[NU Sports] Football experiment

[Jeff Beamsley]

Stephen,

Thanks for your post!

I knew if we chewed on this bone long enough we'd find a part that we 
both thought tasted good. <g>

>We'll agree on that -- plus, you mention the contract and right now we're
>in the middle of a contract. So we'll have a couple years to watch the
>results elsewhere and see how they apply to Northwestern. But I think we
>all can agree that we don't want NU to become one of those schools that
>axes a coach mid-contract even if they do everything right "Sunday through
>Friday."
>  
>
BUT

I don't agree with you that a contract is or should be protection for a 
coach against poor performace (Saturdays and/or the rest of the week).  
Coaches, like many of us, are "at will" employees and can be fired at 
any time.  I'm certain that RW's contract (like mine) has pages which 
cover what happens to him if his contract is terminated before it 
expires.   Those pages are there and often consume a lot of negotiation 
time because BOTH PARTIES realize they often get used.

The flip side is being played out right now in the Urban Meyer 
situation.  He is likely to opt out of his contract because some 
opportunities developed faster than he originally anticipated when he 
signed with the Utes.  The folks at Utah knew they were taking a risk 
when they gave him the "out" clauses that they agreed to.  He did a 
great job for them and now they are finding out that there may be a cost 
to the risk that they took. .

We don't currently agree on the issue of RW's performance, but honestly 
I believe that it is moot.  RW isn't going to fired regardless of who is 
available on the coaching horizon.  Also I don't think that he will be a 
serious candidate for any of the current crop of openings.  If NU had 
won in Hawaii and was going to the Music City Bowl, that might have been 
a different story.  But there are so many more interesting things to 
speculate about in the future, that it seems hardly worth the time to 
wonder what could have happened in the past.

So what remains is the set of experiments that we both agree are 
interesting and can provide some real world data on what the real costs 
are of firing a coach before his contract expires.  Happy you are 
interested in keeping track.

Thanks also for the nice analysis of the current BT coaching situation.  
I agree that Tressel can only be removed by scandal and Carr is only 
going to leave when succession is well established.  If we assume that 
they are both going to be in place for the next three or four years, and 
it is obvious that they both have young talented backfields that are 
only going to get better, my new question to the group is when are we 
going to see another NU BT championship?

Asked in another way, what does NU have to do differently next year to 
beat Mich (we have them at home) AND will NU be able to beat OSU again 
next year in Columbus?  We will have to do at least one of those two 
things and most likely both if we hope to be BT champs in any of the 
upcoming years (at least until OSU goes off the schedule again).

Jeff