Tackling is a perishable skill? In football? It's a required skill that's taught in middle school or earlier.
Pat Ryan says hello
Northwestern probably spends next to nothing on basketball while we spend near the top.
Perishable in that you can’t do it at a consistently high level w/o ongoing practice. Good performance doesn’t require practice, but excellence under pressure when things happen very fast does. Why do baseball players bother with batting practice? Kickers practice kicking. Quarterbacks practice passing. Receivers practice catching.
Yes, obviously our running game is not going to be a strength once again this year.
Yes the last few years we have had a decent offense for a p4 level school but our defense is still stuck at the FCS level.
Oregon very nearly lost their first game too.
Also it matters where the tackling is being done. 4 to 5 yards up field is not doing you much good.
Crucial mistake. Remember Mackovic was AD as well, so we had no leadership in making that hire.
Love the chart, but one minor quibble - it should probably be adjusted to reflect spending vs your Conference peers. For example, MS State spending is high vs the total average, but lower than its SEC peers, so their expected wins should reflect that.
OTOH, ESPN says that colleges spent over $533 million in the last 10 years just on dead money contacts for ex-coaches, not counting recent LSU, TCU, TTU and UConn etc football firings. A guest professor on Stephen A. Smith yesterday was saying that colleges currently spend little or nothing on players and want the proposed “Save College Sports Act” so they can get all those NIL dollars for themselves. That’s in part to repay all those hasty personnel decisions, which have added over a billion $ in expenses since 2005.
I’ve often pinpointed the moment Mackovic was named AD/Coach as the moment Illinois football spiraled into oblivion. Not only did we have no AD to make the coaching hire, we had an interim chancellor (Morton Wier) doing it. Without much thought, he promoted Tepper to head coach then later named Ron Gunther the AD. We can debate whether Gunther would’ve made the right hire, but I doubt he would’ve just promoted Tepper. At the time, Illinois had a respectable football program and could’ve made a strong hire.
Not to nitpick, because yes, these players have spent a long time learning tackling techniques, but even for NFL teams there has been a decent correlation between having a contact light mini camp and early season tackling and defensive execution issues
It's not sustainable. Only a few top programs can do this. What exactly is the point of college football if it's just another pro league? I get that on Sundays. Also, get off my lawn!
Absolutely. I don't remember the landscape at the time to know who the candidate pool "could have been" but Illini football in 1990, 1991 was a legitimate operation. We consistently went toe to toe with Ohio State (beating them 4 in a row in that time frame) & Michigan. We typically lost to Michigan but gave them many tough games. A legit program that in 1990 were the only team to beat eventual champ Colorado (apologies to Mizzou & 5th down). We were the ABC prime 2:30 game usually at least a few times per year. A player on the national stage.
Just got beat by a team that spent half of that according to the graphic.
Corn fed offensive and defensive lines.
