Mike Wright to NU
- Thread starter Medill '03
- Start date
For the record, I still don't lock my door.
But yes, I totally do get it - this is where the game is now. It make perfect operational sense and I don't fault the players or coaches. Just like if a player were to leave us for a $1 million offer to play somewhere else and they say, "this is a business decision I'm making for my family..." it's where we are.
Don’t think that’s the case. Lujan can score points, now has some at least decent offensive skill personnel. Still probably an OT short of feeling decent on the OL, but not too too far off.
I could not share your honest opinion to any greater degree. It is really unfortunate what the college game is becoming.
I am not quite as thrilled with the move as you appear to be. Our most recent free agents at least were proven starters. I must only conclude our NIL war chest was not up to the task in the current market. I wonder how long it will be before the fan base chides management for not paying more in free agency.
Precisely. Our QB turnover and uncertainty is a hole we dug for ourselves. (the coaching staff actually)
This is not just our problem. 43 of 69 P5 schools started a transfer QB last year, which included us. It is happening again this year. I like the redistribution of QBs. We picked up two good ones in the last 5 years that gave us winning records. But yes there were the ones who did not turn out as desired. Hopefully Wright will be good for our system. If we can put together an OL, the team will be fun to watch. I do hope we develop QBs from high school going forward but we are in the same boat as the majority.
We could never compete for the very top high school players even before NIL. Either they could not meet enrollment standards or they wanted a bigger stage to show their talent. But remember we get the same big media check that all B1G schools get regardless of our fan base. We will be seen by a wider audience than ever before. It is why we have nice things. I think NiL changes college sports but I cannot yet conclude it puts us in a bad position. How much more money do we get over Stanford and Duke or any school not in the SEC or B1G? It will make a difference in the next ten years and I think our NIL will be competitive enough. It’s a lot of hope, but my guess is we can bring in graduate transfers that could never get in our undergrad program. So experience players who can immediately start. At least that is my hope.
But for how long? The duration of the current TV contract? If college football embraces free agency, then what in the long run makes NU any more attractive than Stanford? Or Boisie State? Or Fresno State?
At some point our tradition gets trumped by the numbers. We will be playing in a downsized stadium built principly for musical acts while others will draw more in attendance and NIL dollars from larger alumni bases and regional fans.
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I think this is especially good if we are playing at the lake side and the winds are whipping.
I guess I must be missing something. We exchanged one mediocre QB for another.
Hooray.
Why are we supposed to be delighted about this?
Smaller stadiums are happening everywhere. It is a product of the enhanced home experience being better for the casual fan. The NFL stadiums are getting smaller too. The concept is to have a better experience for those corporations who buy the luxury boxes. Our tradition was a program with the longest losing streak and decades of bad football. I don’t long for those days.
What attracts people to NU is what always attracted them to NU. A good education (NIL is not going to make all D1 athletes rich fir life), a chance to play in the B1G with coast to coast media coverage, and enough alum contributing to NIl that can make us competitive. So, yes we will have the edge over non-P2 schools.
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I said "thrilled" because it affirmed Braun and Lujan did in fact have an iron in the fire - it wasn't just a matter of not promising Sullivan the starting job beyond "we're not sure yet if it's you or Lausch." Braun definitely earned my trust last season and Lujan is clearly good at running an offense.
I do genuinely fear that I may not be a fan of college football 10 years from now. CFB is the only sport I watch - I don't care for pro sports for a lot of the reasons we're all a little uneasy about NIL right now, and I don't see it leveling off any time soon. The numbers don't lie - it's clear many if not most programs will be thrift shopping every off season now, especially for QBs. It is what it is.
Because maybe Lujan and Braun know what the hell they’re doing? They happen to have won a handful of national championships between the two of them, so they’ve earned some slack in my book. Wright is better at this point than Sully.
Lujan's offense runs the ball and then exploits the reaction of the defense with play action passes and shots down the field. This new QB can absolutely fly! He will greatly enhance our run game with zone read runs and veer reads. We have not had these possibilities in forever!!! Definitely keeping the backside of all defenses at home and honest. 22.1 mph speed in the open field is amazing. Go 'Cats, a new era of offense. Best of luck.
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll never forget the combination of Colter and Venric Mark. The speed we had on the edge was the envy of the Big 10: Michigan and OSU respected the heck out of it. With Wright and Henning on the roster among others, I'm stoked to see what the O looks like next year. And even if Wright isn't a gunslinger, it is likely he has more throwing ability than Kolter did.
Henning is a really interesting name to mention. Certainly was mentioned as a do-everything type last season, but didn’t hit any home runs in the running game.
Kain Colter and Venric Mark formed the most fun offense I’ve seen at NU — ahead of even the 2000 group. A big play possibility every time those two were together.
I don’t know that Henning has true game-breaking speed, but I imagine he’ll get lots of chances.
They're completely different types of players though.
We probably have a more realistic chance of winning games with a player like Wright even if one considered their overall capabilities to be similar.
Tradeoff feels reasonable to me since Lujan is likely to build a fitting offense.
6 concerts and 7 football games. Also, the new stadium is being downsized to reduce the supply of tickets and thereby create demand and the ability to increase ticket prices and layer in seat licensing revenue.
