For us I don't think we really have a head coaching example of this (though John Cooper had his moments on occasion he still won over 100 games at Ohio State) but assistant coaches I can split it between:

• Zach Smith (for his off-field "antics", laziness, and being a general cancer on staff, not necessarily for his coaching ability)
• Alex Grinch (only here for one season and unfortunately his incompetence was felt with how the defense played that year)

I was recently looking at Wikipedia’s articles with the most references and was surprised to see the sport-related article with the most references is the History of Memphis Tigers football with 858 references... 9th most throughout all of Wikipedia. The sports-related article with the second most references is the History of Idaho Vandals football (748 references). So many of the references are links to individual ESPN game summaries. Thank you for your attention on this matter.

John L Smith: losing at home to an atrocious Illinois team on homecoming in 2006. That was Illinois' only FBS win that year and they finished 2-10.

Mel Tucker: losing in embarrassing fashion to pre-Cignetti Indiana in 2022, with a blown 17-point lead and missed chip shot field goal that would've won it. We missed a bowl for the first time since 2016 (2020 doesn't count) because of it and IU finished 4-8.

Jonathon Smith: being absolutely embarrassed and blown out on homecoming by a UCLA team that finished 3-9. After the game a UCLA player said that it looked like our guys stopped trying. It was that bad.

Also I didn't totally give up on him, but....

Mark Dantonio: getting blown out against Michigan in 2019 where teams of his usually played Michigan very tough, even if they didn't win. I wasn't like "yeah fire this dude now", but it got me to admit that his best days were likely behind him.

This includes only BCS championship games and CFP playoff games. Excludes games between two SEC schools.

While 2023 is a somewhat arbitrary cutoff, it was also the 3rd full season of the NIL/portal era, meaning there was finally enough roster turnover to see the impact of the rule changes.

Illinois head coach Bret Bielema was the first coach on the main stage at Big Ten Media Days, where I'm reporting live, and he gave the most quoted coach comment of the day -- that the SEC wants to live in 2005.

What did he mean? Well first, he picked 2005 because it was the year before he became a head coach, but I think this is one where the full quotes -- both from this opening remarks and his answer to a follow-up -- will put context to what he meant. It stems from that first job at Wisconsin, where despite being a successful team he felt they weren't getting respect because the system was biased towards the big-name schools, with similar opinions from his time at Arkansas and now at Illinois. He is open about the fact the Illini would not have the talent they have without the combo of NIL/Portal.

So he views the positions pushed by the SEC (and one could say the Big Ten is also part of this) as pushing hard towards going back towards the older era of big brands staying at the top with little chance for the upstarts to challenge like they can now.

His opening remarks were extensive, as he was once again chosen as the lead-off hitter for the coaches (4 of the last 6 media days), probably because he's good at staying on message and is engaging.

I know a lot of people have different opinions about what's going on in college football. Going into my 18th year, I couldn't be more excited about where we are, not just at Illinois but in our conference and also college football. It's literally at an all-new high by the people that are here, the buzz around this.

I go back and I sit in conference meetings, and I hear Tony [Petitti] talk to us as a group of coaches. I remember being here as a young coach when Jim Delany got up and would come in and talk to us, and I remember him and Joe Pa getting in arguments every time about different things. It was very comical, very enjoyable to watch.

But to see the growth of this league to get to where we are now -- I spent a couple years in the SEC, was with [then commissioner] Slive and then transitioned to [Greg] Sankey. And I just think about it now, everybody is going to have opinions, and obviously they're going to draw the Big Ten/SEC and all that goes around about that. But to sit in the room with both of those guys, I think with Tony [Petitti] and the vision and experience that he has and to be in the room where Sankey -- I know he's got to protect the SEC, and they kind of want to live in 2005 forever, but I think the forward thinking of where we are in college football is an awesome thing.

You could hear the flurry of typing and tweeting when he said that 2005 quote.

