Eleven Warriors

In my high school and college days, one of my mentors was an educator now working in the upper echelons of the Ohio Department of Education. Among the many things he taught those of us benefiting from his mentorship was to behave in a way that our actions were "beyond reproach," in other words living a lifestyle that did not leave oneself open to criticism of a moral or ethical nature.

I've been reminded of this admonition more than once in recent days reading some of the discussions in the Forum this week regarding Braxton Miller and Johnny Football.

My first job was working in advertising sales at a local Columbus radio station. One of my mentors there, the afternoon drive talk show host, was a former Baptist minister, and he, too, believed in living a life "beyond reproach." For him, that lifestyle included self-imposed rules prohibiting him from being in the same room alone with a female other than his wife, and saving and cataloging all email correspondence should questions ever arise about his actions or comments.

The concept of being "beyond reproach" is about removing any and all appearances of impropriety, and about keeping yourself out of positions to have your actions and motives questioned. As Buckeyes, we know one thing - when you're the 800 lb. gorilla, everyone wants to take a shot at you. For big-time college athletes, my advice is to consider how your actions appear to the unwashed masses, rather than relying on your own knowledge of your motives and intentions.

Case in point: Braxton Miller and quarterback "guru" George Whitfield. As reported earlier this week, the Buckeye slinger tasked the QB-coach-to-the-stars with helping the young gun improve his mechanics in preparation for the 2013 campaign. Even here, at a site dedicated to all things Ohio State (and where presumably there is a pro-OSU bias among the readership), questions immediately popped up regarding the facts of the case:

Member AHH SATURDAY asked an obvious question that made this reporter proud:

Happy to hear that Braxton will be getting some quality advice this off-season, but I'm frankly surprised such an arrangement is permitted by the NCAA.  How is Mr. Whitfield being compensated for his work?

Good question, Mr. Saturday. Despite getting three downvotes for asking another great question, NORWALK followed up with an expanded version of the same train of thought:

How much time are players allowed to spend on football related activities during the off season?  Is Whitfield being paid by tOSU or does he work for Braxton and family.  I'm certain our coaching staff and compliance office know what they're doing but I get a little concerned when I see things like this.

Following a storybook season capped by a bowl-less holiday for the Buckeyes, fans are understandably gunshy about any chance their leading weapon might be doing something that could run afoul of an over-eager NCAA Committee on Infractions (hey, they need something to distract them from the Oregon case, right?).

Most commenters on the thread agreed that Coach Meyer and Ohio State's compliance department must certainly be aware of Miller's work with Whitfield, and more importantly how the consultant was being compensated. That said, consider this: if Ohio State's own fans were asking very logical questions about Miller's business dealings, what are non-fans likely to think when they read about one of the nation's top QBs working with one of the nation's top QB mentors?

Think I'm being paranoid? Enter Johnny Football: Heisman-winning Texas A&M star Johnny Manziel apparently has a penchant for watching Texas' NBA teams from high-dollar courtside seats. Sparked by an otherwise insightful comment from TNT analyst Steve Kerr, a social media firestorm flared up over how, exactly, the 20-year-old Aggie standout scored seats that sold for as much as $1,250 apiece.

Following Kerr's comments, Manziel was inundated with calls, texts and Tweets about how he got the tickets, to which he promptly added fuel to the fire: "Bought myself a little birthday present tonight stop hating!"

As with Miller's hiring of Whitfield, asking questions about how an 20-year-old college student afforded courtside seats at two NBA games in the same week are perfectly logical  reactions. At 11W, many commenters decided that the questions were an example of Post Traumatic NCAA Disorder, and suggested that questioners should let it go, because Manziels' folks are oil barons or otherwise gainfully employed.

Bottom line? It doesn't matter if Manziel is independently wealthy or if Mark Cuban slid the tickets under Johnny Football's dorm room door. Because he is the Quarterback of the Moment, everything he does is under a microscope whether he likes it or not. While I hate to begrudge a kid the right to live a fun, well-adjusted lifestyle, it probably behooves a coach, parent or other mentor to counsel him that putting himself in this type of spotlight isn't going to attract him attention of the positive variety.

Just ask USA Today:

What, you didn't spend your 20th birthday hanging out with NBA stars on consecutive nights at two arenas more than 200 miles from each other? Then you were doing it wrong, my friend.

Doing it wrong indeed. Yahoo Sports, Ohio State's own personal hate-spewing anti-Buckeye media machine, put Manziel's "I bought it myself, dammit" in perspective:

That doesn't, however, explain how he also had seats to the Rockets-Sixers game on Wednesday night. Not only did Manziel go to the game, he also was invited into the Rockets' locker room after the game and showed James Harden how to strike the Heisman pose (and put it on Instagram for everyone to see).

Did Manziel do anything wrong? Who knows. Can Miller afford George Whitfield? Again, not for me to say. What I am saying is this: in the age of social media, every single action taken by big-time athletes is on full-display in real time, and open to every possible interpretation - and often misinterpretation. This adds an additional layer of challenge and, I'm guessing, frustration to coaching and compliance at the NCAA level.

Every Tweet, Facebook and Instagram post is a potential violation or admission of wrongdoing... Or at the very least an invitation for a visit from the NCAA heavy mob.

Without reopening the subject of compensating college athletes, I'd encourage you to read this and this, on the role of money, athletics and the cost of going to college.

Social media and really big issues...

While sites like Facebook and apps like Instagram may be the biggest, newest thorn in college athletes' sides, the tools are already playing a role in an unfolding, unfortunate, and unsavory story right in our back yard. As reported earlier this week, the Steubenville football rape case is getting stranger by the minute, thanks in no small part to social media. With reports from the New York Times (here and here) shedding light on what may have otherwise been a very quiet story in a small town, one has to consider how different this case might look absent its intersection with the internet.

On the one hand, we can posit that without the online attention, the case might indeed have been hushed up, covered up, and otherwise disappeared absent a full and fair hearing. On the other hand, one could argue because of the highly emotional nature of the allegations, because of the involvement of bloggers and Anonymous, and because high school kids are by nature unintelligent creatures, the case can not possibly get a fair hearing at this point, because heads must now roll regardless of actual guilt by any party involved.

Because of the emotional nature of the case, I'm not going to offer any opinion on the case, largely because I don't feel I have enough actual facts to formulate an opinion beyond the obvious: this is a sad, sad tale with lots and lots of blame to go around (parents, I'm talking to you). What I'm suggesting, however, is that we may never know what actually happened, because the comments and images shared and posted that evening are so objectionable that they potentially obfuscate an accurate assemblage of the facts of the case.

It goes without saying, but I don't at all envy the investigators and legal minds who have to dissect and debate this situation in the courts. This is a bad deal all the way around. Perhaps the sad reality is this: Varsity Blues wasn't just a football movie with a bunch of pretty actors, after all.

Two facts about the current state of college football are fairly well known:

1. The Big Ten is "down," and has an overall disappointing season relative to expectations; and,
2. There are no "legends" left in the B1G coaching cupboard.

Turnover is a big issue in football, especially when it comes to the top leadership. The top performing programs in the country are generally helmed by head coaches who have been tenured at least four or five years, have established their programs, recruiting classes, systems, playbook, etc. Nick Saban, Mack Brown, Les Miles... they've all been steering their respective ships for at least 6 or 7 years. In fact, if you look at the SEC as a whole, the top-tier programs generally have the longest-tenured coaches in the conference.

I mentioned the issue of longevity in coaching last week in a piece on the disparity in coaching salaries between the SEC and the Big Ten, because I think the two issues are highly correlated. An excerpt:

One thing that I think is overlooked in the entire discussion over coaching and staffing expenditures is the simple fact that strong compensation yields longevity, and longevity in coaching - stability, in other words - yields dividends in the form of recruiting, coaching systems, and overall program development. The longer you are at a program as a good coach, the more chances you have to recruit high-quality coaches and players who can best execute your system.

 

Getting coaches to stick around takes paying them well enough to keep them from taking off the minute more money hits the table (yes, Wisconsin, I'm talking to you). Look at the Big Ten's longest-tenured coach, Kirk Ferentz. He's also been one of the league's best-paid coaches for more than a decade. He's not going anywhere, and although his teams' performances have been nowhere near what they should be for the money invested, the omnipresent Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God has a good deal to do what that.

 

Consider our own James Patrick Tressel. If he had left Ohio State of his own volition, it wouldn't have been for more money; he would have more likely retired than coached somewhere else. While many discuss Ohio State as a "destination job," part of that destination status is because it pays well. You're not going to make better money too many places outside the SEC, and Urbz compensation competes with the top-tier of that conference.

