• Courting Joe Paterno

    Did you know in 1968 Don Canham’s first choice to replace Bump Elliott as head coach, ahead of Bo Schembechler, was actually Joe Paterno? JoePa was just in his third season at Penn State. Here's the story including an interview with Canham discussing the job search:

  • The Yost Gap Widens (even more)

    The Big Ten released its annual media guide today, including the all-time coaching records.  Thanks to scandals at Ohio State (and now Penn State) we know that the recognized W-records of a couple of the big name coaches have been in flux.  Some history for context: In 2010 I lobbied the Big Ten to change Yost’s all-time conference record wrong because they had included the years 1907-1916…when Michigan was not a member of the conference.  The B1G media brass conferred and then agreed.  They made the change and thus bumped Yost’s #1 overall conference record from an .833 winning percentage to .888 (to #2 Tressel’s .828).  In 2011, after the Ohio State scandal sent Tressel packing and vacated the entire 2010 season, I put the question out there of how the conference would treat Tressel’s all-time record on the official books given the scandal.   I suggested five potential scenarios: Based on today’s media guide (and if they published this previously I haven’t seen it)…we know that they went with option #2 above.  Tressel drops to .810: So they simply removed the 2010 wins, kept the Wisconsin loss, dropped the win % to .810 and kept Tressel on the list saying he met the 10-year minimum threshold.   Sure, it would have been nice to see him drop off behind Bo or…