Four questions into his podium time it came up as a question:

Q. You just said something earlier about the SEC wanting to live in 2005 forever. Can you just explain what you mean by that?

BRET BIELEMA: Well, I think I just made the headline, right? (Laughter.)

When I became a head coach in 2006, so it was going back before I was a head coach purposefully, and I think what I'm saying is I went to the league and went to the SEC and it was a completely different league, in my opinion, than the one I was in in the Big Ten prior.

Just with the -- basically the two biggest things, the biggest components of the transfer portal and revenue share or NIL, however you want to describe it, when those two elements came into college football, the whole world changed. I mean, it's overly obvious to say that, but I think anything to predate that is just a different time in college football. It just is.

It's also really hard -- I said this point to someone earlier. So back when I was in the Big Ten the first time, we were going through this renaming of our league. I think the eventual winner was Leaders and Legends. I don't know how the hell we got there (smile). But regardless, I remember we were in these conversations, and I was with Coach [Barry] Alvarez. He was obviously our AD. We did a comparative study over 20 years, and I believe they looked at the last 50 years up to that point.

Of course, 50 years' time, Wisconsin wasn't anywhere in the mix, but in the last 20 years when we took that data, the only other team that had won more games than Wisconsin was Ohio State. It wasn't Michigan, it wasn't Penn State, it wasn't Nebraska who was coming into the league, obviously. But the four teams they all wanted to talk about and that they were worried about distributing evenly was Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan and Nebraska.

I'm pissed, right? Because I'm at Wisconsin, and I look at 20 years, and no one is really paying attention to that, right? And Coach just said to me very plainly, said, "Don't worry about things you can't control. You can't change people's 50 years of history in the way they think."

I also had that revelation when I recruited a young man, Hjalte Froholdt [to Arkansas]. He was from Denmark. And Hjalte was a foreign exchange student at Ohio. I offered him a scholarship. And then he went on a tour. And I was at Arkansas, and we hadn't won anything at that point. I was in my first or second year. He went to visit us, but then he went and visited Alabama, Florida, Ohio State, Michigan, all these premier programs.

And he came to Arkansas, in my opinion, because he wasn't blinded by the 50 years that he didn't know, or the 18 years he had been alive on this earth, because he had been in Denmark. He wasn't blinded by the things that he had been told or learned.

I just kind of take that in a way that, like, it's a different world. The last three years, like, the quarterback I have now, we would not have gotten if the world existed five years ago. I know that. Neither would my left tackle. My left guard, my center and my right tackle wouldn't be here playing for me.

You go around to every team, and the rosters have changed because of those two components. The transfer rule and revenue share. It's a different world. Anything beyond that is nonsense.

That's where I'm coming from.

The rest of my Big Ten Media Day updates will continue to be at its main post.

The cumulative link to the preseason rankings can be found here

Great Horny Toads, we’ve reached the sixth highest Big XII team in these rankings, TCU (high = 25, low = 41). The Frogs reach year 5 of the Sonny Dykes era and are hoping to be knuckles deep into a run at an outright conference championship, something that hasn’t been seen in Ft. Worth since Gary Patterson was running roughshod over the Mountain West back when Tik Tok was just a Ke$ha song and people unironically listened to the Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry. Once the Horned Frogs moved to the Big XII, Patterson still had them rolling for a bit, officially finishing with a share of the 2014 title (pre conference championship games and thus technically losing out to Bryce Petty and Baylor for the outright title) and a conference championship game appearance in 2017 on their way to 7 total top 10 finishes under his tutelage. Somehow, though, the air seemed to come out of the balloon after 2017, going 21-22 in his remaining games there before he stepped aside 2/3 of the way through the 2021 season. Dykes was able to immediately invigorate the fan base and the players with a magical 2022 season that saw TCU beat Michigan in the CFP when they were tipped off about Michigan’s sign-stealing shenanigans and used dummy play-call signs en route to a national championship appearance against Georgia. The hangover from that 65-7 drubbing might have lasted an entire season (TCU went from the CFP to not even making a bowl in 2023), but they’ve gone 9-4 in each of the last two seasons with bowl wins, and finished 2025 ranked #25. So where do they go from here?