 

Look at the longevity of the head coaches steering top half of the SEC, by the way - see anything striking? The best-paid coaches are the longest-tenured in the conference, and those coaches are typically winning the most games. Saban, Miles, Spurrier, Richt and Pinkel have all been at their schools at least 6 years, all make more than $2 million, and four of the five won 10 games or more this season. Muschamp at Florida and Sumlin at A&M, likewise, each won 10 games and make more than $2.4 million - think they're going anywhere any time soon with those numbers?

Turns out I'm not the only one who noticed the turnover issue. Rittenberg pointed out earlier this week that B1G turnover has been at a level higher than any we've seen in 20 years. Paterno, Carr, Tressel are just a few of the names no longer in office at the league's top jobs... Aside from Big Ten Coach of the Year For Life Kirk Ferentz, no one in the league has been coaching here more than a decade - after Ferentz, Bret Bielema was tied with Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald for old-man-on-campus at 7 years, Mark Dantonio is at 6 years at MSU, and Bo Pelini was in his fifth season.

As Rittenberg (frighteningly) points out: "Indiana's Kevin Wilson, who just completed his second season, will be the longest-tenured coach in the Leaders Division in 2013. Eight of the Big Ten's 12 coaches will be in their first, second or third seasons next fall."

Ouch.

The Big Ten, he notes, went through a similar shakeup in the early '90s, and hit a similar down cycle in on-field performance and national prominence. With 60% of the league's members hiring new head coaches between '89 and '92, the league had an abysmal performance in Bowl Games in the first three years of the decade.

"The good news is things improved the next few seasons, as the Big Ten posted winning bowl marks in 1993 and 1994 and won three consecutive Rose Bowls," Rittenberg noted. "Several coaching hires made between 1989-92 worked out well, namely [Barry] Alvarez at Wisconsin and Gary Barnett at Northwestern."

So the bottom line may be "Keep Calm, and Go Buckeyes!"

We've said more than a few times that conference expansion is about money, and money is about television rights. Conventional wisdom for 20 years has said that the ideal candidate for Big Ten expansion is Notre Dame, but in the current conference landscape, I'm not sure adding Notre Dame makes sense any more. To understand why the golden domes may be just a footnote in Jim Delaney's plot to take over the known universe - and to understand why North Carolina (or Duke, perhaps) and Virginia are the next logical targets, it's important to understand television markets and media dollars.

Let's start with what we know: adding Maryland and Rutgers was about television. Rutgers, in theory, cracks open the lucrative New York television market, the largest single Designated Marketing Area (DMA) in the country, with roughly 7.4 television homes to its credit (the next largest DMA, Los Angeles, is 1.8 million homes smaller). Of the Top 10 markets, Delaney and his Big Ten Network can now plant flags in 4: NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

The SEC, by contrast, holds only one of the Top 10 markets: Atlanta (this also explains why Georgia Tech is often rumored as a viable expansion candidate).

Broadening your scope to the Top 25 markets, the B1G can reasonably claim 5 more, including Detroit, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Cleveland-Akron, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis - you could perhaps include St. Louis, but I don't necessarily believe that is dyed-in-the-wool Illini country. St. Louis, however, makes Missouri a possible expansion candidate.

Again, by comparison, the SEC can claim an additional three markets in the Top 25, all of which are in Sunny Florida, and may be as much ACC markets as SEC country (Tampa-St. Pete, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, and Orlando-Daytona Beach).

Let's step away from the Nielsen ratings for a moment, and take a look at some research from our friends at ESPN. Earlier this year, the network ranked the Top 25 markets for college football, and discovered that Birmingham is the "center of the college football universe." The Alabama market pulled a 5.9 rating (more on how TV ratings are figured here), while our own Columbus pulled a 4.3 in the 2012 survey.

Interestingly, Dayton (#11), Cleveland (#20) and Cincinnati (#25) all made the list, perhaps proving that Ohio State is the most-watched football team in the country with a combined 11.5 rating.

The rise of the giants...

A comment on a forum thread discussing the possibilities of a "super conference" in light of the mass exodus from the Big East got me thinking about expansion candidates again, prompting me to go back and take another look at the pool of potential members. The most likely candidates for expansion have to have a few characteristics that make them truly viable candidates:

• Additional television market penetration to expand the BTN's ratings and revenue potential
• Geographical relevance, generally defined as contiguous to the current B1G footprint
• Membership in the Association of American Universities - a barometer of a school's focus on research
• A focus on academic excellence beyond athletic excellence - subjective, but important
• Potential to be relevant in revenue sports (football and basketball)

You'll note that I've placed the item most fans care about - competitiveness in football, and to a lesser extent, basketball - at the bottom of my list of requisites. This is because competitiveness is no longer the most important factor in the equation, as the Maryland addition proves, and because competitiveness is a moving target. Most folks would not have considered Wisconsin consistently competitive before Barry Alvarez took the helm, and now they've won at least a piece of the conference title three years running. Similarly the much-ballyhooed Oregon Ducks, who were not a great football program for the better part of the previous century, but have become a landmark in the Top 10 since Phil Knight endowed them with money and colorful jerseys.

So if you set aside things like improving strength of schedule for a moment, and think of this with an eye to the business of running a TV juggernaut, there are a handful of schools "available" who meet more or less all of the above criteria. Having already raided the Big East to take one of our two latest additions to the league, there are no schools left in the Big East that add any value to the proposition.

The SEC and PAC-12, for obvious reasons, are also not likely to yield any realistic candidates for expansion - those conferences are strong, getting stronger, and not going anywhere. Ironically, the one traditional SEC school that fits the bill is Florida, but I don't see them leaving the SEC any time soon. That leaves schools currently affiliated with the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 12 to choose from.

With these notions in mind, I think there are five schools that have potential to join the Big Ten and make a positive contribution in the big picture. In no particular order, they are:

• Kansas
• Missouri
• Virginia
• North Carolina
• Georgia Tech

Let me set aside two schools that would make the average football fan salivate for just a moment: Notre Dame and Texas. The reason I am disqualifying Texas up front is simple - it ain't gonna happen in a million years. Well, at least any time soon. For starters, Texas doesn't meet a couple of the criteria above - they're nowhere near geographically relevant, which in this case is of lesser concern because we're talking about Texas, for crying out loud, but moreover they don't actually add that much in terms of television potential.

What's that, you say? Texas doesn't add that much TV potential? No, and here's why: The Longhorn Network isn't yielding great results thus far, and while a Texas team should bring several big television markets (Dallas-Ft. Worth is Nielsen's #5 and Houston is #10), ESPN's analysis of the big college football markets only listed one Texas market in its Top 25 with Austin at #12... behind #11 Dayton, Ohio. While football is big in Texas, there are a lot of football teams in Texas - a lot of good football teams in Texas - and the audience is bound to be more fragmented than in a state dominated by a monolith like the Buckeyes.

Notre Dame is the square peg in a round hole

Notre Dame has always been considered Jim Delaney's white whale, the one that got away, the school that keeps Darth Delaney up at night... But while fans across the country might relish the opportunity to see Ohio State and Notre Dame duke it out each November at LucasOil Stadium for the conference trophy, I'm starting to think that the Irish' chances of getting in the conference are a fading notion or a passing fad.

While I doubt Delaney would turn the Irish away if they came calling, it isn't that important to worship at the altar of Notre Dame sports any longer, and ND might have missed their shot to get in the club, as their stock is rising, and will perhaps price them out of the market. NBC has given ND more money and reupped its contract with the school at each opportunity, and becoming relevant in the national title race under Coach Kelley has ensured that networks will pay handsomely for TV rights again.

For Notre Dame, the money might actually be better in the Big Ten, however... The school has gotten roughly $15 million per season from NBC for football, and another $5 million per year from the Big East for the rest of its revenue sports' television package. Big Ten schools, meanwhile are getting nearly $25 million. Oh, and with Rutgers and Maryland adding to the footprint, B1G schools are set to earn even more.

With the implosion of the Big East and the already announced move by Notre Dame to the ACC, one might wonder if conference realignment could again put Notre Dame on a course to joining the B1G, but looking at my criteria, they're not that great an addition (and don't forget, it's almost a point of pride for Jim Swarbrick to remain independent in football, even though Forbes' Chris Smith says that's bad business at this point).

Notre Dame adds national television exposure, but no discernable television market the Big Ten doesn't already claim. New York City and the New England states would, in theory, be fertile country for a Big Ten Network featuring the Fighting Irish, but there's not a turnkey pin on the map TV market they automatically open up. Rutgers and Maryland provided at least a foot in the door of the New York, New Jersey, Baltimore and D.C. markets.

