As a person who used to follow the PAC-12, and specifically USC and UCLA, pretty closely, I would have been shocked if Sark got any other head coaching job let alone this head coaching job. Sark was literally showing up to events and practices drunk. He was also a much maligned coordinator for the Falcons. Good for him getting his life back under control.

Can someone explain to me why this is happening?

Agreed ... he had some pretty bad problems off the field and was a mess at USC. Good for him getting another chance. Texas must have had him in mind for a while

Maybe they think there's a better chance of him turning things around quickly than starting over?

Makes no sense to me, but as a Buckeye fan - I'm good with it!

Oregon just had some bad luck on the kickoff

The Michigan Athletic Director must be an OSU grad.

I will witness his X. keep him here so Day can continue his dominance! I see more gold pants coming if he stays. He didn't do himself any favors this season IMO. Some other schools are getting to the point where they can give Wishigan a game and even beat them.

Good game between UNC and Texas A&M, tied 27-27, 5:00 minutes to go in the 4th

That went south in a hurry for NC.

He marched in and said, confidently, that he did not lose to tOSU this year ... and then ran tape of tOSU destroying Clemson. The highers up, being high as they are, thought this sounded great ... and worthy of a lifetime deal.

Four more years! Four more years!

Wait, wrong forum.

I asked Santa for this and I was good last year

My guess is money... they either have to extend him or fire him... and it's pretty costly to fire him... if they don't extend him then recruiting would be awful... the extension allows them to fire him easier next year and gives the appearance that he'll be there for recruiting...

I'm personally shocked they didn't fire him this year despite the cost...

Not sure how extending him for 4 years will make it less expensive to dump him.

I think i read the buyout is much less and there's less guaranteed money

Oklahoma's Rhamondre Stevenson has declared for the draft. Nick Chubb II...but bigger.

College career
Stevenson played at Cerritos College for two seasons before transferring to the University of Oklahoma.[1] In his first season at Oklahoma in 2019, he played in the first 13 games of the season before being suspended for the 2019 Peach Bowl.[2] He finished the season with 515 yards on 64 carries with six touchdowns. Stevenson returned from the suspension six games into the 2020 season.[3][4] He was named the MVP of the 2020 Cotton Bowl after rushing for 186 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries.[5][6]

I feel like that's a bit of a premature statement.

Not sure how accurate this will be, in the end, but plenty fun to read lol. See you next year, Jimbo, you still have a big lump coming for opening that fat pie-hole this summer.


COUCH: HARBAUGH PAY CUT TURNS MICHIGAN INTO BARGAIN BASEMENT PROGRAM

by GREG COUCH
4 days ago

Jim Harbaugh was the Ferrari your neighbor parks on the driveway for everyone to see. He was the three-carat diamond ring a friend shows off to overtake your party.

When Harbaugh came back to Michigan, he was there to coach, of course. But he was also brought in for show. Michigan was saying, “Look at us! Don’t look at Columbus, Ohio.’’

Michigan believes in the fiction that it has a long history as one of the nation’s elite college programs. It does not. But Harbaugh was the way to fool everyone — fans, boosters, recruits — that it’s true. And they needed to do it before Michigan faded away, like Nebraska.

I say this because reports are that Harbaugh is about to sign a five-year contract extension to keep coaching the Wolverines for $4 million a year. When he was hired six years ago, he got $8 million a year. The price tag was part of the sales pitch to the world. Now, he’ll be the 10th highest paid coach in the Big Ten. They even reduced his buyout, should Michigan decide to fire him.

Jim Harbaugh is on the clearance rack now. He’s day-old doughnuts. I was at the Jewel yesterday, a grocery store in Chicago, buying fresh orange juice. One of the bottles had a $2 off sticker, trying to get me to buy it before they just gave up on it and threw it away.

That’s Harbaugh at Michigan now. And it’s not going to work. Michigan needs to move on from Harbaugh now.

I’m not trying to ridicule him. I’m not spiking the football in joy over his failure. I’m here in Chicago, fully believing that he should be the Bears coach next year. He’s a former Bears quarterback, he coached the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl and developed quarterbacks. His coaching career has been more successful in the NFL level than at the college level.

Harbaugh has actually done a good job at Michigan, no matter what people seem to think. He brought Michigan back to a national level, one of the top 15 or 20 programs in America. Michigan was awful this year, but maybe after five good years, you cut a guy a break when his team stinks during a pandemic, when practice schedules and player availability are unknown.

