Husker in WI

And Chryst won 11, 10, and 13 before last years drop to 8. It's usually a quicker drop if an inferior coach takes over. They'll be fine, I'm more worried about them over the next 5 years than I am Minnesota, Iowa, or Purdue. On a Reed note, hard to fault him for choosing Wisconsin - they've pretty much been LB University, 7 drafted since 2016.

A huge chunk was culture, but they probably had more talent relative to their conference than we did. And you can't really ignore a few key recruits making huge impacts, like Killins and obviously Milton. A culture change is necessary but not sufficient to turn most programs around.

I disagree - we know we have a good coach. You don't go undefeated in any conference without at least being good. Exactly how good does remain to be seen and we definitely don't know if he's great yet, but 'good' isn't really a debate.

You're cherry-picking the comments about culture. The culture did need to change, and so did the scheme and the players. There are also plenty of comments talking about the improvements in recruiting and running a cutting-edge offense. The off-season is for hype, and right now the stories are the culture/team building ones. When we get to camp they'll shift to more recruiting (look at these new guys!) and development (Player X has completely changed his body, Y is a step and half faster), and at the end of the day all that matters is how they play. But trying to limit the excitement even to reasonable levels is a losing battle.

Same, I just don't think all of them happen. I could see Colorado or Maryland sneaking up on us, but not both. Maryland is has a better run game than Illinois, so it could turn into a weird shootout. Similar with Purdue and Minnesota - wouldn't be surprised at all if we lose either of those games, I just don't think it's both.

Frost has very little D1 head coaching experience, Osborne, Solich, and Pelini had none. Riley had a lot, although obviously it wasn't a lot of success. Even nationally, I don't think there's a strong correlation between previous head coaching experience and success at a top program. Saban is a great example of previous coaching experience, he was good at Michigan State then great at LSU and Bama. But Dabo at Clemson was a questionable hire at the time, didn't set the world on fire immediately. For the last piece, anyone can tell you the hires were bad after the fact. Many said they were bad at the time. But asking about Pelini, Solich, and Callahan's championships is a little ridiculous since none of them were college head coaches before Nebraska, and they were starting from the same number as Osborne. We can all say now these were bad hires, but who would you have hired over Pelini? He was seen as a rising star, and had done everything except be a head coach.

Not common, but TCU went from 4-8 in 2013 to 12-1 in 2014. I haven't found a list specific to 4 win teams, but seems like a team goes from 0-4 wins to 9+ about every year- most aren't in major conferences though. TCU was in the Big 12 at that point though, so they're the recent P5 example - 12-13 Auburn (3-9 to 12-2) and 04-05 Penn State (4-7 to 11-1) are other encouraging examples.

.700 will probably do (if he's winning the Big Ten consistently), but yeah .500 won't cut it. But even if he falls short of the expectations, say loses 3 of 4 against Michigan - OSU is still going to be a tough team for at least the near future. And I don't see the above happening, right now Michigan has some kind of complex and couldn't beat OSU if it was Mike Riley instead of Day on the sideline. I'm sure that'll change, but I'll have to see it before I believe it.

Day is less experienced than Solich, but much more highly regarded as an offensive mind. Ohio State also won't have the difficulty in recruiting Solich did - kids went to Nebraska because of Osborne so once he left it was a tougher sell, top 5 program or not. Sure some kids went to OSU because of Meyer, but plenty of kids will go to OSU just because it's OSU. There are similarities, but we don't really know much about Day yet so I don't think you can say for sure it's the same. Could be like the Devaney > Osborne transition, could be Osborne > Solich. Could be a Tressel > Fickell transition, but I doubt that one. If it goes south, it'll still take a few years.

Which I'm sure is his goal, then he can keep hitting line drives where the shift used to be. It's not a bad move, and I'm sure he's just doing it to make teams a little more hesitant to use a shift that extreme. In general they don't care a whole lot if Carpenter bunts for a single, but if their positioning turns it into a double they'll have to change it up a little.

It's probably not a commit-able offer at this point, otherwise I would think he'd take it instead of listing a top 7 and specifying his recruitment is still open. Could be a guy who blows up late - Fritszche's next best offer when we offered last year was Syracuse, and he ended up with one from Clemson. Also could be a guy who knows he's a Plan B here, and is just trying to force another school's hand by making it look like he's coming up on a decision.