Then you have the issue of what they bring to the table in terms of revenue for the network. Remember that in the BTN calculus, the addition of schools - Maryland and Rutgers, in other words - has been about additional subscribers, not additional advertising clients. While ND has netted mega ratings for NBC this season, those ratings don't mean that much in the cable TV world, which looks at revenue much differently than do broadcast networks. 

Here's the last reason why Notre Dame isn't a fit - it isn't anything like the other Big Ten schools. Aside from the fact that it has great tradition, great sports, and a campus in the middle of flyover country, there are few similarities.

Most Big Ten schools are large, public research universities. Northwestern is the school already in the club that is the least like its peers as a smaller, private university, but it has strong research credentials and has been a member longer than has Ohio State. Even though it is a smaller school, its total enrollment still outstrips Notre Dame by about 7,000 students (undergraduate enrollments are similar, but ND's postgraduate enrollment is a pittance by comparison).

If you didn't already know this, the Big Ten presidents - the true power behind Jim Delaney's throne - take this research thing pretty seriously. Don't take my word for it, just ask my friend Gordon Gee. While athletic revenues are important, to these schools' chief executives academic prowess and research funding are what make the world go 'round. That in and of itself makes Notre Dame far less desirable as a comrade in arms than as an entry in the Bowl Championship Series.

Oh, and if you don't think these academic-types aren't really calling the shots, you're not paying attention.

So who makes the grade?

I've listed five schools who make logical expansion targets for the Big Ten. I say logical because I think they are "available" in the sense that they're in conferences that are less stable long-term, and they've either shown interest in joining the Big Ten in the past, or they meet most, if not all, of my criteria.

Let's start with the one SEC school on my list, a school that used to be in the Big 12, Mizzou. The University of Missouri is a large, flagship state university that is a member of the prestigious AAU. It "fits" the mold of the typical B1G school. The school was passed over the last time in favor of Nebraska, which made sense from a competitive standpoint, as Nebraska is a much bigger national brand, with a much bigger fanbase and a much stronger football tradition.

Mizzou still makes sense, though, as their teams have competed at the national level in recent years, and they meet the academic research criteria. Mizzou also shores up the St. Louis television DMA, the #21 market in the country, as well as the Kansas City market, ranked #31 (Nebraska probably gives some touch in KC, but not enough). Those two markets add another 2.25 million television households to the BTN footprint, in theory.

Similar to Mizzou is Big 12 member Kansas. The University of Kansas is an AAU member, and a flagship public university (Kansas State is actually the land-grant in the state, but is not an AAU member), and while its football team isn't much to talk about, we know full well how good their basketball team is... and I don't think we can afford to overlook roundball in the discussion of TV relevance. Basketball may not generate quite as much revenue for these schools as does football, but think of the number of games played, and the money to be made during conference and NCAA tournament season... It's a bigger and bigger deal each year.

In terms of TV markets, Kansas is a little less attractive than Mizzou, however. Kansas City would still be in play here, but beyond that the next biggest market in the state is Wichita at #68 (455,000 TV homes).

Next up, then, is Georgia Tech. The Georgia Institute of Technology joined the ranks of the AAU in 2010, so it is something of an up-and-comer in the research community, although it is often ranked among the top 10 public schools in the country. It is a little smaller than most of the other expansion candidates (and current B1G members), but provides access to the big Atlanta television market.

According to a quasi-analysis from political super-genius Nate Silver, Atlanta is the #2 market in the country for college football. Little surprise given that it's a large city - the #9 TV market according to Nielsen - in the middle of SEC country. Silver's data furthermore suggests that Tech is the #11 most popular team in the country, and would be the #4 most popular team in the Big Ten... Given the 2.3 million television sets in the Atlanta market, Tech would be a sound addition to the conference.

That leaves the two schools I think are the next most-logical targets - ACC members Virginia and North Carolina. The University of Virginia is, to put it mildly, an academic beast compared with many other schools in the conference. Founded by Thomas Jefferson and set on one of the most gorgeous campuses in the country, UVA is member of the AAU, and is a flagship public university with an enrollment and "feel" similar to Northwestern. 

When it comes to TV markets, Virginia could be huge. As with Maryland, there is the obvious tie to Washington, D.C. Beyond that, however, Virginia is home to several Top 100 Nielsen markets: Norfolk-Portsmouth (#43), Richmond (#57, and ESPN's #25), and Roanoke-Lynchburg (#66). These markets bring another 1.75 million viewers, similar to what Mizzou might add in the West.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is, for the money, the "buy" of the lot. This large, flagship public university, along with Duke, make up a region known as "Research Triangle Park." This in and of itself, along with the requisite AAU membership card, tells you all you need to know about its academic standings. Its basketball program is legendary, its football program has potential (all you need is potential in this equation), and most importantly, it cracks a lot of TV opportunities.

Raleigh-Durham is the #24 Nielsen market with 1.143 million homes, Charlotte is #24 with 1.140 million, and the two rank within ESPN's top 25 college football markets. Meanwhile, Greensboro-Winston Salem clocks in at #46 with another 691k homes, giving you a total potential add to the BTN of 2.97 million TV sets - a staggering number.

If you're Jim Delaney, what do you do?

Given the fascination with the notion that we will see, in my lifetime, four "superconferences" that tell the NCAA where to stick it, there is a strategy here that makes sense, giving the faculty what they want in adding top-tier research schools with strong academic underpinning, giving Fox and the BTN what it wants in more television households, and giving fans more palatable options than Maryland.

• Step 1: Annex Maryland. This gives you geographical access to Virginia. (Check)
• Step 2: Woo Virginia and North Carolina. These two schools offer six Top 100 TV markets and another 5 million potential viewers. They also give you great schools, steeped in tradition, and, in the case of UNC, an amazing basketball brand (Duke, by the way, could have fit the bill here, but its status as a private school seemed less of a "fit" than UNC). This brings you to 16 schools, a pretty nice number.
• Step 3: On the other hand, you could ignore Virginia and take Georgia Tech after you annex North Carolina, bringing the huge Atlanta market and its 2.3 million viewers. Of course if you wanted, you could take all three and add one more school...
• Step 4: Pick up Missouri. Mizzou is a nice addition to the western expanse of the conference, bringing with it two solid TV markets and solidifying the western front of the conference, and providing some good regional rivalry opportunities.

Here's where my strategy stops. An 18-member conference is somewhere between the 16 teams most assume are coming at some point and the 20 teams some folks envision. Eighteen may be unwieldy in size, somewhere in between a manageable 8-team division and those "pods" everyone is talking about these days. Even so, two 9-team divisions could work out... in theory...

If he could figure out an 11-team conference all those years, Jim Delaney can make 18 teams work just fine.

Coaching salaries have become the lifeblood of college sports dynasties. The days of collegiate football franchises keeping legendary head coaches for the duration of their career on a shoestring budget and "love of the game" officially ended with Joe Paterno's passing. Data compiled and released this week by USA Today reinforces one of the key reasons the Southeastern Conference outperforms the Big Ten on the field: shifting demographics be damned, the SEC simply ponies up the dough to hire better leaders.

In a sport where you can't (legally, anyway) spend money to acquire better players (again, legally, that is), the most obvious single place to invest assets with an eye toward improving performance is in your coaching staff. Staffing a team with high-caliber play callers who can recruit, train, motivate and guide the best players to executive better game plans is the surest way to improve performance.

Our own experience is a perfect example: John Cooper won a lot of games, but not the big ones. Ohio State hired a better coach, and won more, important games. Jim Tressel was taken from us before his time, so Ohio State hired the best available coach on the planet in Urban Meyer. The results in both cases speak for themselves. Head coaches are only one piece of the equation, of course, as assistants make every bit as much difference as does the chief executive of the team. This has been discussed at length throughout the silly season on the front page of this site, including a great piece here.

(For my earlier thoughts on coaching and spending, read Part I here and Part II here. A mini-case study relative to the University of Cincinnati's own coaching search can be found here.)

So that brings us to the new data from USA Today. I went back and updated my spreadsheet of coaching salaries to reflect the 2012 head coaching and assistant coaching salaries available to the USAT reporters and compared the Big Ten and SEC in two tables. First, the B1G:

+ Left to coach Arkansas
*Fired after the season

And now, the SoEvilConference:

So let's put the numbers in perspective:

• The average SEC school outspends the average B1G school on Head Coaching by $474,578, or 20.9%
• The average SEC school outspends the average B1G school on Assistant Coaching by $936,476, or 46.3%
• The average SEC school outspends the average B1G school on total coaching by $1,316,766, or 30.4%

In total then, the average SEC school spends roughly a third more in aggregate than the average Big Ten member - a significant difference. Looking at the teams who won at least 8 games this season, we notice that by and large those head coaches earned more than $2 million in compensation, with only one Big Ten coach failing to win 8 games at >$2 million (yes, Kirk Ferentz, I'm pointing at you), and only three SEC coaches failing to do so at that level of compensation.

