Lebowski

This is awesome. Just the fact he already knew who he wanted to hire makes me smile. But reaching out to other ADs for advice makes me absolutely giddy. Dolson ain't effin around.

You can almost guarantee they'll be a better football player next season.

Some things to note. JMU's FBS conference recruit rankings have been at the bottom of the SBC. Just like IUFB. A few JMU transfers jumped from 3 to 4 stars after this year Coach Cig is 100% of an above .500 record his first season of taking over a new job I won't be surprised if Elijah Sarratt and Jalen Green transfers into IUFB. And every single player on IUFB's current roster will have a dramatic improvement in development. Folks like Tayven Jackson will benefit exponentially. So even if we aren't able to retain players that have entered the portal we'll still see improvement and a better product will be playing on the field 2024. But I do hope they rethink leaving the program now because they'll benefit in player development under a Coach Cig staff. My point being, player development is something that is a proven track record and follows Coach Cig wherever he coaches. I truly won't be surprised if we go bowling next year. However, I won't be disappointed if we don't. I will say this though, there are no guarantees because we are talking IUFB here.

I've never felt this optimistic for IUFB in a long time. I know that can change in a hurry. Coach Cig has his biggest challenge of his entire coaching career ahead of him, but I like that he's holding the keys to drive the IUFB bus. He'll get it rolling, one day at time. And I'm really happy about this. I'm happy Dolson made the decision to go and get this type of coach.

I'm a happy campier. Now let's get to work.

Yeah, Duke is the dark horse here. Big Ten is our saving grace.

Nor the conference.

Same team. I also recall how incredibly hot it was.

This happened after 1 successful covid year. We IUFB faithful are starving for this. We're here and ready to go.

If we finalize the Cig deal, I'm looking forward to seeing how it all played out. How things were negotiated, NIL, etc.etc. Something tells me Cig made some conditions with NIL money. Just a gut feeling. Because he's got something to prove and he probably needs some player upgrades to accomplish it.

Completely understand your point of view here. I think his biggest knock is his age. He got a late start at doing the whole HC thing. He's not our coach yet, so who knows.

I'll be really happy if we land Cig. IUP had a 4-10 conference record prior to Cig's arrival and in his first year they went 7-3. Elon had a 4-20 conference record and six straight losing seasons prior to Cig's arrival. They won 8 games his first season there. While at JMU he's always been 1st in the conference. Guys, this is a big effin' deal if we land this coach. I'm trying to stay calm about this because I don't want to get my hopes up. LOL!

He'll have a decent pool to choose from. He's an OG member of Saban's Bama crew, coached both Philip Rivers and Russell Wilson at NC State and is well respected among the coaching community. I'm betting Mike Shanahan joins him for sure. Ball St. grad and 2012 IUFB coach Bryant Haines will probably join him as well. Both have been with him since IUP.

Win. To win here in the Big Ten and give the middle finger to everyone that ever told him he's too old.

Yes sir. I would put all my chips on him to try to make a change at IUFB. I really hope we land this guy.

To be fair, he's got experience at both the worst and one of the best football schools in the conference. He might have just schooled Dolson on what is wrong with IUFB and how he'll make it a better place. Attaboy Dolson! He's my #1 out of all the names listed. A proven winner that creates cultures (notice the plural) of winning. Dude just knows how to win. Like he demands it and his teams just execute.

Winners. Winners pay that.

