The Front Row

I could care less about bringing the B10 anything other than the crushing feel of our boots upon all those who spent the last 13 months criticizing us mercilessly. They had no conference pride that we are the "national" program. All they wanted to see was our downfall and and to dance on our grave. However, when you are a winner, you wont just settle on being mediocre, so we did what needed to be done and went out and got the best coach in American. The rest of the conference is now stunned...how can these guys who had all these issues come out of it stronger than ever? They can't believe it. I am loving it!

Lets win for ourselves!!!!

Regarding the coaches, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Michigan St were already beginning to pay assistants much more. We have finally decided to join the party. We could talk about assistants all day, but it's clear the previous staff was not the caliber they should have been, which is unacceptable at TOSU (no matter who the HC is).

While I do agree that the Big Ten has coaching staffs, facilities and fans that are second to none, I believe the biggest factor preventing us from rising to the top is the quantity of high caliber athletes.

The link below is from an ESPN study over the previous 5 years. I know how we all feel about ESPN, especially in terms of their recruiting department, however, the study has some pretty interesting results. It shows that Ohio State is the only Big Ten team to crack the top 10 nationally as far as landing ESPNU 150 recruits (#10). Even more surprising is that of the top 10 states producing top 150 talent, Pennsylvania is the only state in Big Ten country to make the list at #9.

This to me represents a couple huge hurdles in seeing Big Ten football as a whole compete with that of the SEC. The first being the lack of homegrown talent. Not saying that talent doesn't exist in the midwest by any means, however, the quantity of talent is far less than that of SEC country (5 of the top 10 talent producing states). The other disadvantage I see is location. Lets face it, while the Big Ten can pride itself on quality academics, location is a huge obstacle to overcome. Of the top 10, Ohio State and Notre Dame are the only schools to represent the Northern US in landing top prospects over the last 5 years. It's very difficult to sell cold midwest winters to kids getting offers from the likes of Florida, Florida State, Miami, Texas, and USC (All top 10 schools in attracting recruits). These aspects, along with the high academic admission standards from most member schools, are in my opinion what prevents the Big Ten from rivaling that of the SEC.

http://assets.espn.go.com/pdf/2012/0125/mag_0206recruiting_map.pdf