Smoke & Mirrors 2022 edition

So what exactly is this rif between those 2???

glenn57 wrote:

So what exactly is this rif between those 2???

Kill is upset that they fired his former assistant and his friend Tracy Claeys after they went 9-4. That was also when a bunch of players got into legal trouble for assault too, which is why the administration fired Claeys.

PJ came in and used the phrase “change the culture” and Kill took that as offensive, ie the previous “culture” under him was no good.

Kill is mostly just sour grapes now lol

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Ripjiggen wrote:</div>
Who cares? As if this actually matters for football players outside of NW. Not directed at you Bucky just what was easiest to cut and paste.

As a student athlete they should care where they get their education from since the vast majority aren’t going to the NFL. A lot of fortune 500 companies in MN too and many stick around to work here.

I meant the debate of which school is harder to get into.

Ripjiggen wrote:

I meant the debate of which school is harder to get into.

I made the original comment when I was talking about how fleck has the program beating their GPA essentially each year and said that it was a tough school to get into and it went from there.

I know capt. It wasn’t directed at anyone in particular.

Welp!

Most Popular College Team By State (Link)

Michael C. Winther wrote:

Welp!

Most Popular College Team By State (Link)

nice click bate.

Dan wrote:

I’d be curious to see what the Fleck haters on here and the rest of the public think about the handshake heard ’round the world. I’ve seen people online say PJ established dominance and displayed a lot of power moves, and they’re absolutely right. Everyone was focussed on a handshake after the game and ol’ PJ gets after it in warmups. Then Kill tries to do a quick one and walk away and PJ literally won’t let go. Then Kill’s body language shows he wants to get out of there and PJ puts his arm around him and you can tell he’s dominating the conversation.

PJ has taken the high road the whole time. Then he made the in-person interaction go the way HE wanted it to go. Then his team crushed Kill’s team.

Agree. With the whole thing.

Looks like they took care of business against a vastly inferior team at home again.

Both Wisconsin and Iowa lost at home today. Iowa lost to Iowa State and Wisconsin lost to Washington State.

I would say 62-10 is taking care of business yes. Good tune up for the real games coming up.

The Big Red sure took a dump today. Looks like the the Gophers are the only undefeated team in the Big 10 west.

Iowa has only 1 touchdown through 2 games?

CaptainMusky wrote:

Iowa has only 1 touchdown through 2 games?

I watched the 4th quarter of their game against Iowa State yesterday. They partially blocked a punt in Iowa State’s end zone, got the ball on the 25 yard line, and failed to score any points from that possession. Then the Cyclones scored a late TD to win the game 10-7.

Well the wheels are fully fallen off at Nebraska. Iowa has no offense. And Wisconsin isn’t far behind. Stacking up to look like the Gophers easiest path to the Big 10 Championship game since 2019 when they just needed one more win.

Did they name a coach at Nebraska or one of the coordinators taking over.

Asst coach who was also a QB for Huskers temp HC. His name escapes me.

BigWerm wrote:

Well the wheels are fully fallen off at Nebraska.

Further proof of the insanity that is college sports. Yeah I get it, it’s Nebraska football but still $15 million to buyout Frost? I can’t stop laughing, man did Frost’s agent take the Nebraska AD to the cleaners. To put it politely.

If they would have waited two weeks that number would have been 7.5 million. It is insane how these college football programs burn university money.

I wonder if he will feel bad about stealing all that money? Haha. Man what a joke Nebraska has become and their fanbase just HATES PJ. Every chance they get they blast him for this or that, yet their own problem was right in front of them.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

If they would have waited two weeks that number would have been 7.5 million. It is insane how these college football programs burn university money.

Yeah it’s mind boggling, I don’t care if a booster offered to cover the cost, that is just irresponsible management.

BigWerm wrote:

Yeah it’s mind boggling, I don’t care if a booster offered to cover the cost, that is just irresponsible management.