I could see that kind of season, but I wouldn't be bold enough to predict it. I also just don't see NW as a loss, even if we go 11-1 I think the loss would be from one of Minnesota/Iowa/OSU, or even Purdue.

Scott's brother Steve is or was the Stanford PA announcer, so he probably went there too.

I hadn't seen the articles actually ranking Fields ahead of Martinez, so I get it now. But at the same time if we had one of the top ten recruits of the past 20 years, we'd probably expect him to be better than a lot of more proven players whether that's fair or not. The dude has elite talent, and we'll just have to see how he actually plays.

I don't think it's open to the public, it just leaks so fast it seems like it is. They probably need to restrict the number of people at the schools that can access it, not sure what the current restrictions are but functionally they're a joke. This story from 247 claims a school employee just gave his login details to a media member. I think they should lock it down, as much fun as it is to browse the instantaneous media reports do nothing to help the student-athletes.

Where have you seen people saying he'll have a bigger year than Martinez? There are arguments to be had about how good he could be/will be, but I have not seen anyone (even OSU fans) predicting a bigger year than Martinez. All players start from having accomplished nothing, but we get excited about them anyway. This time of year is all about hype anyway, gotta be excited about something and the shiny new players are appealing. Are you quashing the Wan'Dale hype as well?

Troy Aikman, Vince Ferragamo, Baker Mayfield, and as Nebfanatic pointed out there are several poised to make an impact moving forward in Fields, Martell, etc. Not a quarterback example, but do you think Tre Neal lacked mental fortitude? Rumor was he was not going to start at UCF, which factored into his transfer decision. I think kids are just realizing 4-5 years is not a lot of time, and if you're not playing at Clemson/Alabama/Georgia there are still plenty of places you can play. Especially at QB where only one guy plays. And in this case Fields a better fit for Ohio State's offense anyway, maybe he just realized that too late.

Probably between him, Jonathan Taylor, and Rondale Moore. They don't win last year without him, he and Landman really carried them.

I know they write these well in advance, but nobody proofreads them before posting? Roundtree is mentioned a lot (including being named their best defensive player), and he's definitely not playing this year. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/26787500/illinois-dl-roundtree-suffers-severe-spinal-injury

Looks like it from this thread, but I imagine they'll all move around. Forgot about that when I mentioned guys at Safety, but I'm sure the staff will figure out the best 4-6 players for the secondary and make the positions work as needed.

Not so much what I meant - it's not fair to the other guys. If your message is after the initial suspension you can play if the guys replacing you aren't getting it done, that is not a strong message. Or to put it another way, you're telling the backups we want you to replace the starter because he's breaking rules, but if you can't do it well enough we'll put him back in.

That, and I think it just took a while for players to evaluate the benefit/cost of transferring appropriately. Sitting out a year sounds like a lot, but even if you don't get a waiver losing a year and being at a new school may be better than 4-5 years at your current school. There was (and still is to a degree) a stigma around transferring, but that's going away too. I was looking forward to a Smith/Jones Safety combo in a few years, but I'll move on to looking forward to a Pola-Gates/Farmer/Newsome one. And to Mavrics point, I absolutely would be more critical of this if it was a different coach - I won't pretend I'm consistent with that.

And if they don't play well, you're fine putting him back in because now we need him? If you're actually trying to send a message, it can't be contingent on game performance. And I've never seen a 5 game suspension for a first strike - unless you're combining it with his California thing, but that has to be resolved before they figure out a punishment.

To be fair we don't really know why he's leaving, could be unrelated to lack of playing time. And kids transfer out of Bama all the time, if they don't perform they are encouraged to move on and replaced with more elite talent. In our situation we obviously can't afford to lose as much talent, but kids transfer from every school - the powerhouses are just able to continuously bring in more. Also from what I've read the coaches do not promise playing time to anyone. They offer the opportunity for early playing time, but they don't promise anything more than a good opportunity to win a job.

The other thing is the talent pool at Ohio State is ridiculous - if there is anywhere in the Big Ten where you can get away with a QB still working on accuracy and getting up to speed, it's OSU. Fields doesn't have to be a superstar for them to win.