Big Ten does its thing, SEC does its thing

ROSEMONT, Ill. — During Tuesday's Big Ten athletics director meetings at the league headquarters, school officials and coaches met in suites above the lobby and then walked downstairs to speak with media.

It didn't feel as if there was measuring of what the Big Ten does vs. the Southeastern Conference within those walls. The never ending B1G-SEC discussion certainly took root downstairs when the topics turned to football recruiting, football schedules and satellite camps.

'I think there are a lot of times when conferences get put into buckets,' Michigan State athletics director Mark Hollis said. ' ... I don't view it as two buckets that are opposed to each other. They're from a different geography than ours and maybe the geography creates some of that perceived separation. We probably do things a bit differently because of that as much as anything else.'

Wisconsin athletics director Barry Alvarez didn't go into a regionalism debate specifically. He certainly could have. In the offseason, he lost successful defensive coordinator Dave Aranda to Louisiana State. Aranda made $520,000 in his third year at Wisconsin. He signed a three-year deal with LSU that starts at $1.3 million, nearly tripling his Wisconsin money.

And then there was Bret Bielema's departure for Arkansas in 2012. Bielema stated in no uncertain terms that assistant coach salaries were a constant battle for him at Wisconsin. Aranda's departure shows it remains an issue. LSU did, after all, triple Aranda's pay.

'If you have a good coach, you'd like to keep him,' Alvarez said. 'People look for opportunities. There are a lot of good coaches out there. You have to find a good fit into your program. It's not always about money. It's about quality of life, it's the type of people you're working with, the program you're with and the type of guys you're going to coach, community you're going to live in. All those things come into play. We try to treat our staff well and we always have a number of people who have choices when there are openings.'

The Badgers opened last season against SEC power and 2015 national champion Alabama at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. They'll open this season against LSU at Lambeau Field. In 2014, Wisconsin began the season against LSU at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas.

'I don't look at it as competition and measuring one league to another league,' Alvaraez said. 'I don't see that.'

Of course, this reaches into football recruiting. Nebraska athletics director Shawn Eichorst, a member of the NCAA Division I football oversight committee, has worked in the SEC and ACC. He talked about the role of the oversight committee.

'Today is a different day,' Eichorst said. 'The oversight committee has some authority and autonomy to try to bring fundamental fairness. The 'level playing field' thing is not a reality, but I think there's fundamental fairness. I don't think the geography, the mission of the institution and the resources should bound you by rule based on what you're doing across the country.

'It's a healthy debate and, hopefully, we can hunker down now that we've got the camp thing settled down a little bit, so we can talk about this comprehensively.'

Oh yeah, the camp thing. You'll recall that satellite camps were banned, with the SEC and ACC voting against, and, essentially, striking down Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh's camp incursion in the south. Last month the NCAA Board of Govenors overturned the ban, and now Harbaugh is on a tour, with camp stops in Australia, Las Vegas, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey (more than 30 camps overall).

Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel, who's Harbaugh's boss, by the way, is good with all of the camp stops, the number and the cost.

When Harbaugh sprung this on the college football world, SEC officials called them 'recruiting tours.' Manuel claimed that's not the case.

'I've had no conversations with Jim where he's said, 'My goal for this is to recruit,'' Manuel said. 'We know the majority, 95 or 98 percent, of the prospects in the country that we're going to recruit before he goes to one camp. To say this is about recruiting and put it in that light, it's not the perspective that he has and it's not the perspective that I think we should have on this.'

This is the first season for nine-game football schedules in the Big Ten, joining the Pac-12 and Big 12. The SEC and ACC remain at eight conference games. The Big Ten also enacted 'no FCS' attitude toward football schedules last summer. (Iowa plays two more — North Dakota State this season and Northern Iowa in 2018 — but those, for now, will be the last FCS games the Hawkeyes will schedule.) Some SEC schools schedule FCS opponents in November. The Big Ten didn't pull the FCS ban out of thin air.

'I think it'll be good for the league (nine games), I think our fans will really like it,' Alvarez said. 'One of the criteria we're mandated with is strength of schedule, it's important. Conference championships are important. Strength of schedule and who you're playing is very important.'

Eichorst said dates that keep football prospects from making visits in the spring of their junior years (when it's warm in cold-weather states) could be reviewed. The old call for an early signing period? That wasn't discussed Tuesday, but it's never far from the discussion.

'I've always been in favor of early signing,' Alvarez said. 'I think there are a lot of positives with early signing. You go all the way back to when I was coaching, that always came up. It seemed like the warm-weather schools were always against it. I've always been in favor of it.'

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