thorsin and Oliver aren't good enough
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The results and records show that the conference was NOT weak at the bottom. Only 4 teams had losing conference records, but EACH WON 25% or more of its conference games. Your own example, IOA, proves the point. It was a so-called weak team, yet it won 3 of 8 conf games, including against NU, one of the co-champs. Illinois got dismantled by NU, yet it still won 2 conference games, and nearly beat conference co-champ then #10 Mich, as well as then #13 OSU (what kind of 'terrible' team is that?). MSU only won 2 in conference, but that included defeating then #9 and eventual conference co-champ Purdue (AND beating eventual #15 ND early in the year). Indiana was bad but still won 2 conference games, including beating then #22 Minny (also beat eventual 8-4 Cinci).
The results clearly say that the conference was strong top to bottom (relatively speaking).
im not sure either of us would be proved wrong since neither of us claim him to rise above #2.
I mentioned him because i dont think he can be overlooked as competing for #2 next year. Others on this board have mentioned Smith possibly fighting for #2 as a true freshman and unless smith is really kicking ass, i cant see it. That will leave Yates and Green but based on the sample i saw Yates doesnt have an arm. Alviti just cant throw straight and unless we just let him throw the ball how charlie bliss taught him, he will continue to struggle mightedly.
who knows but i dont see any strong competition for the #2 and it is because our qb recruiting has been struggling bigtime. yes we have two 4 star recruits but the productivity out of that position is killing us and i dont see much evidence behind thorson to change that.
Schools don't look at all or 90% of the 3000 player pool. They have a recruiting strategy that best suits their situation. They pick regions (Chicagoland, New Jersey, Houston area, central Florida, etc) or niches (small schools, large schools, catholic schools, rural schools, lists of top players [Rivals], injured star players, etc.) where they have good contacts, reputation, and a better chance of landing a player. I suspect you have to spend a LOT of time finding those 30% and determining who might get in based upon only sophomore transcripts. Unfortunately, you cannot trust a player's word. Then there's additional time NU must spend making sure that player is a good fit for your program.
The advantage comes in intelligence itself and better retention of players within the program so that NU can field a more mature, better executing team. I also view it as an advantage in that certain kids (a small handful) value academic reputation. However, that is a very small group. Most bright kids want to play in large successful programs under great coaches, knowing that one can get a great education in most fields anywhere but can only get that electric gameday experience at large schools.
Oops, I posted this before reading the rest of the posts, and I see gocatsgo has addressed this thoroughly already.
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OK, realize that you always have to get the last word, so this is it for me. I saw that game. I SAW Illinois play. I don't CARE if they won two conference games (which isn't very good, by the way). That was a lousy team. Northwestern was a weak defensive team that benefited from a hail Mary and a fortuitous Michigan fumble even to get to 6-2, then got beat 66-17 in its bowl game. Rankings don't always mean you're a great team. We've been as high as No. 18 this year with a scoring-challenged offense, and two losses of 30-plus points.
I think there's a solid 50ish people that post here regularly, others that don't post as much, and even more lurkers. But yes, only one poster actually drives me crazy. And by crazy I mean I feel the need to rebut his idiocy time and time again, and then I don't think about him until an hour later when I pop on the boards again and read more of his nonsense.
Could it be that Ill played worse than normal the day you saw them play??
Why do I ask? Because they lost to #10 Mich and #13 OSU by a COMBINED margin of 7 pts (between both games). And, believe it or not, they were ranked during multiple weeks in the 1st half of the season.
Of course, none of that proves they were great or even good. It goes to show how strong the conference was, when one of its 'worse' teams had such credentials!
Teams that were ranked and then fell out of the polls are often poor teams. Was Michigan State good in 2000. No. Iowa? No. Is Nebraska a good team this year? They were ranked. Umm, no.
