psuedo OT: who doth Northwestern snageth?
it would be another version of RR to A2
Ehhhhh... that would be "RR to A2 x 10".
This is the answer. Actually had a chuckle on that one. Well done.
They are waiting until next year...and NW can pay with anyone, so I would imagine they try to go with a big name. I would take a look at a Joe Moorehead.
And I think someone like David Shaw would be perfect to steady the ship and change the culture at NW for a few years.
Shaw would be perfect.
Shaw would be a good fit. Having spent his entire career on the West Coast shouldn't be a major issue: Stanford and Northwestern both recruit nationally, though they do get the largest number of their recruits from California and Illinois, respectively.
Agree that David Shaw would be a great choice.
I would add Paul Chryst to that list, too. He's familiar with the recruiting ground and ran a clean program that went 67-26 over ~7 seasons (partials in 2020 and 2022) with a 6-1 bowl record and ended in top 25 four times and top 10 twice. He's currently an offensive analyst at Texas, so he's obviously just taking a little breather until the next opportunity arises.
Pat Fitzgerald was the perfect coach for Northwestern. He's their Jim Harbaugh. Replacing the favorite son who has had some success after a scandal is going to be hard. Nebraska did it, but Scott Frost was a loser and Nebraska has some high expectations from years past. I don't really know who would be a serious candidate, but it would be fun for Jim Leonhard to take the job after being passed over at Wisconsin. Would love to see him have some success and beat Fickell on the regular.
"Scott Frost was a loser".... Oh boy, Scott Frost definitely STILL IS a loser.
Any of the "hot name" coordinators are essentially off-limits for Northwestern. Northwestern may want them, but I don't think a Sherrone Moore or Brian Hartline would want them. For one, they can each hold out for a better job, but for another, Northwestern has got to be one of the hardest P5 jobs in the country, and they no longer have the "We're in the crappiest division in America so we can still find a way to Indy once every 3-4 years and maybe catch OSU/Michigan on an off-night" card to play. They are going to be in the bottom half of the Big Ten for the very, very foreseeable future.
They're either going to have to get an older re-tread, like a Paul Chryst, or maybe take a chance on some hotshot position coach. That could possibly work because they can offer that guy the option of "Come to Northwestern, skip over needing to be a coordinator, we'll pay you Big Ten money, and you can be a head coach right now."
NW's biggest issue is the entire university getting behind the program. They have money cannon donors like few others have. The gate keepers for the ivory towers would have to open up some of their admissions, convince the donors to support NIL and start building a big recruiting network. But that would take a coach imo willing to build it from the ground up. As NW has shown, there is just enough support a coach can reach .500. Even when they reached 10 win seasons support and budget never increased for the program and support is always meh.
That is possibly a near-insurmountable task for Northwestern. I won't say its impossible, but its darn close to it. You're talking about building an entirely new culture, from the ground up (as you alluded to) and stripping away what they've been literally for their entire existence. And what's harder, you need to get the student body, the university, and the entire city of Evanston to buy into it.
Its not just putting a decent product on the field on an annual basis, which Fitzgerald showed is hard enough to do. Even in the years where Northwestern was pretty good, they were lucky to get the fan ratio to 50/50 if Michigan, OSU, or PSU rolled into town. You have to change the entire university's perception about what the football team should mean to them, and in a lot of cases, people truly didn't care if the team was any good or not. I just don't think that's the kind of culture that Northwestern as a school has really ever emulated, or even cared to try and emulate.
If I'm a young, up-and-coming, hotshot coach, its awfully hard to sell me on coaching Northwestern when I know that when my team steps out of the tunnel to take on Michigan or OSU, at home, they might as well be playing on the road. In order to change that perception, you're going to have to do something that I don't think anyone at Northwestern has really ever done. Win consistently, and convince a town and student body that historically does not care about you to finally, you know, care.
In order to do this, Northwestern can't just an 8-9 win season every few years. 8-9 wins would need to be the bar for them every year, and that's really stinking hard to do when your academic requirements are what they are, you don't have a really fertile base to recruit from (Chicago has some talent but not a ton, and a lot of them are going to go elsewhere anyway), you really can't get top-flight recruits all that often, and then you have a student body and alumni network that really doesn't care about your team. In fact a lot of them are probably fans of other teams anyway. They are just there for their degree.
You're absolutely right about what their issues are. I just don't see how anyone realistically fixes it.
Northwestern is a small school, but it is not a cohesive school. Half the campus is aggressively trying to shut down anything that they feel has even a trace of "misogynist patriarchy" culture. They are killing off all of the frats and sororities one by one. Football is on their list.
They won't kill off football because half the campus does support it, but it keeps football from being a campus-wide priority like it is at most of the rest of the Big Ten.
Their "big stadium expansion" in the works is actually a stadium de-expansion (they are taking away seats), and is being done so that they can have more non-football events in it throughout the year.
They really should team up with schools like Duke and RIce and Stanford and form a national "Ivy League" conference. But that won't happen. Their admin is afraid of half the campus, but they are not stupid. They are not going to walk away from all that massive Big Ten $$$.
