GP1

I agree. However, he didn't get to New England because of his great coaching record at Can't. He got there because of his personal/professional relationship with the head coach. Being a HC at Can't didn't hurt his career. It depends on what his career aspirations were. If they were to go to Can't and have losing season, one after another, then go to coach at New England, I would agree with you 100%. If he wanted the Can't job in order to parlay success into a BCS job, it hurt his aspirations.

I agree. However, he didn't get to New England because of his great coaching record at Can't. He got there because of his personal/professional relationship with the head coach.

All good points. The real question is, can you do that from Can't? I say no. I also say UofA is a great opportunity for a coach looking to do exactly what all of the coaches above did. It has everything a program would need to be successful. All Coach I has to do is turn a losing mentality into a winning mentality and they can go all the way. Fans sometimes confuse a coach who goes from a MAC school to a BCS school as a great coach. Most coaches, and people working in college athletics, are opportunists. I don't blame them for making the moves they do, but I also don't confuse the moves they make as proof they are great at what they do. (For those of you who think you have to pay a coach a ton of money to get a good one need to have the fact pointed out to them that Haywood was the lowest paid coach in the MAC last year.) I have no problem with guys like Kill, Gill and Jones duping low level BCS schools into paying them a lot of money. They all have families to support and a million dollars at a BCS school goes a lot further than $200,000 at a MAC school. Most of these guys want to do great at their schools and then cash in even more like the greatest opportunist of the first decade of the 21st Century did, Brian Kelly. Kelly took short bursts of success at various schools and used it to cash in at the easiest to dupe school, Notre Dame...they hired Faust for crying out loud. Here is what I want to happen at UofA. I want Coach I to go 9-3 next year, win the MAC and dupe a BCS level school to throw a bunch of money at him. It sure would beat the losing we have watched for the past 20+ years.

This guy just won the MAC. Texas high school graduate. ND graduate. No Ohio ties other than a short time as an assistant. In the 21st Century, Ohio schools have won the MAC four times. Only Toledo had an Ohio guy coaching their team. Miamioh had Hoepner...Indiana guy (sp?) and Haywood (sp?) Texas/ND guy. Akron had JD...Colorado guy. It is fantasy to believe it matters whether or not a guy is from Ohio. The facts just don't support it.

I'm not worried about this guy. He's a nobody and probably way down on the list of candidates they were REALLY interested in. Can't is a terrible program (like ours for that matter) with little to offer (ours has a lot to offer). There is WAY more upside at Akron than Can't. The fact the guy coached at OSU does not impress me because I think what they have going on in Columbus is smoke and mirrors. Let's see how this guy does when he has little going for his program. The fact that this guy is from Ohio does not impress me and I'm not sure why it should impress me or anyone else for that matter.

I hate to come off as a dick to one of my favorite posters, but what makes you or any of us qualified evaluators of what is going on at a college football practice? Most fans really don't know who is good or bad. Most don't understand why a game plan is put together the way it is. Most don't understand why certain plays are being called. Most don't know if when a play fails if it was a bad play call or did one player break down. Most don't understand why certain players are used above other. Most don't even know who is working hard or not. A player can work hard and not be a good player. Another player can look lazy, but he is working hard and is so good the physical action looks effortless. Fans should not be allowed into practices, except for one and the spring game. It's D-1A college football, not a high school team where you can walk down to the stadium to watch them practice.

For those of you who may not know, the Inside Drill is when every play is run between the tackles. There are no passing plays and the defense knows it is coming. It is the most brutal 20 minutes of any practice. Goal line is a close second, but there are passing plays on goal line offense so the brutality isn't there. What makes it brutal during spring is the first team offenses and defenses play against each other.

You would be surprised how many teams come August will be sitting in film rooms watching some scragly video shot of their opening week's opponent's spring practices. When teams open up their practices to the public, it happens, and RI knows this because I'm sure they sent some GA's out in the spring when he was at ND. After all, Charlie Weis did come from the same coaching tree as Bill Belichick. Our opener is OSU. I wouldn't be surprised if their spring game was broadcast on the BTN in full HD from multiple angles, and all of the practices up to that point are open to the public with a $20 gate charge. Our coaches will have no problem getting film. Do you have a link for where it says this?

