(01-03-2015 06:54 PM)arkstfan Wrote: I've paid pretty close attention to college football for about 40 years. Power cycles.
The Big Ten fall was blamed on the weakness of the Rust Belt supposedly everyone with a kid good at playing football moved south to find work.
But the bigger deal has been that Big Ten hasn't kept pace with the SEC in salaries especially for assistants. There have also been some bad hires. The Big Ten is starting to reverse that path and but for one toe stub Ohio State has looked better than it has in many years. I think the case can be made that B1G didn't adjust well when the southern pipeline started drying up with the integration of the SWC and SEC.
The PAC-12 has been very close to having title material teams they might make it this year.
Nutt is right in that the SEC is down at the QB position. Hugh Freeze is in year three at Ole Miss and started a kid who couldn't start for him at AState. Somehow hasn't found a replacement yet and his best propspect may get dropped.
Finally the margin between the power leagues tends to be thin. That makes shifts happen even when a league isn't really up or down.
Good post, especially the part about folks making idiotic statements about everyone with decent football kids moving South.
Some people are moving South but the State that had the worst declining population in the North is Michigan. The State has almost 10 million people. From '05 to '11 it had a declining population as the Auto Industry was decimated. Yes, some folks left the State. The Auto Industry diversified to other parts of the country but the overall number of jobs went way down.
Since 2013 though the State of Michigan population has slowly started to rise again.
Now, it is true that some Southern States have some pretty impressive growth percentages but most of those are also small population States so it is easier to have a higher percentage number.
Michigan's population still is quite large and isn't "dying" out as many idiots would say.
That area of the country is rebuilding and that includes their college football. As you say, their biggest problem was the coaching staff salaries. Traditionally, the Big Ten powers have for the most part just cared about themselves and the conference. The Big Ten was the slowest to act in regards to the changing of college football into a National sport not just a regional sport.
They are changing now, although I think someone forgot to send Kirk Ferentz the f'n memo.