Jerry Kill has won the Big Ten Coach of the Year Award, presumably for actually coaching all 12 games this season.

Sure, Urban Meyer won 11 games, hasn't lost a regular season conference game in his entire tenure, and has a chance at a conference title and playoff after losing his Heisman candidate QB, but it's hard to argue with Kill taking a Minnesota team that went 8-4 in 2013 and taking them all the way to...8-4.

Minnesota is a program on the rise under Kill. Yea the record is the same, but their results are different. I'd kill to have Kill as the Rutgers coach as I can imagine what he could do with better recruiting grounds. (No pun intended.)

Ohio State can recruit on name alone. Anybody can win there. 8-4 at Minnesota is more impressive than 11-1 at Ohio State

But what about Beckman? (sarcasm)

(12-02-2014 07:38 PM)CoogNellie Wrote:  Ohio State can recruit on name alone. Anybody can win there. 8-4 at Minnesota is more impressive than 11-1 at Ohio State

Not with the QB injuries Ohio State sustained. Kill is a feel good story because of his illness though.

I honestly don't think there was a standout pick for Coach of the Year. You could argue for Urban after losing one Heisman candidate quarterback and turning another into a Heisman candidate quarterback.

In the end though, I think the team that had most folks surprised this year was Minnesota. I know we didn't see a major change in their record but the fact that Minnesota actually turned into an offensive power, well that is huge within the Big Ten. In fact I think Kill actually earned that award during the losses as much as it was earned with the wins. Minnesota helped quite a bit in terms of helping to hold up the Big Ten this year while it is under siege by everyone else. Having Minnesota in the top 25 rankings helped the conference out immensely.

(12-02-2014 07:52 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  

(12-02-2014 07:38 PM)CoogNellie Wrote:  Ohio State can recruit on name alone. Anybody can win there. 8-4 at Minnesota is more impressive than 11-1 at Ohio State

Not with the QB injuries Ohio State sustained. Kill is a feel good story because of his illness though.

It's not as though Meyer was running some walkon out there. JT Barrett was like a four-star recruit coming out of high school, top-10 at his position and had offers from Arizona, Nebraska, LSU among others. Minnesota's starting quarterback Mitch Leidner probably had zero offers other than Minnesota. Or maybe he had a MAC offer or two. In fact I'd be willing to wager that Cardale Jones had better offers than Leidner.

Coaching at Ohio State is a LOT easier than coaching at Minnesota.

(12-02-2014 07:38 PM)CoogNellie Wrote:  Ohio State can recruit on name alone. Anybody can win there. 8-4 at Minnesota is more impressive than 11-1 at Ohio State

(12-02-2014 10:00 PM)moo Wrote:  

(12-02-2014 07:52 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  

(12-02-2014 07:38 PM)CoogNellie Wrote:  Ohio State can recruit on name alone. Anybody can win there. 8-4 at Minnesota is more impressive than 11-1 at Ohio State

Not with the QB injuries Ohio State sustained. Kill is a feel good story because of his illness though.

It's not as though Meyer was running some walkon out there. JT Barrett was like a four-star recruit coming out of high school, top-10 at his position and had offers from Arizona, Nebraska, LSU among others. Minnesota's starting quarterback Mitch Leidner probably had zero offers other than Minnesota. Or maybe he had a MAC offer or two. In fact I'd be willing to wager that Cardale Jones had better offers than Leidner.

Coaching at Ohio State is a LOT easier than coaching at Minnesota.

Man, college football fans from the 1930's and 1940's would disagree with Ohio State being the easier school to coach at. .

He did a good job for sure, but y'all realize they beat only two teams with a winning record, right?

It was nice that our game with them actually meant something this year for once.

I agree with the original post. I am confused.

Minnesota did about the same this year as last year. In fact almost all the teams did about the same except Illinois made a small improvement.

Minnesota did better than expected but only because the media for some reason could not remember what actually happened in 2013. So they had Michigan and NW way over-rated but if you payed attention to how Michigan and NW finished in 2013, they would have issues in 2014. So i had Minnesota ranked higher than Michigan and NW in my pre-season power rankings, which is what the media should have done too.

The big mystery coming in was how would MD and Rutgers do in the big ten. They both seemed to struggle against the good teams but both ended up finishing 7-5 which is similar to what they did in their old conferences.

You could almost make an argument for Flood, Edsall or Beckman. Everybody expected their teams to suck but they ended up mediocre, but usually the award goes to a coach who actually had a good team.

Purdue looked like they had gotten better but then regressed back to awful.

How does Kevin Wilson at Indiana still have a job? 1-7 in year #4, and gas never been to a bowl in a conference where 70% of the teams go to bowls.

So anyway, I give Kill credit for not backtracking this year, but in the end, Minnesota did about what I expected.

So I would go with Urban Meyer. OSU did about what I expected, except I had MSU ranked higher. But Meyer deserves credit for never losing a big ten conference game in 3 years. That is impressive no matter how much talent you got.

I'm beginning to wonder if Purdue will ever have a good football team again, I wish Hazell's turnaround had more physical proof than it did right now as he's 4-20 through two years at Purdue.

Jerry Kill won both Big Ten coaching awards: the Hayes-Schembechler award as voted on by the league's coaches and the Dave McClain award as voted on by media.

Some news reports say the voting was unanimous for Kill but it is unclear if that was for the coach's award, the media award, or for both awards.

So the people closest to Big Ten football either know something the naysayers don't, or more than likely there is simply a lot of sour grapes out there.

(12-03-2014 05:34 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  Jerry Kill won both Big Ten coaching awards: the Hayes-Schembechler award as voted on by the league's coaches and the Dave McClain award as voted on by media.

Some news reports say the voting was unanimous for Kill but it is unclear if that was for the coach's award, the media award, or for both awards.

So the people closest to Big Ten football either know something the naysayers don't, or more than likely there is simply a lot of sour grapes out there.

I think it boils down to either Kill is more popular than Meyer or there exists jealously of Meyer's regular season success.