Since Cornhusker football is the only thing in town I am sure they have a ton of stacks of booster provided cash, but like you said that is just felonious waste of money.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>BigWerm wrote:</div>
Well the wheels are fully fallen off at Nebraska.

Further proof of the insanity that is college sports. Yeah I get it, it’s Nebraska football but still $15 million to buyout Frost? I can’t stop laughing, man did Frost’s agent take the Nebraska AD to the cleaners. To put it politely.

If they would have waited two weeks that number would have been 7.5 million. It is insane how these college football programs burn university money.

It is insane how much money these football teams make the university. Big Ten new TV contract alone is 7 billion.

Ripjiggen wrote:

It is insane how much money these football teams make the university. Big Ten new TV contract alone is 7 billion.

Yeah that is insane, but likely was a big reason those teams are moving to the BigTen. I dont particularly care for more watered down divisions. I wonder if they will do 3 Divisions?

BigWerm wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>TheFamousGrouse wrote:</div>
If they would have waited two weeks that number would have been 7.5 million. It is insane how these college football programs burn university money.

Yeah it’s mind boggling, I don’t care if a booster offered to cover the cost, that is just irresponsible management.

Husker fan here, there was a lot more going on that moved the timeline up. As I understand it, the AD was not in favor of keeping him at the end of last year and stated as much when he said there is no data that says this is going to work, but had to find a way around the 20 million dollar buyout that was in place.

They agreed upon a 15 million dollar buyout and reduced 2022 salary, buyout dropped to 7.5 million after October 1. Worst case scenario you are thinking we are 2-1 heading into Oklahoma this week and really should be 3-0. Here we sit at 1-2 and our defense just got lit up to the tune of 640 yards by a coach who is in the first year of implementing his system at Georgia Southern.

If all of that is not bad enough, Frost made some comments after the game that boiled down to he wasn’t sure what to do and didn’t know how to make adjustments. Then you have offensive players after the game saying we scored 42, we don’t play defense too.

We are at the point that if the team is not lost already, it is hanging on by a very fragile thread and having a lame duck coach for 3 more weeks was a MAJOR issue that would certainly result in losing the team. I was also one that thought there was no way we would fire him before October 1 because 7.5 million is a lot of money, but I believe it came to the point that not firing him now would end up costing a lot more than the 7.5 million.

I was 100% convinced that Frost would get this thing back on track for the Huskers. Not to the level of the 80’s and 90’s but being in contention for the West every year. He got the recruiting fixed, there is not a major talent issue in Lincoln right now compared to the other teams in the West. On paper they have out recruited every team in the division. What we do have is development and coaching issue. Every year the fastest, most explosive players in our program are the new guys. After training with our strength and training staff they seem to get bigger, stronger and slower. If memory serves, the head strength and conditioning coach has maybe one or two winning season to his name out of 10+. At one point Jo Jo Domann (playing linebacker in the NFL now) refused to do his summer training at Nebraska because he did not believe it was beneficial to him. We have had multiple guys that have been told by the NFL to lose some bulk/muscle and get quicker. They are all playing in the NFL now.

Frost made a couple major mistakes that a first time Power 5 Head Football coach can not afford to make:
– brought his entire staff from UCF, the majority of these guys did not have the experience to warrant such a promotion and worse yet is they were buddies with the head coach…don’t ever hire someone you can’t fire.
– continued to make major changes to the offensive staff, when it was really the defense that was more of the issue. Last year Nebraska’s offense was ranked in the 20’s, but did struggle to score once in the redzone. Last years defense was in the 40’s or 50’s and that was by far their best defense with a couple pro’s on it. The defense has always been the bigger issue. Iowa’s offense will score 35+ on us this year is something doesn’t change.
-Completely ignored special teams for 4 years, this is the first year that we have had a focus on special teams….I’m sure you’ll all be surprised that they are doing much better this year.
-Refused to make a change at the strength & conditioning coach, who is the single most important person in the entire organization since they spend so much more time with the players than the coaches do.

