Earlier this year Ohio State’s Urban Meyer and Penn State’s James Franklin were talking about the good old days in the Big Ten Conference.
Actually, the days of their discussion weren’t that good. Or that long ago.
The two head coaches were out west at an offseason meeting several months ago and the talk between the two head coaches turned to how much the league had changed since Meyer arrived.
Meyer was hired as the Buckeyes’ head coach on Nov. 28, 2011, in the immediate aftermath of a desultory 6-7 season that was overshadowed by the post-Jim Tressel scandal and ensuing turbulence under interim head coach Luke Fickel.
After winning two national titles at Florida in the SEC, Meyer brought a new mindset and high expectations to the Big Ten.
Franklin was hired as the Nittany Lions’ head coach on Jan. 11, 2014, after Penn State had been through the shank of the Sandusky scandal and four head coaches — legendary, interim and O’Brien — in a 794-day span.
After scrapping and scraping Vanderbilt to SEC respectability in quick order, Franklin brought a sense of urgency, personality and organization to the Big Ten.
There they were, Meyer and Franklin, a Big Pair. A combined 45-9 over the last two seasons; Nos. 5 and 8 in the most-recent season-ending AP polls; and Rivals’ No. 2 and 5 in the just-finished recruiting season.
“Urban and I had a pretty good conversation about this at the Big Ten meetings in Arizona,” Franklin said this spring. “It was about how the league has changed from when he first got here to now. It’s interesting, but that’s what has made it so exciting. That’s why people are so prideful in the Big Ten and what the Big Ten is doing.”
In his 80 months at Ohio State, Meyer has seen two schools added, a conference title game installed, the divisions re-organized, 38 opposing head coaches past and present, and the annual Big Ten payday to each school jump by almost $30 million.
Meyer has also seen the arrival of Franklin to the east and Jim Harbaugh to that school up north. In combination, the three have revitalized the Big Ten in myriad ways that have vaulted the conference back near the top of the Power 5 — the league was 7-1 in bowl season — in addition to the Big Ten East to the top of divisional powerhouses. To say nothing of the national spotlight.
Call it the Urban renewal of the Big Ten. A Meyer hire raises all ships.
Meyer — whose Buckeyes won the national title in 2014 — has raised the standard in the Big Ten, with a big push from Franklin and the influence of Harbaugh (to what degree on the field is to be determined). It’s been fueled by an influx of promising, energetic young coaches like Jeff Brohm of Purdue, P.J. Fleck of Minnesota and, now, Scott Frost of Nebraska. And anchored by reliable but not superstar veteran coaches like Kirk Ferentz of Iowa, Pat Fitzgerald of Northwestern and Mark Dantonio of Michigan State.
Let’s take a look at how the Big Ten has changed since Meyer’s arrival.
HEAD COACHES
Since 2011, in addition to Meyer and Franklin, the conference has added head coaches who took NFL teams to the Super Bowl, in Harbaugh (San Francisco 49ers) and Illinois’ Lovie Smith (Chicago Bears). Both lost, btw.
The Big Ten also added Brohm, who in 2017 led Purdue to a 7-6 record and a bowl victory after the Boilermakers had won just nine games in their previous four seasons — combined. It also added Fleck, who was 5-7 in his first season at Minnesota after performing a miracle turnaround at Western Michigan, where in 2016 he went 13-1 with a Cotton Bowl appearance after a 1-11 record his first season.
In December, Nebraska added Scott Frost. Frost was 24-2 as a quarterback for the Cornhuskers in 1996-97 and made a name for himself as a head coach at Central Florida the past two seasons. UCF was a perfect 13-0 in 2017, including a 34-27 win over Auburn in the Peach Bowl. He took his entire staff from UCF to Nebraska, a plug-and-play strategy that Franklin himself successfully deployed when he brought a host of coaches and staffers from Vanderbilt to Penn State in 2014.
