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video with The Urb on the HM homepage

Sofa King

Sofa King

Recruit
2 Year Member
From a coach's perspective, The Urb makes some good points regarding recruiting and the "student-athlete experience".
It's worth watching.
However, there is no denying the extremely positive long-term impact of membership in the B1G.
Here's something NO ONE ever talks about...the Big Ten Academic Alliance. Has anyone here ever looked into it? The BTAA makes the TV contract revenue sharing look like chump change.




www.huskermax.com

Urban Meyer on realignment and Nebraska

In this Big Ten Network segment, former coaches Urban Meyer and Gerry Dinardo discuss how conference realignment has affected college football and Nebraska in particular.
www.huskermax.com www.huskermax.com
 

Urb made some great observations about how California and Texas used to be our main recruiting base, but now that we are in the big 10 its harder to get those players due to the conference primarily being in the eastern half.

However, I think people have made way too much out of recruiting to Nebraska. Bottom line, we had 20 years of bad university and athletic department management. That hurt us more than anything. The recruiting numbers should improve if/when we start winning again.
 
He makes some good points, but I am not sure his reasoning on Nebraska really was all that strong. Nebraska is facing the same logistic issues it always faces. It doesn't really matter if players are coming form California or Florida its a long way to Nebraska.

One of Nebraska's strengths in recruiting when they were really good, was that they always got the best or most of the best from the surrounding states.

The Wistrom brothers, Mike Rucker, Dan Alexander, Troy Dumas, Rod Smith, Marc Mumford, The Vedral Boys, John Dutton, Trev Alberts, Roger Craig, Curtis Craig, Jamie Williams, Kyle Vandon Bosh, Jeff Smith, DeAndelo Evens,

That is just a very small sample of good players from boarder states.
 
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One thing I don't get is how having California as a recruiting base would be any different or affected by the move. Texas pre-Big 12 is still probably driving distance for some locations in the old Big 8, but California seems far in any conference we have recently been associated with. Why would that change due to realignment?
 
I'm not an Urban fan, but he's spot on. Maybe the Big 10 is a better fit financially and academically, but I think it's a disaster for most of the sports programs.

We always say "well we are getting $15-20 million more in the Big 10." Big deal. What has it done for us? And what would our payout have been in the Big 12? With the TV sets that NU used to deliver, it would be one helluva lot more than the $34 million that the conference is currently paying out.

Given the situation at the time, I would have made the same decision that Perlman and the regents made, which was to move to the Big 10. But that doesn't mean that we can't look back honestly and admit it turned out to be precisely the wrong decision. Which it was.

Nebraska will never return to the glory days of the Big 8/12. That's not saying we won't have a good year here or there. But those multi-year runs of 9-10 wins a year minimum are long gone. They aren't coming back. The Big 10 is not the right fit for NU in terms of athletic competitiveness and won't ever be.
 
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wcbsas said:
Disagree
Top 10 nationally in game attendance.
Still a very attractive TV draw.
Top 10 (I believe) maybe top 20 for athletic department revenues.
Top 5 in all-time wins.

We fit the profile of a B1G institution very well.
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but for how much longer? these things are waning as the years fall away.
 
I appreciate Urban's take, and there is a lot of truth to his argument. I do think that culturally, we are a better fit in the (Big 8, or Big XII minus Texas) than in the B1G. And we have seen recruiting drop off in Texas since the move. But here's the rest of the story:

1. Texas blew up the Big XII with their hubris. We could have been left without a conference, had not TO and others proactively pursues B1G membership.

2. We're still recruiting Cali about the same.

3. Academically, the B1G is a much better deal.

4. Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois are in the 500 mile radius, so no change for those recruits.

5. Urban is one to talk about recruiting anyway -- since OhSU recruits nationally, just like NU.
 
Elwood von Kiowa said:
I appreciate Urban's take, and there is a lot of truth to his argument. I do think that culturally, we are a better fit in the (Big 8, or Big XII minus Texas) than in the B1G. And we have seen recruiting drop off in Texas since the move. But here's the rest of the story:

1. Texas blew up the Big XII with their hubris. We could have been left without a conference, had not TO and others proactively pursues B1G membership.

2. We're still recruiting Cali about the same.

3. Academically, the B1G is a much better deal.

4. Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois are in the 500 mile radius, so no change for those recruits.

5. Urban is one to talk about recruiting anyway -- since OhSU recruits nationally, just like NU.
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1. I don't think anyone questions that the move to the Big 10 was the correct call at the time. But in terms of culture and athletic competitiveness, it has been an disaster.

2. We may be recruiting California just the same in terms of numbers, but many of those kids aren't staying. And Texas has dropped off the map.

3. Agreed.

4. Nine years in, we are still setting up new recruiting pipelines, and there is no guarantee that they will ever be solid. And Iowa, Minny, and Ill. are not particularly fruitful recruiting beds.

5. tOSU gets the pick of the litter from several large urban areas, Cincy, Columbus, and Cleveland. And while they do recruit nationally, they have never had to completely shift their recruiting beds due to a conference change. Nebraska remains in uncharted water.
 
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WestTexasHusker said:
1. I don't think anyone questions that the move to the Big 10 was the correct call at the time. But in terms of culture and athletic competitiveness, it has been an disaster.

2. We may be recruiting California just the same in terms of numbers, but many of those kids aren't staying. And Texas has dropped off the map.

3. Agreed.

4. Nine years in, we are still setting up new recruiting pipelines, and there is no guarantee that they will ever be solid. And Iowa, Minny, and Ill. are not particularly fruitful recruiting beds.

5. tOSU gets the pick of the litter from several large urban areas, Cincy, Columbus, and Cleveland. And while they do recruit nationally, they have never had to completely shift their recruiting beds due to a conference change. Nebraska remains in uncharted water.
Click to expand...
Noted. But I don't think our recent struggles are strictly due to the move to the B1G. If we had made the move in the 90's, we would have dominated.
 



WestTexasHusker said:
1. I don't think anyone questions that the move to the Big 10 was the correct call at the time. But in terms of culture and athletic competitiveness, it has been an disaster.

2. We may be recruiting California just the same in terms of numbers, but many of those kids aren't staying. And Texas has dropped off the map.

3. Agreed.

4. Nine years in, we are still setting up new recruiting pipelines, and there is no guarantee that they will ever be solid. And Iowa, Minny, and Ill. are not particularly fruitful recruiting beds.

5. tOSU gets the pick of the litter from several large urban areas, Cincy, Columbus, and Cleveland. And while they do recruit nationally, they have never had to completely shift their recruiting beds due to a conference change. Nebraska remains in uncharted water.
Click to expand...
We've had 3 coaching changes since we've been in the B1G ... in 9 years ... hard to draw any definitive conclusions about recruiting until we have some organizational stability. We still even in the MR years drew on average recruits rated better than most of our B1G West peers.
 

Stability is something worth considering. All of the programs that are currently winning big - Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Penn State, etc., have had lots of stability in both their conference affiliation and their historical recruiting grounds.

I'd say the ACC has had the least amount of change, with a couple of mid-tier newbies in Pitt, Syracuse, etc, followed by the SEC acquiring Mizzou and A&M. The B1G has seen a little more change with two different divisional alignments, but Nebraska has largely been a non-factor, so Ohio State continues to beat up on people.

Oklahoma (and Texas) has probably seen the most change in conference membership, but it's been a gravy train for them. They traded away CU, MU, A&M and Nebraska and got TCU and West Virginia in return. Effectively, they massively downgraded their level of conference difficulty, but managed to keep their conference championship and recruiting inroads. OU is probably benefiting most from all the upheaval, actually.
 
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