Did the Big East hide the decline of Northeast football a little?

[CousCuse]

I've posted this before but just look at the results of the Lambert trophy. It's hard to believe they still give it out but they do. In the last six years, three of the winners had five losses. That's pretty sad.

Cuse hasn't won it since 1992. Since the Flutie era, BC has only won it in 2004. Yukon won it once in 2010. Cincy won it in 2012 and they are not a true Eastern school. Rutgers won it for the first time in their history in 2014 and Navy won it last year. That is a true embarrassment when Navy win a Eastern football trophy. Pitt hasn't won it since 1980. You could argue, as some have, that the Big East (and the ESPN era) has killed Eastern football. This wasn't a slow decline. It was death.

Here are all your Lambert trophy winners: Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Navy that beat Houston last Saturday is a joke to you ? Option football run correctly is => than high speed offense .

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Option football run correctly is => than high speed offense .

Now that is some next level trolling.

 

[cliftonparksufan]

Navy that beat Houston last Saturday is a joke to you ? Option football run correctly is => than high speed offense .

Well, first off, I never said it was a joke. Here is my exact quote:
Rutgers won it for the first time in their history in 2014 and Navy won it last year. That is a true embarrassment when Navy win a Eastern football trophy.

The embarrassment is on Cuse, BC, Yukon, Pitt, Penn State, Rutgers, etc. Nothing against the Navy program (as my dad was in the Navy and I root for them yearly vs Army) but it sums up the quality of the traditional school.

 

[sufandu]

Navy that beat Houston last Saturday is a joke to you ? Option football run correctly is => than high speed offense .

What is a joke is that the northeast didn't have a team that was better than a team that finished 18th in the rankings last year. A whole region that has established football tradition should be better than that.

 

[CousCuse]

What is a joke is that the northeast didn't have a team that was better than a team that finished 18th in the rankings last year. A whole region that has established football tradition should be better than that.

That is the current status of eastern football , aside from that Navy is a machine .

 

[cliftonparksufan]

What is a joke is that the northeast didn't have a team that was better than a team that finished 18th in the rankings last year. A whole region that has established football tradition should be better than that.

Well four out of the last six years the team that won the Lambert wasn't ranked at all. So 18th is an accomplishment. It's no wonder that attendance struggles at Syracuse.

 

[sufandu]

That is the current status of eastern football , aside from that Navy is a machine .

That's exactly the point of this whole discussion. If a "machine" is defined as a team that finishes the season ranked once every 10-20 years, there is a problem.

 

[CousCuse]

That's exactly the point of this whole discussion. If a "machine" is defined as a team that finishes the season ranked once every 10-20 years, there is a problem.

I believe Navy is better than that and doesn't get respected because they are a service academy . It is similar to the POV on FCS . Both FCS and Navy have dedicated professionally run football programs now , not just scholars who played high school ball and play at college for a past time . The CAA is a very tough conference with many great coaches , those teams to me are dangerous for FBS teams who take them lightly . The Lambert trophy should go to the CAA Champion as the Eastern teams in the FBS don't really play each other enough to determine who really is the best team .

 

[sufandu]

I believe Navy is better than that and doesn't get respected because they are a service academy . It is similar to the POV on FCS . Both FCS and Navy have dedicated professionally run football programs now , not just scholars who played high school ball and play at college for a past time . The CAA is a very tough conference with many great coaches , those teams to me are dangerous for FBS teams who take them lightly . The Lambert trophy should go to the CAA Champion as the Eastern teams in the FBS don't really play each other enough to determine who really is the best team .

What you describe is not a "monster". They are a well run program, but consistently winning 8 games with the occasional 10-11 win season against their schedule does not constitute a "monster". It sounds like what we were in the 90's and we weren't a monster then either. That type of description is relegated to the Alabama and Ohio St. type programs.

 

[HRE Otto IV]

I believe Navy is better than that and doesn't get respected because they are a service academy . It is similar to the POV on FCS . Both FCS and Navy have dedicated professionally run football programs now , not just scholars who played high school ball and play at college for a past time . The CAA is a very tough conference with many great coaches , those teams to me are dangerous for FBS teams who take them lightly . The Lambert trophy should go to the CAA Champion as the Eastern teams in the FBS don't really play each other enough to determine who really is the best team .

