LouisEly

The 80% buyout might not kick in until after his third year, this year. I've heard that the buyout "drops" to $25M in December, and the payout is then $334K/month through March 2032, or ~$4M/year. That would be offset by any salary he gets in FBS or the NFL. For reference, the Toledo head coach makes $1.1M, so that would only bring Fickell's annual buyout down to ~$3M/year. With $70M+/year in TV revenue, that shouldn't be an issue. The issue is more that if they have to wait until December, will they be able to get a coach in place by signing day and have enough time to sell kids on staying? Being a state employee, they have to follow state law in posting the position, so they can't interview behind his back and have a candidate ready to go the day after they fire him. And with the elimination of the spring portal window, they only have December and early January to bring in players.

Last night ESPN had their 30 for 30 on about "The U Part 2". After the 1994 season, Dennis Erickson left and Butch Davis was hired. Miami's foundation was already crumbling - they were banned from participating in a bowl game in the 1995 season and had 31 scholarships revoked over the next three years - but it hadn't shown up in their record yet. They were 10-2 in 1994. Three years later in 1997, Davis' team went 5-6. Fans were calling for his firing. People hired airplanes to fly over the stadium with banners that said, "From national champs to national chumps". To many fans, Davis "ruined the program". Three years later in 2000, Davis' team went 11-1 and finished #2 in the polls. Obviously a different era, different rules, but lots of similarities. The foundation was crumbling even though it hadn't shown up in the record yet. Didn't bottom out until year 3. Yes, there is the portal and NIL now, but that's no different than recruiting back then - you're still competing with everybody else for recruits, every other big school has NIL and can use the portal too, and many schools have more resources. Sure you can bring guys in via the portal, but they can leave via the portal just as well if they don't like being a backup or if someone comes along and offers more money. Point being, there are examples where it took more than three years to build a program.

Billy Martin is rolling over in his grave.

Fitzpatrick and Murray have been doing their best lately to ensure that they don't get protected or picked.

And they didn't. Losing at home to Tulsa the death knell.

The whole "develop" model that UW was successful with is dead, and for several reasons. It's much harder to find "hidden gems". There's so much more high quality video available on kids now versus ten years ago. From games, from camps, social media. Kids are putting out their own video and tagging coaches, recruiters, columnists for recruiting rating services. The "overlooked" kids now are few and far between. The portal - if a kid feels like they should be starting and they aren't, they hit the portal. (See: Nolan Rucci - he didn't want to sit behind Nelson and Mahlman for another year, so he left). And pretty much every kid who is being recruited by a top school thinks they should be starting (key word - "thinks"). Poaching by schools with bigger NIL funds. (See: Xavier Lucas) If a kid does show something, other schools with bigger budgets come sniffing around. (Or the kid starts putting himself up for auction - I know for a fact that back as early as January agents for kids were reaching out to Greg Gard telling him that if UW was interested their kid would hit the portal after the season was over. There's a ton of that going on.) Some schools have eliminated public access to practices to try to stop "scouts' for other schools from seeing who looks good in practice. Potential walk-ons are taking scholarships elsewhere due to cost of school. With the state of WI funding less and less of tuition and costs at UW, the cost of attending UW has skyrocketed. That, coupled with inflation and the cost of everything going up (housing, vehicles, vehicle insurance - do you know how much it costs to insure a teenager now?) has made it much more financially hard to walk on when they can get scholarships or partial scholarships at a Northern Illinois, Central Michigan, South Dakota State, etc. And, going back to #2 and #3, they think that if they can start earlier at a smaller school and show something then they'll get offered something in the portal. And they usually do. We cannot compare anything of the sport/business of college football today to pre-2020. It's just a completely different landscape, and much of the way things were pre-2020 is dead now.

What a poopy weekend for WI sports teams.

This is such a beautiful picture...

Chryst was a good coach. Until 2020. 2020 allowed him to be lazy, and then he quiet quitted. It is well known that he wasn't fired for his on-field performance; he was fired because he either half-assed or flat out refused to do what he was asked or needed to do off the field. He literally took MONTHS to fill the recruiting coordinator position after he left. He didn't even make it a point to talk to a 4-star linebacker visiting for a game. See my post above about all the talent he had on that 2022 team that only went 7-6.

And most of the good players on that team never played a regular season game for Fickell - Mertz, Herbig, Benton, Tippman, Guerendo. Braelon Allen and Tanor Bortolini played one year. And there was nothing left behind those guys to develop and take over. That 2022 team had Mertz, Herbig, Benton, Tippman, Guerendo, Braelon Allen, Tanor Bortolini, Jack Nelson, Hunter Wohler. And they went 7-6. Nine NFL players should have done better than that. That's on PC and Leonhard.

