There's nothing like college football media days for me to long for a long, slow August

The Big Ten Conference’s football media days start Tuesday morning in Chicago, stretching through late Thursday afternoon.

I’ve been to that clambake so many times since the 1980s. But not this year, and barring a strange set of circumstances, never again. Despite the oppressive heat in the Midwest this week, the air will feel crisper during the rare times I step outside. I’d say the food will taste better, too, but I’m a sucker for Chicago’s deep dish pizza and Italian beef sandwiches.

Press conferences and media days were the banes of my professional existence. You often had to be enormously lucky to get a story of your own that was any good because you’re swamped by other reporters and essayists, and the material often could be pretty thin.

If you were never in my racket, you don’t know how it feels to have your soul rotting away when you’ve gotten two or three really good answers from someone only to have someone from The Jock or The Schlock or the Upper Peninsula Daily Howl bringing the flow to a horribly screeching stop. Often it was by asking a player to name his favorite flavor of energy drink or something equally inane.

That doesn’t mean those with enterprise and determination can’t come up with something original and even interesting this week. They will. But they’ll have to wait out a lot of other media mopes who may be asking questions that need never be asked.

Then, to be even more discouraged, you’ll see some types in the media circus who can’t keep the smile off their faces and the drool off their chins as they park themselves at a coach’s table and bask in being near him.

It was never my idea of fun, but if you didn’t go it would be the one year the coach you cover announced it was his last season and he was going to run for the U.S. Senate. So you always went just in case, and the coach always stayed put.

One-on-ones are the only satisfying kind of interviews. Those aren’t coming your way at a conference’s media day unless the subject is of little interest to all your peers.

Inevitably and thankfully, the event ends and you find yourself back in the car to Iowa, crawling through Chicagoland traffic and wondering exactly what it was that you saw and heard. Besides, that is, just another promotion for a conference that really doesn’t need it given its fat television contracts and packed stadiums. And you’ve written about it like the trained seal you are because college football moves the needle in your market a whole lot more than Single-A minor-league baseball or a fishing derby at a city park.

At the Big Ten event, each coach gets 15 minutes at a podium in a ballroom delivering prepared remarks and answering a few vital questions of the day. Later in the day, they sit at their own big round table somewhere in another ballroom at the same time several coaches and three players from each of the six teams that day also are answering questions nearby.

What you learn is that the coaches are excited. Because they tell you that. Over and over, in some cases. Here are some podium nuggets from last year in Las Vegas, where the Big Ten had its media days for the first and probably only time:

“I can honestly sit here and tell you that we’re really excited,” said Wisconsin Coach Luke Fickell.

“I’m very excited about this team,” said Oregon Coach Dan Lanning.

“We're very, very excited for the 2025 season,” said Minnesota Coach P.J. Fleck.

“So many things to be excited about,” said Illinois Coach Bret Bielema.

“Couldn't be more excited about this opportunity and challenge that's in front of us, said Michigan State Coach Jonathan Smith, who surely was less enthused after he was fired four months later.

Smith’s replacement, Pat Fitzgerald, reportedly is excited about his new opportunity. He would have been excited at the 2023 Big Ten football media days, but was fired as Northwestern’s football coach two weeks earlier. At the ‘23 event, then-interim Wildcats head coach David Braun said “I'm very excited about what we have coming back on the offensive side of the ball.”

Braun, who became full-time head coach, edged Oregon’s Dan Lanning, 17-16, for most uses of “excited” or “exciting” in their 15-minute slots a year ago. Amazingly, last-place went to Fleck, whose aforementioned quote here was the only time he used the ‘E’ word. That’s wild because there’s nobody more excitable in Big Ten coaching than Mr. Row the Boat Ski-U-Mah Fleck.

Row the Boat and Ski-U-Mah are trademarked Gopher gibberish. Intellectual property, you know.

In the midst of the chatty Fleck’s long opening remarks that allowed time for just one question in his 15 minutes, he offered this information about Gophers running back Darius Taylor:

“Loves cars. It’s a good time in college athletics to like cars. He’s from Detroit, Michigan. He should like cars. It’s a great time in college football to like cars.”

Of the three days, 18 coaches, and four-and-a-half hours of their podium talks last year in Vegas, there was one moment in which I should have fled the football jibber-jabber for the property’s sports book. That was after Indiana Coach Curt Cignetti spoke. The Hoosiers were expected to slip at least a bit last year after going 11-2 and reaching the College Football Playoff in Cignetti’s first season at IU, 2024.

“Year one is in the books,” Cignetti said in the first 30 seconds of his address. “One hundred twenty-six years of Indiana football. Best season in Indiana history. Number 1 out of 126.”

That was the same sort of swagger Cignetti showed in his introductory press conference at Indiana in December 2023 when asked how he woud sell his vision to high school recruits.

“Yeah, it’s pretty simple,” Cignetti said. “I win. Google me.”

That wasn’t coach-speak. Bragging about coming off the winningest season in school history wasn’t, either.

Last season, the Hoosiers went unbeaten and won the national-championship. Indiana was listed as 100-to-1 to do that in July 2025. Google it.

Had I wagered $100 in July on Cignetti’s team to win it all, I’d have cashed for $10,000 the following January. For some reason, you never do the things you should have done when you’re in Las Vegas, instead doing things you shouldn’t.

I should have gone to the sportsbook at Mandalay Bay last July after hearing Curt Cignetti’s swagger.

Cignetti had spoken at the first of the three days of the media soiree in Vegas. Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz said this two days later:

“I think all of us just feel very honored to be in a great conference and see it as a privilege as well to play in the Big Ten. To coach in the Big Ten is a really unique opportunity. I think we're all fortunate of that and looking forward to getting started. It should be a really exciting year this coming season.”

Gonna go out on a limb here and say the dean of Big Ten coaches will say something similar Tuesday when he’s the second of the 18 coaches to meet the press.

I love Chicago in the summer, but not if it’s for three days of sitting in a hotel and listening to college football coaches. I’d rather be sitting around a bonfire in my backyard while it’s 91 degrees with 70 percent humidity. As long as the fire was contained and started by me, not some darn climate-change reason.

Football season may be coming fast, but it’s still a month out, my babies. Go slowly, August. I’m not letting summer ghost me. I have enough so-called friends doing that.

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