While much of their recent focus has been on rule changes in recruiting, the next priority for Big Ten athletic directors might be weighing in on the size of football staffs.
A recent CBS Sports report examined an NCAA study _ which used the staff directories on schools' websites for its data _ that showed the Big Ten has the largest average football staff at 31.6 employees.
Michigan had the conference's largest staff at 40 (fifth nationally), followed by Maryland at 35 and Illinois and Rutgers at 34 each. Northwestern had 32 staff positions, according to CBS, but an NU spokesman said the school actually has 34 paid staff members for football.
The NCAA oversight committee is examining the issue. The NCAA already approved a 10th full-time, on-field assistant coach, effective in January.
The task in limiting the total number will be "trying to understand what's a reasonable number," Purdue AD Mike Bobinski said Tuesday at the Big Ten athletic directors joint meetings in Rosemont. "What's an appropriate number to make sure you're running your program effectively, taking care of all the different needs _ health and safety being first and foremost _ making sure you have the right number of coaches, an adequate number of off-field people but not an absurd or unnecessary number?"
Defining who does or doesn't count as a football staff member will be an important first step. Do recruiting assistants count? Strength and conditioning staff?
"At some point we're going to have to get our arms around it a bit," Illinois AD Josh Whitman said Monday. "The numbers are getting big. The job description is a little more vague. ... Once you get in that football building, how do you define what one person does and another person does? You start putting limits on that, there are some inherent challenges in that."
Athletic directors seem to agree some limit should be put in place.
"There comes a point where enough has got to be enough," Bobinski said. "I don't know that everybody needs an assistant to do their job. At some point, you have your job, just do it. That seems to be a lost concept some days."
