Big Ten coaches walk tightrope of public criticism

Football players and coaches go under the microscope every week — both by themselves in film study and, like it or not, by media that covers them. When they screw up or play poorly, they get asked about it. They know it's part of the deal.

What's rare — at any level — is for a coach or player to specifically name or point out an individual in the process of a critique. Those who consume football get used to hearing 'we can do better,' and things of that nature.

So when Nebraska athletics director Shawn Eichorst comes out and says things like, 'The players have to do better. They have to prepare better for next week. Nobody's feeling sorry for anybody. There's no excuses to be made,' to the Omaha World-Herald and adds, 'We've had fans who have had doubts since we brought (head coach) Mike (Riley) on board. But you've got to win ballgames, and nobody knows that more than him,' after the Huskers lost to Northern Illinois, it raises eyebrows.

When Ezekiel Elliott used his postgame media availability after a loss to Michigan State in 2015 to say, 'I'm disappointed in the play-calling. I'm disappointed in the situations we were put in and I wish it all played out differently,' and later adds, 'I deserve more than 11 carries. I really do. I can't speak for the playcaller. I don't know what was going on,' it raises eyebrows.

How productive those comments are remains to be seen in the case of the former, and only caused controversy to grow in the case of the latter.

The publicly-pointed remarks are rarer in college football than the NFL, but those in the college game notice when it happens at the next level.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz didn't reference them by name, but he said on the Big Ten teleconference Tuesday he heard talk radio discussing New York Giants' head coach Ben McAdoo's criticism of quarterback Eli Manning after a poor performance on Monday Night Football. Calling out an individual player has never been Ferentz's style — former color commentators are a different story — and Ferentz cited the situations of said players.

Ferentz didn't like how Akrum Wadley was penalized last Saturday for — in the eye of the referee — celebrating a touchdown a little too early. The evidence for that came in Wadley sitting out the rest of that series and the next one, and then in the postgame, when he said, 'I just told him he's too good of a player to do that. Close, not close, but why give anybody an opportunity to have to make that decision? He's too good of a player for that.'

That was as clear as Ferentz has been in a long time on specifically critiquing something one of his players did on the field — and even that wasn't a situation where he took Wadley to task too hard.

'If I have something critical of one of their performances or attitudes, then I prefer I'm private about that and take care of things there, in that way,' Ferentz said Tuesday. 'You kind of resort back to what your mom taught you: if you can't say something nice about someone, you try not to say it. I think that's, at least when I try to talk about our players, that's kind of the approach I have.'

To what should be no one's surprise, many of his coaching counterparts across the Big Ten agreed.

Wisconsin's Paul Chryst said on the teleconference 'coaching is helping (players) grow,' and that reinforcement should happen after positive and negative performances. He said helping them understand why is more important than just knowing what went wrong. He said he and his staff have to 'know how to help them get it right,' and that involves how they're told.

Riley, who was a focus of what his AD had to say after the NIU loss, said Eichorst told him right after he gave the interviews what was said. Riley agreed with his boss, and didn't shy away from what was said.

But he's a professional, paid to do his job in a high-profile position. His players, by NCAA rule, are not. Taking them to task has to be done in a purposeful way, or the message could get lost.

Making an example out of someone publicly gets noticed for a reason — and at least from these Big Ten coaches — it's not the right reason.

'I suppose that's a very individual thing,' Riley said. 'When I'm talking about our team, I'm very thoughtful about that. I think I've very seldom ever singled out players or anything like that. I think it's something that I think you have to be very thoughtful about.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com