Black Heart Gold Pants

Pro Combat Goes B1G: Illinois Edition

2012-05-16T18:30:15Z

Methamphetamine: a drug that is spreading like wildfire across Big Ten country, a drug that addicts countless individuals, destroying their minds, bodies and souls, and, hopefully, a drug that will hopefully be causing a little less destruction in Illinois next year thanks to an awareness-raising new uniform by Nike.

"We discovered two things during our research about Illinois," said Nike head designer Christopher Polyblend. "First: central and southern Illinois is absolutely crawling with meth labs, and second: meth manufacturers tend to be very lax about safety."

"Seriously, it's as if they have no respect for the chemistry at all."

The new uniforms will demonstrate good lab safety habits to the thousands of meth producers, or "cooks", inevitably in the viewing audience during an Illinois game, said Polyblend. "The rubber gloves, the ventilation mask, the Haz-Mat suit: all of these things are necessary to protect from chemical burns, incapacitation and even death. It's a sad testament to the decline of science education in this country that more crank producers don't enforce proper safety protocols, but we hope to do our bit to change things for the better."

The gloves accompanying the new uniforms emphasize the importance of mobile lab safety

The Illini will be the first team in the nation to wear a uniform that is both a functional football garment and an OSHA-rated Level B Haz-Mat suit. Polyblend noted that mobile meth manufacture and college football have a great deal in common: "Both are incredibly dangerous, both are likely to lead to permanent disability, and both are waking up to the pressing need for better safety gear."

"Of course, meth manufacture is incredibly popular in central Illinois, so they're not entirely alike."

The uniform's designer, eccentric recluse and Greek expatriate Christopher Polyblend

Polyblend was careful to point out, however, that Nike's endorsement of lab safety was not endorsement of drug use. "Let me be crystal clear: Nike does not and has never supported the production or use of methamphetamine. I can't say that clearly enough. Our hope is simply that fewer individuals are brought to emergency rooms with injuries from chemical mishaps, such as being exposed to phosphine gas when you try to muscle a high school chemistry teacher into giving away the primo ice he cooked up in his Winnebago. That kind of thing."

Polyblend also hopes that the new design will allow Illinois to move on from the Chief Illiniwek era. "It was a big loss to give up such a beloved, if horribly offensive mascot, but we hope Cook Illiniwek will be just as popular." Auditions for Cook Illiniwek will be held in June.

KITCHEN-CLEAN AND FOOTBALL SAFE

It's Not Plagiarism If You Link To It: Big Ten Athletic Directors Meet In Chicago

2012-05-16T13:01:35Z

COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS CHANGING. You can watch Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany speak about Big Ten bowl tie-ins and the possibility of college football playoffs. Right now, it's about the "what" and the "where." According to Adam Rittenberg, Delany said "there's a very strong consensus among the league's athletic directors that the bowl-eligibility requirement should increase from six wins to seven wins." Those new requirements could mean new bowl tie-ins for the Big Ten. The contracts for the current lineup of Big Ten bowl tie-ins expires after 2013.

For the Big Ten meetings the issue of a playoff isn't a matter of if but how. Delany's previous stance was for semi- final games to be played on college campuses. That issue appears to be dead now. According to Delany,

"I had a conference call with our football coaches about a week ago. What they said to me was the 'how' is even more important than the 'what.' They were in favor of the Rose Bowl, the bowl system. They felt it was the least slippery slope. They understood on-campus events could be competitively favorable to them, but they were very clear that the events ought to occur in the context of the bowl system."

Another issue for Delany, besides the Rose Bowl tie-in, is how teams will be selected for a "Final Four" playoff. There's been a proposal for a selection committee or using a formula similar to the old BCS formula that gathers numerous polls and computer rankings. However teams are selected will be controversial. Delany wants transperency in how the system works. What's the formula, who is involved, etc.

While conference champions would be ideal Delany backed off his previous stance that was interpreted by some as a shot at Alabama. Delany says there could be a "hybrid model" for teams that don't win their conference championship. They'd have a pool of teams to select the four final teams. Six was the number floated previously.

The Big Ten will offer two playoff proposals. Conference commissioners will meet next month and Delany hopes to have something formalized by then. July 1st is the date conference commissioners hope to have a playoff format finalized for 2014. The meeting of Big Ten ADs will continue today in Chicago.

Other links:

Nebraska's Tom Osborne: College football playoff change ‘inevitable'
B1G ADs talk schedule strength for playoff
Big Ten athletic directors back playoff using bowl games
B1G ADs: Playoff will bring more tumult
Big Ten, Rose Bowl remain in common law marriage, kind of
Big Ten ADs want league champs protected
Video: Big Ten spring meetings
Podcast: ‘On Iowa' talks college football playoff at B1G meetings
Live from the B1G meetings: League football, basketball recruiting expenses from 2011
Big Ten ADs bless 4-team playoff ... but no more than four
Big Ten spring meetings primer
Big Ten among NCAA's biggest spenders
Iowa-Virginia Tech in basketball is just one more game
Jack Dahm's contract expires after this season
Gatens Excited for Next Step
Hawkeyes Break Before Summer Workouts
Harty: Facts, opinions and predictions

LINK: A Miracle Squared: Celebrating The Greatness Of Bo Jackson

2012-05-15T23:18:16Z

LINK: A Miracle Squared: Celebrating The Greatness Of Bo Jackson

Bo Jackson is the first athlete I ever loved. He's the reason I became an Oakland Raider fan. He's the reason I (almost) became a Kansas City Royal fan. His career-ending injury is the reason I still feel a little bitterness to this day toward the Cincinnati Bengals.

I was 6 or 7 in his heyday and I was in awe of him: at the way he could hit home runs farther than anyone else, at the way he could snap baseball bats like toothpicks, at the way he could bust off 90-yard runs in football at the drop of a hat. Even now, over 20 years later, I can still vividly recall several of his most amazing plays. And one of the most incredible things of all is that those same plays are still amazing now -- they're not the product of my trumped-up imagination. They're just absolutely spectacular plays.

So naturally I was excited to read that ESPN's tremendous 30 for 30 series of sports documentaries is returning and planning a piece on Bo. And I was overjoyed to read this piece about Bo from SBN's Jon Bois and Bomani Jones. And I was delighted to watch this touching piece on what Bo Jackson has been up to lately, via ESPN's Outside the Lines.

Technically, this has nothing to do with Iowa sports. But without Bo, I would never have become the sports fan that I am today. Bo got me started on the path that led to where I am now, writing thousands of words about black-and-gold athletes in pads and helmets, in jerseys and sneakers, in singlets and headgear. Thanks, Bo.

Relegate This: Where Indiana And Illinois Spend Half the Aughts In The MAC

2012-05-15T19:50:00Z

(Bumping this up -- and reopening comments -- because it's Relegation Week at the SBN mothership this week. I also added 2011 data to this post. -- Ross)

If you've been following the action in European soccer at all over the past few weeks, you've likely been gripped by the drama of the annual promotion/relegation battles that pop up in every league. Relegation adds immense drama to games involving bottom-dwelling teams -- they're fighting to remain at their current level and not only maintain current levels of prestige, but (more importantly) maintain current levels of income; the drop in filthy lucre for teams that drop down a level can be immense. From the standpoint of pure competition, it's also a much fairer system than what we see in American sports, since strong play is rewarded (with opportunities to compete in more lucrative leagues) and poor play is penalized (by being forced to play in less lucrative leagues). Conversely, in American sports, poor play is either not penalized (i.e., college, where Indiana can flounder along for an entire decade but collect the same fat checks from the Big Ten conference as the teams that win the league) or actively rewarded (i.e., pros, where teams like the Pirates, Clippers, and Lions are rewarded with high draft picks to enable them to select the best incoming talent).