I initially thought you were referring to Jason Wright and Noah Herron, but that you butchered the spelling like Turk
You have gotten so used to inept offenses that haven’t innovated with the times. We all have to a certain extent. I’m not sure that Lujan is the second coming of Mike Leach but my hope is that he’s going to do some things on the offensive side of the ball that we haven’t seen at NU since Walker was running the program. College football in 2024 all but demands innovation on offense and I for one am excited to see how the Lujan experiment plays out. Give the dude a season or two.
"Northwestern recruited Wright out of high school in 2020. He took an official visit to Evanston in December of 2019 but ultimately chose Vanderbilt."
Wondering if he left Vandy for Mississippi State after 3 years before he got his undergrad diploma. I hope not.
Wright now transfers back as a grad student. I guess he will miss being the smartest student on campus.
For all the Fitz/Bajakian haters, Wright said pretty clearly that Lujan and Braun were the main reason he chose NU.
Glad he did.
Wondering if he left Vandy for Mississippi State after 3 years before he got his undergrad diploma. I hope not.
Wright now transfers back as a grad student. I guess he will miss being the smartest student on campus.
For all the Fitz/Bajakian haters, Wright said pretty clearly that Lujan and Braun were the main reason he chose NU.
Glad he did.
I think we’re going to see a very different offense with Lujan and Wright. The running game (both RB and QB) may be much more dynamic which will be exciting, but I hope Wright has a good enough arm for the downfield passing game that definitely helped us win games last year.
Yeah guy, that’s why I said mostly. Let’s name championship QBs who didn’t transfer (JJ, Bennet, Tua, Trevor).
There are a ton of top qbs from elite teams that were transfers. Penix, Ewers, Fields to name a few. Elsewhere in this thread, someone pointed out that a majority of p4 teams had transfer QBs (including NU)
Yeah, I made a point that if you look at the rosters of the teams that make the playoffs regularly (ga, bama, osu Clemson etc) their rosters are largely players they recruited out of high school. They use the portal to fill in gaps (including QB). Some doofus mentioned Burrow to refute the point. I’ll chalk it up to poor reading comprehension.
I disagree. Correlation is not causation. Just because the very top team in certain years had a recruited QB doesn't mean you have to in order to succeed. Until the system changes, most people will have a transfer QB. There is enough money, enough freedom and enough emphasis on the QB that it will take a while to settle in.
What's to say that if Aidan Gray wins the job next year, and does well, that he doesn't transfer out.
Georgia had 24 transfers this year. I’ll excuse Alabama because of new coach, but they had 39. Ohio State had 25. Only Clemson has managed to have the same number of transfer as us with 12. So most of those regular playoff teams have seen their rosters depleted. Isn't that one reason Saban retired?
His point is baseless, if he has a point.
QB transfer all the time, including many of the best one’s.
Whatever. Since more than just me take issue with the comment, reading comprehension indicates that there are more than just me as a doofus.
Saban retired because roster management is now a 24/7 365 day job and he is 72 years old.
Again, the elite teams build their rosters thru high school recruiting and supplement through the portal. Bud Elliot does the work for me. His blue chip ratio does not include transfers and the teams at the top recruit HS at the highest level.
I don’t get it. Your point seems to be that elite teams build their roster from high school recruits and retain them. We do the exact same thing with a much higher retention rate. So we are doing what elite teams do. If your point is that the elite teams get elite high school recruits, that has always been true. So, what are you trying to prove?
My point is that you can’t win at the highest level relying on transfers. That’s what i said about 10 posts ago!
They have 6 incoming transfers this year. Again, the vast majority of players on the elite teams were recruited out of high school, not picked from the portal. But you Keep banging on that drum.
In five years there will be 15 concerts per year. In ten years, after NU football is relegated, there will be 25 concerts. After this, more.
The stadium is being built principly to create a venue outside City of Chicago labor requirements and tax regimes, enabling talent affiliated with NU’s sports licensing partner IMG Learfield to book their performing artist talent so that all parties generate increased revenues and profit.
It’s hardly ridiculous. It’s NU’s plan for the future.
That survey NU fielded to season ticket holders a couple of years ago (the one that sought our opinion on about five forms of elite seating arrangements) was undoubtedly a test of the concept you suggest. I’m shocked that they got results from that survey that would encourage them to proceed. NU football is too big a risk to be the main draw in that kind of plan, given the potential (or likelihood per me) that NU doesn’t have a chair in the mega conference musical chairs game. For any chance to have the numbers work, they need to pair NU tickets with other big events (i.e. major concerts) to draw significant interest from corporations and other wealthy luxury box buyers.
We won’t be going back to the Dark Ages. Best case, we return to competing in a reconstituted Big Ten comprised of the likes of Purdue, Michigan State, Iowa and others who are relegated from the mega conference NFL minor league affiliate. In that circumstance, 1 of the three things you ascribe to NU in your last paragraph will remain. If we are fortunate.
You are beating the drum. Ohio State dumped 25 players who were their high school recruits into the portal. They then added 5 players who will start in the 22 positions including the quarterback. Sure they kept most of their very best recruits but they relied heavily on the portal to shape their team. They used the portal to get rid of players they don’t want, but you just looking at those 6 players they added and say they did not rely on the portal. It is BS. They are playing games with people who they recruited out of high school.