There is a Lambert for FCS teams. The CAA has won it 3 out of the last 5 years.

 

[sufandu]

Football talent comes from places where they can play football practically year round. In the northeast, recruits miss out on 3 or 4 months of time on the football field. They can hit the weight room and exercise indoors, obviously, but that requires resources not available to everybody. Out west, down south and in a lot of the midwest, you can head outdoors and throw a football around practically any time of the year.

Northeast schools have to go out of their local area to find top recruits. That hurts. With the emergence of some smaller schools in Texas and Florida eating up talent that would have otherwise gone elsewhere, the pool of recruits is dwindling. Let me know if I'm wrong but, last I knew, the best recruits come out of Texas, Florida, Cali, and Ohio. What do you tell those kids to get them to come up north to play ball?

edit: based on this: All 50 states, ranked by their star CFB recruits , apparently Ohio isn't as big a player as I thought; Georgia is, which speaks to the point even more.

Wow. Pretty big drop off after the top 4.

 

[Btstimpy]

So UCONN sucks. BC and Rutgers are getting dump trucked regularly. We're struggling and just not very good. Penn State's mediocre.

I feel like this didn't just happen. This has been in the works for a while that all of these programs are so underwhelming.

I'm not sure what the Big East had to do with it. But it looks like the biggest problem with the Eastern Programs is coaching instability. You can't change coaching staffs every two years and expect to get any traction. Pitt seems to have had 4 coaches in 5 years. Syracuse several. Boston College has had Addazio for a few years. UConn has had Diaco for a couple. I hope Temple can hold on to theirs. This revolving door of coaches is not going to lead to a lot of success. They have to be given time to produce. Some are leaving for more money. Others are getting fired. But I think this is the biggest issue today.

 

[CousCuse]

I'm not sure what the Big East had to do with it. But it looks like the biggest problem with the Eastern Programs is coaching instability. You can't change coaching staffs every two years and expect to get any traction. Pitt seems to have had 4 coaches in 5 years. Syracuse several. Boston College has had Addazio for a few years. UConn has had Diaco for a couple. I hope Temple can hold on to theirs. This revolving door of coaches is not going to lead to a lot of success. They have to be given time to produce. Some are leaving for more money. Others are getting fired. But I think this is the biggest issue today.

Recruits have to believe the coach that is recruiting them will be there for their playing career . Most of the coaches that I see get 5 or 6 years have some level of success and it puts a base under the program that helps boost the next staff like Mendenhall at UVA is getting now . If a team hasn't given up on a coach , he should get more time .

 

[Lou_C]

Northeastern football is never really coming back, in my opinion. Too many programs, too few players, too little resources/support.

There's some chance that Penn State could come back, because they theoretically have the big boy resources to throw behind the effort. Obviously a school like Michigan can overcome geographic disadvantages with unlimited support and resources and a very top brand. Penn State is the only northeastern school that could semi replicate that.

The athletes are too far away, and the recruiting game has gone national AND the calendar has moved up. A ton of kids are committed before they're even allowed official visits...a school like Georgia or Florida has dozens of elite recruits with a three hour drive that can visit over and over from the time they're in the 8th grade. I get a kick out of Northeastern schools talking about there being plenty of talent in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Neither of those schools produce 10 blue chip athletes a year. ONE team could sign every blue chipper in BOTH states this year and not had a top 10 recruiting class last year.

So there aren't enough Northeastern kids to realistically build a national championship level team, especially once the national programs like Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, USC etc come in and skim theirs.

So a northeast team would have to recruit nationally. We can set aside PSU, because their resources and attendance and brand are on a different level, but other than that what northeastern team is going to sign kids that have to travel by a half dozen warmer weather, 70-100k attendance programs, to play in front of 30k fans? How are any of those programs going to build facilities that are remotely comparable to schools in other areas with the country?