I freely acknowledge that relegation will, of course, never ever happen in American sports, at either the professional or collegiate levels. The formats of leagues here are simply too different and there are just too many entrenched interests working against it, no matter how much it might liven things up or create fairer overall systems. But that doesn't mean that we can't still imagine a parallel universe where relegation does exist in America.

College football works fairly well for this thought exercise, since it's already evolved into a heavily tiered system: there's a top flight of BCS schools, a second flight of non-BCS schools in the FBS, a third flight of FCS schools, and so on. Since this is an Iowa blog, I'm going to confine this exercise to the Big Ten and I'm going to use the MAC for the second division, since it's a collection of schools in Big Ten states that all play in that mid-major, non-BCS tier.

It should go without saying, but this is going to be a very limited look at the promotion-relegation issue, mainly just breaking down which teams would have been sent down from the Big Ten each year and which teams from the MAC would have been promoted to replace them. I'm not going to attempt to take a look at this cumulatively, since that would require genuinely creating another universe; the snowball effect of having promotion and relegation in practice would be massive. Coaches from relegated schools might get fired sooner, while coaches from promoted schools might be more apt to stay put. Players from relegated teams might seek to transfer away. The effect on recruiting would be huge. And so on. Plus, it's possible to imagine that in some years a Big Ten might not just yo-yo back into the Big Ten after a year in the MAC -- there were some really awful Big Ten teams in the '00s and it's no sure thing that they would have won the MAC. In that case, we're suddenly dealing with a situation where there are two former Big Ten teams existing in the MAC, and then things start to get really bananas. I'm going to try to avoid venturing down that rabbit hole too far.

Relegation candidates from the Big Ten were determined by looking at conference records in each year; where there was a tie I opted for the tried-and-true main tiebreaker of soccer leagues the world over -- goal differential (or point differential for our purposes). This meant that some teams who had bested the other in head-to-head match-ups wound up being relegated anyway, but hey: maybe they should have tried being less shit in their other games.

Promotion candidates from the MAC were determined by taking the winner of the MAC Championship Game. I could have used the same approach as I did for the Big Ten, and just taken the team with the greatest in-conference record, using point differential to break ties where needed, but that seemed less useful for multiple reasons. One, the MAC schedule is even less balanced* than the Big Ten schedule during this time period, given that they had more teams**. Two, taking the winner of the MAC Championship Game was simply cleaner -- and in some ways, more fair than taking the regular season champion. Three, it was bears some resemblance to the promotion systems in European soccer; in England for instance, the third promoted team for the English Premier League is determined by a four-team playoff (the other two promoted teams are the top two finishers in the second division standings).

* The balance issue is particularly irksome, since one of the reasons promotion and relegation work so well in soccer is because the schedules are perfectly balanced in most leagues: teams play every other team twice, once at home and once away, and that's it. (Scotland is a notable exception here, but Scotland is weird.) Some schedules might be more favorable than others in terms of when certain teams are played, but that's unavoidable; there's never a situation where one team would play one of the top teams in the league, while another team wouldn't play that top team at all. Unfortunately, college football schedules are anything but balanced; in many leagues teams don't even play every other team and even in leagues where there is a true round-robin schedule, the home-away splits can be tricky and unfair. This is also why I looked at just conference records in determining teams for promotion and relegation; conference schedules in college football are far from perfect, but they're infinitely more fair than looking at non-conference schedules, which are all over the map in terms of home/away splits and competitive balance.

** Membership fluctuated wildly in the MAC in this ten-year span. Marshall and UCF were members -- and then they weren't. Then Temple was a member and so on. And please don't ask me why some years some MAC teams played eight games and some played seven. The MAC makes my head hurt sometimes.

Enough preamble. Onwards and upwards!

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2001: Northwestern beat Minnesota, 23-17, but they also lost to Indiana and Iowa by 35+ that year. Thus, in our parallel universe, Northwestern goes from just missing out on a trip to the 2001 Rose Bowl after the 2000 season to being relegated to the MAC after the 2001 season. Needless to say, in this universe, potatoes are not the starch of choice. (FUN FACT: the yuca is the starch of choice over there.)

As a general disclaimer, I'm not going to profess to be an expert on the MAC teams that earn promotion in this parallel universe. I follow Big Ten football closely and pay attention to the MAC only when the semi-annual Big Ten-MAC Challenge rolls around in September and if I happen to be exceptionally bored on a Wednesday evening in October. Our first promoted team is the 2001 Toledo Rockets, who went 9-5 in 2002 and made a repeat trip to the MAC Championship Game. They lost both games against big boy competition (31-21 to Minnesota, 37-19 to Pittsburgh), but the closeness of the Minnesota loss makes it seem like they might have been reasonably competitive in the Big Ten.

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2002: A barnburner! Northwestern avoids relegation in 2002 partially because they bested Indiana, 41-37. They held only one Big Ten team under 30 points (co-champions Ohio State, strangely enough), but fortunately for them Indiana was even more pathetic.

Our MAC representative this year is Marshall, who rumbled to a 11-2 mark in 2002. In 2003, they went 8-4, losing only to Tennessee (34-24), Toledo (24-17), Troy (33-24), and Miami (OH) (45-6). That included a 27-20 win over Kansas State in Manhattan -- a Kansas State team that went on to drub Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game and play in the Fiesta Bowl. They would have been an interesting team in the 2003 Big Ten, particularly considering one of the most wretched Big Ten teams of the '00s took the field that year. Speaking of...

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2003: There was no need for tiebreakers this year; instead we got the '03 Illinois Fighting Illini, the first of the three 0-8 teams to emerge from the Big Ten in the '00s. This particular incarnation of pure suck was the penultimate tango for Ron Turner in Champaign -- yes, penultimate, as in second-to-last. Despite going 0-8 in the league (with a point differential of -205) and 1-11 overall, he was allowed to return for another year, either because A.D. Ron Guenther forgot he existed, or because it would have cost too much to fire him, or because the glow of a trip to the Sugar Bowl lasts just long enough to gloss over even an 0-8 disaster two years later. The Illini cracked 20 points only twice all season and had just one game decided by fewer than 17 points (a 17-14 loss to Indiana). Four Big Ten teams scored 40+ against Illinois, including an Iowa offense led by Nathan Chandler. So, yes, they were truly awful.

As for our MAC representative... lordy, would it have been fun to get even crazier and somehow put the 2003 Miami (OH) team into the Big Ten. Because that squad was arguably the finest MAC team of the '00s -- if not ever. They went 13-1 and swept through the MAC with aplomb (8-0, a +250 point differential). We're a little more familiar with this particular MAC team, too, since Iowa played them -- and handed them their only loss, 21-3, in a game where Roethlisberger threw four interceptions. But the Iowa defense was not only the best they faced all year (by a wide margin), it was one of the finest in the Big Ten, too. It would have been fascinating to see how Big Ben & Co. would have fared with Big Ten teams that year. As far as the 2004 Miami (OH) squad, they were solid -- 8-5 and a return trip to the MAC Championship Game. They didn't fare well against big boy competition, though: a 43-10 loss to Michigan, a 45-26 loss to Cincinnati, and a 17-13 loss to Iowa State in the Independence Bowl.

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2004: Look at the improvement! The Illini cut their point differential almost in half and -- gasp! -- even won a game (over fellow cellar-dweller, Indiana, 26-22). Sadly, that wasn't enough to enable Ron Turner to keep his job -- and it wasn't enough for them to avoid relegation in our parallel universe, either. This Illinois team was certainly more competent than the '03 squad; they had three losses of ten points or less and allowed only one opponent to crack 40 points against them. But they still weren't very good.

The MAC representative this year is Toledo, who went 9-4 and cruised through the MAC. They were very, very poor against BCS competition, though: a 63-21 loss to Minnesota, a 63-14 loss to Kansas, and a 39-10 loss to Connecticut. They were skilled at beating teams as good or worse than them, but woefully out of their depth against everyone else. The 2005 Rockets were a little better (9-3), but they didn't play a single BCS team which makes it hard to discern if they were really much better than the '04 squad that would have crashed and burned in the Big Ten. On the other hand, the team they would have been vying with to avoid relegation in '05 was truly horrible...