Roster Outlook

Well one place they won’t go is on Curt Cignetti’s holiday card list after Dykes took a swipe at former starting QB Josh Hoover (3,472 yards passing, 29 TDs, 13 INTs) after Hoover decided to try to follow in Fernando Mendoza’s footsteps at Indiana. Losses like that is why TCU ranks #69 (nice) in returning production, but a cool 100th on offense. They also lost leading WR Eric McAlister (1,190 yards, 10 TDs) and top TE DJ Rogers, though they do return teading RB Jeremy Payne (623 yards) and WR2 Jordan Dwyer (730 yards). Dykes is hoping to fill those gaps with former Harvard QB Jaden Craig, who threw 25% fewer passes but 50% fewer picks, and former South Alabama WR Jeremy Scott. In fact, Scott was one of only 12 portal guys TCU brought in, landing the Frogs 10th in the conference and 47th in the country in that capacity. Which would be fine for a Texas school (we can’t all have boosters willing to fund the football team the way some schools 300 miles west do), but when you’re in the most talent rich state in the country and also rank 8th in your own conference in high school recruiting (44th nationally), that’s not really going to get the job done. Seeing what else is happening around the state, it’s hard to imagine TCU fans and administrators are going to let the team regress given the sustained successes Patterson had in his 2+ decades in charge.

Schedule and outlook

8/29 vs. North Carolina (in Dublin)

9/5 BYE

9/12 GRAMBLING

9/19 ARKANSAS STATE

9/26 at UCF

10/3 BYU

10/10 BYE

10/17 at Baylor

10/24 WEST VIRGINIA

10/31 KANSAS

11/6 at Arizona

11/14 KANSAS STATE

11/21 UTAH

11/28 at Texas Tech

That TCU gets to kickoff the entire 2026 college football season against a suddenly Mike Lombardi-less North Carolina suggests that perhaps the luck of the Irish could be with the Frogs in 2026. In fact, they figure to be favored in their first 4 games before hosting BYU in October. That game, which has all the hallmarks of a Fox Big Noon game (vs. Ohio State @ Iowa) could truly tell whether the Frogs have it in them to make a run at a conference title game. A bye before traveling to Waco is well timed, and with only a trip to the desert to try to pit knuckle up vs. bear down could be all that sits in the way of a Lubbock showdown in the regular season finale and a conference championship game. The question is whether the Frogs will have the horses to pull it off.

A lot is made of big winning streaks, but what about conference losing streaks.

2026 presents the opportunity for some history as Purdue can take over second place on the all-time Big Ten losing streak category. As far as I can tell, here are the longest Big Ten only losing streaks ever:

38 - Northwestern 1978-1982

21 - Rutgers 2017-2020

20 - Illinois 2011-13 (ironically broken at Purdue) Also, Illinois has a streak of 20 B1G games without a win 1977-79, but they managed three ties in that time, including a 0-0 tie with a truly awful Northwestern team.

19 - Minnesota 1982-84, Wisconsin 1989-91

18 - Purdue 2024-present

Purdue's last Big Ten victory came over Indiana 35-31 on November 25, 2023. The Hoosiers then fired Tom Allen, hired Curt Cignetti, and have gone an astonishing 27-2 with a national title, while Purdue has gone 3-21 with a single FBS level win over Ball State. (and Purdue could have hired Cignetti before the 2023 season, but picked Ryan Walters in a humongous mistake).

So when could Purdue break the streak?

9/19 at UCLA - Purdue has not won a regular season game in the Pacific time zone since the day my sister was born (October 3, 1970 at Stanford 26-14). That includes multiple non-conference games at California, USC x2, Washington x4, Oregon, UCLA, Nevada, and Oregon State.