Here is a breakdown by school of the 38 football head coaches, including interim appointments and current head coaches, in the Big Ten since Meyer was hired:
5 — Purdue, Wisconsin (counting Barry Alvarez twice)
4 — Illinois, Nebraska, Penn State
3 — Maryland, Minnesota, Rutgers
2 — Indiana, Michigan
1 — Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State
DEPTH
The Big Ten is getting better. And deeper. Let’s look at the postseason and final Associated Press rankings in 2017 vs. 2011, to get an idea of by how much:
In the 2017 postseason, the Big Ten had a 7-1 bowl record, with only Michigan losing. (Among the other Power 5 conferences, the Big 12 was 5-3, the SEC was 5-6, the ACC 4-6 and the Pac-12 1-8.) In the 2011-13 postseasons, the Big Ten Conference had a combined 8-16 bowl record.
In the AP’s final Top 25 for the 2017 season, both the Big Ten and the SEC had five teams to lead all conferences. When you add up the average finish of those five teams, the SEC was 10 and the Big Ten was 10.4. Near parity. Ohio State (5), Wisconsin (7) and Penn State (8) led the way for the Big Ten, followed by Michigan State (15) and Northwestern (17). The SEC went 1, 2, 10, 18 and 19.
By comparison, in 2011 the SEC had four teams in the Top 9, while the Big Ten had only one (Wisconsin), at No. 10.
DIVISIONS
Changes made here after the 2013 season made things tougher for Penn State and Ohio State. A bit of history: When the Big Ten added Nebraska to the conference beginning with the 2011 season, it divided its teams into divisions for the first time. The move also brought about the advent of a conference championship game.
From 2011-13, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin were in the Leaders Division, with Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and Northwestern in the Legends Division. Wisconsin won the first two Big Ten title games, while Michigan State won in 2013.
The Big Ten added Rutgers and Maryland in 2014, Franklin’s first season, and the conference switched to its current East-West format. The Leaders booted out Purdue, Wisconsin and Illinois, and added Michigan, Michigan State and Rutgers. Hardly a fair trade.
Since 2014, the East has been comprised of Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Indiana, Rutgers and Maryland. The West is Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Northwestern, Illinois and Purdue. Those divisions have stayed intact heading into its fifth season.
Overall, in the seven times the Big Ten championship game has been played, Wisconsin has appeared five times (with a 2-3 record). Michigan State (2-1) and Ohio State (2-1) have been there three times while Penn State (1-0), Iowa (0-1) and Nebraska (0-1) have played in the conference championship once each.
MONEY
Thanks to new TV deals with FOX and ESPN, and the continued success of the Big Ten Network, Big Ten schools get almost $30 million a year more than when Meyer started — and almost $20 million a year more than when Franklin came to Penn State.
In 2011, each Big Ten school got $22.8 million from the conference office. The shares climbed to $32.7 million in 2014 and the full pay-out to each school (Rutgers and Maryland will get less; they are not yet fully vested) is estimated to be $51 million in 2018.
That extra money has helped fund a ton of upgrades for conference athletic departments overall and football in particular. Athletes now have fueling stations for ready access to extra food and beverages; there are NCAA-mandated cost of attendance pay-outs (the COA is almost $5,000 annually for Penn State football players); each player has an iPad; recruiting budgets have skyrocketed; and football staff sizes have exploded (more on that in a minute).
For example, Penn State football’s recruiting expenditures were $258,000 in fiscal year 2011, according to information the school supplies to the NCAA. In fiscal year 2017, PSU football spent $1.265 million on football recruiting.
RECRUITING
Tree climbing, helicopter jaunts and social media have all given recruiting a new look in the Big Ten. The changes are stunning. To see the results of how the recruiting game have changed in the once-staid conference since the arrival of Meyer — and then, maybe even more notable, with the addition of Franklin and Harbaugh — take a look at Rivals’ Top 25 team rankings.
In 2011, only three Big Ten teams made Rivals’ To 25 final rankings: Ohio State, which was in turmoil and in the final months of the Tressel era (No. 11), Nebraska (15) and Michigan (21).