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2005: Illinois went 0-8 with a point differential of -257, easily clinching worst in the conference (dis)honors. In fact, they make a pretty compelling case for being the worst Big Ten team of this entire era. The staggering level of their badness is almost too much to comprehend, but let's try. They cracked 20+ points just twice and were held to 10 points or less on four separate occasions, including back to back weeks in which they scored two (2) and three (3) points, respectively. They conceded 36+ in every single conference game, including 40+ in four conference games, and 60+ (!) in two of those games. They were astoundingly uncompetitive in Big Ten play. And yet somehow they managed to win two games that year against FBS competition, Rutgers and San Jose State. Still, in Big Ten play, they were absolutely atrocious and it's hard to envision a team more deserving of relegation than this putrid squad.

In 2005, parity hit the MAC, as no team went better than 6-2 in league play and a 5-3 Akron team won the MAC Championship Game. Buyer beware, though: that Akron team went 7-6 overall and got absolutely drilled on more than one occasion. It's one thing to lose 49-24 to Purdue on the road or even 51-23 to Miami (OH) in Oxford; when you lose 20-0 at home to Army, well, I question your quality. Things didn't get better in 2006, either: they went 5-7, although that did include a 20-17 win over North Carolina State that gave them a BCS league scalp. Still, any team that loses five games in MAC play is not one that we can have much faith in for this exercise.

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2006: Michigan State and Illinois both went 1-7 in the league; Michigan State had a point differential of -93, while Illinois had a point differential of -65. Finally the long Illini relegation nightmare is over! They only won a single league game in 2006 (over relegation-bound Michigan State, coincidentally), but they were markedly more competitive: five of their Big Ten losses came by 11 points or less, including three games by seven points or less. In hindsight, perhaps their breakthrough in 2007 wasn't quite so shocking. (No, wait, it was: going from 2-10 to 9-4 is still pretty damn gobsmacking.) Strangely enough, their worst margin of defeat (24-7) came at the hands of a fairly mediocre Iowa team.

While Illinois improved from historically awful to merely pretty crappy, Michigan State bottomed out in the miserable end of the John L. Smith era. The '06 Sparty squad wasn't wholly miserable -- they opened the year 3-0 -- but things went sour after a pair of three-point losses to Notre Dame and Illinois. Those losses, plus a pair of close losses to Purdue and Penn State sandwiched two ugly losses to Michigan (18) and Ohio State (31). Still, what really did in MSU were not those blowouts at the hands of the Big Ten's alpha dogs (recall that in 2006 Michigan and Ohio State spent part of the year as 1-2 in the nation). No, what sunk their battleship were blowout losses to Indiana (46-21) and Minnesota (31-18). Losing to Indiana by 25 points is never a good idea. FUN FACT: 2006 was also the only year in the Aughts when Iowa flirted with relegation, going 2-6 in league play. Fortunately, Iowa's penchant for close losses (and blowout wins over Illinois and Purdue) kept them on the right side of the relegation line (their -18 point differential would have given them the edge in any tiebreaker situations).

Our MAC representative this year brought some fresh blood to the mix, as the Dan LeFevour Era desended upon the MAC and Central Michigan took top dog honors, going 7-1 and adding on wins in the MAC Championship Game and Motor City Bowl. They didn't claim a BCS scalp, but they weren't far off either, losing 31-24 to Boston College and 45-36 to Kentucky (as well as 41-17 to Michigan). Unfortunately, there was definite regression for the Fightin' LeFevours in 2007, as they went just 8-6 (although they did claim another MAC title). The most troubling aspect of their '07 season was their performance against the big boys, though: they lost 52-7 to Kansas, 45-22 to Purdue, 70-14 (!) to Clemson, and again to Purdue, 51-48 in the Motor City Bowl. But the 2007 Chippewas bring us another interesting "what if;" in our universe Brian Kelly bailed for Cincinnati after the 2006 season. In this parallel universe, does he stay in Mount Pleasant for a chance to guide a LeFevour-led Central Michigan through the Big Ten in 2007? Food for thought.

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2007: Minnesota went 0-8 with a point differential of -121, the third and final squad to pull the reverse perfect season in the Big Ten during the 2000s. Yet despite that ignominious 0-8 mark (and the 1-11 overall record), Minnesota can make a compelling case that they weren't as bad in 2007 as we recall -- and that they certainly weren't the worst Big Ten team of this period. Their -121 point differential would be just the 10th worst point differential during the '00s and they were competitive fairly often: three of their Big Ten losses were by 7 points or less, even though their defense was such a leaky sieve that they conceded 40+ five times. They were a lousy team and they deserved to be relegated (for losing to Indiana by 20, for losing to Bowling Green and Florida Atlantic, and for losing to North Dakota State)... they just weren't the worst Big Ten team of the era.

Meanwhile, the MAC brings us Year Two of the LeFevour Experience, which was already summarized a few paragraphs above. They were worse, Brian Kelly had bailed, and major conference teams treated them like a goddamn pinata. And yet they still managed to win the MAC that year because, well, someone had to take the crown. The '08 Chippewas weren't dramatically better; they went 8-5 and ended the year on a three-game losing streak. They did fare better against BCS competition, though; after getting blitzed 56-17 by Georgia, they narrowly lost to Purdue (32-25) and beat Indiana (37-34). On the other hand, they also lost to Eastern Michigan that year, 56-52.

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2008: Amazingly, this is our first sighting of Indiana in the relegation spot since 2004, when Illinois was just barely worse. A year after the spirit of Hep and the "Play 13" quest guided the Hoosiers to a 7-6 season and a trip to the Insight Bowl, the bottom fell out on Indiana when star receiver James Hardy departed for a so-far completely anonymous NFL career and scandal swallowed up fellow star player Kellen Lewis. Minus Lewis and Hardy, the Hoosiers were a sorry lot and the scorelines in their games reflects that point. Only one of their seven losses was by less than ten points. They scored fewer than 10 points in four games. In five of their Big Ten games, they conceded 42+ points, including two games where they gave up 55 points and another game where they gave up 62 points. In two of the three games where they didn't give up 42+ points, they gave up 34 and 37 points. They gave up 45 points to an Iowa team with an inexperienced quarterback and a coaching staff that barely threw a pass in the entire second half. The 2008 Indiana game, remember, was the one where Jewel Hampton -- the back-up running back -- ran for 100+ yards and 3 touchdowns. They were an utterly horrendous defensive team and barely any better on offense.

2008 brought one of the more unexpected MAC champions, as Buffalo knocked off 12-0 Ball State in the MAC Championship Game on the strength of five forced turnovers (including four fumbles that led to 28 Buffalo points). Ball State was trying to make a challenge to the '03 Miami (OH) team's claim as the best MAC team ever, but they crashed and burned spectacularly at the finish line. During the season they had been a juggernaut, amassing a gaudy +167 point differential and steamrolling the MAC competition they faced. They scored 40+ four times, had a margin of victory under 15 points only once all season, and won five league games by 20+ points. But it all came tumbling down in the Championship Game. The Buffalo team that beat them was no juggernaut; they had a point differential of only +33, lost by double-digits to both BCS teams they faced, and beat only two MAC teams by more than ten points. They had a nice run, but they would have been punching significantly above their weight in the Big Ten, a notion borne out by their middling performance (5-7) in 2009. They were crushed by Pittsburgh (54-27) and lost four of their first five games. A hard luck run near the end of the season (three losses by a combined seven points) made them look a little worse than they were, but for all intents and purposes, they were a slightly above-average MAC team that happened to catch fire at the best possible moment in 2008 (in the second half of the MAC Championship Game).