Upsets don't necessarily mean that the winning team is good. Stuff happens, like turnovers, good and bad bounces, injuries, Antawn Randel-El, bad calls, teams in a coma, teams inexplicably in a zone, etc. Horrid Temple (2-9) beating Virginia Tech (9-3) in 1998, happens. Indiana putting up 32 on Wisconsin, IN THE FIRST QUARTER, happens.
Perhaps the best measure of conference strength is OOC play, and in 2000, the co-champs in the conference struggled with 5 OOC losses including 2 of 3 losing decisively in bowl games. You argued that the Big Ten was "unusually strong and deep" (post 165), but the same results could happen if the league was weak. I provided data supporting the latter hypothesis. Now you're agreeing with me, probably because you realize that your logic and your research, has failed you.
I reality, I agree 2000 was a nice accomplishment. The league consisted of mostly middling to good teams (no great teams) in which two good teams with novel spread attacks were able to clip some of the traditional powers and win a share of the championship. Both spread teams lost in their bowl games, NU badly, because they played substantially better teams.
But you can get the same result for a weak conference top-to-bottom. Rankings mean little. OOC play means much more. Just look at the B1G vs SEC last year.
If you think bowl committees focus on matching teams of comparable strength and not maximizing cash profit, then I don't know what to tell you. They did a nice job pairing NU "from a strong, deep conference" against huge, loyal fan base Nebraska in the 2000 Alamo Bowl. Oh, that's right! You don't think Nebraska fans travel well.
This means little. That could also show just how weak and inconsistent the conference was! Even crap teams won against the so-called top teams. One might argue that they all sucked, but three teams sucked just a little bit less.
Well, Purdue has lost to ranked Michigan State and Northwestern teams by a combined 10 points this year. Does that mean Purdue is any good this year? Not really.
You mean MRCat95? I agree. I go nuts reading his nonsense, too.
yeah, but like I have said multiple times, almost half the conference was ranked either right before or after the bowl games...some of the cr*p teams also beat taugh noncon opponents (like MSU beating eventual #15 ND and Indy beating eventual 8-4 Cinci). Aside from the bowl games, many teams hat good nonconf games (Wiscy beat PAC10 co-champ Oregon, as well as Cinci and UCLA, PU lost by only 2 pts to ND, and so on). AP voters and voting coaches aren't so foolish to be deceived by an entire conference. So many B1G teams were ranked by or near seasons end for a reason.
P.S. Sorry, NU lost to top 20 TCU.
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Perhaps it means they aren't terrible. In a tough P5 conference, a team can lose a lot of games, without necessarily being terrible.
NU got blasted by TCU. NU did beat an 0-11 DUKE. The conference was overall weaker than normal, especially at the top. All three of the BT Champs lost OOC games. Heck the only teams that did not lose OOC were OSU, WIS and MSU. IA lost all three OOC. It was an accomplishment for NU but the conference at the top was pretty weak. Balanced, yes. Strong, No way. I think that the only team NU beat with a winning conference record was Mich. (There were only 4 with winning records and NU did not play OSU and lost to Purdue. NU took advantage of a pretty weak schedule.
NU got blown out by TCU and beat an 0-11 DUKE and a6-5 NIU. They only won one conference game against a team with a winning conference record. The conference was balanced but WEAK.
So, explain why almost half the B1G (FIVE teams out of 11) were ranked in the top 25 either right before or after the bowl games. Did most AP voters and the voting coaches get somehow deceived into thinking that the B1G was strong?
I suppose you think that MSU (which only won 2 B1G game) just got lucky when it beat #15 ND...and PU was almost as lucky when it lost to ND by only 2 pts. The luckiest of course was Wiscky which beat the PAC10 co-champ OR, UCLA and 8-4 Cinci.
We absolutely played to our unique/special characteristics when it came to actually recruiting players, but that doesn't mean those characteristics helped in the process of getting to that point.
