maybe ditch the FCS experiment. I think hiring Braun from the FCS as the Defensive Coordinator was a risky, but interesting move by Fitz. But to make Braun the permanent head coach after the fiasco was probably a rash, not well-thought-out decision by a leadership at NU that proved itself to be pretty inept across the board.

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