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2009: At last, an old money team tastes the bitter tears of relegation sorrow in our parallel universe. The '09 Michigan squad improved their record from the first year of the RichRod regime, going from 3-9 to 5-7, and they began to find a semblance of an offense -- but the defense regressed spectacularly, despite having all-conference talents like Brandon Graham and Donovan Warren in the squad. Michigan started the season strongly, going 4-0 and narrowly losing to Michigan State (in OT) and Iowa (on an interception at the end of the game). After a 63-6 throttling of Delaware State, they stood at 5-2 and their future seemed to be bright and ever-so-shiny. And then the situation imploded in stunning fashion and they lost five in a row. Only one of those losses came by less than 11 points, too. Penn State, Wisconsin, and Illinois (!) all battered Big Blue for 20+ point wins, which proved to be the difference in casting Indiana down to MAC hell and instead sending down a true college football blue blood. I'm guessing that in this parallel universe, the RichRod Era doesn't make it to Year Three.

After a one-year hiatus, the Central Michigan Fightin' LeFevours reclaimed the top spot in the MAC and did so in emphatic fashion, sweeping through the field of contenders with a point differential of +191. After a closer-than-expected season-opening loss (19-6) to Arizona in Tucson, the Chippewas rebounded with a surprising 29-27 win over Michigan State that ignited their season. The only game they lost the rest of the way was a 31-10 pantsing at the hands of Boston College at the midway point of the conference season. In MAC play, they had only one margin of victory less than ten points, they put up 40+ on four teams (including two 56-point performances), and generally dominated the competition. Unfortunately, 2010 was far less kind to Central Michigan: they stumbled to 3-9 behind a new coach (their prior coach, Butch Jones, had once again taken Brian Kelly's sloppy seconds, this time at Cincinnati) and logged only two MAC wins (both over their fellow directional Michigan schools, oddly enough). Granted, they also lost three MAC games by seven points or less (and came out on the wrong end of a few close calls in non-conference play as well, including a 30-25 loss to Northwestern and a 38-37 loss to Navy), but the losses of Jones and LeFevour were simply too much for this CMU team to bear.

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2010: Ah, back to our old friends in Hoosier-land. It's really not surprising that Bill Lynch was given his walking papers at the end of the 2010 season when you look at how uncompetitive the Hoosiers were in so many of their losses (and the sheer quantity of losses also became a factor; when you go 3-21 in Big Ten games over three years, there's really nowhere to hide when the reaper comes calling). The 2010 Hoosiers weren't as hopeless as the '08 squad: three of their losses came by seven or fewer points (including their coulda, woulda, shoulda loss to Iowa) and the offense perked up slightly (they scored double-figures in every game, although scoring 17 or fewer points in four games is pretty poor, particularly for a team as defensively frail as Indiana). And, to be fair, that -150 point differential is skewed a bit by that hellacious 83-20 loss they suffered against Wisconsin; over one-third of their total conference point differential came from that one game, which is a little unlucky. But they also lost by 28 to Ohio State, by 30 to Illinois, and by 17 to Penn State -- they were still pretty shitty. The '09 Hoosiers were a bit of a hard-luck team (four losses by 11 or fewer points and the deceptive 18-point loss to Iowa); the '10 Hoosiers were just lousy.

In 2010, the MAC featured a third straight team to make it through the regular season 8-0 (following in the heels of '08 Ball State and '09 Central Michigan), as Northern Illinois pulled off the feat. Unfortunately their magical season suffered the same disappointing ending as '08 Ball State, as they lost a heartbreaker to Miami (OH), 26-21, in the MAC Championship Game. Prior to that game, though, they were the best MAC juggernaut this side of the '03 Miami (OH) squad, racking up a frankly insane +255 point differential and putting forth an offensive blitzkrieg week in and week out. In one three-week span, they put up 195 points and outscored their opponents by 141 points. In three games. Prior to their title game stumble, they had only played one MAC game with a margin of victory of seven point or less, a 28-21 win over Western Michigan, and they had scored 50+ four different times. They did well against big boy opposition, knocking Minnesota around on their way to a 34-23 win, and narrowly losing to Illinois, 28-22. But they also lost to Iowa State, 27-10, in their season opener, which is generally a foreboding way to start the season.

As for the team that actually did win the the MAC last year (and, thus, promotion honors in our parallel universe), Miami (OH) was mostly just a MAC-good team. They took care of business in the league, although rarely in impressive fashion: five of their league wins were by a touchdown or less and they failed to score more than 28 against a single MAC foe. Alas, they were poor against big boy competition last year: they lost 34-12 to an offensively-challenged Florida team and then got spanked by Missouri (51-13) and Cincinnati (45-3). The early preseason projections have them again being a top team in the MAC, even with a new coach (Mike Haywood went off to be head coach of Pitt for about two weeks, before a domestic abuse charge put a kibosh to that), but their struggles against BCS-level teams in 2010 makes us leery of their 2011 potential.

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2011: It's another sad year in Hoosier-land; Kevin Wilson's first year at Indiana was -- somehow -- even worse than the Lynch Era at Indiana. Say what you will about the Mad Gum Thrower, but at least he never went 0-fer in B1G play. Indiana's -195 point differential was also the the fourth-worst total of all the Big Ten teams looked at in this era (only the '08 Indiana team and the '03 and '05 Illinois teams had worse totals). Indiana's best bet at a B1G win was actually their first opportunity, a 16-10 loss to Penn State in early October. They were tied 3-3 at halftime and Penn State needed two late scores to win. Otherwise, Indiana's best shot at a win was a 33-25 loss to Purdue in the season finale. They lost by double-digits in their other six B1G losses and gave up 55 points or more in three losses. Only Minnesota truly rivaled Indiana in badness and they managed to nab two B1G wins, first when Jerry Kill managed to outsmart Kirk Ferentz and later when they got to play an utterly demoralized Illinois team. But hey, sometimes you need a lucky break or two to avoid the relegation curse.

Meanwhile, a year after their promotion efforts were thwarted by a surprise upset in the MAC Championship Game, Northern Illinois gets over the hump and into the B1G in 2011. The '11 Huskies weren't the juggernaut that the '10 Huskies (seriously: +255 point differential!) were (they had a much more modest +96 point differential) and their MAC promotion hopes really came down to a pair of narrow wins: an insane 63-60 shootout win over MAC West co-champions Toledo and a 23-20 win over Ohio in the MAC Championship Game. As wild as the first game was (and any aficionado of mid-week MACtion still has fond memories of that Toledo game), the second game may have been even crazier: NIU stormed back from a 20-0 halftime deficit to score 23 points in the game's final 21 minutes, capping their rally off with a game-winning field goal as time expired. Otherwise, we were thisclose from Frank Solich getting a chance at REVENGE~! against Nebraska in the Big Ten in 2012.

Player Development 2012: Grading the Journey from High-school Recruit to the NFL

2012-05-15T15:01:00Z

Easy bump. -- Ross

College football is a simple game. It's not an easy game by any means, but it is simple and the formula for success is straightforward and well-known: (1) Bring in talent, (2) Develop that talent into football players, and (3) Win games with those football players. That may not be absolutely everything, but that is the gist of it, and it’s those three things that we pay our coaches the big bucks to do excellently.

In this article we are going to make things even simpler. We are going to focus on just one part of that formula: Player Development; Number (2); The ability of a coach to turn raw talent into football playing ability. What’s more, we are going to approach player development from the player’s perspective. We know, and the talent knows, what they can do for coach. Let's leave that aside for the moment and focus instead on the player's perspective: What can coach do for the talent? Where should a recruit go, and who should he play for, if he wants to maximize his development as a football player?

