Small, private school fires sacred cow, heads to national championship game
- Thread starter phatcat
- Start date
I can already see the furious posts from the folks calling for Fitz's head if NU fired him and then hired a coach who failed at Cal and was fresh off 5th and 6th place finishes in the AAC.
Until he won more games in the first two weeks than Fitz won the whole year. And then won more by week 5 than Fitz won in 2 years.
Not an advocate for a particular replacement, I'm in favor of holding someone accountable
Won more in one season than Fitz in 3 years, including the BigW champ year?
Sonny Dykes is a really good coach. He has done something spectacular down there in Texas. Their old coach Patterson could have been Walker’s half brother - even though they crushed us in 200
I’d love to hear Fitz’s take on it… but I bet he’d rather see TCU win it than the other 3 teams. He also may not care about it at all. Only Fitz knows…
I’d love to hear Fitz’s take on it… but I bet he’d rather see TCU win it than the other 3 teams. He also may not care about it at all. Only Fitz knows…
Who cares? Fitz is still 1-1 versus Sonny as a head coach IIRC.
My guys @corbi296 and @CoralSpringsCat can confirm if you don’t believe me.
TCU has averaged 41 ppg this season. They averaged 26 ppg in 2021.
Part of scoring a lot of points is deciding you want to score a lot of points. NU doesn’t believe in that philosophy. Neither did Gary Patterson.
Sonny Dykes wants to score 75 every game. Fitz wants to score one more than his opponent.
Yesterday’s NY6 winners averaged 46 ppg. High-powered offenses are a must in modern college football.
Part of scoring a lot of points is deciding you want to score a lot of points. NU doesn’t believe in that philosophy. Neither did Gary Patterson.
Sonny Dykes wants to score 75 every game. Fitz wants to score one more than his opponent.
Yesterday’s NY6 winners averaged 46 ppg. High-powered offenses are a must in modern college football.
I wish we had an offense. And a defense. And special teams
A common denominator of the four semi finalists was that they all have mobile QBs. It is a must in today’s college football.
Dykes was set up for success and won on the back of Patterson's recruits. You think he'd have had that same success here at NU? If so, you're much more silly than I ever thought you were. I'm happy for Dykes, but most folks around here hated him when he was at Cal.
That said, your boy is available. Navy just fired him after his sixth place finish in the AAC. You signing up for that? I suspect you'd be all stoked about how "accountable" NU was being before you started raging about how cheap and uninterested in winning that NU was. Firing someone just to be "accountable" is silly, too.
I’m not sure what your point is. No one is saying dykes would have the same success at NU as he had at Tcu. People are saying NU could have more success with a different coach. Completely reasonable take. And college football coaches are held accountable by being terminated when they are bad at their job. Take out the weird Covid year and Fitz has been the worst power 5 coach by a mile since 2018.
I domt think it’s a stretch to say that he would be fired at every othe BIG school. I think NU should have fired him after this past year but I can understand why they didn’t.
I don't have a boy. I don't know this Ken, though I probably commented on a thread about him. Here's an idea: find a coach that is successful at a G5 level and hire him. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (Beckman et al). What could go wrong? 0-12? Farmer Jones will come back, Napoleon?
The point of this thread isn't that a particular coach (Dykes, Ken, whatever) is right, it's that the tolerance of suck is, well, intolerable. You might be one of those "2-3 more seasons" guys. Personally, unless this exhaustive and exhausting DC search yields Hank Jr, I feel like we are destined for no better than 2-10 next year. We were one bonehead Scott Frost call from being 0-12. Tell me, Hoos, at what point do we pull the trigger? I'd really like your opinion.
Firing someone to make them accountable for a pattern of failure and refusal to change is never silly. Especially in the silly sport of CFB. Times have changed. Adapt or die. Harbaugh adapted. Frost didn't. Duke TCU et.al adapted. Shaw resigned. Meanwhile in Evanston, the Cheese stands alone
Really?
Sounds like this mystical AAC 6th place genius was going to be 5-0. Please do give me some insight on what phatcat was getting at in this reference to Dykes that wasn't implying he would have the same success.
I'm sorry that it wasn't clearer, but the point of my posts here is that the original post was silly. Comparing the situations at TCU and NU in the spirit of merely holding someone "accountable" is foolish. Wanna suggest a coach who would be more successful than the current one and explain why? Go for it. Make suggestions about how the program has to change to be successful? 100. But making change just for change sake? That's what reactionary, rudderless organizations do.
Round and round we go. I interpreted his dykes comment as a contrast to Fitz record, not as an indication that dykes would go 12-0 at NU.
