B1G Girls Do Cry

By now you’ve heard that Bret Bielema and Mark Dantonio are a couple of giant babies, each complaining to some degree about the way Urban Meyer recruits.  Dantonio called Meyer “unethical” for doing what every other Big Ten coach–including the head Spartan himself–does, namely recruiting kids they would like to have play on their football teams.  Bielema stepped it up a notch, because he’s the Earl of Douchebury, flat out accusing Meyer of “illegal” tactics and even asking Daddy Alvarez to escalate his concerns to Big Ten chief Jim Delany.

To Alvarez’s credit (wow that was hard to type guys), he basically turned the whining around his head coach, declaring that Meyer’s aggressiveness is not unscrupulous, a thinly-veiled way of lighting a fire under Bielema’s lazy recruiting strategy.

I imagine that most of you are like me, and find Dantonio’s participation in this Lifetime movie to be more surprising than Bielema’s.  As a Buckeye fan with fond memories of Dantonio’s suffocating defenses, I have always cheered for his teams after he moved on (unless they were playing us, of course).  I admired him for his no-nonsense demeanor and occasional major risk-taking in games.  Meanwhile, Bielema is Bielema; this is what he does.

If you hadn’t seen it, you would have never guessed that these were the two coaches who faced off in the conference championship game last season.  Oh wait, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  Look at it from their perspective:  the Big Ten has just been divided in such a way that there are essentially three “powers” in each division.  Chances are that some combination of those teams (Michigan, Michigan State, and Nebraska vs. Ohio State, Penn State, and Wisconsin) will be featured in 90% of the Big Ten title games we witness.

So what does Dantonio see?  A Nebraska team that will still take a couple of years to adjust their new environment coached by a guy who is perpetually fighting the urge to FINISH his own players Mortal Kombat-style, and a Michigan team that had a nice turnaround under new coach Brady Hoke but still didn’t beat “Little Brother.”  The future was wide open.

And Bielema was probably just downright schoolgirl-giddy.  Both of his primary divisional nemeses had just lost their legendary head coaches to scandal.  It is still unlikely that Penn State will recover any time soon.  Things were going to be so easy for him: cruise through the Leaders, then tangle with Sparty every year for the BCS spot.

Then Urban Meyer showed up with a hungry staff looking to add a little spark to what was at the time a decent but not special recruiting class.  And then the kids started flipping like it was Cirque Du Soleil up in here.  If you think Penn State’s Bill O’Brien has been silent on the issue because he doesn’t care or is too preoccupied with the Patriots, you’re wrong.  He’s just trying to make it to Sunday without Meyer turning Gronkowski.

Finally, if there was any doubt as to the effect this would have on Meyer:

“You’re pissed because we went after a committed guy? Guess what, we got 9 guys who better go do it again. Do it a little harder next time.” – Urban Meyer

(h/t Brandon Castel @ theOzone.net)