Unfortunately Frost took to much from the Chip Kelly tree and forgot what Osborne, Walsh and Tomlin taught. Tried to blend the philosophies and it never worked. When you try to be good at a lot of things you are never great at any one of them.

I personally can not stand the PJ schtick, but I will say I think he is one heck of a football coach. You know exactly what they are going to do and they line up and do it anyway. If you get past all of the rah, rah crap and focus in on what he is saying, he’s a really good coach. I was impressed by him early on when his defense was really struggling and he made a change to the DC, they simplified it and have been really good on defense ever since.

Hard to believe but the Gophs are 1st in the country in both total offense and total defense. Granted, playing NM State and Western Ill, but there was also a time not many years ago a loss would not surprise you.

Nebby is the same spot the Gophers were in the 80s- 20 years past any actual shot at a championship. Problem is the fanbase thinks this was a couple years back when nobody they are recruiting was alive during the glory years.

Already hearing PJ’s name brought up as replacement at Nebraska…besides the $10M UM buyout on top of the $15M they paid to fire Frost, there’s the fact Nebraska fans hate PJ. And at this point Minnesota is a better job than Nebraska. Yeah I said it.

BigWerm wrote:

Already hearing PJ’s name brought up as replacement at Nebraska…besides the $10M UM buyout on top of the $15M they paid to fire Frost, there’s the fact Nebraska fans hate PJ. And at this point Minnesota is a better job than Nebraska. Yeah I said it.

Its not zero, but its got to be dang close to zero that PJ would leave MN for Nebraska. I believe I read very early on in his tenure that with his divorce and the 2 kids he has to stay in the upper midwest. Not sure Nebraska would qualify or not.

I don’t personally want PJ at Nebraska and I doubt we will poach a head coach from within the conference. Having said that, I think he’d be very successful in Lincoln but might have to tone down his raw, raw stuff quite a bit. Though I think he has toned it down a little already.

Long term I think the Nebraska job is a way better job than Minnesota (fan, donor and university support) but right now there is no question that Minnesota is a better program.

Ryan Speers wrote:

Long term I think the Nebraska job is a way better job than Minnesota (fan, donor and university support) but right now there is no question that Minnesota is a better program.

You’re probably right, but how do you even judge a job these days when the conference TV money dwarfs the local revenue? Sure they have a lot more support (fans and money), and Memorial Stadium is full of 85k fans every weekend vs Huntington barely full of 45k most weekends. But significantly higher expectations, pressure and rebuilding an iconic brand vs creating your own, it’s a lot more complicated than it used to be. I agree with you on the Long Term vs Short Term, but just some additional random thoughts.

There will be better jobs out there in a year or two for Fleck. Better than Nebraska that’s for sure.

I know there’s talk about him staying the mid west but if the SEC comes calling he’d be a fool to turn them down.

BigWerm wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Ryan Speers wrote:</div>
Long term I think the Nebraska job is a way better job than Minnesota (fan, donor and university support) but right now there is no question that Minnesota is a better program.

You’re probably right, but how do you even judge a job these days when the conference TV money dwarfs the local revenue? Sure they have a lot more support (fans and money), and Memorial Stadium is full of 85k fans every weekend vs Huntington barely full of 45k most weekends. But significantly higher expectations, pressure and rebuilding an iconic brand vs creating your own, it’s a lot more complicated than it used to be. I agree with you on the Long Term vs Short Term, but just some additional random thoughts.

I would say you measure all jobs based on what is the realistic recruiting level. Nebraska can realistically recruit classes ranked in the 20’s, maybe even as high as 15. Frost has been mostly in the 20’s with no results to help recruits believe.

PJ has no doubt raised the Minnesota recruiting level, but I think we are talking 30’s or 40’s on an annual basis. If he leaves, where does recruiting go?

And we are all looking up at Ohio State, USC, Penn State and Michigan. Who can each get top 10 classes every single year!