The Big Ten commissioner was caught not just with his pants down, but completely off, by this stupidity and isn't sure what to say so he unleashed one of the most dreaded statements in college athletics. In the last paragraph of the link DrZ provided, he says something along the lines of "we are trying to build a fan base". Are you freaking kidding me? It's a BCS level conference and they are trying to "build a fan base". Attention Big Ten commissioner....your teams play in front of sold out stadiums every weekend and you have some of the largest alumni associations in the United States. THE FAN BASE IS THERE YOU MORON. Whenever you hear someone in college athletics bring up "building and growing" it should make you cringe because it is a sign that person has no idea what to do and is buying time until his next job. He may be able to slip that nonsense by the limited intellects of Big Ten graduates, but he isn't getting it by the intellect of this University of Akron graduate (twice). The second thing the Big Ten should stay away from is marketing the past. I mentioned this on this board when I first saw the stupid division names and I was right. The way they named their divisions tells me they don't have much in the present to market and they know it. Major League Baseball markets the past and did anyone see the TV ratings for the World Series this year? Terrible. Market the present. If what you have in the present is not good, make what you have better. Americans like to look forward, not backward. The one idea I like about the way the Big Ten is organizing the divisions is they are trying to make each division equally competitive. If they were really smart and creative, they would rearrange these divisions every 4-5 years. You can't make a decision in 2010 expecting to know what the conference is going to be like in 2020 or even 2015.

If a guy is a good coach, it doesn't matter if he was a head coach or not prior to getting a MAC job. A good coach is a good coach regardless. The funny thing about this hiring is it can prove the people who think you should hire a coach with lower level head coaching experience both wrong and right. The guy was successful at Miamioh contrary to this opinion. If he goes on to Pitt and wins, it will prove the opinion to be correct because he had experience coaching at a lower level school. It's funny how things can turn out.

He also has a hot girlfriend who is an expert auto mechanic. She traveled with him down to Mississippi. I believe her name was Miss Vito. Herman Munster was the judge too.

Fans should get to see one Saturday morning practice and the spring game. There are things that need to take place during spring practice that don't reflect very well but are necessary. There is a lot of fighting, cursing and vomiting......and that's just the coaches. Fans, and especially grade school kids, shouldn't be party to that. I'm not sure why the average fan would want to go to a practice. College football practices are like watching paint dry. It's boring for the players too. All the players can think about during spring practice is the day when it will all be over. The best party of the year didn't take place after the last regular season game, it took place after the spring game when the feelings of dread come to an end. All fans deserve is what they see during the regular season. That's all that matters anyhoww.

OK...That's probably the most creative thing I've ever seen a band do. It was so simple, why hasn't anyone done something like that before?

Maybe the people shooting the guns should do a better job of doing what the coach tells them to do.

Rumor has it he even got a relative out of legal trouble in Mississippi.

IMNHO, what Akron lacks, and has lacked for as long as I can remember, is a guy you can bring off the bench and he is automatic offense. Maybe there were some, but I just can't remember. When you put a guy like this in the game, you have to accept he is going to play defense poorly so you have to figure out a way to keep him from being too big of a liability on defense. KD won't put up with a guy who plays defense poorly so he doesn't have guys like this on his team. I think a guy like this is needed for the times when everyone else is having difficulty putting the ball in the basket, because you have to keep pace with the point pace of good teams until you figure out what adjustments you want to make.

I wonder if Faust said, "By golly, anyone who coached at Notre Dame is a good coach as far as I'm concerned."

You just described the majority of coaching hires. He knows the same as everyone else. If he can get good players, he will win.....if not, then we all know what happens.