This article isn’t about recruiting, but it is part of what recruiting is about. Every prospect hears the happy talk from every interested recruiter about what that coach and that program will do for that player. But talk is cheap, and we can do better. We have a decade’s worth of data that we can use to measure the success that each program and coach has had at developing the talent that they attract, and we are going to use that data to put coach’s happy talk to the test. To be specific, we are going to match the outcome of the last decade of NFL drafts to the Rivals ratings of the incoming recruits of every BCS program from 2002 (when comprehensive rankings began) until 2009 (the last year for which most recruits have become draft eligible). Last year we used this same approach to look at the best (and worst) programs and conferences at developing recruits into NFL players, and had some interesting discussions on just what it all meant. This year we are going to reevaluate our programs and conferences with an additional year of data, and expand on last year's analysis by taking a look at the impact that geography and position have on player development.

This is Player Development 2012, where we provide the hard answers to the question of who’s doing the best, and worst, at turning talented recruits into football players that can play at the highest level of the game - the NFL.

Stars Matter, but the Program Matters Too

First off we have to get one thing straight: stars matter. The USCs and Ohio States of the world bring in higher rated recruiting classes and - on average - they win more as a result. What's more, the higher rated a recruit is, the more likely they are to excel as a football player. For instance, higher rated recruits are more likely to be drafted into the NFL, and when drafted they are drafted higher and stick with their NFL team with greater frequency. We can quantify the talent advantage that a higher rated recruit possesses by combining our two data sources: the Rivals recruiting database which ranks each BCS recruit every year going back to 2002, and the outcomes of the past decade of NFL drafts.

If we restrict our attention to BCS programs only, since the vast majority of NFL players come from BCS schools, the draft outcomes for each ranking of recruits from the 2002-2009 classes is as follows:

Stars	Percent Drafted	Average draft position
★★	5.1%	143 (5th round)
★★★	8.2%	124 (late 4th round)
★★★★	17.0%	108 (early 4th round)
★★★★★	37.0%	79 (3rd round)

Let there be no further doubt: Stars matter, and recruiting - Number (1) in the college football formula - is vitally important. Let's be honest, we already knew that - but what about Number (2)? The second thing that this table makes very clear is that while stars matter, no BCS recruit is a lock to develop into an NFL player, and the vast majority aren't even a good bet to do so. Even the elite of the elite, the 5 stars that are drooled over by fan bases across the country, have less than a coin-flip's chance of ever hearing their name called in the NFL draft. Some of that can be marked down to individual motivation, and some to the difficulty in evaluating 17 years old kids, but there is another factor in play as well: the quality of the coaching these players receive. Stars matter, but the program matters too...

We've calculated the fraction of each rank of recruits that are developed into draft picks by the average BCS program. We can use that to evaluate the success of individual programs (or conferences) at developing their recruits relative to this BCS average. The Development Ratio is a simple way to measure the effect of a program on player development: Take the number of recruits a program turned into draft picks and divide that by the number that an average BCS program would have produced from the same recruiting classes. For instance, let's say your team brought in 20 4-star recruits and 80 3-star recruits over this time period, and that 15 of them were drafted. The average BCS program, by the numbers above, would have had 10 of those recruits drafted. So our example program has a development ratio of 15/10 = 150%, and has increased it's players chances of making it to the NFL by 50%. Very good!

Back to the original question - we know Ohio State produces more draft picks then Purdue, but is that just because of all those 5-stars they bring, or does Ohio State have a better development program as well? If I am a recruit with NFL aspirations, which schools will best help me fulfill that dream? And how much does it matter?

Rank	School	Recruits Drafted	BCS Expectation	Development Ratio
1	Iowa	28	14.7	189%
2	California	30	17.4	172%
3	USC	51	29.5	172%
4	Ohio St.	39	23.6	165%
5	Wake Forest	14	8.5	164%
6	Clemson	27	18.0	149%
7	Cincinnati	14	9.4	149%
8	Georgia	37	26.2	141%
9	Utah	17	12.1	140%
10	Virginia Tech	25	18.0	139%
11	Oklahoma	36	27.1	133%
12	Wisconsin	20	15.0	133%
13	Penn St.	24	18.5	130%
14	Texas	32	26.2	122%
15	North Carolina St.	20	16.7	119%
16	Pittsburgh	19	15.9	119%
17	Connecticut	12	10.2	117%
18	Nebraska	23	19.6	117%
19	LSU	34	29.1	116%
20	Stanford	15	13.1	114%
21	Florida	33	28.9	114%
22	Louisville	16	14.1	113%
23	Miami (FL)	29	26.0	111%
24	Notre Dame	23	20.8	110%
25	Oregon	21	19.0	110%
26	Alabama	27	25.0	107%
27	North Carolina	20	18.7	106%
28	South Carolina	24	23.2	103%
29	Michigan St.	17	16.7	101%
30	Arizona	18	17.7	101%
31	Michigan	24	24.0	100%
32	Illinois	17	17.1	99%
33	Arizona St.	17	17.2	98%
34	Purdue	14	14.4	97%
35	Georgia Tech	12	12.4	96%
36	Missouri	16	16.7	95%
37	Florida St.	27	28.2	95%
38	Syracuse	12	12.7	94%
39	Arkansas	18	20.1	89%
40	Rutgers	13	14.5	89%
41	Virginia	16	17.9	89%
42	Auburn	21	23.9	88%
43	Oregon St.	13	15.0	86%
44	Tennessee	23	26.6	86%
45	Vanderbilt	8	10.0	80%
46	Boston College	11	13.8	79%
47	Baylor	10	12.6	79%
48	Maryland	14	17.8	78%
49	West Virginia	12	15.4	77%
50	Texas A&M	15	20.1	74%
51	Kentucky	10	13.4	74%
52	Northwestern	7	9.8	71%
53	Indiana	7	10.3	67%
54	Oklahoma St.	12	18.3	65%
55	South Florida	9	13.8	65%
56	Colorado	11	17.2	63%
57	Mississippi	12	20.6	58%
58	Minnesota	8	13.8	57%
59	UCLA	11	19.3	56%
60	Texas Tech	9	16.2	55%
61	Mississippi St.	10	19.0	52%
62	Washington	8	16.1	49%
63	Washington St.	6	13.2	45%
64	Kansas	6	14.7	40%
65	Iowa St.	6	14.6	40%
66	Kansas St.	7	18.2	38%
67	Duke	0	11.2	0%

The program matters, and it matters a great deal. The choice of the right (or wrong) program can double a recruit's chances at the NFL, or it can halve them! And in the special case of Duke, bury them completely. The programs at the top - Iowa, Cal, USC and Ohio State - can back up their happy talk on the recruiting trail with a sparkling resume. Over the past decade these programs have developed their players at a level significantly above the average BCS program. They have taken their recruits and made more out of them than their initial abilities would have indicated, with the NFL factory of Iowa under Kirk Ferentz leading the way by nearly doubling the NFL chances of every recruit that takes their talents to Iowa City.

Great coaching is an absolute requirement to be a great developer of talent, and the past decade certainly blessed our top teams with that: Kirk Ferentz, Jeff Tedford, Pete Carroll, Jim Tressel and Jim Grobe were (and are) some of the best in the business. But in addition to great coaching, you also need stability. This was touched on last year, but the stability factor really pops out to me this year. Every one of those top teams not only had a great coach, they also had one coaching staff that spanned the vast majority of the past decade (if not all of it). In comparison, take a look at some of the failing programs, especially those like Washington, UCLA and Texas A&M that have the resources and support to do better. Each one of those three failing programs has been through multiple coaching transitions during the past decade, and as a result many of their players switched between systems, changed conditioning programs, and perhaps were simply shunted aside as part of the changing preferences of the new regime, all of which caused their player development to suffer. On one hand, this offers hope for the future - the new coach can always argue that he shouldn't be penalized for his predecessors' failings. But happy talk is cheap, and the proven record of the programs at the top is (and should be!) a powerful argument on the recruiting trail.

