The Front Row

Astute:
Especially calling out Nebraska. "They’re not putting together a terrible class by any means, but mediocrity is not what is expected of Nebraska."

And your remarks on Northwestern. Nice call on that one Dave: " Pat Fitzgerald’s chances of finishing fairly strong and improving his team’s recruiting ranking are good after the Wildcats completed a 10-3 season. "
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Edit to add: I like watching what the Wildcats are doing. I'm actually becoming a fan of their personality. If only a few other teams had Fitzgerald's fire.

Bucknuts, this is the second article today that you have called Eli Woodard Eli Appel. I have to correct you on this one. Buckrock I might as well pick on you too. The SEC is very aggressive compared to the SEC? Also to name three of the best recruiters, Urban, Chip,Lane, and Sabin? I never was the best at math, but.....

Definitely shows jp on the field that's for sure. Id say braska wisky Nd iowa need to step the hell up and honestly I'm surprised that illinois isn't doing better. Their is a lot of talent in Illinois but they're not getting it. Why aren't they working Missouri better?

Thanks Dave. Great Update.

thanks dave!

Other than tOSU and scUM, the classes are very lack-luster. I give a lot of credit to PSU with their NCAA sanctions in full force. Nebraska and Wisky in the top 25 isn't bad, but they should be in the top 15-20 every year.

Iowa and MSU have terrible classes. MSU should be doing a lot better than they are, Iowa is just bad and getting worse.

It's bad when you add two non-traditional football schools (Maryland, Rutgers) and they rank higher than over half the conference. That's the state of football right now in the Big Ten.

"...Amazingly, there is talk that Ferentz is a leading candidate for the Kansas City Chiefs head coaching job. Hey, at least he won’t have to worry about recruiting (or in his case, not recruiting) if he moves on to the NFL."

Iowa should be so lucky. The ONLY reason Ferentz is still employed is that his enormous buyout is too rich for Iowa taxpayers to forfeit. If he leaves voluntarily, the good people of the Hawkeye State will be square-dancing in the streets. Hayden Fry proved you could recruit talent from places like Chicago/Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska (yes, even Neb), Missouri, and the West and put together some very good teams. Iowa City and the University are actually great places with progressive people and a great Town/Gown feel. Ferentz has screwed the pooch there and left a good program in ashes...

I actually thought the Big Ten fared well in the bowls, relatively-speaking. They were underdogs in six of the seven games (initially were underdogs in all seven but Northwestern became a slight favorite the day before the game) and were heavy underdogs in many of them, but ended up 2-5. That in itself is no embarrassment. Then you factor in that every team in the conference was playing "two spots up" due to the absence of Ohio State and Penn State ... and I think the Big Ten did as well as I could have expected in the bowls.

This story is much more big-picture. I actually started writing it before yesterday's bowl games.

Dave, I agreed with you on the article but your post on the bowl games, not so much. There is no asterisk by the outcome of the bowl that says, " we weren't good enough to play in this bowl but because of the NCAA we had to play up, sorry". You can't tell me that Minnesota and Michigan didn't choke at the end of the game, also Neb. just gave up. My biggest problem is that these teams don't play with any heart, and I don't foresee that changing any time in the near future, esp with recruiting like this. Yes, I'll agree they were playing without the same talent level but they were playing fine the whole game but we all knew, and I think they did too, that they would all choke in the end. It's a mind set and only NW showed that they are gonna overcome it, maybe its because they're smart kids. So , that being said, how do these teams change the pattern in their recruiting? They have a lot going against them, cold weather, losing records, bad rep of a losing conference, and the parade of changing coaches.