For Big Ten schools, we can see that Iowa under performed its spending, while Northwestern significantly outperformed. We can also see that schools in the Big Ten that spent more than $4 million in total coaching generally won 8 games or more, with Iowa and Michigan State being the two schools to break that rule.

With the SEC data we can see that Generally schools had to spend at least $4 million as well, to get to the 8 win mark, though Ole Miss, Tennessee, Mizzou and Auburn each failed to do so. Interestingly, 50% of those schools replaced their head coach following the season.

One thing that I think is overlooked in the entire discussion over coaching and staffing expenditures is the simple fact that strong compensation yields longevity, and longevity in coaching - stability, in other words - yields dividends in the form of recruiting, coaching systems, and overall program development. The longer you are at a program as a good coach, the more chances you have to recruit high-quality coaches and players who can best execute your system.

Getting coaches to stick around takes paying them well enough to keep them from taking off the minute more money hits the table (yes, Wisconsin, I'm talking to you). Look at the Big Ten's longest-tenured coach, Kirk Ferentz. He's also been one of the league's best-paid coaches for more than a decade. He's not going anywhere, and although his teams' performances have been nowhere near what they should be for the money invested, the omnipresent Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God has a good deal to do what that.

Consider our own James Patrick Tressel. If he had left Ohio State of his own volition, it wouldn't have been for more money; he would have more likely retired than coached somewhere else. While many discuss Ohio State as a "destination job," part of that destination status is because it pays well. You're not going to make better money too many places outside the SEC, and Urbz compensation competes with the top-tier of that conference.

Look at the longevity of the head coaches steering top half of the SEC, by the way - see anything striking? The best-paid coaches are the longest-tenured in the conference, and those coaches are typically winning the most games. Saban, Miles, Spurrier, Richt and Pinkel have all been at their schools at least 6 years, all make more than $2 million, and four of the five won 10 games or more this season. Muschamp at Florida and Sumlin at A&M, likewise, each won 10 games and make more than $2.4 million - think they're going anywhere any time soon with those numbers?

Winning 10+ games, winning conference titles, and winning bowl games takes the right combination of several interrelated factors. Coaching salaries are one factor, but one factor that has a significant affect on several other factors critical to winning at a high level.

The University of Cincinnati is a fascinating study of college football at the mid-major level. After a string of relatively successful seasons, predicated by a string of three successful head coaches, the school is once again dealing with the pains of losing its chief play caller to a bigger, better program.

Mark Dantonio, of course, started the trend toward creating a perception of UC as both a real player in the college football conversation and as a good stepping-stone program for coaching talent. Dantonio was the first coach in 23 years to lead the school to a winning season in his first year, going 7-5 in 2004. He led the team during the school's move into the Big East, took the team to two bowl games in three seasons, going 7-5 in 2004 and 2006.

He was promptly gobbled up by Michigan State, where as we know, he coaches yet today.

Following Dantonio was Brian Kelly, called up from Central Michigan after winning the MAC in 2006. Kelly did even better at UC than did Dantonio, finishing 34-6 in four seasons, winning the (yawn) Big East twice and playing in four Bowl Games, including two BCS appearances (which the team lost). During his tenure at UC, Kelly's Bearcats finished ranked in the AP poll three of four years, something else Dantonio's teams failed to do (note, this is not a Kelly > Dantonio comment, as much of Kelly's success was predicated on the rebuilding Dantonio did during his run).

He was promptly gobbled up by Notre Dame, where he coaches the most amazing team (aside from Alabama) and the most amazing player (aside from Johnny Football) in the known universe. </sarcasm>

Leading us to the most recent UC defector, Butch Jones. Jones, who followed Kelly at both Central Michigan and UC, went 23-14 in three seasons, winning the Big East crown twice and going to two Bowl Games, including a victorious outing in last season's Liberty Bowl. His victory over SEC school Vanderbilt (hey, they ain't Kentucky) was coupled with being named 2011 Big East Coach of the Year.

He was promptly gobbled up by a troubled University of Tennessee. Rocky Top has certainly seen a rocky stretch, and the school needed a big "get" in the silly season to right a sinking ship. Butch's ability to do that remains to be seen - his resume isn't quite as strong as Kelly's, so I don't know if anyone expects the big orange machine to be vying for a national title in three years, but anything's possible.

Cincinnati, meanwhile, is at a turning point. After being a dominant player in the now-on-life-support Big East (the Bearcats won at least a share of the conference title four out of the past five years), the school is making a run at joining the "we're not one of the Big 4 conferences, but we're really close" ACC. Joining a better conference is not a bad move, considering the Bearcats have probably exhausted their upward mobility in a struggling conference better known for basketball than for pigskin prowess. (Although it appears that Louisville's move into the Atlantic Coast Conference may have slammed the doors on an entrance by the Bearcats, unless the conference opts to go bigger, perhaps considering UConn or UC.)

Two big issues appear to be keeping UC from keeping coaches for more than the three seasons needed to catapult themselves to a top-tier program: money and facilities, which are in reality sides of the same coin.

The facilities issues are easy and obvious to understand:

There's also a lot of work to do on the athletic facilities, with little money available.

 

During Jones' tenure, Cincinnati expanded its football facility, adding a practice field with a protective bubble for bad weather. The school is trying to figure out how to upgrade 35,000-seat Nippert Stadium, which is the second-oldest playing site in the nation for a college team behind Penn's Franklin Field. Nippert has been in use since 1901.

Despite their Big East success, the Bearcats have played in front of disappointing crowds at Nippert. They drew only 21,171 fans on senior night — their smallest crowd of the season — for a 27-10 win over South Florida this year.

Nippert and the UC fanbase are problematic - if you can't get butts in the seats, you can't do a lot of things you need to do to stay competitive at the highest levels of college football. Similarly, five-star recruits don't want to spend their days in sub-par training and practice facilities when there are plenty of big-time programs spending millions upon millions to offer professional-grade (or better) athletic facilities.

Coaching salaries are the other big issue leading coaches to greener pastures. As I discussed earlier this week, schools are spending more money to attract better talent, understanding that there is a correlation with trading up and winning games.

In three seasons at UC, Jones averaged $1.42 million in compensation. UC football earned the athletic program $13.4 million on an investment of $11.2 million. As we also discussed, spending on assistant coaches make as much or more of a difference in football program performance as does spending on the head coach. UC spent $1.5 million on Jones' staff in 2011.

By comparison, former Tennessee coach Derek Dooley earned an average of $2.1 million over his three seasons with the Volunteers, and his staff earned an aggregate $3.2 million in 2011 - more than double what Cincinnati spent on its assistant coaching staff. Kelly and Dantonio likewise earned significantly more money and had a significantly larger payroll for staff in moving to the Irish and Spartans locker rooms.

Can the Bearcats come up with enough cash to make a dent in their facilities deficiencies and upgrade their coaching payroll? It's doubtful. With an overall athletic budget last year of $43.6 million, the Bearcats football expenditures are already nearly a quarter of the budget, and though the program operated in the black, it only turned an athletic gain of $2.2 million to the department.

As with most things, a cycle of sorts plays out here: spending more money to upgrade facilities and coaching talent will likely net better players, and coaching longevity will net better and better on-field performance in a potentially better conference that will net more and more money in ticket sales, licensing revenues and television rights. In other words "if you build it, they will come."

Of course, you've got to bite the bullet and build it first.

Note: The post refers to money spent on assistant coaches; however, due to a quirk in the USA Today database, figures are actually total spending on coaches, including the head coach, for 2011. Thanks to reader Deshaun for catching this. Once the USA Today database is updated to reflect 2012 assistant salaries, I'll do another analysis. ~Andy

Earlier, we took a look at the role of money in coaching and running a winning college football program. While a cursory look (no regression analysis as of yet) at what it takes to win 8 or more games per season, we observed that in the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences this year, schools who paid their coaches at least $2 million were more likely to win at least 8 games.

Given the perception that the SEC is a "superior" conference, we also noted that schools in the media-beloved conference spent on average $500k per year more on their chief play caller than the average school in the Big Ten ($2.75 million versus $2.27 million). Commenters astutely noted, however, that an even greater disparity exists between the two leagues and how schools pay their assistant coaches and coordinators.

Again using data from USA Today's coaching salary database, I analyzed the money spent in each league on assistant coaching staffs, and present the numbers below for your further consideration. Note that the data available as of 5 p.m. EST on Dec. 5 is for the 2011 football season, so figures for schools including Ohio State will be vastly different. The tables below, accordingly, reflect each school's record and head coach as of the 2011 season. An additional analysis will need to be conducted following the release of salary data for 2012 (perhaps then I'll have time to do the regression analysis).

