Several coaches in new-look Big Ten football need name tags, and at least two forms of identification

CHICAGO - Outside of Joe Paterno's presence, Big Ten football has never felt less familiar.

We had barely gotten used to Rich Rodriguez as Michigan's coach before he was fired last January. Jim Tressel, one of college athletics' rocks, had his Ohio State career buried under a rule-mangling landslide of his own making in Columbus.

This is the first year the two football dynasties have rolled out new coaches in the same year since 1897. Oddly, it's 114 years later and there still is no traveling trophy for Michigan-OSU. You call that a rivalry?

Indiana and Minnesota, schools that have never used the words “football” and “dynasty” in the same sentence, also brought new head coaches in Kevin Wilson and Jerry Kill.

Then, of course, there is everything-new Nebraska. Bo Pelini didn't just come into Chicago on the back of a turnip truck, and yes, some Nebraskans grow turnips. Pelini isn't a rookie, but he, Herbie Husker, and the rest of the Nebraska crew are Big Ten newbies.

So the look is fresh and different across the board, with division play to debut before the Big Ten's first league-title game. It almost is sufficient reason for the conference's new, unsightly “B1G” logo to be splattered all over the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, where fans will intersect with coaches and players at today's Kickoff Luncheon.

The volume of change was so startling here that one almost overlooked ancient one, Penn State's Paterno, quoting another old and famous guy.

“Socrates, 400 years B.C., said ‘The kids today are terrible, tyrants. They don't pay attention.' That's 2,500 years ago, OK?”

Funny, new league coaches Pelini and Brady Hoke of Michigan got all puffy Thursday when talking about the Big Ten's great academics, but neither invoked classical Greek philosophers.

Luke Fickell of Ohio State seemed to just want to put in his 15 minutes at the podium and not say anything that would haunt him. Fickell is 37 and has never before been a head coach. He couldn't be faulted if he were a bit nervous facing several hundred media people in one room.

“I had no time to sit and think,” Fickell said. “I had no time to feel sorry of any sort, to have a whole lot of emotion. The situation arose and obviously I had to stand up. I think that's what's been best for me, not to have the ability to sit down and think about the situation that's ahead, but hit the ground running, do what I know how to do best, and that's compete.”

You got the sense Fickell would have been happy had no one asked him about Tressel. Michigan State Coach Mark Dantonio felt no such awkwardness, but perhaps should have.

Dantonio called Tressel “a tragic hero.” Dantonio's intent was good, since he called Tressel his mentor and said Tressel had done a lot of good for a lot of people. But withholding information and lying to keep Buckeyes players on the field weren't some unhappy twists of fate a hero suffered.

About Tressel, Fickel merely said “We know we need to be who we are and continue to move forward and focus on the things we have, not the things we do not have anymore.”

In other words, and to use Chicago White Sox broadcaster Ken Harrelson's catch-phrase, he gone.

Hoke gave us a bit more bluster. He rebuilt the football programs at Ball State and San Diego State. He won't do so at Michigan, he says.

“I don't think we're rebuilding, period,” Hoke insisted. “I mean, we're Michigan. We've got kids who understand that they're Michigan.

“This might sound arrogant, and if it is, it is. We're Michigan. We have a global education. We're the winningest program in the history of college football.”

Those utterances probably made Ohio State fans snarl and smile simultaneously. Because they made Hoke sound as easy for the Buckeyes to dislike as ever.

Hoke closed his remarks to the media here with “Go Blue!” Pat Fitzgerald of Northwestern closed his with “Go Cats!” Wisconsin's Bret Bielema closed his with “On Wisconsin!”

I'd have preferred to hear more from Socrates via the philsopher Paterno.