Tim Miles: B1G Coach of the Year?

I trust the coaches way more than I'll ever trust the media, in every sport. Both groups have biases on some level, but I just can't trust the media. Their whole business is ensuring that the profitable teams look good.

 
Enhance89 said:
Minnesota_husker said:
f#*k the media... Tim Miles deserved that and even the winning coach thought that... bunch of idiots who voted without watching a f'ing game.

glad the coaches gave it to miles... I trust their opinion more.
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This is actually a really intriguing opinion to me. Let me relate it back to college football - I've seen the argument countless times (including on this message board) that the AP poll is more valuable the Coaches' poll. Why? Because coaches don't have time to sit and watch teams when they're so worried about their own and the next opponent. But, the media does. That's why sometimes you see teams like Nebraska in the Coaches' but not the AP - our name still carries weight with coaches, while the media casts us out after we lose games.

Now, obviously there's a difference because I'm talking about college ranking and this is the vote for COTY. But, it's an interesting point of debate. Do some people trust the media in football but not in basketball to make a choice like this? Not trying to single you out by the Minnesota! I'm just kind of curious how people view this.

Obviously, I'm biased - Tim Miles is COTY. And I'm genuinely surprised even the "media", many of whom decided Nebraska would finish dead last, didn't pick Miles. Michigan was expected to drop off, but they have a proven coach and talent. Nebraska had FAR more questions prior to the season, and Miles has done excellent work. I just don't see how him making a four seed and likely NCAA tourney bid isn't COTY material in the "media's" eyes.
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The media has barely more time to watch than a head coach. Stewart Mandel's great book, Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls gives a pretty good glimpse:

Take it from me. Covering a college football game—which most voters in the poll do nearly every Saturday—is an all-day affair. Let's say the game kicks off at 3:30 P.M. EST. To beat traffic and get to the press box in time to get settled, I probably leave my hotel around noon. Consequently, I am in the car listening to the radio, or walking from the parking lot, during the first half of the noon games. Once I arrive, usually there are televisions in the press box airing at least one major national game. I try to keep an eye on them, but realistically my attention is mainly focused on getting ready for the game at hand—studying game notes, chatting up the teams' sports information directors. However, thanks to ESPN GamePlan, it's now possible to see games on my computer, so I definitely watch the ones that go down to the wire. Once the game I'm covering starts, I try to keep tabs on some other games on my computer, but by the second half such multitasking becomes more difficult, and because you need to go down to the field with about five minutes remaining to do interviews, it's a given that I won't see the endings of the other games live. I usually return to the press box about an hour later and frantically write a column. By the time I get back to the hotel (or, more often, to a sports bar), I'm able to catch about the last quarter and a half of the prime-time games.
All of which leaves myself and my fellow reporters extremely dependent on ESPN's Saturday night wrap-up shows and/or SportsCenter. "Without fail, I try to catch ESPN's final highlights show," said 2006 AP voter Tim Griffin of the San Antonio-Express News. "If I can catch it before I go to sleep Saturday night, so much the better." The other problem is, most of us have flights to catch before the ballots are due. "I try to catch as many games as possible, but, of course, covering a game takes a large chunk out of my Saturday," said another voter, Mitch Vingle of the Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette. "More than once I've stayed up until Hawaii or a late West Coast team completed its game in order to vote—with a four A.M. wakeup up call set up to catch a plane." Indeed, finding out what happened in the games ranks right at the top of the list of tasks a voter should probably undertake before casting his ballot. In 2006, the AP booted one of its voters, Jim Kleinpeter of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, after he admitted to mistakenly dropping Oklahoma nine spots because he'd failed to check the final score of the Sooners' game against Texas Tech. Oklahoma had rallied to win 34-24. "I was in the press box after the LSU game that night and I remember… asking somebody, Did Oklahoma get beat? and somebody said 'Yes.'" Kleinpeter told the Tulsa World. "When I woke up the next morning, I rushed through my stuff and when I looked in the paper, I didn't see the score. It was still in my head that they lost."

Fortunately, the national scope of my beat allows me to get to different parts of the country and see most of the top teams in person at some point. If, however, you're a beat writer covering, say, Michigan State, chances are the only teams you'll see in person all season are the Spartans' Big Ten opponents and annual nonconference foe Notre Dame. "I have often said that a regular college football fan has access to way more games on a weekend than a beat writer who is often on the road and is tied to one game," AP voter Dave Rahme of the Syracuse Post-Standard told the Daily Oklahoman. "I saw much more college football before getting on the beat than I do now."
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That whole chapter is gold. It really helps us understand how wing-and-a-prayer the two human polls are. Stewart goes on to talk about, supported by quotes from coaches, how many coaches don't complete their ballots themselves. One coach does due diligence on the top two teams, then hands the poll to his SID and has them fill out the rest. That coach estimates 90% of other coaches do the same.

It's a really imperfect system, set up to gauge a highly flawed sports model (120 teams in one division is a crock), determined by people who are barely informed enough to make a valid opinion. And there's no doubt biases exist - they have to, if for no other reason than that no human can watch 20 Top 25 games before casting their ballot every week.

 
Football and Basketball are apples and oranges. A lot more games played in BB and in many cases the coaches are seeing a team 2x a year. Coaches have a better opportunity to see the other teams and see how they are prepared and how they perform over the January-March grind of playing at least 2 and sometimes 3 games per week. We are also not talking about a national award or rankings. This is a conference thing.

Miles took a team that was picked to finish last in the league by almost everyone and took them to a 4th place finish. He deserves to be COY.

