Big Ten Tidbits: 5/10/2011

Syracuse Isn't an Elite University Either! No, Syracuse isn't in the Big Ten (yet...</Delany cackle>), but news of its impending departure from the Association of American Universities should be a salve to offended Nebraska fans. Syracuse was one of the primary targets of the Big Ten's search and is an unquestionably strong academic institution; their failure to live up to the AAU's expectations says as much about the AAU's biases as it does about the school.


This is a bigger blow for Syracuse than it is for Nebraska, however, since the latter will be receiving gobs of money from the Big Ten/Committee on Institutional Cooperation, while Syracuse will not. But as I said before, the AAU is increasingly irrelevant. Its main function is to reappropriate federal grant money given to one institution to the rest of the group. Think of the AAU as an insurance policy against the possibility that the school won't get as much government money as hoped in a given year. Add in some cultural bias (no self-respecting academic wants to live in yucky upstate New York--especially not the cities--just like they don't want to live in Lincoln) and you've got the Incredible Shrinking AAU.


Pat Fitzgerald Was Wealthy, Is Now Wealthier: Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune reports that Fitzgerald's contract with Northwestern has been extended through 2020 for $1.8 million a year. The length of the contract is somewhat meaningless, since all that matters is the buyout cost (unknown), but the dollar size puts Northwestern squarely within the meaty part of the Big Ten coaching salary bell curve. It also makes any attempts by other schools to wrestle Fitzgerald away that much more difficult.


Bonus LOLs come on twitter as the Tribune-based Greenstein fights with Sun Times editor Chris LeDuca and  writer Joe Cowley. Greenstein sometimes gets a little too far ahead of stories but generally does a solid job on the college sports beat; Cowley is a hack who has had his baseball MVP voting credentials revoked for being too hacky and pioneered such stories as "my friend AJ Piersynski is good at defense because he can throw me out at second base", while LeDuca is the editor who employs said hack and, until recently, employed Jay Marrioti. No conflicted loyalties on my part in this fight.


Investigators Question Tressel about Smell Coming from Crawlspace: OK, that hasn't happened yet. But Ohio State's already overworked compliance department is now fighting another fire, this time about some potentially shady car deals that Ohio State athletes have procured over the past few years, including one deal for the low, low price of $0. There could be a lot of explanations for that, including some that are entirely innocent, such as tax fraud on the part of the car dealer (innocent to Ohio State, that is; the car dealer would be screwed).


Then again, maybe Ohio State's compliance department isn't overworked. Adam Jacobi makes the persuasive case that a finding of violations here would be especially damaging to Ohio State's NCAA enforcement apparatus and could result in the dreaded "lack of institutional control" label being applied. Meanwhile, Jim Tressel had no idea that the omelete he had for breakfast was made of condor eggs, and he's looking into rumors that former players have recorded Indians games without the express written consent of Major League Baseball.


Quick bits: Gabbert the Younger leaves Missouri; Indiana is an intriguing possible landing spot. Penn State basketball lands Dayton transfer Matt Glover, who will be eligible for 2012-13, while Michigan State gets Valpo transfer Brandon Wood for next year through the grad student exemption (loophole?). Do journalists have a macro that inserts "Tubby Smith" into every coaching vacancy story? 

The "No NUs" Club

("But you let in Northwestern?" "We're allowed to have one.")

So, Nebraska got kicked out of the Association of American Universities today. No, Nebraska is not getting kicked out of the Big Ten. Would Nebraska have been admitted to the conference without AAU membership? While I can't say for sure, they probably would have been; lots of schools being seriously considered were not AAU members.

But take heart, Nebraska fans: the AAU is a silly, increasingly irrelevant club. A few hundred academics at a few dozen universities decide which schools meet their necessary criteria (i.e., where would I be willing to teach if I were not already a tenured faculty member at Brown). Its criteria for membership are such that having top scholars on really, really important topics, like Jacques Derrida and the social meaning of boredom, but not things like producing more and safer foodstuffs. It has not admitted a new member in 10 years, because, hey, all the good work is already being done somewhere else, amirite? Besides, no one wants to live in Lincoln, Cornhuskers; it's bad enough I have to teach two lecture classes this semester and one of them meets on Fridays.

