[NU Sports] Questions

Mon Oct 16 13:57:11 CDT 2006

I believe if I remember correctly that Dunbar was a native of Washington or
some other Pacific state, so he probably feels more at home out west.  Also
I'm sure he's probably attempting to put himself into a position to move up
to head coach again sometime, as it is obvious that Walker was going to be
the guy at NU for some time before he left.  Walker himself admitted that he
liked to see his coordinators move on after spending some time here (it was
the same when he was at Miami as well).

If Walker was here things would have probably looked a bit different on the
offensive side of the ball this year.  I would think that with a first time
OC Walker himself may have doen a good amount of play calling during the
games.  Obviously with Fitz in charge he has no offensive experience
coaching and it has made it much more difficult.

After this season, Fitz does have a bit of a challenge as it's obvious NU
needs to bring in more coaching experience.  The question is does he want to
essentially demote McGee and bring in someone with more experience?  I think
this is the only option as we have seen McGee just isn't ready yet.
Hopefully he can bring in another asst. coach with some experience as well -
either on the defensive side or for the special teams.  It'll be the first
huge decision he'll have to deal with.

Jonathan

On 10/16/06, cherron604 at aol.com <cherron604 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Hopefully Dunbar is not waiting on Tedford to retire - Dunbar is about 57,
> Tedford is about 45 (unless the NFL comes calling for Tedford).  Does
> anybody know - was Tedford considered for the Raiders job before Al Davis
> settled on Art Shell - or is Tedford too beloved in Berkeley to leave ?
>
> A whole generation of assistants seemed to have gotten old and retired
> waiting for Paterno to retire.
>
> Chuck Herron   Tech '85
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jeffb at hilgraeve.com
> To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Sent: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 9:51 AM
> Subject: RE: [NU Sports] Questions
>
>
> Chuck,
>
> All reasonable questions that have somewhat reasonable answers.
>
> 1. QB's - This is the good news and bad news of college FB.  If you have a
> stud QB, your opportunity to recruit a stud replacement doesn't start
> until
> the third eligibility year of your current stud.  If you look at recent
> Michigan history, Gonzales was the back-up to Navarre for two years, but
> Michigan was able to recruit Henne because he knew he was going to get a
> chance to play. If Navarre had two years of eligibility left, Henne
> probably
> would have gone to Penn State. Because of a pre-season injury to Gonzales
> and Henne's quick success, Gonzales, even after he was healthy again,
> never
> factored in the QB mix.  But you ended up with an interesting contrast on
> Saturday night where Henne was the third year starter for UoM and Morelli
> (who graduated the same year as Henne) was a first year starter for PSU
> and
> looked the part.  There is just no substitute for on-field experience.
>
> The situation at NU is a little more challenging because our offense is so
> QB dependent.  It may turn out that none of our current three will be "the
> guy".  Our next stud may be a senior in HS who wants to be a star and will
> respond to the opportunity to start.
>
> As far as the nature of the offense is concerned, virtually everyone is
> running some form of the spread.  So I think that there is just a whole
> lot
> more demand for the sort of kid who can run this kind of offense.  So I
> think that NU, like a lot of schools, just runs the risk of having a down
> year until they find the "right" kid.  The good news is that the "right"
> kid
> can have a dramatic effect (e.g. Illinois is a much better team this year
> with Juice Williams). But I agree with many of the previous posters, it
> doesn't appear that Brewer is the guy.
>
> 2. Coaches effect the quality of play and also the quality of the player.
> Henne's HS coach was interviewed during the game Saturday night and said
> that Henne went to Michigan because they have the best QB coach in the
> country.  Guys who have aspirations to play on Sunday are going to make
> those sorts of choices.  Even though we aren't currently getting the
> results
> on the field, we don't know yet what impact McGee is going to have on
> recruiting.  I think we have to give him an opportunity to recruit before
> we
> pass judgment.
>
> NU doesn't release much on what assistants get paid, but we do know that
> RW
> was well paid.  I suspect that our assistant coaches are also paid
> salaries
> competitive to other BT schools.  Fitz was a relatively young assistant,
> but
> he is living in a nice house in an upscale neighborhood, and is making
> babies.  So I suspect even before RW's passing, that he was doing fine.
>