People in the Northeast just don't care that much about college football, so they not only do they not play it, or dump stupid amounts of money on their kids football development, they don't buy tickets and they don't go to games and they don't donate massive sums. That's not a character flaw...in any other context, they're the reasonable ones. It's nothing to be ashamed of but might as well own it.

That's not to say that EVERY team in the Northeast has to be terrible EVERY year. I think its possible for ONE Northeast team to be a fairly consistent Top 25 player. I think it's possible for another one to be regularly 5-8 wins. And the rest will stink. I don't think any of those schools will be a national title contender ever again. However, once a decade or so, that top 25 team will have just the right mix of seniors and catch some breaks, and have a chance to make a deep run into the season undefeated and climb toward the top of the polls, and by the same token, that 5-8 win team some odd season will get out to 8-1 and get a little national attention...and then they'll slip back.

The ACC is a bit overinvested in the Northeast with Pitt, SU and BC, but they're all here and that doesn't bother me. It would be nice if we had both the top 25 team and the 5-8 win team, and Rutgers (and the G5) schools remained trash.

 

[elimunelson]

Northeastern football is never really coming back, in my opinion. Too many programs, too few players, too little resources/support.

There's some chance that Penn State could come back, because they theoretically have the big boy resources to throw behind the effort. Obviously a school like Michigan can overcome geographic disadvantages with unlimited support and resources and a very top brand. Penn State is the only northeastern school that could semi replicate that.

The athletes are too far away, and the recruiting game has gone national AND the calendar has moved up. A ton of kids are committed before they're even allowed official visits...a school like Georgia or Florida has dozens of elite recruits with a three hour drive that can visit over and over from the time they're in the 8th grade. I get a kick out of Northeastern schools talking about there being plenty of talent in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Neither of those schools produce 10 blue chip athletes a year. ONE team could sign every blue chipper in BOTH states this year and not had a top 10 recruiting class last year.

So there aren't enough Northeastern kids to realistically build a national championship level team, especially once the national programs like Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, USC etc come in and skim theirs.

So a northeast team would have to recruit nationally. We can set aside PSU, because their resources and attendance and brand are on a different level, but other than that what northeastern team is going to sign kids that have to travel by a half dozen warmer weather, 70-100k attendance programs, to play in front of 30k fans? How are any of those programs going to build facilities that are remotely comparable to schools in other areas with the country?

People in the Northeast just don't care that much about college football, so they not only do they not play it, or dump stupid amounts of money on their kids football development, they don't buy tickets and they don't go to games and they don't donate massive sums. That's not a character flaw...in any other context, they're the reasonable ones. It's nothing to be ashamed of but might as well own it.

That's not to say that EVERY team in the Northeast has to be terrible EVERY year. I think its possible for ONE Northeast team to be a fairly consistent Top 25 player. I think it's possible for another one to be regularly 5-8 wins. And the rest will stink. I don't think any of those schools will be a national title contender ever again. However, once a decade or so, that top 25 team will have just the right mix of seniors and catch some breaks, and have a chance to make a deep run into the season undefeated and climb toward the top of the polls, and by the same token, that 5-8 win team some odd season will get out to 8-1 and get a little national attention...and then they'll slip back.

The ACC is a bit overinvested in the Northeast with Pitt, SU and BC, but they're all here and that doesn't bother me. It would be nice if we had both the top 25 team and the 5-8 win team, and Rutgers (and the G5) schools remained trash.

nothing is permanent Lou. At some point the ACC will geographically split into two divisions that reflect the old ACC and the old Big East (after the final conference realignment to the 4x16 model). History repeats itself and the talent up here is enough to sustain good teams in that old Big East division.

I don't buy the south being dominant in football forever. College football up this way has always been what it is now. If anything the money flowing throughout college football could even the playing field down the line.

One final note on football in the northeast (specifically New England). What the Patriots have done for this area has energized football throughout all levels up here. At some point this may manifest itself with more talent coming out of the area.

 

[HtownOrange]

Northeastern football is never really coming back, in my opinion. Too many programs, too few players, too little resources/support.

