Does Big Ten or SEC have better coaches?
Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry explain why the depth of coaching talent and staffs in the Big Ten has helped the conference dominate the elite levels of college football the last few seasons.
Video Transcript
I think the other thing that they glossed over, glossed over, that you and I specifically have spoken about, I think the Big Ten flat out has better coaches.
And I'm not talking about head coaches, right?
Like, they've got really, really good head coaches down there in the SEC.
I'm talking top to bottom stats.
I'm talking guys who are in position rooms and guys who are on the field teaching, the position coaches, the coordinators.
The Big Ten to me has always had the better guys when it came to that, and part of the reason why was because it was always more of a developmental conference.
When you weren't recruiting the best of the best every year in order to be what Iowa was and what Wisconsin was and what Michigan State was, which was a team that was winning Rose Bowls and made it to the College Football Playoff, they had to really develop the guys that they brought into the program, whereas the SEC- Two and three-star guys.
Yeah.
The SEC was bringing in five-stars that were, you know, three-and-out players.
And you don't have to be as good of a coach when you're doing that.
You have to be a great recruiter.
And now with the de-emphasis of high school recruiting and more of it shifting to the portal, and now you, m- we're, we're past the era, but you had the era of guys who could be in a program for four and five and six years sometimes, and your development matters at that point.
The Big Ten always had that edge to me, and I do think that is a big factor in why things have flipped.
And, and I think, like, even the head coaches getting better.
Like, you had to el- you had to make really good big hires at that position.
I mean, Urban was, was part of this, right?
Yes.
So you talk about his impact on, like, getting everyone to recruit more aggressively.
you know, Jim Harbaugh.
Like, you're getting some of these are, like, the best coaches that have ever coached football in the modern era- Right coming to the Big Ten and elevating.
And, you know, Kurt Signetti, we've had, had this argument, we'll probably have it this off-season.
Is he the best coach in the game right now?
Right.
I don't think there's anyone else who could have done what he just did, and the speed at which he did it.
Talk about how he is as a teacher, the preparation, the way that those teams are structured, the way that they play.
Mm-hmm.
all of that is stuff that we would not have seen in the past, because you wouldn't have had the portal, you wouldn't have had, been able to flip a team like that.
and when you talk about, there was, there's that part in that clip with Kirby Smart where, like, what job would you have left Alabama for as a coordinator?
First of all, people did not leave good jobs for Indiana.
No.
That's why they had to go all the way down and bring up a group of five head coach- Right who had just come to FBS.
Like, had gone from- Right FCS to FBS and then comes up to the Big Ten.
But so even three years ago that was not the case.
Like, people did not want to come to an Indiana.
Now you have this idea or, like, people think there's a blueprint that they can copy, and so they're more, gonna be more willing to do it.
But all of that was still really new to the sport, and when you look at all of these things happening at the same time and the fact that not just the Big Ten, three different teams winning, but the SEC not even being in the championship game for those- three years, I think that's why, like, the red flags are going up in that conference.
And like you said, Kirby, coaches wondering, "Are we not as good coaches?
Like, what's going on?"
There's been so much anxiety around rev share and NIL and the money because these Big Ten fan bases h- are huge.
Right.
Huge alumni bases.
Right.
You have the billionaires.
We've talked about the difference between, like, car dealership owner versus, like, Google- Auto maker co-founder.
Yeah, auto maker, right.
Like, it's, it's very different.
And so- Right all of that's happening at the same time in a world where yes, you don't just, like, roll out the five stars and, you know- Yes you can't stockpile the guys the way that Saban and Kirby did in the first few years in Georgia.
No doubt.
No doubt.
So that's what's happening, but it's really interesting because I'm not sure how you close the gap if you're the SEC except, like, you need to get, again, you need to hit at the quarterback position, I think.
and you need to survive the grind.
They're going to nine conference games this year, so we're gonna hear even more complaints about this because half the league is picking up an extra loss.
We're o- still only a couple years into Oklahoma and Texas making things harder as well.
but, like, you gotta be able to survive that, that four game, three, four game stretch at the end of the year, which is also different.
I think that's where, like, these are the teams that truly are the best over the course of the year.
Even though Ohio State, when, you know, we made such a big deal about, you know, they were the eight seed and they had lost to Michigan, they had lost these games they shouldn't have, but by the end they were the best and they could, they could weather that, that grind at the end.
That's what it's gonna take, but I really think it's like, it's, it's, goes back to what we said right out of the gate.
You have to have the best players, the key positions- Yes in order for those teams to ultimately win.
So, like, I don't, I don't think there's, like, one easy fix for the SEC to, like, get back and win a national title.
No.
I mean, I think there's, there's an evaluation on all of it.
and there's probably some guys right now trying to figure out, like, do we staff properly?
And I think that's a question everybody has, and a lot of it has been like, well, how do we structure our front office and how do we, you know, we, we have more allowable coaches on field, so what are we gonna do with those guys?
But, like, from the standpoint of, well, what, what qualities are you looking at in your coaches when you're getting ready to hire them?
Like, to me, I think recruiting high schoolers might be more of a secondary skill than it was in the past.
There's probably that evaluation of it.
How do you, how do you entice that top-tier talent that you were just able to get back in the day?
Like, how do you, how do you get those guys to come back and be back, and you can win the first round of the draft again?
I think all the, the factors have to kinda come together.
And once again, everybody's figuring this thing out on the fly too.
Like, how do you manage a post-season?
And you mentioned Ohio State, thought they did it really well the year that they won it.
didn't feel like it was as tight this past year for them.
Like, that's a learning experience they're going through.
Kurt Signetti kinda had the stairsteps where they made it, they probably weren't ready to win a title, you know, the, the first year they made it to the College Football Playoff, but learned from that experience, structured their post-season really well where they were fresh and able to compete, and really throttled teams when they needed to.
Everybody's figuring that part out as well.
and, you know, it's an adaptation, right?
Like, Kirby's probably sitting in the room by himself at times and he's like, "Okay, like, what is my practice plan when we're, we're in the, we're in the second round of the College Football Playoff and we had that layoff?
Like, what is my practice plan to make sure guys are fresh and ready to go?"
And it doesn't help that they're possibly changing and tweaking it every year, right?
Right.
Like, this year we're gonna have the same format as last year, but it is gonna go even later into January.
and, and, you know, if you go to 16 or 24, like, it, it totally changes the back end of the, the calendar.
So that becomes even harder to do as well.
You talk about getting rid of championship games.
Mm-hmm.
All of those things affect what you're trying to do to make sure that you're peaking at the right moments in December and January, and they're always changing.
So it's, it's such an interesting conversation, even outside of the money piece of it, which obviously, like, I think a lot of SEC people are like, "It's just the money."
Again, I, I still, that doesn't explain getting Fernando Mendoza from Cal.
He was not the big marquee quarterback available- Right last off-season.
You heard me say it a million times, I think it's a sneaky good pickup for Indiana.
Okay, did not think he was gonna win the Heisman, did not think they were gonna, he was gonna be the number one pick in the draft.
But there, there, you have to still be good at some things- Mm-hmm like talent ID and have money to get the players, but it still doesn't have to be the absolute high-end guys, like the, the headliner guys.
which again, like you, we're seeing, we're gonna see what happens with Texas Tech when, you know, they got the headliner guy, they got Brandon Sosbe, and now they- Right d- they probably don't have him.
what does that mean for the-