> I think that the coaches who left did so for two reasons.
>
> 1. They assumed that RW was a coach for life at NU and Fitz was his
> designated heir.  Their chance to become a HC most likely required a move.
> So why not promote yourself to a program where there was a chance to move
> up
> in ranks?
>
> 2. They knew they had maximized their value during the Baz years and that
> NU
> was going to struggle offensively for at least a year trying to find the
> next Baz.  So if they were going to have to leave eventually anyway, might
> as well leave when you have maximum bargaining power.
>
> The challenge for Fitz, if he does become a coach for life, is to build a
> program where the assistant coaches have a lot of say in how things run
> and
> ultimately can get the sort of national recognition that the assistants at
> Penn State or UoM get.  That, success, and money of course, are the
> reasons
> why turn-over is so low in these programs.  I think Fitz is trying to do
> that, but of course, the results have to follow.
>
> If the results (both wins and recruiting) don't follow, you should see
> those
> coaches held accountable, just as they were at UoM for example where,
> after
> a 7-5 season, there was a big shakeup in the ranks including a new DC and
> OC.  The team and coaches appear to have responded with a team that will
> content for the NC.
>
> Jeff
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
> Behalf Of cherron604 at aol.com
> Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 3:58 AM
> To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Subject: [NU Sports] Questions
>
> 1 - Quarterbacks
>
> Everybody involved in the program has known for 2 or three years that BB
> was
> not going to be around in 2006.  If the expectation was to continue to
> play
> a very quarterback-centric offense, shouldn't the expectation have been
> that
> the pipeline would contain as many strong QB candidates (with real solid
> credentials) as possible ?  Yet all we had in the pipeline for 2006 was
> Bacher, Kafka and Brewer.  Should we have made the calculation a few years
> ago that, since this offense requires such a high-level of QB skill, if we
> could not maintain that skill level in the recruiting pipeline, we should
> move to a more typical Big-Ten type offense that was less dependent on
> highly-skilled (hard to find) quarterbacks...?  Is it as simple as saying
> spread offense=lots of QB talent=lots of talented QB recruits, or, if you
> can't bring those recruits in, migrate toward a more typical offense ?
>
> 2 - Offensive Coordinators
>
> Kevin Wilson took over as OC in 1999 with 9 years head coach or OC
> experience.  He had great success for 3 years, then left, not for a head
> coaching job, but to be OC at Oklahoma (where he remains).  In 2002 Mike
> Dunbar took over as OC with 17 years head coach or OC experience.  He had
> a
> great run for 4 years before leaving for another lateral move (OC at Cal).
> Now we have promoted an OC with no head coaching or OC experience.  This
> raises a couple of questions:
>
> a) Why have 2 very accomplished OC's left the program, since they were not
> leaving to become head coaches ?  Was it money ?  If it was purely money,
> does the university need to review the pay for the assistant coaches ?  Or
> did they leave for some other reason ?  If we are not going to pay
> adequately to retain good OC talent, do we have to reconsider our
> commitment
> to playing football at the Big Ten level ?
>
> b) Isn't it safe to assume that the offense we have been using requires
> exceptional OC talent as well as exceptional QB talent ?  We might further
> assume that exceptional OC talent is at least as hard to find as (if not
> harder to find than) excepional QB talent.  Given both of these, should a
> calculation have been made that unless the supply of exceptional OC talent
> could be maintained and guaranteed, we might need to transition to a more
> standard offense, not requiring such exceptional OC talent to implement ?
>
> c) Is it reasonable to assume that you could replace two OC's with a
> combined 26 years of head coach or OC experience prior to their arrival
> with
> an OC with no head coach or OC experience ?  Why exactly did we think we
> needed to be an OC training ground when for the last seven years we had
> been
> more of a finishing school for highly-experienced, highly-talented OC's ?
> Did we even consider hiring anybody with HC or OC experience when Dunbar
> left ?
>
> Garrick McGee is probably a great guy, and he might be a good OC someday,
> but why exactly did we determine that he should get his on-the-job
> training
> here ?  Shouldn't that training happen at some place like Toledo or
> Western
> Illinois ?
>
> Greg Colby is another issue entirely, to be discussed separately.
>
> Chuck Herron   Tech '85
>
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Jonathan W. Hodges
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