2025 College Football Thread

[JWags85]

He had 1 whole conference win in 3 of his last 4 years. That's an entire recruiting cycle. And he oversaw Hazing U.

Barnett won a lot at Northwestern, Walker did A-OK, and yes, Coach Hazy did well before the wheels fell off, too. Since the mid-90s, NW hasn't been the Rick Venturi Mildcats.

You're doing an absurd overselling of Fitzgerald's extreme fade at the end of his run. Not just 2 years. 3 of 4 + Hazing.

Randy Walker was 37-46 and had 1 season over .500...definitely A-OK. Gary Barnett was 35-45, had 2 really good years and then faded. Had 2x as many 3 or less win seasons as winning years in 7 years in Evanston. Definitely won A LOT. His last year he was 0-8 in the B10 and still got hired by Colorado and was in consideration for Texas.

That 1995 Barnett team was probably the best NW team of all time, an absolute thunderbolt out of nowhere.  But everything about Fitz's total resume at Northwestern completely eclipses both Walker and Barnett, it's not even a debate without a bias pushing the agenda.

Again, how you feel about the hazing colors the argument but I was speaking to specific on field results.  Fitz had bad/underachieving 2 year stretches followed by a great year multiple times in his career.  That last 1-11 team still had multiple young future NFL players that helped them to 8-5 the next year and he got a MAJOR DC hire to finally replace Hankwitz after a few years.    But I get it, you feel the hazing should have banned him from coaching forever and thus he's only rehired cause he's white (cause we really needed another thread to go there) not cause his resume could have gotten the MSU job easily anytime post Dantonio. At least be honest about it.

[Pakuni]

Randy Walker was 37-46 and had 1 season over .500...definitely A-OK. Gary Barnett was 35-45, had 2 really good years and then faded. Had 2x as many 3 or less win seasons as winning years in 7 years in Evanston. Definitely won A LOT. His last year he was 0-8 in the B10 and still got hired by Colorado and was in consideration for Texas.

That 1995 Barnett team was probably the best NW team of all time, an absolute thunderbolt out of nowhere.  But everything about Fitz's total resume at Northwestern completely eclipses both Walker and Barnett, it's not even a debate without a bias pushing the agenda.

Fitzgerald did fine work at Northwestern, but I wouldn't go nearly as far as to suggest his resume matches Barnett's.
Fitz took over an entirely different Northwestern program than the one Barnett did, from facilities, to the stadium, to record of success, to the support of the university, alumni and fans. Northwestern was easily the worst major-conference program in the country when Barnett took over, and perhaps the worst program overall. They'd won 24 conference games in the previous 20 seasons combined, under five different coaches. In 13 of those 20 seasons, they won two games or fewer. They hadn't had a winning record since 1971 and hadn't played in a bowl since 1948.

Fitzgerald took over a program that had gone to a bowl 5 of the previous 10 years, and finished the season .500 or better five times over that span. He won more consistently than Barnett, but that was only made possible by Barnett's resurrection of the program. Twenty years from now, if someone asks who was the coach that had the most impact on Northwestern football in modern history, Barnett will be the correct answer.

I'd liken it to O'Neill, Crean and Buzz at MU. Buzz had the most sustained success of the three, but the other two rescued the program from potential irrelevancy and made Buzz's success possible.

[MU82]

Randy Walker was 37-46 and had 1 season over .500...definitely A-OK. Gary Barnett was 35-45, had 2 really good years and then faded. Had 2x as many 3 or less win seasons as winning years in 7 years in Evanston. Definitely won A LOT. His last year he was 0-8 in the B10 and still got hired by Colorado and was in consideration for Texas.

That 1995 Barnett team was probably the best NW team of all time, an absolute thunderbolt out of nowhere.  But everything about Fitz's total resume at Northwestern completely eclipses both Walker and Barnett, it's not even a debate without a bias pushing the agenda.

Again, how you feel about the hazing colors the argument but I was speaking to specific on field results.  Fitz had bad/underachieving 2 year stretches followed by a great year multiple times in his career.  That last 1-11 team still had multiple young future NFL players that helped them to 8-5 the next year and he got a MAJOR DC hire to finally replace Hankwitz after a few years.    But I get it, you feel the hazing should have banned him from coaching forever and thus he's only rehired cause he's white (cause we really needed another thread to go there) not cause his resume could have gotten the MSU job easily anytime post Dantonio. At least be honest about it.

Buried his head in the sand while his players were getting brutalized. PLUS he won 1 conference game 3 of his last 4 years. At least be honest about it, Wags!