But part of Harbaugh’s success has been his brashness. And that’s gone now. Now, he’s just some coach at Michigan. And to cut his salary in half — reports say that with incentives such as winning championships, he can still get back up to $8 million — is to put him in position to fail.

Believe me, I think that these salaries are outrageous in a public university system where English departments are filled with adjunct teachers being paid $4,000 per class with no benefits, and students have to take out six figures worth of loans that they’ll be paying off until they retire just to attend.

But for Harbaugh to be Harbaugh at the college level, he has to be obnoxious and he has to have an obnoxious salary, not one that is lower than the coach at the University of Illinois. This would be like moving the Royal Family out of Buckingham Palace into a two-bedroom flat, expecting tourists to keep coming.

On top of that, there are so many reports saying that Harbaugh was looking to leave Michigan and go back to the NFL. (Are you listening, Bears owners?) Supposedly, five NFL teams were interested. So Harbaugh was playing the field while stalling on Michigan’s offer.

Maybe, but if any team had made him an offer, it’s hard to see why he’d take a 50% pay cut to stay at Michigan.

Appearances matter, and it looks like Harbaugh was holding Michigan out as a second-choice, a fallback plan. When he came to Michigan, he made the program look like The Place to Be. Now it’s Plan B, and the school has just cut his salary in half and made it easier to fire him.

I’ve heard of better sales pitches to recruits.

Harbaugh was brought in to beat Urban Meyer at Ohio State. He hasn’t beaten Ohio State yet. Hardly anyone can. Meanwhile, Meyer is reportedly interviewing today with the Jacksonville Jaguars who might pay him $12 million a year to coach Trevor Lawrence.

Sorry, Jim. I know I’m calling for you to coach the Bears and that just comes with Mitch Trubisky at QB, if they bring him back.

But hey, Harbaugh would walk in the door at Soldier Field beloved and believed. There might even be Ferrari-like fireworks in Chicago to celebrate his homecoming. At Michigan now, he’s just a Chevy Spark.

https://www.outkick.com/couch-harbaugh-p...dNJfKL0b8O4zPIU

The Buckeyes are so far ahead of the Big Ten Schools in Talent that they need more Competition to be ready for NT Game Next Year ...

Some people may take that as arrogant, but there is a lot of truth to that statement.

Didn't intend to be arrogant Just stating facts

I have been saying it for a long time. The Big 10 doesn't do the Bucks any favors in the way of preparing them for bowl season. The Big 10 is weak.

The Bucks can match with any team in the country on a regular basis. The problem is they don't play enough tough games.
Every league is going to offer up some "automatic" wins, but it can't be pretty much every team, year in and year out.

There is no doubt in my mind if OSU played in the SEC, they would win their fair share of championships but they wouldn't just romp through the schedule as is now the case. The gap between the mid level teams and the top teams in the SEC isn't that great. Any one of those mid level teams can jump up and bite you even if you are on your game.

Just 2 years ago I would have strongly disagreed with this post, but the teams that were decent competition then have really fallen off. I don't think Northwestern and Indiana have replaced the likes of Michigan State, Wisconsin, Penn State and even Michigan of a couple years ago. We were not prepared to face what Alabama put on the field.

I was thinking the same thing, and I'm sure those programs will come around again, but the past few years it's been mainly Penn St and Wisconsin as far as any kind of challenge, and well, it hasn't really been one.

We won't magically see any team in our conference rise to any where the level of Alabama anyway. Maybe it's just hindsight of a very screwy season and "unchallenged" was just because we just didn't play much.

I guess, at the end of the day, we need Ichigan and State to return to some kind of prominence before we can feel like we really need to tighten the laces on Saturdays again.

And let's not ignore the elephant... "can't cover, can't tackle" will never win you a Championship.

SEC fans taking credit for bama is hilarious. The rest of that conference was absolute rubbish this year.

The Big Ten was not good this year. Indiana was a really really good team, Ohio State is Ohio State, and the rest of the conference was total trash, starting with Penn State and Michigan.

There have been years over the last decade where the Big Ten was incredibly good. Nobody will doubt that the SEC is the best conference most of the time, but it is top heavy just like every other conference other than the Pac-12 which isn't heavy anywhere.

Said it before, Ohio State not getting a full slate of games was more harmful to ohio state than helpful. They never really got a chance to develop and gel as a team. The Clemson win is an absolute shocker, and I think they were playing off motivation.