Michigan's New Weightroom
- Thread starter tksirius
- Start date
judzeehawk
Well-Known Member
Nothing amazing.
Anything built within the last 5 yrs is going to be pretty darn nice. And yet if you built something 5 yrs ago compared to just finishing something today the 5 yr old one will be outdated just about. Just how it is. Northwestern from what I'd seen has a heck of a new setup right on the lake. That may be a game changer for them.
Maybe he can trick them into thinking it is the Pacific!!! Cold frickin winds off that baby in the winter.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Is Iowa's maize and blue with a big M on the wall? Thought not.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Those guys are all gonna have huge traps.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Northwestern's is amazing, but the problem with Lake Michigan is that once the Lake cools down by about the 3rd week of October until the weather warms up in April, it ain't much to look at. Fitz needs to get all the officials scheduled for like the last 2 games in September or the first or second game in October. If you go there while the Lake is still warm and the trees have just started to turn, it really is amazing.
Well for what Northwestern had all those years prior this can only help them. Any kid that was going Love or hate Fitz he's got a heck of a program going on over there. To say they are keeping the heat on Iowa along with Wisky would be an understatement. They along with Nebraska going forward I'm afraid can be huge thorns in our side
Yeah, that's a lot of trap bars.
I feel like Iowa's players deadlift like this
https://giphy.com/gifs/vKG9BVGuI8Pa8
Edit: How do you put a giphy in this thing?
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
They are hobbled by their admission standards. They are getting crushed by schools like Stanford and Notre Dame (though both give exceptions if the aggregate of the team stays above the threshold). Recall Iowa got Faith E. from NU when he missed their cutoff by a fraction of a percent. They just don't budge.
That's sort of been our saving grace over the years with them. Gotta hand it to them with that always having been there they do pretty well.
hawkdrummer1
Well-Known Member
Once you get to a certain level, the facility matters less than the people inhabiting it. Most of the D1 programs are at that level, others are in "if you wanna play you better pay" mode and are upgrading...like Purdue.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Yep, that's the downside to the TV money for a program like Iowa. The really big programs like Texas, Bama, OSU, etc. are always gonna have the nicest toys. The next cut of programs like Iowa, Wisconsin, Georgia, Tennessee, etc. where you have a rabid fan base that gets fleeced for huge donations for tickets has the powder to play pretty close to the big boys. But when you add in these absurd media rights contracts, suddenly programs like Purdue that were selling 99 cent tickets a few years ago are able to try to buy their way into the club with the likes of Iowa and Wisconsin. At least within the P5, it's harder for the "upper middle class" programs to distinguish themselves from the proles.
hawkdrummer1
Well-Known Member
With many programs trying to "buy their way up"...like Purdue, ISU, and others....are we do for a market correction? If Matty Campbell (for example) can't bring a steady pattern of success to Moo U, or if he does and bolts in a year or two... does a program see its stock crash? Have the ADs leveraged them so deep that it's unsustainable? ...particularly if TV revenues slip. Or is it a flawed metaphor?
Gimme your best analysis, OK4P
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
I don't know how much debt these programs are taking on to finance these renovations. But there will be a day of reckoning. BTN revenue has steadily gone up, but I think that is largely a function of them growing the footprint for in market subscribers. At some point, that is going to start to drop with all the cord cutting and fights like the Comcast fight right now.
But here's the thing, NCAAF sports is in the aggregate a zero sum game. The aggregate w/l % is .500. No more, no less. Programs at the top will get shots at the title and a good, but not historically great, program like Clemson might see a one year or few years of blips up. Programs on the outside looking in like Iowa, Wisconsin, MSU, Georgia, etc. might get their shot, but the odds of any of those programs winning three straight games of progressively increasing difficulty at the end of the year are extremely remote so it will take years of being there and then a fluke to win. Lower tier programs like Indiana, Iowa State, Kansas, Virginia, Vanderbilt, etc. are never ever ever going to even have a crack at it. So while they'll spend a lot thinking they have suddenly gained a competitive advantage, they really haven't gained anything except maybe another win or two for a short period because remember, it's a zero sum game. You gotta take the W away from someone and Iowa State ain't gonna perpetually displace Texas or Oklahoma no matter what they do on facilities or coaching. See, e.g. Oklahoma State and their facilities and coaching that T. Boone purchased.
As TV money goes flat or drops and football wanes in popularity (see, e.g., current student sections) you'll see schools start to retrench toward their academic missions. Maybe the more proper analogy is that it is the stock market in a bull market. You look at Iowa State's "stock" today versus 2000 and you'd say "wow, this sure has gone up" but the problem is everyone else's has as well. It's a fallacy of composition problem - a middling program tries to emulate a successful program and this plays out over all P5 teams and no one is made relatively better off other than (i) the contractors who build facilities, (ii) the architects who design them and (iii) the coaches and AD hangers on who have convinced the schools that they are Maestros deserving of 7 figure paychecks for mediocrity because the budget has become bloated.
hawkdrummer1
Well-Known Member
Interesting take. So, a follow up question. Iowa went from a perennial loser pre-1980 to a perennial winner and occasional National player since ...going solidly from the lower quartile to the upper quartile in D1...and we've stayed there. Toss out a few names of schools that we might have "replaced" or that slid the opposite way when our position elevated. (understanding that it's not a simple 1-to-1 exchange) Purdue? Minnesota?
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
I'm too young to answer that, but perhaps no one. Iowa's rise was a result of a sea change in rules around scholarship limits and Hayden Fry's foresight as to how those would change the landscape. From 1969-1981 the Rose Bowl was exclusively a Michigan or OSU affair and the little 8 meant absolutely nothing in the conference, so I don't know who the tallest midget was - it probably doesn't matter. Iowa and Illinois both rose to prominence in the early '80's by getting good enough to finally knock off the two top dogs. MSU had one good year when they had that excessively 'roid-filled team. Then, Wisconsin cracked the code and punked Iowa and Illinois as the top of the "little 8" and managed to beat the big dogs occasionally and put together a good run of Rose Bowls when Alvarez got there and they are probably the premier "second tier" program in the country today (maybe Clemson still qualifies as second tier - I'd probably put them in the top tier bince they have 2 national titles in my lifetime).
Barring a drastic change to the landscape like a further revision to scholarship limits or maybe a rule that teams can pay 25 players or something like that which would further diversify talent, there is almost nothing you can do to change your long term relative standing while maintaining compliance with NCAA rules. You can get lucky on a splash hire, but 90+% of lower tier schools will not be able to retain a great coach if Michigan, OSU, Alabama, Florida, Texas, etc. come calling when they have a vacancy.
It's really unfortunate, I love the week to week variability of college football - you can have a game like ISU knocking Okie State out of the title game or the games in the past 10 years where Iowa has beaten national title contenders like PSU, OSU and Michigan, but the macro picture is very frustrating because the top teams are just invincible over the course of a season even if they might drop a game during the season. Even when MSU got to the playoffs, they got curb stomped by 'Bama. The talent gap between the top of the first tier and the top of the second tier is enormous.
trj
Well-Known Member
They don't budge even a little? All the prominent alumni, you mean to tell me that their kids can't get a wink and a nod?