[NU Sports] that's the way it is

[Brad Wilson]

While I yield to no one is my desire to see the NU
football talent pool beefed up in both quantity and
quality, and I quite concur with Dennis that as a
university and a football team NU can match anybody
and need stand in no one's shade, it seems me to be a
willful denial of reality to say that NU will ever
have Ohio State or Michigan's talent.

Leaving aside such matters as academics, players NU
could never recruit and the ability of NU to serve as 
 an NFL training ground -- which alone make the idea
of NU equaling Ohio State in talent improbable at best
-- consider this: 
 
College football is and seemingly always will be about
the grand, traditional powers that stalk the land.
Each major league has 2 or 3 of these, 2 or 3
traditionally very much weaker squads and a bunch of
middling teams in between. Once in a great while some
of the middling teams pop up into powers -- the
occasional forays of West Virginia into the elite come
to mind -- and even less often a traditional weak
sister becomes a power (Kansas State under Bill
Snyder, say).

But the top teams are not much different than they
were  25 years ago (and some go back much farther
before that): OSU, Penn State, Michigan, Clemson,
Georgia, Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, Notre Dame, Oklahoma,
Texas, USC, Alabama, Nebraska. Miami of Florida and
Florida State were beginning their runs in 1981. To
fall from this blessed bunch requires vicious scandal
(SMU) or sustained total incompetence (Notre Dame
under Faust).

For reasons everybody can name -- tradition, ability
to produce NFL players, home-state loyalty, money, the
willingness to debase a great university for the sake
of athletic success -- these teams always have
attracted the top talent. 

Sure, top players slip through their hands (Barry
Sanders, Donovan McNabb, Lawrence Taylor all come to
mind), but these powers get the largest share of
blue-chippers.

Now, this does NOT mean they always win. If it were
so, Notre Dame would have won 15 of the last 20
national championships, if you believe Tom Lemming's
recruiting rankings. Great coaches, players with
hearts as big as Kansas, a little luck and lots of
guts and moxie can overcome the talent deficiency -
and the classic example of that kind of team wore
purple, the '95 team we all love so much, that special
band of brothers that will always  "walk together
forever", to steal a Fred Shero line.

Longer-term efforts against the status quo are harder
to sustain. By using brilliant special teams play and
dazzling skill-position recruiting, Frank Beamer kept
Virginia Tech near the top, but always struggled
against the powers when things got tough. The way ESPN
promotes Captain Kirk at Iowa you'd think he was Amos
Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner and Bill Belichick rolled
into one, but even his "Genius" doesn't do much with
OSU and Michigan.   Barry Alvarez used monster linemen
and powerhouse backs to take Wisconsin from doormat to
three Rose Bowl wins, but even he struggled mightily
against Michigan. Not even teams such as Texas A&M,
Arkansas and UCLA -- all with traditions that dwarf
NU's -- can keep up with the traditional heavyweights
in their leagues.

I dispute that just because NU can't -- and generally
won't -- be able to match PSU, OSU and Michigan in
talent it should drop to a another league. 'Twere that
so there'd be a lot of teams changing leagues across
the country.

There is no reason not to shoot for a Big Ten title
every season. It may even be possible to win three in
a decade (smile). But it will be done with less talent
that OSU, PSU and Michigan have almost every time,
just as Maryland, Missouri, Cal, Wake, etc., will do
so against the titans in their leagues. It will be
done on guts and glory, and with (somewhat) lesser
players.

I don't like that, but that's the way it is in college
football. And it will likely stay that way.

Brad Wilson















"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular." -- Edward R. Murrow, 1954.

"Quis ipsos custodes custodiet?" -- Juvenal

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