Right now, Rivals’ 2019 team rankings has seven Big Ten teams in its Top 25: Michigan (No. 4), Ohio State (10), Penn State (19), Purdue (21), Michigan State (22), Minnesota (24) and Wisconsin (25). The Big Ten’s rise can be attributed to a number of factors: the high bar established by Meyer and Franklin (with his energy, organization and family-first approach); an influx of energetic younger coaches — like Brohm and Fleck — with a history of success at less prominent schools; more money for recruiting; and a renewed respect for the Big Ten.
In addition, the recruiting game has also changed with the advent of an early signing date. Instituted in 2017, the December signing date — followed by the more-traditional early February date — is a big shift in the recruiting world.
The rise and fall of summer satellite camps has occurred since Meyer entered the Big Ten. And there’s no denying that Harbaugh taking his players on trips abroad to Rome in 2017 — at a reported cost of $800,000 — and France in 2018 represents a change in the way business in the Big Ten is conducted, if only in Ann Arbor.
THE SCHEDULE
In 2016, Big Ten teams went from playing eight conference opponents each year to nine — for Penn State, that is six in-division games and three swing games against West division teams. That makes the overall path to the College Football Playoffs even more difficult, typically replacing an easier non-con foe with a team from the West. Penn State’s 2018 schedule is Exhibit A: Its games against the West division include Illinois on a Friday night, Wisconsin and Iowa.
(Both the Big 12 and Pac-12 have the same nine-game conference requirements as the Big Ten. Meanwhile, the SEC and ACC only require eight conference games for its members — another reason these two conferences had three of the four teams in last year’s CFP.)
Friday night games are new. Penn State will get its first taste of that change on Sept. 21, when it plays at Champaign, in a made-for-TV date being shown on FS1. I wrote about that in-depth a few weeks ago; read about it here. The last time Penn State played a regular-season game on a Friday was in 1982, against Pitt the day after Thanskgiving.
SOCIAL MEDIA
In 2011, social media was important. But it did not play such a huge role in recruiting, fan interaction, marketing, program development, recruiting and recruiting. It is one of biggest changes in the business of college football since Meyer came to the Big Ten. Franklin’s mastery of it is part of Penn State’s success, in recruiting, attendance and re-enagement of the fan base.
Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State are the Big 3 of social media in the Big Ten.
Both Harbaugh and Meyer are around the 2 million mark for Twitter followers, while Penn State has the second-most followers of the Big Ten football teams on Instagram and the third-most on Facebook. I did a deep-dive on social media followers and all the Big Ten football programs a few weeks ago as I was researching this story, and found the numbers so compelling I wrote a separate story just on social media. That article is here.
STAFFS
Over the past seven seasons there has been a proliferation of consultants and quality control assistants across college football and at Penn State. These are a mixture of analysts and former coaches who aid in game planning, film studying and player support, but not on the practice field.
Former NFL head coach Jim Haslett has been the most high-profile of this group at Penn State, but there have been — and are — many others. In addition, the size of recruiting staffs has grown to the point where there are now fulltime graphic designers on staff tasked mainly with designing materials and social media. This is a key, but largely unknown, aspect of Penn State’s recruiting success.
Some of Penn State’s schematic success on the field over the past two seasons — from the blocked field goal attempt that led to a scoop-and-score against Ohio State to a specific scoring suggested by an aide late-night in Lasch — can be attributed this extra staff.
Such help ain’t cheap. In fiscal year 2011, Penn State football spent $605,000 on administrative support and staff. By fiscal year 2017, the same budget line item had grown to $4.6 million.
More obvious, this past spring the size of the full-time assistant coaching staffs in major college football increased from nine to 10. Then there’s the quality and cost of the staff. Ohio State is the Big Ten poster boy for this change: Buckeyes defensive coordinator Greg Schiano — a former head coach at Rutgers and in the NFL, with Tampa Bay — makes $1.5 million.
At Penn State, Joe Moorhead represented the sign of the times. The presence of Moorhead, who was 38-12 as a head coach at Fordham before coming to PSU, was a game-changer on the field. And both he and Bob Shoop, the former Penn State defensive coordinator who is now in the same role at Mississippi State under Moorhead, shifted the paradigm at PSU. Both made close to the 7-figure territory at Penn State, a new threshold for Nittany Lion assistants.
Call it cha-thing changes.
