Any Chance the administration ponies up 70 million for Fitz buyout?
- Thread starter Titanium999
- Start date
I'm not at the point that I want Fitz bought out, but I've had just about enough of his coordinators.
Fitz needs to go. He hired the bums, all of them, not just the coordinators. The guy has just exposed himself as somewhat of a fraud. The administration also comes off as a bunch of fools for giving Fitz that ridiculous contract when he had no conference titles, much less a national title. Now, the Uber rich alumni come off as chumps for investing almost a billion dollars into facilities for a program that won't get back on any track til Fitzgerald is gone. If Ryan really wants a winner, he should cough up some $$$$ to land Meyer, but he won't. Too stupid. Money can't fix stupid. In fact it can cause stupidity. Hard choices are to be made to save the program, but I am not sure anyone will pony up to admit they made a major mistake with Fitz's ridiculous contract.
Sadly the only way real significant change will happen IS if Fitz is bought out.
Hiring Urban Meyer would finally get me to drop my NU fandom.
Why? You want to win don't you? Meyer isn't perfect, but he wants to win. You will get your money's worth with Meyer. Face it, Fitz is a grifter for the most part. He got paid way more than he deserved to, and hasn't produced nearly enough to justify his ridiculous salary. Would he renegotiate his salary so he could hire the best available assistants and help the school? Probably not. He doesn't give a shit, thus he is a grifter unless he proves otherwise by doing what I have previously stated.
Because he’s a shithead. I want to win but not at that cost.
You already have a shithead as HC. I guess you want to relive the 70's-80's. Very few of the top notch HCs are sheet white clean. You want to win in the era of big money you will need to get a bit dirty. NU is coming off like a bunch of dolts!!! Almost a billion dollars in new facilities and they will have nothing to show for it in terms of on the field results. If Fitz wakes up and does does some major retooling of his staff, then there is hope, but I don't think he will do what will be needed.
Guys, don't start an arguments about something that will never happen.
Meyer would never coach at a school with a 35,000 seat MAC size stadium (gorgeous, but we should up the seat count, anything less than 50k is a joke). And he will never coach at a school with academic restrictions like we have (nor would he coach at Stanford, Rice, Vanderbilt, etc.). He will go to someplace like Arizona State and recruit the transfer portal to a championship or two.
And coach Fitz will not be let go for at least a few more years and by then Meyer will be snapped up.
The small size of our future stadium will prevent us from ever attracting the best of the best in terms of coaches and quite frankly players. I am not suggesting we build a mausoleum, but 35,000 is not BCS team size. I'm surprised no-one is talking about how this might affect coaching and recruiting. "I don't want to play at Northwestern, they're rinky dink".
And don't tell me we can't attract about 50k a game average - we have done so when we are good.
Meyer would never coach at a school with a 35,000 seat MAC size stadium (gorgeous, but we should up the seat count, anything less than 50k is a joke). And he will never coach at a school with academic restrictions like we have (nor would he coach at Stanford, Rice, Vanderbilt, etc.). He will go to someplace like Arizona State and recruit the transfer portal to a championship or two.
And coach Fitz will not be let go for at least a few more years and by then Meyer will be snapped up.
The small size of our future stadium will prevent us from ever attracting the best of the best in terms of coaches and quite frankly players. I am not suggesting we build a mausoleum, but 35,000 is not BCS team size. I'm surprised no-one is talking about how this might affect coaching and recruiting. "I don't want to play at Northwestern, they're rinky dink".
And don't tell me we can't attract about 50k a game average - we have done so when we are good.
Here's the thing...Fitz is an excellent figurehead. EXCELLENT. He is one of the most well-regarded personalities in all of college football, and his long tenure at NU is one that is generally noted positively by the college football media. It benefits us to have and keep him here.
This problem is actually much, MUCH cheaper to fix than firing Fitz/buying him out: buy him two coordinators who are good enough to be head coaches but who know better and aren't interested in doing head coaching things. Worked out great for us and Mike Hankwitz for over a decade. I suspect he was a pretty cheap date and others won't be...but $2-3M each for coordinators who get us to a bowl game pretty much every season guaranteed...they pay for themselves and given our biggest donors, this really feels like a no-brainer.
The problem with this plan is that inevitably, some will leave the nest and Fitz would need to accept that in some years, he might not be higher than the third best Xs and Os coach on the team. Seemed okay with being second-best to Hank...
This problem is actually much, MUCH cheaper to fix than firing Fitz/buying him out: buy him two coordinators who are good enough to be head coaches but who know better and aren't interested in doing head coaching things. Worked out great for us and Mike Hankwitz for over a decade. I suspect he was a pretty cheap date and others won't be...but $2-3M each for coordinators who get us to a bowl game pretty much every season guaranteed...they pay for themselves and given our biggest donors, this really feels like a no-brainer.
The problem with this plan is that inevitably, some will leave the nest and Fitz would need to accept that in some years, he might not be higher than the third best Xs and Os coach on the team. Seemed okay with being second-best to Hank...
Who will be available in 2025 though? I guess it doesn't matter, he probably will be better than Fitz. I wholeheartedly agree with your post. What kid with stellar talent will play in a MAC sized stadium? Or for a coach that well can't seem to coach(Fitz). I would go for Meyer just simply because he has won wherever he goes. He built Utah into a power, won mattie's with Florida and OSU. I am more impressed with his stint at Utah though. You are not going to get very far with being vanilla!