In a few years Nebraska will be flush with Big Ten cash (see also: Penn State). Nebraska will gain 25 spots or so in the U.S. News and World Report Rankings that no one except everyone pays attention to, and Nebraska will be asked to rejoin the AAU again. Whether they do or not will say nothing whatsoever about the quality of the university.

Around the Big Ten: Spring Games

Spring game disclaimers: These are only glorified practices. Every team has fifteen practices each spring, but the spring game attracts far more than 1/15th of the fans' offseason attention. Some players aren't particularly interested in practice, and anyone can have an off day.


To make matters worse, some teams run only skeleton offenses, others run vanilla defenses, and most run both. What we saw this weekend is a reflection of what we will see in the fall, but only a murky one; we can discern the outlines but the particulars are muddled. Finally, almost every observation is zero sum. A missed tackle is a broken tackle. Great pass blocking means bad pass rushing. 


The most valuable things we learn are the things that filter out the zero sum. Who looked slow? Who dropped passes? Who overthrew receivers? These are valuable because they aren't context-dependent. The schemes may be watered down, the systems may not be installed, and players may still be feeling their way, but overthrowing a receiver by 10 yards is always bad. 


Unfortunately, context-neutral observations tend to be negative, because the positives usually have offsetting negatives (good accuracy on throws? Why was the pass defense so bad? Bad accuracy? This QB stinks.) That being said, lets go ahead and over-analyze some scrimmages!


Michigan


The Positives: Mike Martin is still very good. Devin Garner might have the strongest arm in the Big Ten; he threw one pass 60 yards while moving away from his throwing arm (it was incomplete, but still). The wide receivers showed some ability, especially Je'ron Stokes, who made nice adjustments on a couple of passes. Redshirt freshman Jake Ryan had a nice day, getting a sack and an INT-TD (the sack honestly impressed me more as he kept from doing that thing that most young linebackers do on an end rush and get sucked in too far and lose contain on the outside). The offensive line opened up some nice holes when the offense went into plow-ahead mode, which they'll probably be doing a lot more of under Brady Hoke than under Rich Rodriguez. Denard Robinson is still really fast. Mike Cox had a nice 68 yard touchdown run.


The Negatives: Kickers might be a problem again this year. Denard Robinson had a really poor day throwing, especially when asked to stand in the pocket and deliver a ball accurately 15-20 yards through the air. Decision-making was a problem for both Robinson and Gardner, with both throwing interceptions. Besides from the long TD run from Cox, none of the running backs did much to distinguish themselves, and most of the gains on the ground seemed to be from good blocking, not necessarily good play from the rusher (the Cox TD had a broken tackle, which zero sum means could be good or bad). On that same note, the middle of the line is vulnerable; I focused on junior Will Campbell for much of the scrimmage and he was getting beat pretty easily in one-on-one situations every play while non-existent in the pass rush. The hustle is there, but the results are not.


Penn State


The Positives: Matt McGloin led the offense on a nice touchdown drive, showing moxie and spunk and verve and whatnot (also, some sharp passes). Backup receiver Brandon Moseby-Felder had two completions, including the only touchdown of the scrimmage. The defense looked solid, though no one really stood out. No one was hurt.


The Negatives: The weather, which shortened the game by almost half while rendering the rest almost useless. Like the Michigan/Purdue game last year in which Michigan scored its third lowest point total of the season, the conditions almost certainly made the offenses look worse and the defenses look better than the are.  That being said, Rob Bolden had an awful game, with zero completions and an INT (there was a drop in there, maybe two depending upon how generous you want to be in your definition of drop). It's unwise to take too much from a spring game no matter what, but this was more of a washout than usual; quite a shame for a team whose quarterback competition is perhaps the single biggest question mark in the Big Ten heading into the season.

Linkfest! 3-31-2011

Is it Illinois's turn to play coach chicken? The campus rally for Bruce Weber might draw fewer students than the one for Matt Painter in West Lafayette.


Corn Nation breaks down the Nebraska basketball season that was.


Speaking of the Cornhuskers, Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune talks to Nebraska AD Tom Osborne.


Brian Cook says Michigan's freshmen might not take as big a step forward in their sophomore year as the average freshmen. Still, "our freshmen were too good" is a nice problem to have.


Dr. Saturday takes a brief look at soon-to-be Ohio State gameday head coach Luke Fickell.


The Daily Gopher skips all the way forward to the 2013 football season. That might not be a bad idea for Gophers fans.