 
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It’s the fifth time in Beilein’s career — and first in his seven seasons at Michigan — he has earned the coaching award.

“The Big Ten coach of the year is Tim Miles’ award,” Beilein said of the Cornhuskers coach, who led his team to an 11-7 conference record. “That is a great honor for him; he’s been a tremendous coach all year long.”

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140310/SPORTS0201/303100105#ixzz2vf5O7enQ

 
It's fitting that in a season where Gus Malzahn completed a journey from high school coach to BCS championship game coach at Auburn, we see some similar up-from-the-bootstraps success stories in college hoops.

Start with Nebraska coach Tim Miles (1). On Sunday, the perennially futile Cornhuskers beat the Wisconsin Badgers to finish the regular season 19-11 overall, 11-7 in the Big Ten. A team picked to finish last finished fourth, and in the process may have secured the program's first NCAA bid since 1998. That may be enough to make Miles the Big Ten Coach of the Year.

He's only in his second year at Nebraska, but the 47-year-old Miles isn't a college coaching wunderkind. This is his 19th year as a head coach, at his fifth different school, in his third different level of college hoops. Miles spent the first nine of those 19 years at the NAIA and NCAA Division II levels, working at such illustrious locales as Mayville State (then of the North Dakota College Athletic Conference) and Southwest Minnesota State (of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference). Then it was off to the big-time, as it were, at North Dakota State – which was a D-II school until the president decided to make the leap to D-I independent status a decade ago. Miles spent six seasons coaching the Bison until moving to Colorado State for five more years. That's when Nebraska hired him, to the widespread yawns of an already apathetic basketball fan base.

The Corn People had no idea they'd just struck oil. Now they know.

"I've gone against a lot of great coaches in the small college divisions," Miles said Monday. He was fortunate enough to work his way up from that level, and it has sharpened his appreciation of what he has now.

"There's something to be said about being the small-college guy and having no resources at all," Miles said. "You're having to do everything yourself. … I think the smartest bankers in America make their future presidents be a bank teller."
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http://sports.yahoo.com/news/forde-minutes--with-the-madness-in-sight--it-s-time-to-burst-bubbles-and-sort-seeds-084814722-ncaab.html

 
Agreed with everyone. I just don't see why Michigan is being rewarded for doing what they were supposed to do - win. Nobody thought Nebraska would win. The fact that they have is straight up coaching. And for that reason, it should be Miles on all accounts.

The media has barely more time to watch than a head coach. Stewart Mandel's great book, Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls gives a pretty good glimpse:
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That may be true in some cases, but the media polls are not entirely given up to nationals like Mandel. Many of those voters are local beat writers, writers that cover entire conferences, etc. I've heard first hand (and through several interviews) from many media members that they take time to watch others games and often. And, these same media people have expressed on other occasions that coaches tell them they really don't get a chance to watch many games (during the season) or even follow other teams because of their schedules.

I agree that both have their biases, though, which is why I'm certainly not saying one is better than the other. Strengths and weaknesses. But, everybody in the conference/country that covers the B1G and college basketball (and doesn't coach) knows what Miles has done. How they can rationalize that a talented albeit reloading Michigan team's coach deserves that reward over what Miles has done just baffles me.

 
I think Miles will get a huge money boost. Its just Eichorst doens't like to speak about contracts during the specific season.

 
Paul in WI said:
I'd rather be recognized by my peers. Unless Nebraska suddenly picks up several million more people and the media that goes with it, we're always going to have a tremendous disadvantage compared to the old guard.
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Doesn't matter when even the Nebraska writers are going against Nebraska.

 
finlay22 said:
It’s the fifth time in Beilein’s career — and first in his seven seasons at Michigan — he has earned the coaching award.

“The Big Ten coach of the year is Tim Miles’ award,” Beilein said of the Cornhuskers coach, who led his team to an 11-7 conference record. “That is a great honor for him; he’s been a tremendous coach all year long.”

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitne...5#ixzz2vf5O7enQ
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Beilein is a classy guy. He knows what a job Miles did.

 
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Miles did a great job this year but don't discount what Beilein accomplished this year (I puked a bit in my mouth saying that). It is extremely hard to win when you are expected to and they lost 2 first round draft picks this year. Those type of guys are hard to replace even when you have good talent coming in. I think both are worthy of the honor.

I do like how many are using the media's preseason ranking to justify Miles and then discounting the media for not giving him coach of the year. You can't use the media as a measuring stick for accomplishment and then discount them in the same post.

 
Also, it is hard to take B1G coach of the year voting serious when they gave it to Kirk Ferentz three times in football.

 
jsneb83 said:
Paul in WI said:
I'd rather be recognized by my peers. Unless Nebraska suddenly picks up several million more people and the media that goes with it, we're always going to have a tremendous disadvantage compared to the old guard.
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Doesn't matter when even the Nebraska writers are going against Nebraska.
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Who is doing that? Or are you just referring to Dirk and how he can't say 'Creighton' without taking a breath?

 
Foppa said:
jsneb83 said:
Paul in WI said:
I'd rather be recognized by my peers. Unless Nebraska suddenly picks up several million more people and the media that goes with it, we're always going to have a tremendous disadvantage compared to the old guard.
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Doesn't matter when even the Nebraska writers are going against Nebraska.
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Who is doing that? Or are you just referring to Dirk and how he can't say 'Creighton' without taking a breath?
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That and Lee Barfknecht voted for Michigan in 1997 when we split the title with them, so he probably voted to Belein too.

 
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