Or maybe just $0 to not renew coordinators. Fitz could stay on has the CEO of Northwestern Football - he can continue as a sort of cheerleading, program-presenting Head Coach. But, yes, he needs position coaches who can coach technique and coordinators who can scheme and make adjustments. Hankwitz was a gift that landed in Fitz' lap after being fired from Wisconsin. Look at Ohio State and Alabama --- they get fired head coaches to become coordinators. Maybe there is a great coordinator who experienced being head coach and was fired and would be okay going back to being a coordinator? Maybe there is a great career assistant who was left unemployed somewhere and would enjoy going somewhere with relative job security? Certainly, if there is $20 or $40 or $50 million to buy out Fitz, then there is $3 or $4 million to hire a top flight assistants. On the other hand, if Fitz is resistant to change then that's where the new AD and President may have to step in. Something's got to change...NU needs to prepare to compete in the Bigger Ten and the days of losing to mediocre MAC and FCS schools has to go away. Like Saban said, you got to be able to score in contemporary college football.
Head coaches have a vision of what they want and go out to hire the best and brightest coordinators and assistants available. Look up my uncle's coaching tree on the web, Saban is part of his tree. Who the hell does Fitz have for his tree? Hankwitz? Hank was a helluva coach, but retired and never went on to being a HC.
The current 47,130 isn't exactly massive, it's the 9th-smallest Power 5 stadium. Even getting to 50K barely gets you out of the bottom 10.
But I agree that Urban Meyer would never even consider coaching here.
Right, so we are going to cut that down by almost 1/3? Why? We can fill a 50k stadium. It's a terrible idea.
Make it less fancy-schmantzy if you have to but don't cut down capacity. Or just rebuild Ryan,
Make it less fancy-schmantzy if you have to but don't cut down capacity. Or just rebuild Ryan,
I think the only guy who has become a FBS level coach (not FCS) after coaching for coach Fitz was/is Garrick McGee.
Since the Randy Walker era started in 1999, we have sold out 16 of 145 home games (11.0%):
5 against Michigan (00, 05, 11, 13, 18)
5 against Ohio State (04, 06, 08, 13, 19)
3 against Nebraska (12, 14, 18)
1 against Iowa (10)
1 against Wisconsin (18)
1 against Notre Dame (18)
All of those teams brought countless thousands of fans along, and the other 89% of games failed to sell out. I agree that 35k is too small, but expanding capacity beyond the current number would just lead to wide swathes of empty seats.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing to be a lifelong assistant. Some people don't want to deal with the politics of being a Head Coach and just want to focus on the program. It wouldn't hurt Northwestern if Fitz found some more Hankwitz-like coordinators who excel at the game. Look at Ohio State's new defensive coordinator who came from Oklahoma State, for example, who has tightened up the Buckeye's defense from what it was the past few years.
I just want to keep it roughly where it is. And don't just look at sellouts.
There was a post a year or so ago (not made by me and I don't know where to look for it) that showed how average season attendance had gone up since the "Dark Ages" and there were years with around a 43k or so average. Of course you want to hope for some growth so I wouldn't cut it down from the current 48k. It's a ridiculous thing to do - ticket prices will be crazy if they want to generate the same amount of revenue.
I hope they are not making it the way they are making it to make it seem not too big for our lacrosse or soccer teams.
"I hope they are not making it the way they are making it to make it seem not too big for our lacrosse or soccer teams."
Okay the English Department wouldn't like your sentence, but this is an interesting notion...
Could the new football stadium be viewed as a multi-sport venue????
Not necessarily. It seems likely that NU will add some kind of “required contribution” in order to purchase a season ticket. It will not increase the value of games (on the secondary market) one dime against teams from FCS, MAC or the likes of Rutgers, Minnesota or Indiana.
Trying to make it all up on OSU, Michigan or Nebraska is an iffy proposition and the market will decide. (Yes, the first games those teams play in the new stadium will keep prices high, but afterwards, not so much.)
What I find particularly interesting about the chart earlier in the thread is that 4 of the 16 sellouts happened in a single season - 2018. Then, a season ticket was a good investment, especially for non-Northwestern fans.
Right - but part of the point is that even in the seasons with a good average, we don't get big crowds like that without the aid of like 10k (or more) opposing fans. And since our fans are notoriously quiet, those 10k (or more) opposing fans are often louder than the NU fans. Part of the idea behind reducing capacity is creating a stadium where, if we're having a halfway decent year, we can sell it out with NU fans and not force our offense to run a silent count in its own stadium. This was one of the motivations to reduce the capacity of Welsh-Ryan, but unfortunately it hasn't been tested yet because we have yet to field a competitive team in the new building.
Don't really think that most of the 35,000 seats will be filled by NU fans. Sad but true.
I think this is the primary reason they are downsizing the # of seats.
An attempt to keep some of the riff raff out.
I love this because experienced former HCs will know and tell the AD that Fitz doesn't have a clue. Fitz doesn't want any threat to his regime. That's why he doesn't hire or develop hungry up and coming talents. Hank didn't want his job.
By the way notice that no current or former players openly support Fitz? How often do former players prowl the sidelines? Thats in contrast to other big time programs. You always have visits.
When we are winning the stadium is always rocking with a ton of NU fans. I don't mind the visitors at all.
I say we are taking the notion that our stadium is the "Wrigley Field of College Football" way to far.
It should have about the number of seats that Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, Georgia Tech and Stanford have - all of which are in the 50k range,
I always liked the TCU stadium and that is about 5Ok too.
Or Georgia Tech
Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field
The Official Athletic Site of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. The official source for info on GT Facilities | Bobby Dodd Stadium. Powered by WMT Digital.
ramblinwreck.com
Worth noting that Adam Cushing, who left NU to become the head coach at EIU, was fired last season after posting a 3-26 record.
Incidentally, he has moved on to take an O-line coaching position...at Duke.
