Feels like a hard pivot, but probably an overdue one. The Athletic college football podcast was debating the Mel.Tucker contract, and their recruiting guy shut it down, and said they have killed college football as anything other than a national title sport, but unlike basketball, there is way less randomness. Mel Tucker may fail, but he's gunning for it. Dantonio may have kept churning out 8-4 seasons, but 8-4 might as well be 4-8 with the current narrative. So you might as well shoot for the moon, because the downside isn't worse than the worst case scenario. Wisconsin is realizing the same. They could just go 9-3 forever, lose in the CCG, and wind up in a random Alamo Bowl. Or go for broke, and if it doesn't work, who cares, you missed an Alamo Bowl
To be fair, that recruiting guy is obsessed with the title race and not much of a believer in the idea of the spot being broad and interesting for the sake of being intersting. Like, the way to beat that narrative is just to do things like enjoying watching your team, even if it goes a hard-fought 7-5. Like, there's no rule a person can't do that, even if ESPN says stuff.
The downside/worse case scenario is always interesting because it's broadly applied across sports in a sort of interesting way. There's always this temptation to reduce down the range of things that are pretty good. So you're either at the moon, or everything else is garbage. That writer also said he'd rather be 7-5 than 9-3 if it got a five-star QB development reps, something with a poor track record of mattering. (It also kind of sets aside the idea that being good is a step toward being great, which I always find a bit silly)
But when it comes down to it, once you're in the season, people live and die on each week. And if you're saying one third of the season of feeling bad/not caring doesn't matter, it just kind of feels like a self defense mechanism. I've watched 6-6 teams and 9-3 teams, and let me tell you, 9-3 is a much, much more enjoyable experience, and that's why I watch, not to pine for a title run I'm not likely to get.
The Tucker bit is interesting. His pitch, and the pitch The Athletic writer bought, was that because he could pull blue chippers at places that pull blue chippers, he could maybe do it in EL. It's the same pitch as Ed O in Mississipi, Tim Brewster in Minnesota. Maybe it totally works, but probably won't. And in a lot of cases, then you get feasted on by the 9-3ers or the world. And maybe the 4-8 team feels the same as the 9-3 team, but I've never felt that. On the other hand, Fleck came to Minnesota as the talent collected, albeit one that could never draft off a power brand. And somehow, he is still in that middle tier, with perfectly nice recruiting because it's hard to get really good kids from warm places to come to cold ones. (It also leaves me thinking about Will Muschamp, a legendary recruiter, who went to a non-recruiting power and delivered, basically classes within that school's normal range)
Anyway, that's something I had a lot of thoughts about, less focused on Wisconsin or MSU, but just because I listen to that pod.