First, the Big Ten:

First off, note what an outlier Penn State turned out to be - Paterno's longevity, his own well-documented low salary (compared to other and especially to less-successful head coaches), and the extremely small budget he had for assistants, and it's a wonder he accomplished what he did in the last decade of his career (spare us further recapitulation of the evils of Penn State and its former coaches, please).

Secondly, look at the schools who seriously under performed their spending: Ohio State, for obvious reasons; Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana, though you can lay the last two at the feet of new coaches in rebuilding programs. Meanwhile, Michigan State and Purdue may have actually outperformed their spending.

Let's compare with the SEC:

Vanderbilt, as a private institution, does not release figures for its coaching budget.

Obviously the SEC outspends the Big Ten on coaching staffing, and at a much more significant difference than at the head coach level. On average, the Big Ten schools spend $3,629,196 on their assistant coaches, while the average SEC school spends $5,780,307, a 59% advantage over our home conference. Think of the difference that additional $2.15 million makes in a program... almost mind boggling, yes?

Now, take into account the combined coaching expenditures of the top-spending program in both leagues: In the SEC, Alabama is clearly the Scrooge McDuck of the conference, spending roughly $14 million on Nick Saban and his staff! By comparison, big-spending Iowa pumps out roughly $9.62 million on its cadre of coaches and Michigan spent some $8.86 million on Hoke & Co.

In 2011 the SEC Champion LSU Tigers spent an estimated $11.5 million on its play callers, while the Big Ten Champion Wisconsin Badgers spent almost $7.2 million on its coaching staff, a difference of $4.3 million - or almost enough to buy the entire Northwestern Wildcat coaching corps twice. (Still think Bert's dash to Arkansas wasn't all about the Benjamins? I've got 9.5 million reasons to think it was...)

Looking at what spending on assistants it took to get to 8 wins, in the SEC the breaking point appears to be $5 million - only one team (Mizzou, who wasn't actually playing in the SEC at the time) won 8 games spending less. Only three schools spending more than $5 million failed to win 8 games: Florida won 7 under first-year coach Will Muschamp, Ole Miss fired Houston Nutt after the 2011 season, and Tennessee fired Derek Dooley in 2012.

The Big Ten last season was a hot mess because of the number of first-year play callers - one third of the coaches in the conference were in their inaugural season. Even so, $3.5 million seems to be the cutoff for 8 wins - only Penn State won 8+ with less spending. Three teams, on the other hand, spent more than $3.5 and failed to win 8 games, including our own Ohio State; Iowa and Illinois were the other two, and Ron Zook was dismissed following the 2011 season, while Kirk Ferentz was probably given a raise and a contract extension.

I'll go back after USA Today updates its database with the 2012 assistant coaching salaries and we can compare the total expenditures for the same season's performance, but from the 2011 figures we can see the differences between the two conferences are much more significant at the assistant level than at the head coaching level, and those differences were in and of themselves statistically significant.

While some will bemoan the college football coaching "arms race," the bottom line is that the Southeastern Conference has set the bar very high, and if Jim Delaney's plan for ruling the known universe is to come to fruition, at some point the schools in his conference are going to have to spend some more of their piles of Big Ten Network money.

Since we're in the silly season, theories abound as to what drives coaches to move hither and yon - mostly, though, we can put big moves down to a desire to improve one's resume and to improve one's income. For some, Urban Francis Meyer as an example, going home is a powerful motivator, but thus far this season we haven't seen an abundance of great homecoming stories on the coaching carousel.

Two pieces stood out to me this week in analyzing coaching and the state of the B1G in general - the first was Johnny's analysis of which Big Ten play callers were "expendable," and the second was USA Today's database of coaching pay. Looking at these two pieces in tandem may give us some logic behind why the B1G hasn't quite overcome the perception that it is an also-ran conference to the likes of the SEC (and this season, to the Big 12 as well).

Let's look at the numbers for the Big Ten:

And now, for the Southeastern Conference:

Undertaking a "quick and dirty" analysis of the data, we can see that the SEC outpaces the B1G in both its top-tier coaching salaries and in its average salary. Spending a total $35,702,545 on 13 coaches (Vanderbilt does not release its coaches' salary information), the conference schools average $2.75 million per head coach. By comparison, the Big Ten schools spend and aggregate $27,261,261 on 12 coaches, for an average of $2.27 million.

The dividing line appears to be the $2 million threshold. As a word of a caution from a wanna-be economist, understand that correlation and causality are not the same thing - just because two things are correlated does not mean one has an effect on the other. In other words, while spending $2 million or more on a coach seems to be indicative of schools that win 8 games or more, simply jacking your coach's salary to that level ain't gonna guarantee eight games (see the curious case of Kirk Ferentz for more).

In the case of the Big Ten, exactly half of the member institutions pay their chief football executive more than $2 million, and of those only one failed to win 8 games this season; as a corollary, of those paid less than $2 million, only one coach won more than 8 games. Pat Fitzgerald's Northwestern Wildcats went 9-3 again this season, and I contend he is becoming the Joe Paterno of NW: he'll be there forever, consistently winning enough games and making enough Bowl appearances that he will become the essence of his school's football identity.

Looking at the "more competitive" SEC, we see that 10 of 14 schools (excluding Vandy, of course) pay more than $2 million, and of those, only three failed to win at least 8 games this season. Similarly, no SEC coaches earning less than $2 million won 8 contests this year.

Why should this make intuitive sense? It speaks to resources and support. If a school can afford to spend the big bucks for a marquee coach, it likely spends good money on facilities and other factors that make for a successful program. An area getting much more attention from Buckeye and Big Ten fans in recent years is spending on assistant coaches - an exhaustive analysis of assistant coaching salaries will have to wait for another day, but suffice it to say good staffing matters, as our decade long love affair relationship with Jim Bollman can attest.

Here is the other big factor that I think is overlooked in what makes for great programs: longevity. It is damn difficult to build a program in a season or two - Urban Meyer is one of the very few coaches to waltz in to a program and win a national title or go undefeated in a year or two. Young guns like Darrel Hazell do it at the mid-major level from time to time, but their success at the upper tiers of college football is spotty at best. Hell, even a legendary leader like Hurricanes/Cowboys/Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson stub their toes from time to time in the early days of their rebuilding efforts.

Looking at the Big Ten play callers prior to this week's coaching changes, we saw an average tenure of 4.33 years, with three first-year and three second-year head coaches. By contrast, the SEC has an average tenure (again, prior to the start of silly season) of 4.71 years, with three first-year and two second-year leaders. The biggest difference, however, is the tenure of the highest-performing coaches: Among the teams winning 8 or more games in the Big Ten the average tenure is only 3.833 years due to first year phenoms Meyer and BOB; Pelini, Bielema and Fitzgerald each had at least five years' experience.

In the SEC, on the other hand, the average tenure of coaches winning 8 or more games is 5.375 years, a statistically significant difference. Five coaches have at least six or more years in the saddle - Saban looking relatively young with only 6 seasons at 'Bama - with two leaders crossing the decade mark.

Thinking of the "great" coaches in college football history, longevity was clearly a factor in their legendary status: Schembechler, Hayes, Bryant, Paterno, Bowden, and even lesser lights of the modern era like Alvarez and Spurrier all had massive experience under their belts by the end of their careers. Look at it this way - while our culture has moved toward an extreme "I want it now dammit" attitude, those top-shelf coaches had enough good will and political capital under their belts to weather the occasional subpar season (Joe Paterno being a prime example of high highs and low lows in any given decade).

Given the first observation - that winning 8 games or more takes money - the second observation reinforces a long-held management maxim: hire slow, and fire fast. If you're going to commit several million dollars to a marquee employee, you'd better make sure he's the right man for the job before you put the cash on the table. On the other hand, if you can tell in three seasons that it isn't going to work, move on. But if you've got something going, buy-and-hold makes a lot of sense, just like in the market.

Turnover at top-tier institutions is fairly low, compared to other programs; this reinforces a notion of marquee football factories as "destination jobs." Looking at the Top 5 "greatest programs" in college football history, we see a consistent trend toward long-tenured high-performing coaches in the Bowl era (post-1935).

