MichiganCardinal

This is true for every other team, but this is the Jets we are talking about. It would be like if the Lions fired Campbell after going 3-13-1 in 2021. Yeah you sucked, of course you sucked, look at your roster.

Illinois lawmakers probably laughed at that letter and said “fine not in 2027 either, have fun in Gary.” Just wait for Bears leadership to start trying to sell their fans on Hammond, Indiana being oh so very different from Gary, Indiana. Or better yet, the feasibility of a team in the Milwaukee suburbs. Give me the Kenosha Bears!

I'm hoping to get caught up by then. I'm currently on the very unexpected John Cena cameo.

I agree. To their credit, it’s not like the Big Ten has added a school that is well outside their academic mold. But I guess how much does that matter? I think the historical component plays a large role in my mind too. As recently as 20 years ago, the Michigan-Ohio State and Michigan-Michigan State rivalries were almost ironic within departments where faculty had attended or done fellowships at both schools, or were invested in a research project that had components at both schools. That’s not the case between Michigan and UCLA, or Penn State and Oregon. Could it be the case in 20, 30, 50 years? Maybe. But I think conferences are now just synonymous with sports, and particularly football, in a way that probably isn’t good for the original role these conferences played.

I think he took a gig in the Utah athletic department or administration.

They never should have done what they did with the conferences. These aren’t even conferences in the traditional sense of the word. They’re just scheduling agreements. Back in my day *shakes fist at cloud* conferences were like-minded schools who shared academic and athletic values. Now they’re just about maximizing television revenues 9 days per year. They could have just left conferences as they were but removed all scheduling barriers in football. Let everyone be as special as Notre Dame thinks they are. We’d get to the same endpoint of schools making lots of money, a 12+ team playoff, and someone (probably Notre Dame) being upset.

Well I can see someone’s not doing his share in rowing the boat.

As of today, Vegas agrees. Chicago is +1.5 against the Packers, +3 against the 49ers, and +1.5 against the Lions. Green Bay is -1.5 against the Bears, -3 against the Ravens, and -1.5 against the Vikings. Detroit is -7 against the Steelers, -3.5 against the Vikings, and -1.5 against the Bears.

The end of his career? No one is going to take him seriously as a starting quarterback. His best hope is to win a committee battle in a QB room like the Giants and Browns had this year.

I think Dillingham is my #1 choice. He's 35, energetic, and doing more with less at a place like Arizona State where football goes to die.

Kerby Joseph needs to come out on the field on a pair of crutches and intercept Rodgers one more time.

Don't you mean off tackle? I'll be here all week.

An interesting wrinkle: if the Lions beat the Steelers and the Ravens beat the Patriots, the Week #17 game between the Ravens and Packers will mean nothing for the Ravens. Both the Ravens and Steelers would be 8-7 and no matter what, it would come down to Week #18 when they play each other.

I see college football programs in tiers. Michigan isn't a Tier 1A school where you're born on third base, but that's probably limited to Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia. Those three have the infrastructure in place where I think most warm bodies could be the head coach and go 10-2 or better. It's just a machine in need of a figure head. They should compete for a national championship in the 12-team format every single year. But I would put Michigan in the next tier, 1B. The infrastructure and money is in place where you should be very competitive every single year. 9-3 should be the floor, and it shouldn't happen in back-to-back years. And you should probably seriously compete for a national championship at least once every 3-4 years. In the modern format, this probably means qualifying for the playoff at least every other year and advancing to the semifinals every four years. I'd also put schools like Texas, USC, Notre Dame, Oregon, LSU, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma into this category. Clemson will probably eventually get here too. And then below that is Tier 2, who should have a legitimate shot at a national championship once a decade, but whose realistic ceiling year-in and year-out is probably 9-3 or 10-2. This is where I would put places like Ole Miss, Florida, Auburn, Missouri, Tennessee, Florida State, Miami, Penn State, Michigan State, Washington, and Utah. Maybe Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska too, though all three of them are weird in their own ways. Tier 3 encompasses the programs that can maybe catch lightning in a bottle, but probably don't have the institutional supports in place to sustain it over a longer term. Most of the ACC and Big 12 fits this mold, along with places like Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Illinois, and Minnesota. You get the idea, it gets worse from there. I think there are a'plenty of coaches that would gladly take a promotion from Tier 2 or Tier 3 programs to Tier 1B. Likewise, in a vacuum, Michigan is arguably a better job than say LSU or Texas A&M, who is Tier 1B but thinks they should be 1A. In the same way Washington and Utah are probably better jobs than Penn State and Miami, who are Tier 2 but think they should be 1B. But people don't exist in a vacuum. Kenny Dillingham may prefer to stay home at Tier 3 Arizona State. LSU may back up a Brinks truck to hire whoever their donors want. [Insert Candidate Here] may not love not knowing who the AD and President will be in year two, even with a Tier 1B school... And Michigan is not going to poach someone from an equal or greater-footing school (i.e., Freeman or DeBour) unless extraneous factors make it possible (i.e., folks with torches outside DeBour's house, instability in South Bend).