COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

Big Ten Championship Game

Former SEC commish Roy Kramer has been in the media recently talking about his ideas for a potential Big Ten championship game and Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune has a few words from Kramer on that issue:

Advice for Big Ten:  Pick 1 site for football title game

“The grandfather of college football’s first conference championship game believes if the Big Ten opts for a title game, as expected, the league would be wise to select a single host city.

“I would pick one site,” Roy Kramer said by telephone Tuesday. “I think it hurts you to rotate it, to be honest. And my personal opinion, I would recommend indoors.”

Officials from Indianapolis (Lucas Oil Stadium), Detroit (Ford Field), Chicago ( Soldier Field), Cleveland ( Cleveland Browns Stadium), Minneapolis (Metrodome) and Green Bay (Lambeau Field) have expressed interest in the game. Lucas Oil, Ford Field and the Metrodome are climate-controlled.

Kramer took the lead in creating the SEC championship game in 1992 as the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.”

We agree completely with Roy Kramer on this issue and as the Big Ten starts thinking about the site and format for a Big Ten championship game they need to give some serious consideration to issues that they might not normally think about relative to such a matchup.

We here at Coaches Hot Seat never really realized what the SEC was building with their Championship Game until a conversation we had at dinner in the mid-1990s with a business executive in the South.  This particular fellow as an alum of Alabama and had been to the first few SEC Championship Games because Alabama had been in them against Florida, but he had increased his order of tickets to the SEC championship game in subsequent years because he was now using the game in Atlanta as a place to entertain and do business with clients/potential clients.  Also, over the years as we have attended the SEC Championship Game we have come to meet hundreds of fans from all of the SEC schools that go to the game each year also, regardless of whether their team is playing in the game or not which is another whole dimension to the SEC championship game that we never even gave a thought to when the game was first proposed.  We doubt the SEC did either….

Mike Slive and the folks at the SEC have turned the SEC Championship Game into something much more than just a matchup of the winners of the two SEC divisions, but an “event” which allows for the fans of the two teams playing in the game to see their school play for the SEC Title, but also a game that…

1.  Brings together SEC fans, officials, media, etc. into one place each year at the end of the SEC football season

2.  Attracts fans from each of the SEC schools each year whether their school is in the game or not

3.  Attracts business and entrepreneurs from around the South and United States much like the Super Bowl does each year, because the SEC Championship Game has become an event which is hosted in a very large and attractive city with Atlanta that is very conducive to both entertainment of clients/potential clients and for doing business.

4.  A game that because of its constant spot on the calendar and location in Atlanta creates an “event” that people and businesses can plan for far in advance which just creates that much more interest in the game

Besides being an annual event that brings together lots of different people to one place each year, that the SEC Championship Game is in Atlanta which his one of America’s great cities and has dozens of different things that fans can experience and businesses can do with their clients is one of the driving forces in making the great event that the SEC Championship Game has become in recent years.

From our personal perspective here at Coaches Hot Seat, we really look forward to attending the SEC Championship Game each year because we get to see friends and business associates that we often don’t see at other times during the year and we also know exactly where we are going to stay year-after-year and we know exactly what we are going to get from the SEC Conference, which is a high-quality event that never disappoints.

Yes, we agree completely with Roy Kramer on the Big Ten picking 1 spot for their Big Ten Championship Game and since we have been to all of the stadiums/cities mentioned in Teddy Greenstein’s article above if Jim Delany called us (not very likely!) we would tell Jim that hold the Big Ten Championship Game at…

Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana

 

 

The main reasons we would recommend Lucas Oil Stadium is that it is the closest set-up to what the SEC has with the Georgia Dome and World Congress Convention Center and that Lucas Oil is located near the downtown core of Indianapolis and thus there are lots of hotels nearby where the fans can easily walk to and from the game.  Throw in that the game would be played indoors which in Big Ten country in December should be a very important consideration if one wants to generate the largest crowd and interest possible and that Indianapolis is centrally located in the Big Ten area are two more good reasons for playing the game in Indy.  Also that the folks in Indy and at Lucas Oil Stadium already successfully put on lots of events and football games each year and that Indianapolis is like Atlanta a thriving and growing city and you have the perfect combination of what any conference would want in Lucas Oil Stadium and the Big Ten Championship Game. 