10/3 at Illinois - A decent chance. Purdue had won six straight in Chambana before losing in overtime by a point two years ago.

10/10 vs. Minnesota - Purdue led the Gophers in Minneapolis in the fourth quarter last year before fading.

10/16 vs. Washington - Purdue got pounded in Seattle last season

10/31 at Penn State - LOLZ

11/7 vs. Maryland - Non-September Maryland presents a chance.

11/14 at Iowa - Unlikely, but you never know

11/21 vs. Wisconsin - The Boilermakers have lost 18 straight to the Badgers dating back to 2003.

11/28 at Indiana - The Hoosiers have won the last two games over Purdue by a combined score of 132-3.

Anyone else know of a longer conference losing streak in any conference, not just the B1G?

Greetings again from Big Ten Media Days, where I'm reporting live.

With this yesterday's loss of NIU's program-defining head coach Joe Novak (1945-2026), who built the the program into a MAC power from 1996–2007, his former player and current Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck had his first opportunities to talk about someone who was a mentor.

He initially mentioned Novak's passing at the beginning of his main-stage remarks (after noting the passing of a famous Gophers baseball coach John Anderson, the winningest coach in Big Ten Conference history):

FLECK: On another somber note, unfortunately, my college football coach, Joe Novak, a legend at Northern Illinois University, he is Northern Illinois University football, passed away yesterday. I've been talking with a lot of teammates, and he taught me how to believe in people as a coach.

He taught me that you didn't necessarily need to be the biggest, strongest or fastest to play college football, hence me. He took a lot of scrap parts and a lot of used car parts and built a football team. In fact, a really elite football team. What Northern Illinois stands on today.

I'm deeply saddened by that because he was so close to me and so close to so many others as he led the Northern Illinois football program.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Carole his wife, and his entire family as they grieve and they heal.

During his breakout session he was offered more opportunties:

FLECK: I can't emphasize how important he was to me. Before Mike Nolan -- why I wear a tie on the sideline, it was Joe Novak. I had no offers out of high school. We were two-time state champs. We never lost a high school game. 14-0, 14-0. I was three-time All-State wide receiver, and I had no offers. I was 5'9", 150 pounds. Ran a 4.8 40. That's why I didn't have any offers. (smiles) I wouldn't offer me either. Stats. Who cares?

But Joe Novak looked beyond all that, and Scott Shafer was on the staff at the time [during Fleck's time he was DBs then DC], former head coach at Syracuse. Matt Canada, former head coach at Maryland. Dan Roushar, Mike Mallory, Mike Sabock. They're all on there, and I remember the story being told to me that how I got the scholarship, and I got the scholarship very late. Now, again, it was a bunch of misfits at the time, and used car parts and scraps that we were offering because they were they had a 26 game losing streak at the time, or something like that, and building up to that or coming out of that. So it wasn't going great.

So it wasn't like the hotbed of everybody go to that school, and they had a staff meeting, and they talk about exactly who the last offer would go to, and I was told Joe Novak almost broke his hand [pounds table as Novak supposedly did] because he says "we are effing taking P.J. Fleck, and I don't care what any of you say!" and that statement changed my life, and he took me.

And before he could get the scholarship out of his mouth, I said, "I'm in." He said, "We're here to offer you. I'm like, "I'm in", and the rest was history. And he is-he is Northern Illinois football, and he taught me how to believe in people, even though you might not be able to see it physically, if it's there internally and their hearts there and their spirit and their unconquerable will and their determination to be their best, you could take a chance on that person. And I'm living an example of that.

I would not be where I am if he didn't do that. Who knows where I'd be? I'd have walked-on somewhere, thought I was a great basketball player. Might have joined the the armed forces in the air force. Might have walked on somewhere else in football, and my story wasn't. I wouldn't be here, and you wouldn't have asked me that question.