At the end of the season (final poll) three BIG teams were rated. NONE in the top 10. Highest was Mich at 11. Purdue at 13 (not sure how they were rated that high with a loss in the RB) and WIS at 23. Heck, we were BIG champs and not rated. That is about as weak as the BIG has ever been. The BIG was the weakest (at the top) of the major conferences that year. All the other major conferences had teams in the top 10. PAC10 had # 3,4,7. Big 12 had #1,8,9,12 and 25, Big East only had 2 but they were #2 and 6, SEC had #10, 18.19.20,22,24 and the ACC had #5, 16 and 17. Basically we were the only power conference without a team in the top 10. Probably the only time a BIG champion has not been in the top 25.
There were 6 power conferences then vs 5 today. Basically any one of them would automatically have at least 2 or 3 in the top 25. That is basically about all the BIG did .Again, the BIG was balanced but was not very strong at the top. Only one team ended the season with less than 4 losses (Michigan at 3) And some of those losses were OOC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_NCAA_Division_I-A_football_season
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Read what I wrote and then answer. There were FIVE B1G teams ranked in the top 25 EITHER just before (end of 11-game reg. season) or after the bowl games. Even if a team is dropped after a bowl loss, it does not changed the fact that after AN ENTIRE regular season (11 games) it was ranked among the top 25. A bowl game is still just ONE game.
Just defining "conference strength" by the number of teams among the top 10 of the final AP poll is at best extremely arbitrary. Obviously a conference could have 1 or 2 very strong teams and no one else that is any good. That doesn't mean it is a strong CONFERENCE. The wear-and-tear of playing a full season in a deep league also takes a toll. It isn't the same to play a bowl game after a season in which you only played a few good teams and a bunch of "cup cakes", than after a grueling B1G season when the worse teams included the likes of MSU.
P.S. On a side note, Mich was #10 in the final coaches poll (not that it makes a big difference).
If you mean that NU hasn't been terrible under PF I fully agree. It hasn't. Then again, why should it be? NU won THREE B1G crowns the decade immediately preceding PF, and won 4, 5 and 5 B1G games in the 3 seasons right before his tenure. The problem is that in 10 years NU has not yet won a single league or even division title (when it won 3 in a period of about equal length), and have won only 1-3 B1G games in 66.67% of its completed seasons. It hasn't been terrible alright, but it hasn't exceeded even by one game the number of B1G wins in the 2 immediately preceding years, and consequently hasn't won any title. That is a massive problem, for a 10-year regime.
I'm just working a theory here...
Do you think it's true that NU tends to have a) longer relationships , b) deeper relationships, c) higher offer to commit ratios, and (a new one) d) lower decommit rates* than other schools in the conference?
Is it possible that that's related to the unique students that NU is able to target? It seems to me that, if everybody is starting with a pool of, say, 500 kids to evaluate, and NU's pool becomes 150 that the legwork dictates to be possibilities, then NU is at an edge against those programs that have 450 reasonable opportunities. Your hit rate had to be higher at NU, but it will be because of your focus is clearer.
*D) was challenged last year, but seemed a trend.
Wow. I posted the original thread. Some of the stuff I read is amazing. I Am a fan of northwestern because my kid goes there. Otherwise I have always been into the sec, being from the south. All I'm saying is that the team is good and the quarterbacks stats look brutal. No big deal. Maybe they are our best options. If this team was in the sec with this talent they would be asking for the qbs head. You guys are happy with 8-2 and that's great. Championships take a little more ambition than that. Toughen up a little bit. Did someone compare 1 of our qbs to joe Montana? That's priceless. You guys have a great sense of humor.
you sound like someone from the SEC. Go away. We don't need your kind. At least your wife's kid has brains.
Don't know what football you've been watching this year, but I'll take the QBs at Ohio State, Michigan State and Iowa over QBs I've seen at Alabama and LSU this year any day. Toughen up? How about the SEC toughening up its academic standards. Let's have Alabama recruiting at the same academic standards as Stanford and Northwestern and see how many national championships they're hauling in. But what the heck, doing student-athlete the right way takes a little more ambition than that.