Ryan Day, Ohio State: $10,196,250 ($9,826,500) OC Brian Hartline $1.6 million DC Jim Knowles $1.957 million. DL Larry Johnson $1.167 million OL Justin Frye $1 million CB Tim Walton $1 million RB Tony Alford $772,500 S Perry Eliano $515,000 ST Parker Fleming $500,000 TE Keenan Bailey $400,000 QB Corey Dennis $412,000 Whoever gets hired will bring in his guys. Dolson isn't interviewing coordinator jobs. This is one of the major reasons I hope Candle is our guy. He'll bring in his guys, that already know the system (OF WINNING!). He'll hit the ground in a full blown sprint and shake some trees along the way. This is THE REASON I want an experienced HC that has a resume of winning to get hired. Even if it doesn't work out he'll at least already have a head start on things that most don't really take into account. If it's Chryst, he'll do the same. Hart and Frye will reach out to folks they trust and cherry pick folks to come along for the ride. They won't have that experience and hindsight of the duties of the job, but will be able to surround themselves with folks they trust. Regardless, going either route might be a homerun or a backwards K. All of this makes me wonder that Dolson wasn't able to sell IUFB to some of the names mentioned. It's a tough sell, especially to winners. They probably asked tough questions to Dolson where he failed the smell test. If that's the case, I'm almost certain money played a big role. Which doesn't make sense considering we just ponied up a large chunk of change to axe Allen. Whatever, it's IUFB. The other thought I have is Dolson had a target or two but didn't get any bites because it's IUFB. For example, it's possible Herman just doesn't want to coach here but was kind enough to go through the interview process. Bottom line, I hope the next coach hired wants to be here and has something to prove.

I'm starting to wonder if that 6-9 million dollar amount mentioned here is the total amount for both HC and assistant coaches? Just to put things into perspective, I did some searching for 2023 salaries of the Big Ten schools and here's what I've found. Source The dollar amount in parenthesis is the total amount allocated to assistant coach salaries. I could not find any info on PSU assistant coach salaries for some reason. I've included next year's schools as well. Both Northwestern and USC are private schools so their salaries are unknown. Ryan Day, Ohio State: $10,196,250 ($9,826,500) Mel Tucker, Michigan State: $10,015,350 (5,950,000) James Franklin, Penn State: $8,500,000 Jim Harbaugh, Michigan: $8,194,000 ($6,462,250) Luke Fickell, Wisconsin: $7,625,000 ($5,400,000) Kirk Ferentz, Iowa: $7,000,000 ($5,330,000) Dan Lanning, Oregon: $6,624,999 ($6,815,000) Bret Bielema, Illinois: $6,500,000 ($5,697,000) P.J. Fleck, Minnesota: $6,000,000 ($4,633,000) Chip Kelly, UCLA: $5,979,167 ($4,945,000) Matt Rhule, Nebraska: $5,500,000 ($5,515,000) Mike Locksley, Maryland: $5,500,000 ($5,075,000) Tom Allen, Indiana: $4,510,000 ($4,885,000) Kalen DeBoer, Washington: $4,200,000 ($7,525,068) Ryan Walters, Purdue: $4,000,000 ($4,915,000) Greg Schiano, Rutgers: $4,000,000 ($5,081,034) David Braun, Northwestern: unknown Lincoln Riley, USC: unknown IUFB's salaries seemed to be a bit off because after Bell was let go Osterman wrote an article saying Carey was earning $815k annually. So I'm not sure how accurate these are but it does provide you a bird's eye view of the conference money allocation. Overall IUFB is at the bottom of the barrel with both HC and assistant salaries. I was surprised to see DeBoer's salary so low. He's also paying his OC $2mil, which I believe was the highest paid coordinator in the conference. I wonder if that assistant pool is also part of DeBoer's own salary, much like what Allen did for Bell?

Does anyone know the budget for assistant coach salaries for IUBB? Like is it market value for a top tier program?

He got mentioned by me and some other cat on like page 20-50 or something. LOL. I was just throwing out coordinator names, since Lewis is being discussed. I guess my point was to point out there are plenty of other coordinators that have a more experienced resume than Lewis. It was more of a knock on Dolson than anything.

The same reason Gruden is? LOL!

So, it's not that he didn't win per se, it's the program he was coaching has a much more richer history than IUFB thus the reason you say he didn't win? Or is it you're just not a fan? Or is it his recruiting, or lack thereof? Serious question, how would you feel if he accomplish the exact same results at IUFB?

Define win. Because during his tenure (3 seasons) he went bowling 3 out of 3 and finished with a 21-15 record. I don't know about you, but for me at least, I would be on cloud nine if IUFB had his numbers while at Miami.