In a certain sense it doesn't matter who they hire next year (after the interim year). I mean, of course it does matter, but there is so much dysfunction in the athletic department there, with a relatively new AD and an even newer president of the university, that they qualify as a dumpster fire.
The next football coach is going to have to start from scratch in the midst of all that dysfunction. Bill O'Brien did a remarkable job righting the ship at PSU after the Sandusky scandal but NW is not PSU. Good luck and, without divisions starting next season, they'll be lucky if they finish above 12th in the conference.
Brian Griese? for some reason I think the guy could be a coach of the head variety after listening to him in the booth and due to the fact that he has a very precious ring.
Urban Mayer.
Oscar Mayer is more likely.
Cryst seems like a very viable candidate. pretty low key personality, no scandal in his history, had decent success at WS....
Only half-joking, I have told a couple people that Northwestern really needs low-key and boring for the next decade or more, and Paul Chryst certainly could provide that. However, Chryst doesn't strike me as someone who would care to walk into a public relations maelstrom.
This seems like a somewhat easy fix for the new staff. I'm assuming the new coach is going to broom everyone and bring his own people. If Bill O'Brien could handle Penn State, this should be a walk in the park.
Mike Ditka? I saw Kicking and Screaming, lives in Chicago area plus he'd have an never ending supply of balls and vitamins.
It's a tire fire. So Urban Meyer!
Mostly because it rhymes.
This is a dead end for an up and comer to build their resume I believe. Already tough to win there, plus they are walking into a broken scandal ridden atmosphere.
Guys like David Shaw, Bronco Mendenhall, Paul Chryst, Gary Patterson all make more sense to me….nothing to prove, would probably fit culturally (maybe not Patterson), can stay pretty obscure at Northwestern if they avoid scandal. At least 3 of them are stand up guys too.
I feel like Shaw (Stanford is the closest corollary to Northwestern) and Chryst (knows the area and the conference) make the most sense.
David Braun new this year, DC hire at Northwestern and former coordinator of the year at North Dakota State.
https://footballscoop.com/news/northwestern-reaches-head-coaching-decis…
Makes a ton of sense. New Staff member without any ties to the previous staff this happened under. This would allow a move where with some success this season he could be retained and without they could go in a new direction.
Tuck comin? If it weren't for his absurd $95 million deal he might be available at the end of the year.
Are you talking about the Mel Tucker who is on the Dodd Trophy Coach of the Year watch list? That Mel Tucker?
And I quote: "Mel and his coaching staff have been very public about their desire to help equip young men beyond the field. On field results will also be a factor in determining the winner but it’s worth noting that Tucker and Michigan State are doing a great job improving the quality of their players in all facets of life."
Too bad Gerg Robinson isn't alive. He and his coaching approach would have been perfect to rehab NW.
I think David Cutcliffe would be a good guy to bring some stability to the program. You could get a few years out of him and then bring in a younger coach.
He's waiting for the Michigan job to open.
I know someone who would walk to Evanston to take the job....
Fergodsakes
Is the headline trying to summon Cthulhu?
i thought Phil Collins: psu, psu, psuedeo
"Roundup the usual suspects..." Captain Renault in Casablanca
If Braun wins 3-4 games, the job is his. Northwestern isn't going to be ready for awhile for the scrutiny that will come with an extended coaching search.
Some coaches I’d be calling if I was Northwestern - regardless of how likely they may be:
Lance Leipold would be an excellent choice if they could snag him - though I think Kansas has him pretty locked up in a new deal but could be wrong.
- He coached barely an hour away at UW-Whitewater.
- He has been great at every school he’s been at.
- He gets a lot out of players that aren’t ranked highly.
Jim Leonhard as well would be an interesting choice. He was the heir apparent at Wisconsin until he wasn’t.
Paul Chryst might be someone worth looking at. He had really good initial success at Wisconsin until 2020.
Tom Herman would be interesting after turning Houston into a powerful program briefly and doing alright at Texas until they axed him for Sarkisian (lol).
Pat Narduzzi would be an interesting one. He’s probably just about maxed out his potential at Pitt but could potentially be a nice fit at Northwestern.
Matt Campbell is only 2 years removed from being the hottest up and coming coach Bob college football. While he has certainly cooled, he would be a great hire for the Wildcats.
Mike Kafka would be an interesting but potential “Harbaugh hire” for them. He’s a former player who has found his place as one of the better OCs in pro football. He might even be a HC soon enough. He has no head coaching experience though.
David Shaw is a boring pick, but ran a clean Stanford program and kept it going strong for a decade after Harbaugh left before the wheels finally started to come off over the past couple years.
Jeff Traylor has really built up a strong program at UTSA. If they find success this year after bumping up to the American Conference, I could see him being poached by some mid-level P5 school.
Chris Petersen hasn’t coached in a couple of years and is a west coast guy, but maybe he would be open to taking over a school like Northwestern. Would be a massive long shot.
Gary Patterson would be a nice placeholder coach for a few years. Like David Shaw, he was great until the wheels started falling off toward the end of his tenure at TCU. Plus, Northwestern is a purple school, so he’d feel right at home.
Upvoted for the Patterson purple school comment
I have long thought that Lance Leipold should take over at Iowa whenever Ferentz retires for all those listed reasons. He's recruited the Iowa territory before.