Winners and Losers from 2016 Big Ten Media Days
The summer "talking season" tour made its stop in Big Ten country this week, the last of the power leagues to have its media days. And much like the events previously held for the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC, the two days of interviews and news conferences Monday and Tuesday served as the unofficial start of the 2016 season.
"This is one of those events every year that you mark on your calendar, that it's the start of football," first-year Maryland coach D.J. Durkin said on the Big Ten Network telecast.
Thirteen of the league's 14 schools were represented in Chicago, with Nebraska staying home to mourn the loss of punter Sam Foltz. Foltz was killed in a car accident Sunday night in Wisconsin, a crash that also killed former Michigan State punter Mike Sadler and injured LSU kicker Colby Delahoussaye.
The overall tone from Big Ten media days was that of hope and anticipation, as is expected at this time of the year. We've sifted through the coachspeak and everything else to find the real stories, the “winners” and "losers" of the past two days.
Winner: The New Coaching Blood
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The Big Ten has four new head coaches for 2016, including Minnesota's Tracy Claeys, who served as his team's interim coach for much of 2015 before getting the permanent gig. That quartet—three of whom are first-time head coaches and the fourth is returning to college for the first time in more than 20 years—got their media days initiation and as a whole fared well in front of the microphones and cameras.
Illinois' Lovie Smith was the main attraction of that newcomer group, the former Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach who was brought on in March after spending the past 21 years working in the NFL. He said the biggest difference between the college game now and when he was last involved (as a defensive backs coach at Ohio State in 1995) can be found in the time spent on the recruiting trail.
"There's a small free-agency period in the NFL, and this is a year-round sport in itself with recruiting," Smith said, per the Big Ten Network's broadcast. "It's a 24/7 job, and we're embracing that."
While Smith had more of a laid-back demeanor, the other newcomers were more noticeably amped up. Maryland's D.J. Durkin had the aura of a kid about to open presents on Christmas morning, with Bleacher Report's Ben Axelrod tweeting Durkin "is by far the most excited I've ever seen a head coach be for a media day."
Rutgers' Chris Ash used his time at the podium to set the stage for his program establishing healthy rivalries with other teams in the Big Ten, just not right away since he's just getting started.
"We're going to work the best that we can here at Rutgers to create rivalries with everybody that we play," Ash said.
Claeys, who took over for Jerry Kill in October, made his media days debut but considers himself and his staff as Big Ten veterans. "We have five years invested in the program. We're going to enter the season with what I think is our best football team since we've been here."
Loser: Negative Recruiting Allegations
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The concept of one school bad-mouthing another in hopes of influencing a recruit is nothing new, nor is it something that any school is immune to. But Penn State's James Franklin thinks his program has to deal with this tactic more than others because of the Nittany Lions' history, particularly in relation to the Jerry Sandusky scandal and its tendency to keep popping back in the news.
"It's kind of a unique situation, because you're having conversations about things that you, your staff, your players have nothing to do with and happened over 40 years ago," Franklin said Monday, per PennLive.com's Bob Flounders. "Negative recruiting happens all over the country, everybody is dealing with it. Obviously, for us, there's some sensitive subjects out there. Some people choose to use it and some people don't."
Though Franklin didn't accuse specific schools on Monday, comments Franklin made to the Reading Eagle in June insinuated that Big Ten schools Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State (as well as Notre Dame) were using Penn State's past against it on the recruiting trail.
OSU coach Urban Meyer took great offense to this on Tuesday, saying: "We do just fine in recruiting to not worry about that stuff." MSU coach Mark Dantonio said negative recruiting is "not our M.O. And that's not how we do business."
Fox Sports' Bruce Feldman tweeted Tuesday that Franklin said quotes about negative recruiting were "taken out of context" and he never accused individual schools of the practice. Despite the clarification, the damage has been done.
Winner: Hoosier State Football
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The Big Ten's 14 schools are spread over 11 states, and smack-dab in the middle of the league's geographic footprint is Indiana. It's home to a pair of Big Ten programs in Indiana and Purdue, and those are arguably the lowest-profile teams in the conference due to that state's lean toward college basketball and the recent performance of the Hoosiers and Boilermakers on the gridiron.
