http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevintrahan/2014/09/17/the-big-tens-inferiority-complex/
The Big Ten's Inferiority Complex
The Big Ten has an Iowa problem. Not just because the Hawkeyes inexplicably lost to the much weaker Iowa State Cyclones last Saturday, making a bad year for the Big Ten that much worse. But rather, the comments after the loss were more representative of the conference’s biggest problem.
There were many calls for Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz’s firing after the loss, pointing out that Ferentz is one of the highest-paid coaches in college football and hasn’t done anything of significance since 2009, when he signed a massive contract extension through 2020. This is to be expected after another bad loss —
the Hawkeyes have had far too many of them in the last few years — and it’s warranted. The most-used counterpoint was what was troubling:
“Iowa’s not going to get anything better than Kirk Ferentz.”
By all accounts, Ferentz has had some impressive years in Iowa City. He’s won two Big Ten championships, been to two BCS bowl games (winning one) and finished in the top 10 of the AP Poll four times since 2001. But overall, Ferentz has made Iowa a middling program. The Hawkeyes have averaged exactly eight wins per year since 2001, but are paying Ferentz top-tier money ($3.985 million per year, good for ninth in the country).
Photo taken by me of Herky the Hawkeye holding a Tigerhawk flag. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That’s led some to believe that this is the ceiling for Iowa: A high-paid coach with a weak recruiting area can only get to eight wins, so that must be all the program can do. But that’s not true, and it reveals a deep inferiority complex in Big Ten thinking, because this kind of thinking at Iowa is representative of the entire Big Ten.
The idea that Iowa and many of its middle of the road conference mates can’t get better than their current coaches is ridiculous.
Iowa ranked 11th in athletic department revenue last year, with over $107 million in revenue. A total of 12 Big Ten teams ranked in the top 50 in revenue.
Iowa can absolutely afford to buy out Ferentz’s contract and hire someone very good to replace him.
The bigger issue
is a matter of resource allocation and values. Paying up just because you can isn’t an effective strategy, as Iowa has very clearly demonstrated. Big Ten schools have done a terrible job of finding coaches who have the mindset needed to succeed, most importantly in recruiting.
Big Ten schools have don’t recognize the importance of recruiting, and while they will often pay up for head coaches who can be figureheads of the program, they don’t value assistant coaches, who high school players have noted
have the biggest effect on recruiting. Only five Big Ten coaches
rank among the country’s highest paid assistants, and none are from a school not named Ohio State, Michigan or Nebraska. Meanwhile, 11 SEC assistants are in the top 25.
Big Ten teams have also been unable to transition from the regional model of recruiting to the national model that the rest of the country has adapted to. Part of the reason for the conference’s recruiting woes is due to population trends, but the conference has added the recruiting rich areas of New Jersey and the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) with the additions of Rutgers and Maryland. Moreover, good coaches aren’t limited by geography, and the best southern teams have taken some of the top recruits from Big Ten country. You can’t blame geography when one of the top recruits in your region
says you aren’t trying hard enough.
“The Big Ten needs to recruit harder. They need to really go after the recruits they really need,” (Jashon) Cornell said. “They have to hassle you a little bit, on you every single day. That makes recruits think the coaches really want me and I could go there because the coaches want me so bad. That’s what the SEC does.”
To fix itself, the Big Ten needs to recognize that it has all the tools to be better than it currently is. It doesn’t have to settle. If the league’s teams fix their collective inferiority complex, the wins might finally return.