Again that was one of the weakest seasons of all time for the Big 10. The HIGHEST rated team in the final season poll was 14 (PU). The championship was great for us but it was a very weak season for the BIG. Interesting that PU actually moved up by losing. Have not seen that before. 6 wins in conference would not have won the BIG any years since and not sure how far back you have to go to find a team win the conference with a 6-2 record before 2000 either. That you continue to bring up that championship. Only 3 other times in history has a two loss team won conference (interestingly, each was a 6-2 team. 1990 four teams were tied with 6-2 records. In 1981, two teams were tied. Since the BIG went to a Championship game, WIS has been able to get into the game with a 6-2 record and a 4-4 record and win the championship. Just saying that winning the championship with less than 7 wins or more than one loss is highly unusual.
I find it disturbing that you continue to use that weak championship to belittle what Fitz has accomplished. How about this. Walker for all your love of that championship managed 8 wins exactly once (that year) and never more. Fitz has had 4 seasons of at least 8 wins. He has had 9 wins in season twice (something Walker never did) and he was able to win a bowl game and get to 10 wins (something only accomplished in the RB year. He managed to get a post season ranking not done since 97. He managed to get wins against power conferences that Walker had problems with. Even in a down year, he was able to defeat a ranked ND,
Roughly what percentage of total man-hours are spent screening recruits (compiling lists, talking to HS coaches, doing transcript and background checks) versus recruiting players (contact, texting, sending mailings to offered recruits, pitching the program, accompanying them on visits, etc.)?
Don't forget the difference in OOC scheduling up until 2012. Walker didn't play any FCS schools while Fitz has played 10 FCS schools (9-1).
I will have to retype my answer, because now apparently posts in capital letters are now deleted. That is a pretty high standard of civility, which I hope will be applied uniformly regardless of the author. You own your board.
It is absolutely ludicrous to argue that in 2000 the B1G was weak when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
1) The B1G had 11 teams, right? Of the 11, 5 (FIVE) which is near 50% were in the top 25 either just before or after the bowls.
Multiple other B1G teams not in that list managed to get ranked for multiple weeks, or well inside the season. Even if they eventually fell out the polls, that shows they weren't all that weak.
It is well known that when a conference is strong, it is difficult for any one team to get very highly ranked because as teams beat each other, they blemish each others records.
2) Even the 'weaker' teams were capable of beating top teams both inside and outside the B1G. Case in point 2-6 MSU beat co-champ PU and #15 ND. 2-6 Indy beat 8-4 Cinci. 3-5 IOA beat co-champ NU.
Others fell just short, as 2-6 Ill who lost to OSU and Mich (both top 15 then) by a combined 7 pts.
3) Wiscy only managed 4 B1G wins, yet managed to beat PAC-10 co-champ OR, plus UCLA and Cinci.
All that clearly show that the B1G was both very strong and balanced. That is the reason why no team managed more than 6 B1G wins, and 3 teams shared the championship.
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I dunno why people jumped down your throat. Must be having a bad day. You make a great point and started what may be one of the longest threads in this boards history! Good stuff, stick around. Thanks.
Walker was not exactly the master of OOC. He had what, 3 wins against any OOC foe with more than 4 wins? Just saying some of his foes, like 0-11 Duke in 2000 might as well have been FCS.
Would the fact that NU is the program with the most losses be an advantage? Not disagreeing with your overall point, but you can't simply say that all unique things must be an advantage.
I didn't find him to be lecturing or condescending at all. Now you may disagree with him but I don't think he was being an asshole. It didn't come across that way to me anyway.
Balanced, yes. Strong no. We, as champions, played the number 3 team in the Big 12 (a strong conference that year) and got blown out. Big 10 really did not do particularly well OOC that year. That some bottom of the Big 10 teams beat top teams is an indication that the conference was balanced and the top teams were not that strong. Example, IA beat us but IA lost all 4 of their OOC games.
Again, balanced but only of middlin strength vs the other power conferences. The Big 12 was the king that year.
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