[NU Sports] Questions

Mon Oct 16 14:44:23 CDT 2006

Couple of points.

Dunbar is a west coast guy (born in Tacoma, graduated from Washington in
'72)

He was in line to be HC at Toledo, but Gary Pinkel stayed on the job a
little too long and he jumped at the chance to be the HC at Northern Iowa in
97.  He left Toledo after a great season too.  Toledo finished the 96 season
in the top 25 nationally with a senior running back (Wasean Tait) ranked
second in the country in total yards.  

He didn't really get the job done at Northern Iowa (Div I-AA).  He had a
winning record overall but posted a .500 in conference record for his four
years with no championships.  The year after he left, though, Northern Iowa
won their conference.  

His first year at NU was 2001.

Beyond that it is just speculation.  

Tedford may have told him that he doesn't plan to stay at Cal.

Maybe Tedford offered to give him a larger say in the offensive scheme than
RW.

Maybe he just wants to end his career on the west coast.

The longest coaching stint in his whole career was the five years he spent
at Toledo.  He may just be one of those guys who likes building better than
operating.  

Just raised all of these because it wasn't at all clear that money was his
primary motivation.

Jeff

  _____  

From: cherron604 at aol.com [mailto:cherron604 at aol.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 11:48 AM
To: jeffb at hilgraeve.com; nwu-sports at tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] Questions

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%40tssi.com>
[mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com <mailto:nwu-sports-bounces%40tssi.com> ]
On

Behalf Of cherron604 at aol.com <mailto:cherron604%40aol.com> 

Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 3:58 AM

To: nwu-sports at tssi.com <mailto:nwu-sports%40tssi.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

________________________________________________________________________

Check out the new AOL.  Most comprehensive set of free safety and security

tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web,

free AOL Mail and more.

_______________________________________________

nwu-sports site list

nwu-sports at tssi.com <mailto:nwu-sports%40tssi.com> 

http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports

_______________________________________________

nwu-sports site list

nwu-sports at tssi.com <mailto:nwu-sports%40tssi.com> 

http://romaine.tssi.com/mailman/listinfo/nwu-sports

  _____  

<http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/1615326657x4311227241x4298082137/aol?redir=ht
tp%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eaol%2Ecom%2Fnewaol> Check out the new AOL. Most
comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions
of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.