USA Today: Urban Meyer will speak to Big Ten coaches about weak recruiting

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He is right that the conference needs to recruit better overall, because if we continue this downward spiral in terms of competitiveness, nobody will even take the conference champion seriously. However, he also needs to realize how much different it is trying to get kids to come to [insert school not named "Michigan", "Ohio State," or "Nebraska" here] than it is Ohio State.
 



Sounds like Meyer was leading the discussion.
 

Pat Fitzgerald said it never happened. From Today's ESPN B1G Blog:


"Urban Meyer's much-anticipated recruiting shpiel for his fellow Big Ten coaches didn't take place after all."

According to Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald, Meyer never intended to question or criticize his conference colleagues at their annual business meeting Monday at Big Ten headquarters in Park Ridge, Ill. Meyer's comments about the Big Ten's recent recruiting performance last week to a Columbus radio station (97.1 The Fan) made waves around the college football world, especially when the Ohio State coach said, "When you see 11 of the SEC teams are in the top 25, that’s something that we need to continue to work on and improve." Meyer added that a recruiting discussion between coaches at their meeting would be "essential."

"From my understanding after seeing what was reported, a lot of that was taken out of context," Fitzgerald, who chairs the Big Ten coaches' group, told ESPN.com. "It was more, 'How can we continue to further our brand? How can we make our in-game experiences improve? How can we make our pregame experiences improve?' All those things in the vein for our fans, the game-day experience of Big Ten arenas and for recruiting."
 


tell urban meyer to shove it up his ass.. its easy for him to say.. this pisses me off stick to ur own business and we will do the same jackass
 

B1GSportsGuy said:
B1G schools actually have academic admission standards. SEC schools cheat and are basically JUCO's.

Let's play some of those New Year's Day bowls game at Lambeau Field or Soldier Field and see how they do playing major bowl games on the road.
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You're right in terms of the barely existent academic standards at most SEC schools (except Vandy). If the Big Ten wanted to stoop to that level, they could.

The one thing that is going to hurt the Big Ten going forward is the climate, and there's nothing that can be done about that. Any NFL prospect that has a choice between going to Florida, Georgia, Alabama, now even Ole Miss with their recruiting year, where it's relatively warm and there are lots of cute girls in shorts year-round, as opposed to hunching over in the snow going to class in Minneapolis, Madison, Ann Arbor etc. Well what would you choose?
 

discochris said:
You're right in terms of the barely existent academic standards at most SEC schools (except Vandy).
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I'm not sure where this misconception got started, but Florida and Georgia are both good schools that are as good or better than many Big Ten schools. Alabama and Auburn are both decent, and as good or better than the bottom quartile of the Big Ten academically.
 

It would be interesting (dpodoll68 assignment for you) to see NFL careers and longevity of players from South vs North. Seems that Guys from the north, who play less football, develope later and have longer playering careers in the NFL. Looks like the Big Ten has over 50 in the Hall and the SEC and ACC each have about 22-25. Guess I don't know where those 50 players are originally from. This is a bit OT.
 



dpodoll68 said:
I'm not sure where this misconception got started, but Florida and Georgia are both good schools that are as good or better than many Big Ten schools. Alabama and Auburn are both decent, and as good or better than the bottom quartile of the Big Ten academically.
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Odd huh? Never did the research but always read and heard how lousy Florida academics were, then when B1G expansion talks heated-up the AAU schools list started to pop-up. There were Florida and Vanderbilt. Apparently someone DOES engage in non-athletic research in the SEC. People can and will whine about that list but hard to find a school on there that you'd be embarrassed to display their diploma on your wall.

Amazing how often what you "hear" and "general knowledge" is wrong.