I think there was more to his getting hired at Pitt than his race. Pitt has had off the field problems and the school wants them fixed. He had problems like that at Miami and fixed them. Secondly, I don't think there were many people interested in the job at Pitt. It is a third place school in a BCS conference in name only. The program is not impressive and has rarely lived up to expectations regardless of the coach. Haywood won't live up to expectations and will be out sooner than later. Thirdly, Haywood won when it mattered...in the league championship game. Pitt has shown an ability in recent years to poop their pants late in the season with the conference championship on the line. In the glory days of Pitt football (Majors and Sherrill) Pitt had, let's just say, laxed standards for a player ever seeing the inside of a classroom. Pitt won't put up with that any longer. Haywood won at a school with good standards and that is probably attractive to Pitt. Sure, Haywood backed into the championship game by Can't beating OU, but he got there and won. JD did the same thing (OK, neither backed into anything). The big difference between the two is JD only won six regular season games. Haywood won eight regular season games, which is a good bit for a MAC school.

My hand isn't in the air, but a lot of Miami fans had the same opinion of Haywood last year at this time. Quick turnarounds happen all the time in the MAC with coaches nobody has heard of. Why not us?

I think you are being a little too harsh. Minnesota is a very good team with a very good coach. The Zips really hung in with them just days after getting waxed by an A-10 team. We have big guys, just not as big or as many as they have. That's the real difference between a MAC school and a Top 20 school. For every one good big guy we get, they get three. It's just a numbers game. Over a 40 minute game, the numbers catch up with you. The Zips have good enough big guys to win the MAC and then see what happens in the NCAA. I feel good about their chances after watching the game last night. Let's just hope MN's check doesn't bounce.

So let me get this straight. Since Chad Johnson wanted to play soccer, all American soccer players are as good of athletes as Chad Johnson. Kansas City (over half of their players are not from the United States) beats Manchester United in a "friendly contest". I'm sure this game was more like a preseason baseball game than a real game. If being able to run a long way makes one in great shape and better shape than people who play other sports, then marathon runners must be the greatest athletes in the world and not NBA players? Sorry bobbyake, your facts are weak at best and prove little. Here is how I see it. Chad Johnson is a world class athlete and probably ran circles around the little kids on the pitch (what a stupid name). At some point there was no challenge to it so he challenged himself with better athletes. Those athletes were playing football and not soccer. See preseason game analogy for KC vs ManU. Running and bouncing a ball off of your head while collapsing in pain after nobody touches you doesn't make one a great athlete. In Europe, great athletes are playing soccer...In the US, great athletes like Chad Johnson are playing football, basketball and some play baseball.

There are a lot of reasons why soccer is more popular in Europe than the US. The culture is different, but I think a big reason why it is so popular in Europe is when you go see a Europen soccer match, you are watching the best athletes in those countries. Let's be honest. In the US, you play soccer if you can't play football, basketball or baseball. In Europe, you play basketball and whatever other sports they play because you could not play soccer. The next time you get a chance to watch the US play a team from Europe, look at the size difference between the US and European players. The European players are much larger than the US players because the best athletes play soccer in Europe. They are bigger, faster and stronger than the US players, because our big, fast and strong players are playing football, basketball and baseball. I think it is really that simple. Good athletes can make a boring sport like soccer exciting and that is what you get in Europe. The rule they should get rid of in soccer is bouncing the ball off of their heads. I had a friend who played soccer in college and he was against heading the ball because he said it didn't allow for "control of the ball" and heading outcomes were too random. Makes sense to me.

The Big Ten is already a second tier conference like the Big East and ACC. No reason to join them, they are already one of them.

The Big Ten is obsessed with the past and this is an example of it. In terms of football, the best days are behind it and increasingly moving into the distance. This type of stunt strokes the egos of the blue hairs that remember those days. Basically, the names of the divisions embody how the rest of the country views the Big Ten. The fans of the Big Ten see it as a great conference with great tradition (best days in the past). The rest of the country sees it as a joke. What I'm trying to say is the names they selected for the divisions are actually perfect.