That's our big list of programs, but how about the conferences? After all, if the Bleacher Report has taught us nothing else, it has at least proven that there is always room for one more ranked list:

Rank	Conference	Recruits Drafted	BCS Expectation	Development Ratio
1	Big Ten	228	197.4	115%
2	Pac 12	218	206.6	105%
3	ACC	214	207.1	103%
4	Big East	107	106.0	100%
5	SEC	257	265.7	96%
6	Big 12	149	184.4	80%
7	Non-BCS	170	430.6	39%

Just like last year, the Big Ten and the Big 12 are the two conferences that separate themselves from the rest of the BCS - in opposite directions. The B1G is the best at getting the most out of its players. Year after year the conference has taken its incoming talent, which lags every other conference save the Big East on a per-team basis, and developed it into NFL quality football players. Another strong draft performance this year kept the B1G comfortably in its catbird seat as the premier player development conference. Meanwhile the Big 12 slid even further back from its already poor position last year. This decrease was not due to Nebraska and Colorado, which were removed from the conference in this year's analysis, but was the consequence of another lackluster year at the draft for Big 12 players. There are too many teams in that conference where recruits seemingly go to die, and the Midwest recruits that the two conferences fight over each year should take heed: If you are dreaming of the NFL, think twice about picking the Big 12 over the Big Ten.

Location, Location, Location: The draw of warm weather and the privilege of choice

So far we have been evaluating each program and conference in a vacuum, without considering the specific circumstances of individual recruits. But there is more to choosing a college than that program's NFL pipeline status, and one of those biggest additional factors is location. Should you stay close to home and go to the in-state school, or is it better to strike out for newer, greener pastures? How about a big city versus a small college town? Hot muggy summers or snow in the winter (or neither, aka California)?

One inescapable reality that BCS recruits face is that where they are is not the same place as where the BCS scholarships are. Of course this is trivially true, only a small portion of our population grows up in college towns, but it is true on a macro level as well. The median location of a BCS recruit lies right in the heart of the South, near the town of Toney in northern Alabama. However, the median location of a BCS scholarship spot is around 200 miles north of that average recruit, right on the border between Dixie and the North in the space between the towns of Evansville, Indiana and Henderson, Kentucky (view map).

There's no getting around it, the average BCS recruit has to head North, but not every recruit has to put up with colder winters if they aren't so inclined. With the blessing of talent, comes the privilege of choice:

Stars	Average Distance	Average Move N/S	Average Move E/W
★★	299 miles	180 miles N	78 miles W
★★★	255 miles	134 miles N	13 miles E
★★★★	234 miles	50 miles N	25 miles E
★★★★★	260 miles	39 miles S	72 miles E

The laws of supply and demand pull the average recruit North, but if you aren't average then you don't have to follow the rules that govern the masses. With every star comes more choice in the form of more scholarship offers, and when given that choice recruits vote with their feet for the warmer weather and milder winters of the southern climes. The trend East and West, while less pronounced, is also clear: When recruits have the choice, they prefer to move towards the population centers to the East rather than venture into "flyover country" in the great American middle. A sobering thought for Iowa fans, or fans of any Midwestern football program that sits both to the North and West of most recruits.

The talent might prefer to move towards the warmer weather and bigger cities, but is that a wise choice for their NFL aspirations? Are they trading their NFL opportunity for a couple of years in the sun and the city? We saw previously how the right (or wrong) program can substantially increase (or decrease) a recruit's chance at the NFL - how does the location of the school factor in? How does that biggest factor, the distance to school, affect the likelihood that a recruit successfully develops into an NFL caliber player?

Stay home young man, stay home, the grass over there isn't quite as green as it looks. Every individual is different, but the trend here is clear - the farther a recruit travels to go to college, the less likely they are to develop into a player worthy of the NFL. This holds up across all star classes (although it is least significant amongst 5 stars) and the location effect is a substantial one: Staying local is a ~25% boon to a recruit's NFL prospects, while heading across the country carries a ~25% penalty. Just in case you forgot we were talking about kids here, this is your reminder. The support structures and familiarity that come from a home base are important, and not everyone is ready to leave it all behind at 18 years of age. All the talent in the world means little if you can't keep your life in order.

Position, Position, Position: Some stars are worth more than others, and some schools excel for certain types of players

We know that stars matter. We know that the recruiting services - while not perfect, and engaging in a tricky business of forecasting the lives of 17 years old - are getting it right in the aggregate. But what if we break things down a little more carefully, and go position by position? After all, should we really expect that picking out that pro-caliber QB will be equally difficult as picking out that pro-caliber lineman? There's an easy way to check, we can simply repeat our draft analysis for each position individually:

Fraction of recruits drafted - By position and stars
Stars	TE	OL	DE	ATH	LB	RB	DB	WR	QB	DT
★★	7%	4%	4%	3%	4%	4%	6%	6%	3%	5%
★★★	9%	7%	9%	9%	8%	8%	7%	8%	6%	8%
★★★★	23%	14%	22%	16%	16%	15%	18%	14%	12%	17%
★★★★★	100%	29%	32%	43%	33%	28%	39%	54%	31%	35%

The first thing that has to be said is that the recruiting services, Rivals at least, are getting it done across the board. At every position there is a steady increase in the likelihood of getting drafted as the star rating increases, and the percentage drafted is relatively consistent across positions when holding star rating constant as well. There are some differences: for example, a 5-star WR is a much better bet to develop into an NFL caliber player than is a 5-star OL, and the O-line in general seems to be a harder to evaluate than most other positions. The 100% hit rate on 5-star TEs pops out, but that is largely because Rivals only handed out the 5-star designation to 5 TEs from 2002-2009. The big differences between the positions isn't due to issues with the recruiting services, the big differences come at the program level where certain programs excel at developing different positions.

Penn State likes to call itself Linebacker U, USC brings to mind All-American QBs and explosive skill players, and Iowa and Wisconsin have developed national reputations as offensive line factories. But what is the reality? Do these programs live up to their reputations when it comes to developing players at the positions they are associated with? Last year we looked at the differences between the development at certain position groups between conferences, and this year we are going to do the same for individual programs. Unfortunately, our data set is not large enough to go position-by-position and get meaningful results, so we will be grouping players into three position groups: Ball-handlers (QB, RB, WR, ATH), Linemen (OL, TE, DT, DE) and the Defensive Back 7 (LB, DB). Let's give our hypothetical recruit an even more specific answer: What is the ultimate destination program for the position he plays? Who is doing the best job developing players like him on the football field?

Top Developers of Ball-handlers (QB, RB, WR, ATH)
Rank	School	Recruits Drafted	BCS Expectation	Development Ratio
1	California	12	5.4	220%
2	Ohio St.	11	5.9	186%
3	Louisville	8	4.3	184%
4	Michigan St.	9	5.6	161%
5	Clemson	8	5.0	159%
6	LSU	17	10.8	157%
7	USC	15	9.9	150%

Top Developers of Linemen (OL, TE, DT, DE)
Rank	School	Recruits Drafted	BCS Expectation	Development Ratio
1	Iowa	14	5.5	254%
2	Wisconsin	11	6.0	181%
3	USC	20	11.4	174%
4	Penn St.	13	7.7	169%
5	NC State	12	7.7	155%
6	Clemson	11	7.2	153%
7	California	10	6.5	153%

Top Developers of the Defensive Back 7 (LB, DB)
Rank	School	Recruits Drafted	BCS Expectation	Development Ratio
1	Ohio St.	18	8.4	213%
2	Iowa	9	4.4	203%
3	USC	15	8.1	185%
4	Texas	11	7.0	157%
5	Clemson	8	5.2	155%
6	Oklahoma	15	9.8	152%
7	California	7	5.0	139%

USC does indeed show up as a top developer of the offensive skill players, but did you have Cal and Ohio State leading your list? Maybe Cal, Tedford is known as a QB guru and Cal has certainly sent running backs to the league as well, but I imagine few would have guessed that Ohio State under Tressel was one of the premier developers of talented skill players. Conforming more closely to expectations is the linemen category where Iowa and Wisconsin lead the field. Iowa's performance in particularly is rather remarkable, Captain Kirk and company have sent 2 and a half linemen into the draft for every 1 the average BCS program would have produced, a stunning 254% development ratio. If you are a linemen offered by Iowa, can you afford to say no? And in the defensive back 7 it can be no surprise that we we see Ohio State and USC in the top 3, each of these programs has done more to earn the title of Linebacker U in recent years than has Penn State, but Iowa as number 2 may surprise even some Iowa fans. As a fan, it's a little too easy to get used to, but it is not normal to see a progression of 2- and 3-star recruits develop into All-Big Ten players in the secondary like we've seen at Iowa. You wonder why keeping Phil Parker was such a priority for Coach Ferentz? Wonder no longer, he's been doing a great job for some time now.