Not going to touch your last sentence....:)
 

dpodoll68 said:
I'm not sure where this misconception got started, but Florida and Georgia are both good schools that are as good or better than many Big Ten schools. Alabama and Auburn are both decent, and as good or better than the bottom quartile of the Big Ten academically.
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Pure conjecture here, but I wouldn't argue these schools can hold their own academically overall. My thoughts are these: because the importance of football is much greater and shared by the majority down here ( i live in SEC country) , that players academics are not held to the standards that a player at Minnesota, Northwestern, or Purdue would. It has more to do with the culture: football comes first. You could probably toss Ohio State in with those schools that allow players to slide by. The SEC is the easiest target because their is more schools like that in that conference.
 

discochris said:
The one thing that is going to hurt the Big Ten going forward is the climate, and there's nothing that can be done about that.
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Keep burning non-renewable fossil fuels at the current rate, and we'll have a climate like Alabama in like, 3 years!
 

minibeaver said:
Pure conjecture here, but I wouldn't argue these schools can hold their own academically overall. My thoughts are these: because the importance of football is much greater and shared by the majority down here ( i live in SEC country) , that players academics are not held to the standards that a player at Minnesota, Northwestern, or Purdue would. It has more to do with the culture: football comes first. You could probably toss Ohio State in with those schools that allow players to slide by. The SEC is the easiest target because their is more schools like that in that conference.
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That's more how I think of it. Wasn't there a Gophers commit not that long ago that couldn't get into school and ended up going to Auburn?
 



GophersInIowa said:
Wasn't there a Gophers commit not that long ago that couldn't get into school and ended up going to Auburn?
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Taikwon Paige. He committed to the Gophers, found out he couldn't be admitted, then flipped to Auburn because they thought he could get in there (you know, because it's such a horrible school:rolleyes:) but he couldn't get in there either, so he ended up playing for Toledo.
 

GophersInIowa said:
That's more how I think of it. Wasn't there a Gophers commit not that long ago that couldn't get into school and ended up going to Auburn?
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The only one that comes to mind is Paige, but I'm sure there's more. It may even be less about the quality of student before they get to campus, but more about what they are allowed to get away with once they get their.
Teams like Alabama and Florida don't really need to take chances on guys like that. However the Auburn's, Mississippi State's and Ole Miss'es often do. But I kind of look at this as two separate issues. It's one thing to offer a kid who is academically questionable, (middle to lower tier SEC teams) and to allow them to slack off once they get there (perhaps all the SEC teams). Granted, I'm an ardent SEC hater and have no proof to back up my opinion. :)
 

dpodoll68 said:
Taikwon Paige. He committed to the Gophers, found out he couldn't be admitted, then flipped to Auburn because they thought he could get in there (you know, because it's such a horrible school:rolleyes:) but he couldn't get in there either, so he ended up playing for Toledo.
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Just did some quick research and the rumors were that Paige was notified by the U admissions that he would not be accepted so he went to Auburn, got accepted, but ended up having clearinghouse issues with the NCAA. Once that got cleared he ended up at Toledo. Of course we'll never found out for sure what happened.

I think the point is that people aren't saying they're bad schools or anything, just that admission for at risk athletes seem to be easier.
 

dpodoll68 said:
I'm not sure where this misconception got started, but Florida and Georgia are both good schools that are as good or better than many Big Ten schools. Alabama and Auburn are both decent, and as good or better than the bottom quartile of the Big Ten academically.
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According to a quick scan of this page, the Big Ten has around fifteen Nobell laureates. SEC has two, both from Vandy. Big Ten laureates are from a lot of different schools including Minnesota, Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Rutgers, and Maryland. This is not the objective way to measure a school but data points like this may have contributed to the perception.

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_nobel-prizes_20091012.html

I'm curious, which three would you place even with or below Alabama and Auburn? And which additional schools would you say are at parity or below Florida and Georgia?

My back of the envelope ranking:
I think Nebraska, OSU, and MSU are the bottom quartile.
PSU and Iowa escape to the next tier joining Purdue.
Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota,are in the top half.
Michigan and Northwestern are the class of the conference.

I honestly can't say I'd put any of them below the Alabama schools.
 

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