There's some chance that Penn State could come back, because they theoretically have the big boy resources to throw behind the effort. Obviously a school like Michigan can overcome geographic disadvantages with unlimited support and resources and a very top brand. Penn State is the only northeastern school that could semi replicate that.

The athletes are too far away, and the recruiting game has gone national AND the calendar has moved up. A ton of kids are committed before they're even allowed official visits...a school like Georgia or Florida has dozens of elite recruits with a three hour drive that can visit over and over from the time they're in the 8th grade. I get a kick out of Northeastern schools talking about there being plenty of talent in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Neither of those schools produce 10 blue chip athletes a year. ONE team could sign every blue chipper in BOTH states this year and not had a top 10 recruiting class last year.

So there aren't enough Northeastern kids to realistically build a national championship level team, especially once the national programs like Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, USC etc come in and skim theirs.

So a northeast team would have to recruit nationally. We can set aside PSU, because their resources and attendance and brand are on a different level, but other than that what northeastern team is going to sign kids that have to travel by a half dozen warmer weather, 70-100k attendance programs, to play in front of 30k fans? How are any of those programs going to build facilities that are remotely comparable to schools in other areas with the country?

People in the Northeast just don't care that much about college football, so they not only do they not play it, or dump stupid amounts of money on their kids football development, they don't buy tickets and they don't go to games and they don't donate massive sums. That's not a character flaw...in any other context, they're the reasonable ones. It's nothing to be ashamed of but might as well own it.

That's not to say that EVERY team in the Northeast has to be terrible EVERY year. I think its possible for ONE Northeast team to be a fairly consistent Top 25 player. I think it's possible for another one to be regularly 5-8 wins. And the rest will stink. I don't think any of those schools will be a national title contender ever again. However, once a decade or so, that top 25 team will have just the right mix of seniors and catch some breaks, and have a chance to make a deep run into the season undefeated and climb toward the top of the polls, and by the same token, that 5-8 win team some odd season will get out to 8-1 and get a little national attention...and then they'll slip back.

The ACC is a bit overinvested in the Northeast with Pitt, SU and BC, but they're all here and that doesn't bother me. It would be nice if we had both the top 25 team and the 5-8 win team, and Rutgers (and the G5) schools remained trash.

You never know, the NCAA could actually do their job and enforce academic standards, stop paying players, stop gray shirting, etc., which would all but shut down the SEC (Vandy)..., nah, you're right. So long as the SEC can load up on ineligible players, gray shirt, and pay the kids on the side with no retribution, there really isn't much of a chance. And, it's not like UNC where classes are made up, most northern schools expect their students to show up for class and earn their own grades.

As to "overinvested in the northeast", do you really want to give up about 40+ million (NY, PA, MA and New England) people in the viewership pool? That TV deal would drop considerably. The only real "overinvestment" is in NC with VA a distant second, and the NC schools are grandfathered in as they were all original schools in the ACC.

 

[JimBoston]

The Northeast is in a cyclical downturn for a number of reasons. First, Rutgers and Temple have never been good football programs with strong fan support, although Rutgers had a couple of good years and Temple has been a solid program recently. Penn St. has been down, primarily for two reasons. Joe Pa got old and the sanctions associated with Sandusky. They will be back, although I'm not sure Franklin is the coach who will do it, but they will attract a top coach. Pitt has been a solid program, although I doubt they can win big there. BC has made two bad coaching hires and they don't seem committed to football excellence. Not sure if they will bounce back, but a good coach could easily turn them around. UConn as a solid football program until PP took over, but now they are in the AAC. Syracuse has been like BC with a few bad coaching hires. Hiring Babers to run his offense in the Dome is a very intriguing hire.

Look at the Northeastern FBS head coaches as the Northeastern schools are not hiring established winning coaches. Rutgers, UConn, Pitt, Temple, and West Virginia hired assistants and BC hired a coach with 2 years experience and Penn St. hired a coach with 3 years experience. Syracuse went with a more established coach, Babers, who has 4 years of HC experience. Why is this happening? With the exception of Penn St. and West Virginia, the Northeastern schools have not proven that they are focused on paying football head coaches.