Before we move on, let's also note that the great development schools - Iowa, Cal, USC and Ohio State - are not just specialists in one area. Each of these schools is topping the charts in at least two of the three position groups. It starts at the top. A great head coach can put together a program and a coaching staff that will serve the needs of all the players on the football team, not just those in the positions he is most familiar with. And let's also pause and give Clemson a moment in the sun. Yes, that's right, Clemson, is one of the top 7 developer of talent in all three of the position groups here. I don't claim to understand it (I don't know much about Clemson) but hats off to the Tigers, there has been something right going on over there in Death Valley.

At the end of this article I think it's time to take a step back and think about what we've learned. We've seen that programs, conferences, school location and a player's position all influence the journey of high-school recruits to the NFL. But it's easy to make too much of all this as well. I'm reminded of the recent decision by Des Moines recruit Jake Campos to attend Missouri rather than home-state Iowa (he clearly didn't get my page). And if we think that getting to the NFL is the only thing that matters then his decision seems crazy: Iowa is the best player development school in the country (check), by attending Iowa Mr. Campos would stay closer to home (double check), and Iowa particularly excels at developing players at Mr. Campos' position of offensive line (triple check!). But we can't forget the second lesson from all of this: High school recruits are probably not going to play in the NFL. The NFL is a dream, and one that is certainly achievable by some BCS-level recruits, but it cannot be counted on. It's completely appropriate for NFL aspirations, if a recruit has them, to play a role in choosing a college, but they shouldn't be the only thing. Even in college football, the most monetized and publicized amateur sport in the country, the student half of the student-athlete is the part that will matter most to the vast majority who play this game.

Methods: Rivals star rankings were used to rank recruits. Recruits from the 2002-2009 recruting classes were matched against draft results from 2004-present to determine draft status. 2010 and 2011 recruiting classes were not included as most of those recruits are still ineligible to be drafted. The expected number of draft picks for a program was calculated by multiplying the number of 2/3/4/5 star recruits for that program by the BCS average number of draftees per 2/3/4/5 star recruit. The Development Ratio is then simply the actual number of their recruits drafted, divided by this expected number. Statistically significant differences between the Development Ratios of individual programs or conferences and the BCS average are denoted by bolding and/or highlighting in red. Note that only drafted recruits are included in this analysis, so walkons or certain other players who joined the team in an irregular manner are not counted. Recruit locations were determined by geocoding the city/state pairs associated with each recruit in the Rivals database via the USC WebGIS Services. Conference affiliations and BCS membership were assigned as per the 2011 season. This means that Nebraska is in the Big Ten, Utah and Colorado are in the Pac 12, Texas A&M and Missouri are in the Big 12 and Colorado are in the Big 12, West Virginia is in the Big East, and TCU is not part of the BCS.

Pro Combat Goes B1G: Minnesota Edition

2012-05-14T20:00:16Z

[Earlier editions of the Pro Combat series can be found here: Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Wisconsin]

Maroon and gold are out and the purple reign has begun: the University of Minnesota announced today that they would be undertaking a complete redesign of their uniforms. The new look will center around the style and music of Minneapolis native Prince, and will amount to a total reimagining of the Golden Gopher brand.

"Minnesota had a good run with Goldy Gopher," said Nike head designer Christopher Polyblend, "but let's face it, the 1934-36 dynasty was a long time ago. I mean, the team's last bowl win was in 2004. We at Nike figured: Let's go crazy, let's get nuts, let's look for the purple banana-- why not?"

The new uniforms feature Prince's trademark purple jacket from the album and film Purple Rain, knee-high leather platform cleats, and a lace shirt open to the navel. The design omits several traditional safety features, such as padding for the sternum and clavicle, but Polyblend believes the sacrifices are necessary in order to capture the essence of Minnesota culture.

"When one thinks of Minnesota, what comes to mind? For most people, the answer is obvious: raw, unbridled sexuality." said Polyblend. "Dance, music, sex, romance -- all of that. Just dirty, filthy, near-pornographic stuff. The kind of borderline obscene material found in so much of Prince's music."

The gloves accompanying the uniform honor head coach Jerry Kill, and can also be used to perform a terrific Señor Wences routine

In addition to the uniform changes, the team will be debuting a new logo, mascot, and slogan. The old mascot, Goldy Gopher, will no longer be used, and will be replaced by an unpronounceable glyph known simply as "The TCF Bank Symbol".

The new TCF bank symbol (top) will replace the traditional UM "M" logo and mascot, Goldy Gopher (bottom).

Also, the team slogan and cheer, "Go Gophers Go!" will be changed to "Nothing Compares 2 U M". The new slogan will be featured prominently on the waistband of the team's new suede, side-buttoned pants. Polyblend explained the reason for the change: "If Minnesota is going to break out of its football rut, it needs to start thinking in drastically different terms, and that means all the rah-rah 1930s nostalgia has to go. A new slogan is just one part of that. The new pants, new jacket, new platform boots will all work together to convince fans of two things: 1) Minnesota football is back, and 2) I Wanna Be Your Lover."

"You'll want to keep those pants out of the rain, though, because they will get spotted pretty badly by any moisture."

The final change to Minnesota tradition comes in the area of musical accompaniment. The old fight song, the "Minnesota Rouser", was written in 1909 by Floyd Hutsell as part of a competition sponsored by the Minneapolis Tribune, and includes the following charming but dated lyrics:

Minnesota, hats off to thee!
To thy colors true we shall ever be,
Firm and strong, united are we.
Rah, rah, rah, for Ski-U-Mah,
Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah!
Rah for the U of M.

The new fight song, "Let's Pretend We're Married", includes the following more contemporary (but just as rousing) lyrics:

I wanna f**k U so bad it hurts, it hurts, it hurts
Ooh, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna f**k U
Yeah, I wanna, I wanna, ooh, I wanna f**k U
Look here martian, I'm not sayin' this just 2 be nasty
I sincerely wanna f**k the taste outta your mouth
Can U relate?

When presented with the plans for the new uniform, Minnesota native and biscuit fetishist Garrison Keillor promptly died when his head exploded.

REVOLUTION-ARY UNIFORM DESIGN FIT FOR A YOUNG ROYAL

What's a Hokie? We Have 197 Days To Find Out

2012-05-14T18:45:01Z

The Big Ten and ACC announced the matchups for the 2012 ACC-Big Ten Challenge today and our mighty Iowa Hawkeyes were drawn against the mysterious Hokies of Virginia Tech for a game in Blacksburg, VA on November 27, 2012. (TV is still TBA but let's assume it's another ESPNU shindig.) What the hell is a Hokie, anyway? Surprise! It has nothing to do with turkeys. But isn't their mascot kind of a turkey? What's with that?

The origin of the term "Gobblers" is disputed, with one story claiming it was coined in the early 1900s as a description of how student athletes would "gobble" up their more than ample servings of food. Another story attributes it to the fact that the 1909 football coach, Branch Bocock, wanted to stimulate better spirit amongst his players and initiated them into an impromptu and informal "Gobbler Club."