1. Oklahoma - 13 coaches, averaging 66.8 games in the saddle; three crossed the 170 game mark (Wilkinson, Switzer and Stoops)
2. Michigan - 9 coaches, averaging 98.4 games at the helm; three crossed the 100 game mark, with Schembechler hitting 247 and Carr hitting 162
3. Ohio State - 11 coaches, averaging 76.5 games; Hayes, Bruce, Cooper and Tressel all coached more than 100 games
4. Alabama - 11 coaches (not counting Price and Kines), averaging 82.4 games; only Frank Thomas and Bear Bryant broke 100 games - Bear had 287
5. Notre Dame -  14 coaches, averaging 61.4 games; only three coaches last more than a decade, each marking 11 years (Leahy, Parseghian and Holtz)

As B1G fans hope schools in the league up the ante in coaching and competitiveness, money and longevity appear to be two big factors worth watching in the next few years.

It's interesting, looking back at the annals of Wisconsin Badgers football history, to learn that a team that is typically lumped into the upper echelon of the Big Ten Conference wasn't actually all that legendary throughout the better chunk of the Bowl era (post-1935... Side note: The Rose Bowl traces its origins back to the early Tournament of Roses matchups going as far back as 1902, but didn't become the Rose Bowl until 1923. In 1935, other Bowl games started popping up, with five in existence - Sugar, Cotton, Orange and Sun - by 1940).

In 1935, Clarence "Doc" Spears led the Badgers to a 1-7 record, tied for dead last in the conference; in 1936 Doc was coaching the Toledo Rockets. Up to that point, the team had won the conference title five times: 1896, 1897, 1901, 1906 and 1912. Following Doc's dismissal, Wisconsin swiped a successful head coach away from Villanova named Harry Stuhldreher, who had gone 65-25-9 in 11 seasons at the helm.

Stuhldreher, a three-time All-American quarterback, was a member of Notre Dame's legendary "Four Horsemen." His tenure at Wisconsin was nowhere near as glorious as his days playing in the shadow of the golden dome. In 13 seasons he notched a record of 45-62-6, climbing as high as 2nd in the conference standings twice - and #3 in the AP rankings in 1942 - but otherwise never did better than a share of fourth place in the B1G. He left Wisconsin in 1948 and died two years later.

Ohio native Ivy Williamson was the next skipper at UWM. A captain of the M*ch*g*n team that won the national championship in 1932, Williamson was a noteworthy line coach at Yale from 1934-1941, and again following his Naval service, from 1945-1946. Hired as the head coach of Lafayette (Penn.) in 1947, he took a team that had gone 3-14-1 in two seasons to a team that 13-5 during his two years at the tiller, leading to his hiring at UWM.

Williamson's tenure at Wisconsin was solid, but not exceptional. He won the conference in 1952, but lost the 1953 Rose Bowl to... you guessed it: USC. From 1949-1955 he coached the Badgers to a respectable 41-19-4, but after going 4-5 in 1955, he was named Athletic Director (actually because the current AD died suddenly), a post he held until the long, steep decline of the Badgers in the late 60s, culminating with his firing in 1969. He died six weeks later.

Following William's move to AD, his line coach and fellow Lafayette staffer Milt Bruhn took the reins. A guard on an undefeated Minnesota squad that won back-to-back B1G titles in 1934 & 1935, Bruhn notched more AP rankings than his predecessors to go along with two conference championships, but a precipitous decline following a loss in the 1963 Rose Bowl led to an overall so-so record of 52-45-6 from 1956-1966. True to UWM tradition, after three 2-5 seasons in the conference, Bruhn was moved into the Assistant AD's office from 1967-1969.

Upon Bruhn's move into administration, former Wisconsin player John Coatta was named head coach. A three-year quarterback under Ivy Williamson, Coatta was a Florida State  assistant from 1959-1964, and was hired as an assistant under Bruhn in 1965. Named head coach in 1967, Coatta set an NCAA record for most consecutive games without a win to begin a career with 23, going winless his first two seasons and winning only three games his third and final outing as head coach in Madison.

Another former lineman and line coach helmed the Badgers from 1970-1977 (perhaps there is a reason Big Ten teams are known for a "three-yards and a cloud of dust" mentality). John Jardine had played at Purdue, and after five years of high school coaching was a line coach at his alma matter in 1964. He served from 1965-1969 as an assistant at UCLA, a team that was ranked in the top 10 four of five years.

Jardine was every bit as uninspiring as his predecessors, going 37-47-3 though the 1977 season, going no better than 7-4 and 4th in the conference - both in 1974.

Another Ohio native followed Jardine's inauspicious footsteps: former Bowling Green quarterback and safety Dave McClain. McClain studied under some truly legendary coaches,   including as an assistant coach at Cornell University under Tom Harp in 1962; at Miami University under Bo Schembechler from 1963–1966; at the University of Kansas under Pepper Rodgers from 1967–1968; and at The Ohio State University under Woody Hayes from 1969–1970 before accepting the head coaching job at Ball State.

MAC Coach of the Year in 1975, his team won the league in 1976 - only the school's second year in the conference. Following seven solid seasons at Ball State he was named head coach of the Badgers in 1978. McClain went 46-42-3, winning at least seven games each season from 1981-1984. Though he never won the Big Ten and though he only won one bowl game (the 1982 Independence Bowl), the Wisconsin athletic center and Big Ten Coach of the Year Award (the one still given by the media, that is) were named in his honor, and he has been enshrined in the Halls of Fame at Bowling Green, Ball State and UW.

Jim Hilles was named Wisconsin's interim head coach in 1986 following McClain's sudden death. The team went 3-9 under the Ohio native, who had served as McClain's defensive coordinator. He worked for Glen Mason from 1987-1990 both at Kent State and Kansas.

In 1987, the Badgers again looked to the ranks of successful Division II coaches for a new skipper. Don Morton had taken North Dakota State to three Div. II National Championships in four seasons, winning the 1983 title. In two years at Tulsa he went 13-9 and won the Missouri Valley Conference in 1985. Unfortunately for Morton and the Badgers, that was as good as he ever did: Wisconsin went 6-27 in three seasons under his leadership, going 1-7 in the conference each year.

So, before we get to the really interesting thing that happened in 1990, look again at the state of the Badgers' football program from 1935-1990: Nine coaches over a 55-year period, only three of whom won more games than they lost during their tenure; Only three conference titles; only five bowl appearances and only one victory...

And then, along came Barry. Badly in need of someone who knew what the hell they were doing coaching a football team, Wisconsin turned to a talented defensive coordinator from Notre Dame. Barry Alvarez had played linebacker at Nebraska from 1966-1968, coaching high school football in the state from 1971-1975. He then coached three years in Iowa, winning the state's 4A title in 1978 and earning the attention of Hayden Fry, the newly-minted head coach at the University of Iowa.

He then spent seven years on Fry's staff as linebackers coach before he was hired by Lou Holtz at Notre Dame in 1987 and named defensive coordinator in 1988.

Alvarez was just the medicine Wisconsin needed. Inheriting a program that hadn't had a winning season since 1984 and had only won seven conference games in that time span, he went 1-10 in his inaugural season. But, hope sprung from there, as the Badgers consistently improved their league record until 1993, when Wisconsin went 10-1-1, earning a share of the Big Ten title and earning the league's Rose Bowl berth, beating UCLA 21-16 in their own backyard (for more on the magical 1993 season and how John Cooper got hosed twice, see here).

For the first time... ever... Wisconsin was not only relevant to the conference battle, but also in the post-season. During his tenure, the Badgers won or shared three Big Ten titles and won three Rose Bowls - yes, he is 3-0. He also led the Badgers to 11 bowl games; before his arrival they had been to only six bowls in their entire history. The 1998 team notched the first 11-win season in school history, while the 1999 team won the school's first outright Big Ten title in 37 years. He went 118-73-4, capping a 10-3 swan song with a Capital One Bowl victory over the Auburn Tigers of the hated SEC in 2006.

In other words, without Barry, there is no Wisconsin as we know it.

There isn't much about Brett "we don't want to be like the SEC" Bielema you don't already know. He played nose tackle under Fry at Iowa from 1989-1992, serving as an assistant from 1993-2001. Serving as co-defensive coordinator at K-State from 2002-2003, Alvarez hired him in a similar capacity at Wisconsin in 2004 and was named Barry's successor in 2005.

His teams have gone 68-24 since '05, with a conference record of 37-19; he has won a share (or an asterisk) of the league championship in each of the past three seasons. He is 2-4 in Bowl Games, including back-to-back Rose Bowl losses.

And now, he's off to the SEC.

So, who's next? As we can see, the school has run the gamut when it comes to hiring philosophies: tasking successful head coaches from lesser conferences, promoting from within, and poaching successful assistant coaches from other big-name schools. What it has never done is successfully steal a successful head coach from another big-name school. Early speculation is hard to gauge at this point, especially given the number of other major coaching announcements made in recent days.