The indoor factor and being able to play without the weather interfering the game but more importantly the comfort of the fans of the teams and the fans/others that will attend the game cannot be overemphasized.  It’s usually pretty cold even in Atlanta in early December but people know that the SEC Championship Game is going to be played indoors and they also know that there are lots of indoor places nearby the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta where they can get out of the elements if necessary and that reality is one of the things that has driven the SEC title game forward in recent years.  Note that the ACC has had trouble in selling tickets for their championship game which has been caused by the ACC not building their title game into an “event” like the SEC has which brings together not only SEC fans but other folks that enjoy attending the game for a whole host of different reasons.  The ACC does not have an indoor facility in their area of the country (except the Georgia Dome, which is where we would move the ACC title game if the SEC would allow it.  What about a noon kickoff for the ACC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome and then the SEC Championship kicking off 3 hours after the ACC title game ends at the Georgia Dome!  Now that would be great and the Atlanta tourism folks would love it!) and they have not been able to draw a lot of the ACC fans that don’t have a team playing in the title game because they don’t see it for what the game should be, which should be a gathering of ACC fans, alums, media, etc. to celebrate the just ended regular season. 

Lucas Oil Stadium Jimmy.  Lucas Oil Stadium!

 

2010 Analysis Head Coaching Changes

We continue with Day 2 of the Coaches Hot Seat 2010 New Head Coaches Analysis with the second category of New Head Coaches.  That second category is….

Mediocre or Unknown hire.  We either think this hire is mediocre or we don’t know enough about this coach to have a strong opinion either way.

Vanderbilt

Robbie Caldwell for Bobby Johnson – If new Vanderbilt head coach Robbie Caldwell decides to get out of coaching he should know that he could make $25 K a week in Los Angeles comedy clubs doing exactly what he did at SEC Media Days in Thursday!  Those snobs and elitists in LA love laughing at people that don’t follow their obscene rules for life and Robbie could make a mint with them laughing at him and Caldwell laughing back and also all the way to the bank!  A few years ago about a dozen of us here at CHS loaded into a couple of limos and hit several comedy clubs in the LA area and we fell into conversation with a fairly well known comic later that night at a pool party that we Shanghaied our way into….

….and we were stunned to learn what one could make by packing in the crowds at LA comedy clubs.  As for Robbie Caldwell being the new head coach at Vandy, we haven’t a clue to what he will be able to do with the Commodores, but Bobby Johnson was looking at 2 to 4 wins in 2010 and that may be why Johnson is now no longer in the game!  Robbie Caldwell seems like just a good guy and a good ‘ole boy, but we would recommend to him that he find a way to get his Vandy players fired up and playing like crazy in a few games this year because he and his football team have NOTHING TO LOSE!  Good Luck to you Robbie Caldwell….Have fun and coach like this is your last year in the game…  (Memo to Robbie Caldwell:  If you need the number of a good agent that would have you booked quickly at some LA comedy clubs just drop us an email at info@coacheshotseat.com.  That “turkey” thing alone would be worth the price of admission just to see the LA folks go quiet with their mouths agape as the wondered if you were kidding or not.  You see most of these Westside LA folks think that chickens and turkeys just magically appear at the local Safeway stores and don’t have a clue to just how they actually “get” to market!   

East Carolina

Ruffin McNeill for Skip Holtz – It has been a tremendous rise for Ruffin McNeill over the past two years as he moved from the linebackers coach at Texas Tech, to the defensive coordinator at Tech, to the interim head coach that included a bowl win at Tech, and now the head football coach at his alma mater East Carolina.  McNeill stopped at 9 difference places as an assistant before arriving at Texas Tech 10 seasons ago with Mike Leach and now he gets the opportunity that most coaches want, a shot to prove himself as a head coach.  We don’t know a whole lot about Ruffin, but he seems to us as the type of coach that we would like to play for and send our kids to play for and McNeill just needs to turn his natural enthusiasm for the game into continuing the good work that Skip Holtz has done at ECU.  In 5 seasons at ECU Skip Holtz put up a pretty impressive 38 – 27 record including two C-USA conference titles and with that past winning comes pretty high expectations that McNeill will have to deal with as he makes the head coaching transition at ECU. If we had to guess on McNeill’s tenure with what little info we know about the man, we would predict success but winning in the C-USA is not an easy thing to do and that means Ruffin has his hands full as head towards his first season as a head coach.

Central Michigan

Dan Enos for Butch Jones – Dan Enos has dropped into one of the hottest coaching jobs in the country, with former Central Michigan head coaches Brian Kelly and Butch Jones putting up some gaudy win numbers and championships and that means the pressure will be on Enos right from the start of his first head coaching job.  In the last 4 seasons Central Michigan under Kelly and Jones CMU won 46 games and put up 3 MAC conference titles and the fans that we have spoken to this spring fully expect Enos to keep things rolling for the Chippewas.  Dan Enos has had a number of stops in his assistant coaching career, but his primary work has been with Mark Dantonio at Cincinnati and Michigan State over the past 6 years and Enos also played QB for Michigan State under George Perles.  Perles and Dantonio are two coaches that should have laid a very good foundation down for Enos and now we are all going to see if he can perform at a place that is now used to and expects to field a winning football team each and ever year.  Coach hard Dan!