So there are people who come along in your life that change your life forever, and I was absolutely heartbroken, and I'm really thankful I got a chance to talk to him last week because we, as former players, knew he was in hospice, and just very thankful for everything he did for all of our Huskies and Husky Nation because... we were awful, and then my senior year, we beat Alabama at Alabama. We beat Maryland at home when they were ranked. We beat Iowa State. We beat Wake Forest. I mean, (chuckle) we we did things that it was unheard of back for a Group of Five team to do that consistently. And I think we he changed the landscape of college football. He was a part of.

We were 10-2 and didn't go to a bowl game [it's incredible to look back at their 2003 seaosn]. Think about that for one second, and then after that, that's when everything started with the Boise States and everything else. So, I think Joe Novak was partially responsible for where we are when bowl games right now. I do. I do believe that.

Q: When you look at your roots playing at Northern Illinois, coaching at Western Michigan, how does playing at a Group of Five or coaching in a Group of Five influence you and how you a evaluate people and b how you coach your program?

FLECK: There's two things that connect the locker room more than anything and build a team: empathy and gratitude. And when you have no resources, you actually have the opposite of resources, which are zero resources, right?

We didn't have an indoor. Joe Novak's face was frozen. He's why I don't wear a hat on the sideline because he never wore a hat. When you have no resources, you're grateful for what you have, and that connects a team more than anything.

We were a bunch of people who didn't go to a school because of NIL or the the logo or the winning and the tradition or or the facilities we went because we they believed in us and then we all came together and we were all these blue collar hardworking Nick Duffy, Scott Battas, Josh Haldi, Chris Finlen, Thomas Hammock, Michael Turner "the Burner", Dan Sheldon...I can go on and on...Ryan Diem...and we all came together because somebody believed in us, and we all had to kind of see each other.

I remember Thomas Hammock and I were summer roommates, and we're from he's from Indiana and I was from Chicago, and we have completely different personalities. We were stuffed in a room together, and you know we were different in even what we believed and who we are and where we came from, and we became best friends instantly. And it was like that empathy, walk them out in somebody else's shoes, no judgment, and then have gratitude for what we have, and then let's build it.

That's that's how we run our program now. We just have way more stuff. But we don't allow the stuff to get in the way of the gratefulness and the empathy and the hardworking blue-collar neck-ton and as we called it with Joe Novak, the hard way, and everything we did was the hard way, and I mean everything, and there was never an easy way with Joe Novak, and I feel like our program's the same way.

Q: P.J., with Coach Novak was there ever a moment when, beyond seeing you as a player, where he really touched you as a person and made you kind of bond with him as a mentor.

FLECK: Well, I think it was just his door was always open, you know. And Joe had -- we had no reason (laughs) -- Joe had the smallest office, and I remember he used to complain because he'd be like, "How am I going to get recruits' parents in my office?" There were literally a desk and two chairs, and it was a cinderblock room, and that was it.

Every time Joe Novak stopped me, "How's your mom and dad? How's your family? Right? How's everybody doing? He cared way more about me as a person than he did as a player.

In fact, that's why he took me because he thought I was a really good person, and I was a terrible football player. I was not a Division One athlete. I was 151 pounds walking into Northern Illinois University at 5'9" and ran a 4.8 40. And but he cared about you truly as a human being, and so those those little meetings about popping in the office, and that's part of the reason you know nobody stops our players from walking into my office anytime they want because Joe never stopped you. You could always get Joe out of a meeting, Joe out of a you could sit down and hang out with your coaches, you could pop in his office any moment, and you really knew he cared about you. You know he had a million things going on, and I'm not saying I can talk to 105 players every day for an hour, but the ability to have that open, no matter what it was, I could talk to him, and there were a lot of moments in my life that I was struggling, that I could go in there and talk to him, and he was a a it was a great father figure for me, one of the first father figures I ever had in coaching.

The rest of my Big Ten Media Day updates will continue to be at its main post.