What we can tell from the histories is that the two coaches who put the football program on the map were defensive minds with ties to Hayden Fry and the Iowa Hawkeyes. Neither Alvarez nor Bielema had ties to Wisconsin, so getting a "Wisconsin man" is clearly not a prerequisite - in fact, former players haven't done all that well any way.

Predicting these things is a fool's errand, but looking at where the program has been, it isn't hard to speculate that Wisconsin's days as a perennial Big Ten powerhouse may be drawing to a close even sooner than we thought.

Buckeye fans and those who root for other teams in the Big Ten Conference have long assumed there is a built-in media bias against teams in the flyover states. Unfortunately, the existence of this bias has become irrelevant as the conference has really turned in a string of subpar performances in recent seasons.

Aside from Ohio State, which has been relatively dominant in the league - 2011 excepted - for the past 12 years, the teams in the B1G have not performed up to their traditional powerhouse status:

• That Team Up North  wandered through the wilderness for the better part of the Jim Tressel era, especially during its dark night of the soul, also known as the Rich Rodriguez years.
• Wisconsin is on the verge of dropping its third Rose Bowl in as many seasons.
• Nebraska hasn't won a league title (in either the B1G or the Big 12 conferences) since 1999.
• Michigan State continues to fall short of expectations despite hope renewed seemingly every season.
• Despite three 11-win seasons and four bowl victories, Penn State has lost an average of 4.6 games per season since 2000.
• Iowa is still coached by Kirk Ferentz, B1G COY for life (but I digress...).

The league is a combined 82-62 this season... Take out the two squads ineligible for the conference title or other post-season appearences and that record falls to a pathetic 60-58... a paltry .508 batting average. That's right, the league members that could play for a title this season essentially lost one game for every contest they actually won... which is why we're all so excited about this. (Oh, and add the two newest members of the B1G into the mix and you come up with a slightly better record of 73-69 sans OSU and PSU... Rutgers added a strong performance this season; Maryland, not so much.)

Where this really comes home is in looking at the Sagrin ratings data. Since this is one of the factors in the BCS formula (yes, I know the BCS is going the way of the Dodo, sort of), it's useful to see what the data says about how bad our league really is. Sagrin ranked each conference based on its simple average, a central mean that gives the most weight to the teams in the middle of the pack, and also by what he calls the "Win 50%," defined as "the rating required to win 50% of the games if playing an infinite number of round-robins in the given group at a neutral location."

Here's what we discover:

Sagrin's rankings go on through #25, but for purposes of our discussion this breakdown is actually about seven more than we need. The stats, my friends, don't lie: while the B1G isn't as bad as the Big East (yet), we're a far cry from the vaunted SEC or *gasp* the Big 12.

Strength of schedule, obviously, is important, and not just for the obvious reason that perception quite often equals reality. Conference strength is important in the longterm view because of the wisdom from Proverbs: As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. The SEC is so darn good because the teams in the SEC are so darn good... Ohio State, one could argue, is good on the one hand because it beats up cupcakes every weekend, and on the other hand you could argue Ohio State is so good in spite of playing cupcakes each weekend.

In fact, more than one observer on this site has noted that the 2012 Buckeye squad tended to play to the level of its competition, which may actually reinforce the iron on iron theory of strength of schedule.

A word about Sagrin's methodology, from the wizards at Wikipedia: 

Sagarin, like the developers of many other sports rating systems, does not divulge the exact methodology behind his system. He offers two rating systems, each of which gives each team a certain number of points. One system, "Elo chess," is presumably based on the Elo rating system used internationally to rank chess players. This system uses only wins and losses with no reference to the victory margin.

The other system, "Predictor," takes victory margin into account. For that system the difference in two teams' rating scores is meant to predict the margin of victory for the stronger team at a neutral venue. For both systems teams gain higher ratings within the Sagarin system by winning games against stronger opponents, factoring in such things as home-venue advantage. For the Predictor system, margin of victory (or defeat) factors in also, but a law of diminishing returns is applied. Therefore, a football team that wins a game by a margin of 7-6 is rewarded less than a team that defeats the same opponent under the same circumstances 21-7, but a team that wins a game by a margin of 35-0 receives similar ratings to a team that defeats the same opponent 70-0. This characteristic has the effect of recognizing "comfortable" victories, while limiting the reward for running up the score.

So back to the greatness of the Big 12... don't take my word for it - let's look at the Sagrin numbers to devine specifically why the schools in the middle of the country are the best of the best this season (rankings for strength of schedule, ELO and Predictor are in parenthesis following the rating):

Take a look and see if anything pops out at you... Two things I noticed right away: Five of the Big 12 teams have schedule strenght ratings in the top 10 in the country, and all have a SOS ranked in the top 25! Secondly, All Big 12 teams played at least seven teams in the Top 30, while four play an astounding eight teams ranked among the Top 30. When Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee infamously referred to the B1G as a veritible "murderer's row" a season or two back, he could have easily been talking about this year's Big 12.

Much to the chagrin of the much-hated Southeastern Conference, the Big 12 looks much better on paper than the self-appointed greatest conference in the known-universe:

Key observations here (aside from the fact that there is a team worse than Auburn, that is)? As another observer pointed out, the top half of this league is loaded for bear while the bottom third or so is pretty weak. It is interesting that former/sorta-still rivals Missouri and Kansas have the #1 and #2 toughest schedules in the country... Mizzou played more Top 30 teams than any other team in the SEC this season.

The question of tough schedules always seems to come back to which is better: playing tough teams or winning all your games, which is a trick question, of course. The truth is that it is better to win all of your games while playing tough teams - a la Alabama or Florida, who beat 3 and 4 teams, respectively, in the Top 30.

A bigger point comparing the SEC to the Big 12 this season is that aside from the aforementioned Tigers, the SEC's schedule isn't nearly as "tough" as you think when you look strictly at strength of schedule rankings. Most of the teams in the league play one of the 30 toughest schedules, though statistically Alabama's is only 35th toughest and only three teams have schedules in the top 20 of the SOS rankings (Mizzou, Auburn and Florida). Looking at those rankings, one could say that Florida is a little underrated in this year's media and Georgia is a little overrated.

So how do these figures compare with our home-sweet-home conference, the "three yards and cloud of dust" Big Ten?

There is is folks, in all its ugly glory. The saddest part of this graphic for me, in all honesty, is that our Buckeyes actually play the third-weakest schedule in the B1G! That School Up North gets credit for playing two schools in the Top 10; of course Ohio State is the only school in the league to go unblemished against ranked teams, Wisconsin and Nebraska each won two of three in the top 30, and they played schedules comparable to an average SEC team.

Out of conference scheduling is clearly the millstone around the Buckeyes' neck this season, however: those four teams earned a combine record of 19-30 this year, a miserable .388 for the season. The conference schedule was marginally stronger, with a combined record of 52-46; the Buckeyes opponents in total recorded 71 wins to 76 losses, or .483 for the year. It's no wonder 50 teams had tougher roads in 2012.

The data underscores the importance of some of Gene Smith's recent scheduling moves. Unfortunately, college football scheduling is done so far in advance that football fortunes change in a relatively short time-horizon. Will TCU be a powerhouse in five years? Good question.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, it's likely going to get worse before it gets better. While many of us are nestled all snug in our beds with visions of national championships dancing in our heads, next season will present a challenge relative to the strength of the Buckeyes' schedule. Out of conference, our fortunes may be slightly better - San Diego State, Florida A&M, Cal and Buffalo notched a combined 20-27 record this year... SDSU essentially takes the place of UCF in the 2012 schedule as the respectable OOC opponent; Cal should have filled that role as a member of the PAC-12, but its 3-9 record this year was only bested by the 2-10 Illini.

Based on this year's records, the 2013 Buckeye opponents enter the season a combined 69-75; not playing Nebraska or Michigan State next year is actually a bad thing given that we're still saddled with Illinois and Indiana. The hope for Ohio State clearly has to be that Beckman and Wilson get better, and fast. Similarly, it would be nice if whomever takes the reins at Cal picks up the pace in a Cinderella season... Oh, if only they'd hire Darrel Hazell... I'd say that Iowa getting better would help, but who are we kidding, right?

With conference realignment talks continuing and specualtion over the B1G's next two additions rampant, it's easy to see why fans want another Nebraska and not another Maryland. (On that note, 9-3 Rutgers would fall in Sagrin's rankings behind Michigan State and ahead of Purdue in the Big Ten this season... It's 2012 SOS is 84th in the country - obviously that will improve with a move from the Big East to the Big Ten, but it is interesting to see how our new brothers compare.)

As I discussed previously, the study of conference expansion is interesting in and of itself, and defies fan logic. Even so, one has to hope Jim Delaney has seen these numbers as he plots to annex Virginia and/or North Carolina.