San Jose State

Mike MacIntyre for Dick Tomey – Mike MacIntyre takes over one of the toughest jobs in I-A football with the San Jose State job and to display how tough of a job SJSU is, MacIntyre’s predecessor Dick Tomey put up a win/loss record of 25 – 35 in the previous 5 seasons and Tomey is a guy that put up a record of 158 – 110 – 7 in 24 seasons at Hawaii and Arizona.  San Jose State is a very difficult job for a number of reasons, but it is a place where there is an opportunity to mine the large number of very good high school/juco football players in the state of California that don’t end up BCS schools.  Jack Elway (John’s father) was the head coach at San Jose State from 1979 to 1983 and put up a record of 35 – 20 -1 including a few wins over Stanford and Coach Elway recruited a lot of the players from California that couldn’t get into the Pac-10 schools and convinced them that staying in state or in the SF Bay area and playing before family and friends would be a lot more fun than heading off to a school several hundred or thousands of miles away.  San Jose State sits in one of the largest cities in California in San Jose and the school and the campus should be conducive to recruiting more talent than SJSU has recruited in recent years and if MacIntyre wants to win some football games he will make hay or not on who he can recruit and keep in school.  Since Mike MacIntyre spent 6 seasons on David Cutcliffe’s staffs at Ole Miss and Duke we give him better than a 50 – 50 chance to be a success at San Jose State.

La. Monroe

Todd Berry for Charlie Weatherbie – Looking over Todd Berry’s assistant coaching career it looks like many that we see here at Coaches Hot Seat…

1983 1984 1985 1986-1988 1989-1990 1991 1992-1995 1996-1999 2000-2003 2004-2005 2006 2007-2009 2009-

Tennessee (TEs) Tulsa (WRs) Oklahoma State (QBs) Tennessee-Martin (OC/QBs) Mississippi St. (WRs) SE Missouri St. (OC/QBs) East Carolina (OC/RBs) Illinois State Army ULM (OC/QBs) Miami (FL) (QBs) UNLV (OC/QBs) ULM

….these days as college coaches end up at many different schools along the way as they work towards a head coaching job.  We know very little about Todd Berry as a coach, but we do know that La. Monroe is a very difficult place to field winning football teams and one can look at the record of his predecessor, Charlie Weatherbie’s record over the previous 7 seasons 31 – 51 to see this is not going to be an easy assignment.  Will Todd Berry win at La. Monroe?  We haven’t a clue but we wish him luck at a place that seems built to put head coaches on the Hot Seat!

Akron

Rob Ianello for JD Brookhart – Alum Rob Ianello takes over at Akron and he must have realized that since he left the school over 20 years ago his alma mater has put up a record of 100 – 146 – 3 which can’t be a very comforting thought.  Of course when you are talking about going back to the Jerry Faust days at Akron we are talking about a long time ago in the game of college football and it is the current perception of Akron as being a place that has a mediocre football program that will be one of Ianello’s biggest obstacles to success.  Ianello’s immediate predecessor, JD Brookhart put up record of 30 – 42 in 6 seasons with 1 MAC divisional title and only 2 winning seasons.  The task for Ianello is very clear, he must make Akron a perennial contender in the MAC conference and somehow get to Zips to a winning record every year which will open up postseason opportunities and more importantly drive-up interest in Akron football and the Zips athletic department.  We don’t envy Rob Ianello in what he faces at Akron because it really will take a game-changing like coach and approach, like Urban Meyer delivered to Bowling Green many years ago, to turn Akron into a winner and it is up to Ianello and Ianello alone to whether he can deliver the things that it will take to win at Akron.

Memphis

Larry Porter for Tommy West – We don’t know a lot about Larry Porter as a coach other than he spent 7 seasons on Les Miles’ staffs at Oklahoma State and LSU, but we do remember Larry Porter as being a very good running back in his playing days at Memphis in the early 1990s.  Everyone tells us that Porter is a very good running backs coach and a great recruiter and his recruiting skills is what will make or break his future at what is one of the toughest jobs in the country with Memphis Tigers football.  Yes, Memphis is a tough job, but it is a place where a coach has access to a tremendous amount of high school football talent within a 3 hour drive, but also has a large number of very good BCS schools that are recruiting those same players.  Porter will have to find the players that either do not academically qualify for BCS schools, underappreciated players or players that can be developed into college athletes that can play at the C-USA level.  Larry Porter does have that he grew up and played his college days in Memphis going for him and thus he should be able to connect with the local fans, alums, boosters and business community to try and raise the funds that will be critical to having the resources to build the facilities, recruit the players and field winning football teams.  If anyone can win at Memphis it should be Larry Porter and we wish him good luck.

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