Thus, the name was already popular when Fred Meade, a local resident chosen by the student body to serve as the school's mascot, had a large turkey pull him in a cart at a football game in 1913. The school's president halted the cart pulling after one game because he thought it was cruel to the turkey. Meade continued to parade his mascot, which he had trained to gobble on command, up and down the sidelines--and did so until another "turkey trainer" took over in 1924 to continue the tradition. Enthusiastic fans and sports writers adopted the "Gobbler" nickname and began to use it regularly. In 1936, a costumed Gobbler joined the live gobbler for at least one game. The use of a live gobbler mascot continued into the 1950s, and the first permanent costumed Gobbler took the field in the fall of 1962.

College football used to be such a wonderfully strange sport back in the olden days. But enough about football! We're playing Virginia Tech in hoopyball! What should we know about VT when it comes to hoops?

They went 16-17 in 2011-12 and just 4-12 in the ACC, finishing in a four-way tie for 9th (or last, depending on how you spin it). Their best win was a 47-45 defensive slugfest over cross-state rival, Virginia. FUN FACT: like Iowa, they played mighty Campbell last year. Unlike Iowa, they mopped the floor with the Fightin' Camels, 85-60. Then, over a month after their season had concluded, Tech surprisingly fired longtime head coach Seth Greenberg. Greenberg's ouster came after the departure of several VT assistant coaches, so maybe the writing was on the wall. In fact, one of those departing VT assistants, James Johnson, did a 180 and came back to VT to assume the now-vacant head coaching gig. Not surprisingly, turmoil has been the order of the day among VT's players, with all-ACC freshman Dorian Finney-Smith heading for the exits. He was joined by one of Tech's top incoming recruits, too.

Iowa is 0-2 all-time against the Hokies in basketball, with both previous losses coming in the B1G-ACC Challenge. They narrowly lost a game in Blacksburg, 69-65 in 2006 and lost another close game in Iowa City, 70-64, in 2009. Those two losses are just part of a pattern of futility on Iowa's part in the Challenge -- we have a miserable record of 2-9 in Challenge games, by far the worst of all the teams that have played in the event (ignoring Nebraska's 0-1 mark since they're pretty new to the Challenge). Iowa's lost six games in a row in the Challenge and hasn't won since a "bowling shoe ugly" 45-42 home win over North Carolina State in 2005. It would be really, really, really nice to get another win in the Challenge.

* * *

The announcement of this game also fills in another part of the jigsaw puzzle that is Iowa's 2012-13 non-conference basketball schedule.

So far, we know the following games:

* Iowa State (home)
* UNI (neutral; part of the Big Four Classic in Des Moines)
* Central Michigan (home)
* DePaul, Wichita State, Western Kentucky (neutral; part of the Cancun Challenge in Cancun, Mexico)
* Virginia Tech (away)

That's probably about half of the non-conference slate (Iowa played 13 non-conference games in 2011-12).

Also, here's the full slate of ACC-Big Ten Challenge games, courtesy ESPN:

Tuesday, Nov. 27

Minnesota @ Florida State
North Carolina @ Indiana
NC State @ Michigan
Maryland @ Northwestern
Iowa @ Virginia Tech
Nebraska @ Wake Forest

Wednesday, Nov. 28

Purdue @ Clemson
Ohio State @ Duke
Georgia Tech @ Illinois
Michigan State @ Miami, FL
Boston College @ Penn State
Virginia @ Wisconsin

The Big Ten has won three in a row in the Challenge (after losing the first ten Challenges to the ACC) and, on paper, seems pretty well-suited to contend for a fourth-straight Challenge crown. North Carolina-Indiana is a tasty matchup, and Virginia-Wisconsin should be ideal if you pine for an insomnia cure, the return of Todd Lickliter-style hoops, or just the long slow embrace of death.

Assume the Position 2012: Tight End

2012-05-14T17:00:40Z

Assume the Position is our offseason guide to the Iowa Hawkeyes football depth chart. The math is difficult, so take it from us: As time moves on, we'll know more. That's why we rank the positions from most certain to least certain.

Previously on ATP2k12:

1. Quarterback
2. Cornerback

Today: Tight End

The Crown Prince of Prussia

C.J. Fiedorowicz (#86, Junior, 6'7", 265, Johnsburg (IL) HS)

He's only been here a couple of years, but I feel like we've been writing about C.J. Fiedorowicz's potential since the day we started. Now, finally, the Polish Hat takes the crown.

Fiedorowicz was the jewel of the 2010 Iowa recruiting class, a four-star genetic freak of a tight end who played seven different positions in high school and was enough of a talent to draw offers from programs that don't even use tight ends. He initially committed to one of them -- Ron Zook's Illinois -- before switching to Iowa. Since then, he shrugged off a redshirt, blew people up on special teams as a true freshman, won the second-string tight end spot for his sophomore year, left the initial starter -- a four-year letterman -- in the dust, caught sixteen passes for 167 yards and a handful of touchdowns (including a touchdown in Iowa's bowl loss), and drew rave reviews from his new offensive coordinator. Not a bad two years.

For 2012, Fiedorowicz is probably Iowa's most potent offensive weapon. He's too big for defensive backs, too fast for linebackers, and too tall for just about everyone. He can be lined up at the end of the offensive line, in the slot, or even split wide. His time last season at second-string tight end -- a role that places the utmost emphasis on blocking and little else -- squelched any rumors of his insufficient blocking ability. He's everything he needs to be, and there's nobody else that matches his ability, tight end or otherwise. He's no longer just the Polish Hat. No, Fiedorowicz is the building block for the entire offense.

The Other Hat

Zach Derby (#85, Senior (RS), 6'3", 240, Iowa City HS)

His brother might have left the program under a cloud of broken promises and broken bus glass, but Zach Derby has inexplicably made it to the end of the line, a solid contributor to his local university. Derby came across town to enroll at Iowa in 2008 and landed a walk-on spot; many believed it was less due to his potential ability as a player and more his younger brother's already-heated recruitment. Nevertheless, Derby took a redshirt and spent another season on the sideline before finally seeing action in 2010. Two seasons in and out of the tight end depth chart have yielded five starts, thirteen catches and 134 yards, and he exited spring as the solid second-string tight end.

Derby doesn't have the natural athletic ability to seriously push Fiedorowicz, as we saw late last season. What he does have is four years of experience, some serious blocking ability, and a desire to contribute. He's a ready-made second tight end in the old offense. Whether that's necessary for the new offense to function will dictate what contribution Derby will make in his final season.

While You Wait for the Others

Ray Hamilton (#82, Sophomore, 6'5", 248, Strongsville (OH) HS)

Hamilton's the heir apparent when Polish Hat steps aside, a universal four-star recruit stolen from under Ohio State's nose. He played in ten games last season as a true freshman and caught one pass in the opener against Tennessee Tech (pretty much all of the rest of his playing time came on special teams). He's big and getting bigger -- he added nearly twenty pounds over the course of his first season -- and there's no denying his athletic talent. The concerns are academics (the rumors were swirling this winter, though there was no suspension) and blocking. We'll know much more this time next year.

Henry Krieger-Coble (#80, Freshman (RS), 6'4", 235, Mt. Pleasant (IA) HS)

The cousin of former Iowa basketball player Jess Settles, HKC was a camp commit in the summer of 2010. He checked the boxes and met the eye test, but there was remarkably little discussion of him during his redshirt season. He was skinny. He's a little less skinny now. But there's a lot of work to do here. Good news: He had a good spring.

Jake Duzey (#87, Freshman (RS), 6'4", 235, Athens HS (Troy, MI))

Given this offseason's coaching changes, Duzey might be the most interesting player on the roster. He's a complete wide receiver/tight end hybrid, he was a deep threat outside wide receiver in high school, and he had an impressive offer sheet for his star rating (Oregon, Purdue, and Cincinnati) mostly because he's a wide receiver trapped in a tight end's body. He might have been completely lost in a Ken O'Keefe system, but his unique ability set could serve him well under Greg Davis.