But everyone has the same record right now, and both Indiana coach Kevin Wilson and Purdue coach Darrell Hazell did their best to paint the upcoming season in a positive light.
"Make sure you have your TVs turned on," Wilson said, per the Big Ten Network. "It'll be a lot of fun when the Hoosiers play."
Indiana went 6-7 in 2015 but made its first bowl appearance since 2007, falling in overtime to Duke in the Pinstripe Bowl. The Hoosiers led the Big Ten in scoring (36.5 points per game) but were last in scoring defense (37.6). Five of their losses were by eight or fewer points.
Purdue went 2-10 last year with its lone conference win coming against Nebraska. Hazell enters 2016 on a major hot seat, having gone 6-30 overall and 2-22 in Big Ten play in his three seasons. On Monday he disagreed with a reporter's assertion that his tenure constituted a "three-year funk" for the program, instead calling it "a growing process."
Hazell oozed confidence, saying: "I know we're in a position right now to go out and win some football games." He referred to media days player representatives Ja'Whaun Bentley, Jake Replogle and DeAngelo Yancey as "the best players in the country."
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Loser: Iowa's Reputation
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Iowa is coming off one of the best seasons in program history, starting 12-0 and coming oh so close to winning the Big Ten title. The Hawkeyes return 13 starters, including senior quarterback C.J. Beathard and the majority of a top-20 scoring defense, not to mention the longest-tenured coach in the conference in Kirk Ferentz.
But despite being the unofficial pick of Big Ten media members to repeat as West Division champions in 2016, a good portion of Ferentz's news conference Tuesday was spent explaining how Iowa would try to avoid falling short of expectations as it did the last two times it was coming off a big season.
"That really gets down to just winning close games, doing little things right," Ferentz said. "Little things do matter. They are big things."
Iowa dipped from 10-2 in 2004 to 7-5 a year later, losing all three games in 2005 decided by one score. After going 11-2 in 2009, it was 2-5 in one-score games the following season, resulting in an 8-5 record.
Winner: Jim Harbaugh
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It remains Jim Harbaugh's world and we should just be glad to get to live in and experience it. The Michigan coach's enormous presence was once again on display at Big Ten media days, where as the final speaker on Monday he wasn't limited to as short a time at the podium as his coaching peers.
He also apparently had carte blanche to rock a baseball cap with his suit, a necessity he said was "the product of going five weeks without a haircut" (per Sports Illustrated's Brian Hamilton). That was just part of the eccentric journey Harbaugh took the media on, discussing his inclusion in a rap video and using the word "meritocracy" several times to describe how he determines playing time...before wondering if that was a "real word or did I make it up?"
Oh, and he also autographed a Michigan fan's bicep.
A year removed from going 10-3 in his first season coaching his alma mater, Harbaugh remains a larger-than-life character who has turned self-promotion into an art form. But as he told Bleacher Report's Adam Kramer, he's also fully invested in honing the on-field product and not interested in just being competitive.
"We want our dreams to be big," Harbaugh said. "We want our goals to be lofty. We want to dream those dreams, so much that people will laugh at us."
Loser: A Hurried Format
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While it may seem like overkill that the SEC spreads its media days over four days, at least there's no rush to the proceedings. The same can't be said for the Big Ten version, particularly the coaches' news conferences, which had the feeling of an assembly line.
Each day featured seven schools, with each coach getting about 15 minutes at the podium before they were quickly shuffled off to make room for the next one. Compare that to LSU coach Les Miles, whose opening statement prior to answering questions at SEC media days lasted nearly 22 minutes.
Admittedly there were other opportunities for reporters to speak to coaches in more informal settings, not to mention to opportunity for one-on-one interviews for TV and radio stations. But when it came to the main news conference—where many reporters spend much of their time trying to collect information on the entire league—there was no time to catch a breath between the end of one coach and the next.
The condensed format combines with the Big Ten's lack of a preseason media poll—it stopped that practice in 2011, though Cleveland.com has since filled that void—gives off the impression that the league considers media days a necessary evil rather than a valuable opportunity for self-promotion.
All recruiting information courtesy of 247Sports, unless otherwise noted. All statistics provided by CFBStats, unless otherwise noted.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
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