The good news? We have empirical evidence that the SEC is not the greatest conference in college football. Let's enjoy that for a moment, shall we?

While it may no longer be Hate Week, the hate heaped toward our Buckeyes continues in the form of a metaphorical middle finger from the league's coaching fraternity. Even though seven members of the 2012 squad were named First-Team All-Big Ten, the coaches largely told the Bucks to "piss off" via their all-conference selections. Think I'm just being a homer? Hell, even ESPN, the center of the OSU-hating universe, noticed the snubs (...for once, the media got it right).

As Bennett noted in his write-up at ESPN's Big Ten blog:

Let's start with the coaches' team. Braxton Miller is named the quarterback of the year in the league, but he's only the second-team quarterback on the coaches' selections? Uh, what? No offense to Taylor Martinez, who had a terrific year, but Miller was simply better all season long.

 

That's not even the biggest stunner involving an Ohio State player. Buckeyes linebacker Ryan Shazier did not make the first team, falling behind Michigan State's Max Bullough and Wisconsin's Chris Borland (Penn State's Michael Mauti is an understandable lock). There was talk of Shazier for Big Ten defensive player of the year after the way he blazed through the second half of the season. But that looks less likely now. (Unless the coaches want to engage in some serious trolling by naming Miller the offensive player of the year and Shazier defensive player of the year as second-teamers).

Bennett also suggested OSU's Bradley Roby should have been named Defensive Back of the Year and that left tackle Jack Mewhort was noticeably absent from the coaches' selections, though he was named Second Team by the media voters. In all, the media named twice as many Buckeyes to the First Team as did the league's play callers. Braxton Miller did get some nice props despite the snub on the coaches' all-conference team, earning Quarterback and Offensive Player of the Year honors. Somewhat surprisingly, consensus all-conference selection John Simon was named Defensive Player of the Year.

While naming on three defenders to their first team and naming ZERO offensive players from the highest-scoring offense in Buckeye history to the first team, the biggest snub from the Bitter Ten coaching corps came last night with the selection of Bill O'Brien as Coach of the Year over undefeated first-year head coach Urban Meyer.

Let's set one thing straight up front: what O'Brien did at Penn State this year is pretty impressive, and he certainly has earned any recognition coming his way. Taking a team that was largely expected to be the whipping post of the league this season and turning it into arguably the second-best squad in the conference was a feat of Herculean proportions. In particular, his development of Matt McGloin (a favorite target for derision from the 11W audience - feel free to leave appropriate wisecracks in the comments) into a legit quarterback is noteworthy.

Setting aside O'Brien's credibility for a moment, passing over Coach Meyer still steams my clams, and here's why: it reinforced what a shaft-job the voters did in passing over Jim Tressel for a solid decade, and reminds us that Urban will likely never win the league's Coach of the Year Award:

Former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel was a victim of his own success when it came to winning Big Ten Coach of the Year honors.

Tressel never claimed the award despite dominating the league during most of his Buckeyes tenure. If Tressel had a down year midway through his run at Ohio State, only to get the team back to a league title or a BCS bowl the following year, he would have had a better chance.

In many ways, the Big Ten Coach of the Year award is about what happened the previous season or the previous offseason rather than the actual season for which the honor is presented. Recent history also shows first-year coaches who bolster programs have a good chance for the award.

 

Who won COY in 2002, then, the last year that Ohio State went undefeated and untied (oh, and went on to win the National Championship)? None other than three-time B1G COY honoree Kirk Ferentz. Leading the Iowa Hawkeyes to an 11-1 season (yes, that loss was to Iowa State) after a 7-5 outing the prior season, Ferentz was deemed the more successful play caller.

Ferentz, btw, would go on to win the award again in 2004 (a legit 10-2 and co-B1G champs) and in 2009. The last win, like his first, remains something of a head-scratcher, as Iowa went 11-2, with a home loss against unranked Northwestern and a loss in Columbus to the Jim Tressel squad that won the conference title outright and whipped Oregon in the Rose Bowl to finish with a #5 ranking on the season.

If you look at the history of the COY award, it becomes apparent that the coaches of one of the most dominant programs in the league for half a century just don't get the love when it come to league honors. While the modern version of the award chosen by the coaches is named in part for the legendary Woody Hayes, it has been 33 years since an Ohio State chief has won the award (Earle Bruce won in 1979):

• Woody won the award the second year it was given - 1973 - a year after his friend and nemesis Bo Schembechler won the inaugural award. In all, Bo one the honor six times in 17 years; the Ohio native won the honor in '72, '76, '80, '82, '85 and '89. Woody won twice, in '73 and '75.
• That Team Up North has seen its coach named COY nine times in total, by far the most of any school in the conference. Gary Moeller won the award twice, with Brady Hoke earning the award in his inaugural season.
• Iowa comes in second, with long-time leader Hayden Fry taking home the trophy three times, as has the aforementioned Ferentz.
• Illinois and Michigan State are tied with five wins each, though the Illini wins are notable because they were won by four different men. Northwestern coaches have won the award four times since 1972, while Purdue, Wisconsin and Joe Paterno are tied with three wins a piece.
• Paterno won the first of his awards in 1994, the year after Penn State joined the Big Ten. He won again in 2005 and 2008, though in theory those wins have been vacated under the imperious NCAA sanctions stemming from the Sandusky debacle.
• Indiana's Bill Mallory won in 1986 and 1987 (perhaps the last time the Hoosiers were anywhere near relevant in football), and Minnesota's Glen Mason won his school's only entry in 1999 (not quite the last time Minnesota was relevant in football, but close).

In total, 29 different coaches have won the award in 40 years. From 1986 through 2010, the award was dedicated in honor of Wisconsin coach Dave McClain, and was selected by the media. The coaches selected a separate award from 1982 to 1991; the coaches resumed selecting a coach of the year in 2011. The coach-selected honor was named for the first two recipients of the Big Ten Coach of the Year award, Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes, as the Hayes–Schembechler Coach of the Year.

So what is it about the coaches that leads them to ignore the Buckeyes?

Earle Bruce-coached teams won the Big Ten title outright twice - in '79, when he was named COY, and again in 1984. The Buckeyes also tied for 1st in the B1G twice during Bruce's tenure, in 1981 and 1986.

In 1981 Iowa's Fry won the honor despite losing one additional non-conference game than did Bruce; the Hawkeyes earned the right to represent the league in the Rose Bowl by virtue of edging OSU in the AP Rankings at the end of the regular season. In 1984, Purdue's Leon Burtnett won the honor - his team only went 6-3 in the conference, but '84 was the first time in school history that the Boilermakers defeated Ohio State and Michigan in the same season.

Indiana's Mallory may have been among the first B1G coaches to win the award because of a major turnaround... After going 0-11 in '84 and 4-7 in '85, the Hoosiers finished 6-6 and went to their first Bowl Appearance since 1979.

John Cooper, much to the ever-lasting shame of Buckeye Nation, earned a share of the Big Ten title only thrice in 13 seasons at the helm:

• In 1993, Barry Alvarez earned the honor as he took the Badgers to the Rose Bowl - the Buckeyes tied Wisconsin 14-14 at Camp Randall.
• In 1996, after again losing the M*ch*g*n, Cooper took the #4 ranked Buckeyes to the Rose Bowl - and won - but Northwestern's Gary Bartnett won COY for the second year in a row after leading the "Cardiac Cats" to back-to-back Big Ten titles.
• In 1998, Cooper again led the Buckeyes to a single loss (again, to TTUN), and again shared a piece of the B1G crown with Alvarez, who again won the award... One thinks John Cooper must have hated Alvarez, as the Badgers' coach twice swiped the trip to the Rose Bowl and COY honors. (As a side-note, Ohio State actually should have gone to the Rose Bowl that season, but B1G tie-breaker rules were apparently designed by the same people who give participation ribbons to every kid because "we're all winners.")

The history of coaches snubbing Senator James Patrick Tressel is fairly fresh to readers' memories, so I'll not recapitulate the numerous insults in the past season. As Bennett noted in his ESPN write-up, the Tressel era saw the B1G play callers largely selecting the "feel good" stories of major comebacks, rather than rewarding a coach who dominated their sorry asses squads for 10 years running. Vest-coached teams only lost 14 conference games in 10 seasons, winning the conference outright three times and taking home a share of the championship an additional four.

Usually we think of as the media being the major Buckeye-haters of the world, but when you look at it on paper, it's pretty clear that green is a color most Big Ten coaches wear pretty well. Well here's to you, rest of the Big Ten - congrats on going a combined 70-62 this season (that's an even .500 if you take away the league's only other 10+ win team, Nebraska). Looking forward to seeing you represent the league during Bowl season... Good luck, we're all counting on you.