Ad Disclosure
With news that former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer will co-teach a course at the university in the Fisher College of Business entitled, “Leadership and Character,” I scoured the archives (of my imagination) to unearth rejected courses proposed by other coaches and individuals in the conference. These courses were left on the cutting room floor to let these members of the B1G get back to the basics of football.
ACRON 101, 1 credit
Acronyms 101
University of Minnesota
Instructor: PJ Fleck
Learn the intricacies of conjoining clunky combinations of vowels and consonants to form acronyms to establish themes. You’ll find yourself the most satisfied after you learn to plaster such names on shirts and baseball caps so the inherent corniness of your efforts will take some of the glare away from an overall conference record of 5-13. AHRYS (acronyms hide records you’ll see). Course gets remarkably more difficult as it progresses into October and November.
SOUR 101, 3 credits
Sour Power
Michigan State University
Instructor: Mark Dantonio
Designed to help students cope with nonsensical failures early in the course, students will learn to bring others down to their level and engage in ugly battles that leave both parties unsatisfied. In the business of life and the business of business it’s worth it learn how to spoil any budding fun the competition may be having and that they provide to the public at large to benefit your overall success.
POS THTS 201, 2 credits
Positive Thoughts
University of Wisconsin
Instructor(s): Football Media Relations Staff
Students will learn the power of persuasion in their interactions with members of the national media. You’ll promote the importance of off-season passing academies and other events irrelevant to the in-season success of your team in order to establish a national narrative that your quarterback is about to become a national star.
MGC ACT 252, 3 credits
Magic Action
Purdue University
Instructor(s): Brian Brohm and Rondale Moore
Taught in conjunction by the coach and a highly-gifted freshman, students are exposed to the genius of using a bunch of misdirection, motion, and unique alignments to get the ball in the hands of their best player. The second part of the course deals with learning how to exert remarkable feats of strength and explosiveness against much larger competition.
TRTH 101, 4 credits
Truth Telling
Michigan University
Instructor: Jim Harbaugh
Get ready for an upheaval in all preconceived notions and generally accepted ideas. Think chicken is a good protein? Think again. Skim milk a better milk choice than whole milk? Think again. The traditional football mind of Jim Harbaugh reveals many of the commonly assumed ideas to be fraudulent.
SRVNG FLR 401, 3 credits
Surviving Failure
University of Illinois
Instructor: Lovie Smith
Learn how to survive year-after-year of abhorrent job performance that shows little to no sign of improvement to earn the full freight of your contract. Students will be instructed on how to convey no interest in improving at their job and care little about bringing people in to improve the production and performance of their organization.
BDGTNG 101, 3 credits
Balling on a Budget
Northwestern University
Instructor: Pat Fitzgerald
Students will be welcomed to a course where they’ll learn how to build a remarkably competent football team amid academic constraints. They’ll also work on how the use of a single catchphrase to end all interview segments and press conferences comes off as sincere and enthusiastic, not hokey and trite.
PBLC BNDNG 401, 2 credits
Public Bending
University of Maryland
Instructor(s): University Board of Regents
Students will learn to use a sizable amount of time and resources to establish the best course of action for the public university while working in conjunction with other successful and like-minded people to make a decision after ample amounts of teetering on a particular subject. After the decision is made the students will then be forced to reverse course and deal with a public relations nightmare that stretches for months at a time.
Nick is a writer for saturdaytradition.com. Your overuse of GIFs forced him away from Twitter. He removed himself from consideration in the Vanderbilt heading coaching search.