In the NFL, yes. In college football, if a kid thinks he's good enough to start and he isn't starting, he hits the portal. That's why Rucci left - he didn't want to spend another year sitting behind Nelson and Mahlman. That's why all the DBs left - they demanded to be guaranteed starting spots, and when they were told they don't guarantee anybody anything they left. But it's hard to build depth when the prior regime over the past three years brings in a total of 6 OL recruits (one who got homesick and left, one who's so bad he can't even start this year), 2 TEs (one of whom had a substance abuse issue and quit football, the other isn't even in the 3-deep this year), and 3 DL recruits (one of whom couldn't get admitted). That's the thing, they have to start those relationships 2-3 years before they commit. The guys he was building relationships are freshman now. And what hurt Fickell is that NIL started a year before he left Cincinnati and Cincinnati didn't have the NIL funds to get the top recruits, so there weren't many good recruits he could bring with them. We also know that the chancellor made UW play by the book with respect to NIL. Nothing paid until they got to campus. Lots of other schools were cutting checks up front. Bird in hand... Do I think Fickell is a great coach? No. What I'm saying is that regardless of who they brought in they were headed for disaster.

And those 5th year starters have gotten injured. All three years. That's not rewriting history. As for "the transfer portal", what we don't know is how much UW has had in NIL funds available, how much the QBs they've had to bring in cost (by all accounts, seven figures for an experienced Power 5 starting QB), and how much that leaves them for other positions. And when they have as many holes as they've been left with, they don't have a Phil Knight or a Larry Ellison to give them eight figures to fill out the entire team. And kids in the portal aren't going to go somewhere where they don't think they have an opportunity to start. An OC isn't going to go to UW in the portal because Renfro was there; nobody knew he was going to get hurt. UW was without their starting QB, OC, LT, TE, and they lost their starting RB during the game. No wonder they struggled on offense.

Would be awesome to soak the visitor's clubhouse in Miller High Life

Weren't they supposed to have overtaken the Brewers by now? They're the same distance back that they were 39 day ago.

I'd be willing to bet that's the norm when a coach is fired in-season now, and that's due to the portal window. If you are going to bring anyone in from the portal you need to have a coach in place ASAP. And kids are going to bail if they don't know who the coach is going to be. Between the first signing date for recruits in December and the portal window you can't have a prolonged coaching search anymore. And I don't think there's anyone in the NFL who wants to go to the circus that is college football right now.

The best Northwestern has done in the NIL era is 8-5 in 2023; they played two ranked teams and lost both games. They went 4-8 the next year and are 1-2 so far this year. TCU has oil money and Jesus money coming out of their rear ends.

That's true - no QB recruit in 2020. I thought they had a good OL class in 2021 and they did on paper - Rucci, Mahlman, Benzschawel. But it was only three players, Rucci didn't want to wait his turn so he took advantage of the portal, and Benzschawel was severely over-rated. He's a redshirt SR now and hasn't been able to earn a starting job, and that says something right now. So, in three years (2021-2023) Chryst brought in a total of 6 OL - Rucci, Mahlman, Benzschawel, Brunner, Barrett Nelson, and Durand. Six OL in three years... no wonder their OL is a disaster. And you can't fix that in the portal when you have to buy a starting and a backup QB every year. I don't think that PC was a bad hire. His promotion of Joe Rudolph to OC and then replacing him with Bobby Engram was the death knell. That, and NIL.

The #1 way that you beat yourself is by trying to do too much. While I appreciate Danny O'Neil's level of effort, by trying to do too much he hurt his team badly today. Bad INT, bad sacks, gave Maryland more yardage than he generated for UW. Thanks, Chryst, for your half-assing of recruiting the last two years you were here and for all of the quality QBs, OL, TEs, and DL you left behind (which I believe is a total of two two players - Mahlman and Brunner). When you don't have $40M in NIL to spend on a team you can't buy an entire offense and half of a defense to get you a halfway decent team.

I don't agree with this. The schools that people use as examples have benefited from easy schedules. Indiana got torched in the two games last year that they played against good teams. They weren't that good. Arizona State lost to Cincinnati last year and this year they lost at Mississippi State where their starting QB went 10-22 for 82 yards, 1 TD, 2 INTs. UWs backup QB did that against Alabama. Deion brought his own luggage. He hasn't beaten a good team yet and started this season 1-2. If by "boosters" you mean Larry Ellison shelling out $10M for the #1 QB recruit in the country at the behest of his sugar baby, or Phil Knight shelling out $40M to fund his alma matter, yes, but UW doesn't have any of those boosters.

Well, UW hasn't lost at home to Tulsa, so things could be worse. I hope that OSU allows Gundy to finish the season. He's been there long enough and given enough to that program to have earned that right. Maybe like Chryst he's just had enough of what college football has become and is half-arsing it.

If Priester or any other ground ball pitcher is starting you can bet that Ortiz will be starting as well. When you have a ground ball pitcher starting you put your best defensive SS in the game.

Including Anthony Rendon.