Regardless, firing Fitz would not be “making change just for changes sake”. Firing Fitz would be because he has been awful at his job. Like, frighteningly bad at his job. Have you watched the games???? I could name a D3 coach who could do better than 2-16 in the BIG. I could find a high school coach they could take NU roster and beat Illinois at. What the hell are you even talking about?
That's a great question. JMHO, but after this season, I'd say that NU should be giving some ultimatums. If NU has another season like the last two (3 or less wins) with no signs of positives to build on, I'd say the university should be looking for a new longtime solution.
This narrative of "refusal to change" is really interesting. Dude has fired/replaced coordinators twice in the last five years amidst two division championships. And he's fired/replaced multiple other coaches in that time as well.
And the "pattern of failure" comment really seems to be lacking context. There are exactly two coaches in the last 100 years who have had winning records in more than 50% of their seasons as NU head coach. One is the current head coach and the other is in the college football hall of fame. Heck, there's even another coach in the college football hall of fame who couldn't reach that mark at NU.
I appreciate you asking thoughtful questions and apologize if I came on too strong. We just disagree about the actual lay of the land and the idea that firing someone just for the sake of saying you did something is an auto-positive. More often than not, it is what bad managers do. Advocate for somebody you think would do a better job, but don't be one of those people who say it couldn't get worse. All you have to do is look at the previous 40+ years of Northwestern football history before Fitz was head coach.
My bad. I thought I was talking to a serious person...not the guy who hired Gerry Faust.
I was here before Barnett for Peay’s last season. I’m not sure it was much worse.
That's because you were drunk at the tailgates and didn't even bother to go inside the games.
If you had, you would have noticed that the difference between Peay's six year run and the last six years of Fitz is the three bowl wins, two division titles (Peay's teams would have finished as high as 4th place twice in his six years) and a winning percentage less than half. Other than that, not much difference.
It’s remarkable that people can argue with a straight face that firing Fitz would be changing for changes sake. Good grief. For me, I knew Fitz had no answers during the Miami game. It could have been the Duke game (falling behind 21-0), could have been the SIU game (the tight end running right down the field for 2 wide open TDs with a third one being dropped). It was miami driving down the field with the backup QB in (who couldn’t throw a rock in the ocean) and NU unable to stop them. During a timeout the camera cut to Fitz and he had a look of utter bewilderment. I knew NU was screwed.
That Miami game was something else. The team was unprepared for a backup who, we would learn during the game, couldn’t throw. And with that being the case, the RedHawks shoved it down our defense’s throat with the game on the line.
Miami looked exactly like NU hopes to look, which is sad. Miami passed once in 13 plays on their game-winning drive.
For the remainder of my life, I will be grateful for everything Fitz has done for the program, the athletic department and the university. I wouldn't object to a Statue at the new stadium. Nevertheless, his inability to adapt, to remain even mediocre, leads me to believe he cannot recover. JON was terrible and he is gone, but we are awful in all phases of the game. A whiz-bang DC, with our returning talent, might be able to squeeze 3-4 wins, but I have serious doubts.
Seems like he took Patterson’s recruits and got more out of them than anyone could’ve expected. They also lost one of their highest recruits to the portal in the off-season.
I'm not talking about the last six years. Just a few years ago, we still had Mike Hankwitz.That's because you were drunk at the tailgates and didn't even bother to go inside the games.
If you had, you would have noticed that the difference between Peay's six year run and the last six years of Fitz is the three bowl wins, two division titles (Peay's teams would have finished as high as 4th place twice in his six years) and a winning percentage less than half. Other than that, not much difference.
I'm talking about last year. With no Mike Hankwitz. It was bad. Peay era bad. Only when Peay coached us, we didn't lose to an FCS team or to Miami OH.
Actually Mike Hankwitz deserves the statue. We can name a port a potty for Coach Fitzy.
Also Peay had nowhere near NUs commitment to the program in terms of facilities and salary. Off the top Fitz has lost to Illinois State and SIU. And I think he may have a losing record against the MAC.
He's actually 11-4 against the MAC. I thought you might be right so I looked it up. Recency bias rears its ugly head, he's 2-3 in the last 5 games but 9-1 otherwise......started out his career 8-0.
Dykes was a terrible fit at Cal. He replaced Jeff Tedford, best known for discovering and developing Aaron Rodgers. JT was a fan favorite even when his teams were not doing well. I'd see Dykes occasionally around town and he always seemed disgruntled even after a win. He was a fish out of water in Berkeley. Texas is where he belongs and not surprising he's done a lot better there.
