What's the Big Difference?

If you’ve never been or listened to a press conference before one of these Group of 6 vs. Power 4 games, here’s an unbroken tradition.

To the coach or a player of the smaller school that sportsbooks expect to lose by multiple touchdowns, a reporter or writer will ask about the challenge of the upcoming game. Everybody at the presser knows what’s what. The bigger school has more resources, more money, probably thousands and thousands more fans in attendance on game days, and perhaps even stronger and faster athletes on its sidelines.

Hey coach, can you talk about you guys having to face a crowd of 70,000 and how you view your upcoming Big Ten opponent?

Well, they’re a good football team, but we’re not concerned with the logo on anybody’s helmets or the patches on their jerseys. We just have to go out and play our game and not get beat on little mistakes.

It’s a boring, flavorless answer, and it happens everywhere. These exchanges happen almost every year at Eastern Michigan. If you want to watch any of the other Group of 6 coaches say the same things about their similarly-sized games, you can find hours and hours of the recycled quotes on YouTube.

Said EMU’s Chris Creighton on Monday, before the team goes to Wisconsin after it played Michigan State Saturday: “The conference doesn't dictate how we prepare. We had an eight-day week for Michigan State. It'll be… a sort of a normal seven-day week, which I don't think we've had one yet... We have a formula for how to prepare, and we've already got that in motion.”

Western Michigan’s Lance Taylor ahead of the Michigan game: “I try to keep the preparation week-to-week, no matter who we play, or where we play, or what their environment’s going to be, or what the weather’s going to be… Really, each week, it is about us.”

Rice’s Scott Abell, before he faced Notre Dame: “I treat every team like they’re a top-5 team; you treat every team with the same level of respect. If we’re doing our job right each and every week, this week of prep and practice, for our players, will look exactly the same.”

Boise State coach Spencer Danielson before the Oregon game: “At the end of the day, they’re going to make their plays — defensively, offensively, and special teams. When you’ve got the team they have, they’re going to make their plays… Everything from me about our team this week is that we have to go be our best.”

With respect to these coaches, press conferences are not Honesty Hour from these CEO-like figures in their coaching positions. These press conferences are weekly opportunities for coaches to try and control any narratives surrounding their team and frame the way they’d like fans’ conversations to sound.

As much as I’d rather hear coaches and players cut more wrestling-style promos ahead of big games, I can understand why they tend to lean on the side of caution with their words.

But now that we’re knee-deep in an age where player movement is so frequent and entire rosters can sometimes be totally reconstructed in just a few months, the cut-and-paste statements that players are instructed to follow up with in these settings sound a little different now.

Sure, Saturday was Eastern Michigan at Michigan State, and this weekend will be EMU-Wisconsin. But next year, who knows where everybody’s players will be?

At first, EMU safety and captain Bryce Llewellyn said the same old, same old on Monday. “We don't care if you're a Power Four team, if you're a MAC team, if you're an FCS team. We're attacking the work regardless of the name on your jersey. So as far as us going out there confident and playing our true brand of football, we do that, and we can continue to do that.”

But Llewellyn knows the situation. He himself transferred schools once, from FCS-level Charleston Southern, just like thousands of others have.

If Llewellyn’s college career had happened 10 or so years ago, his football life would be more about developing in his old school’s system, and he probably would’ve finally gotten the chance to transfer into a higher playing division as a graduate student.

Since he’s playing in today’s age, he was able to transfer after a promising sophomore year, and he’s now teammates with three guys who have played at Michigan State before, and he got to play with them at their old school.

When those guys were at Michigan State themselves, did they ever picture themselves playing anywhere else? Maybe, but I’m willing to bet a great percentage of transfer athletes did not enter their college careers knowing where their second or third college destinations would be.

So sure, EMU went to Michigan State to face Sparty, and it’ll chase with Wisc-y this weekend. But in a few weeks, who knows where those Big Ten opponents will end up. Some of them will stay in the sport’s premier league, but we all know that nobody knows where they’ll all end up.

Some of those players might end up at Eastern one day. Somebody could play at Alabama next year. Or maybe they’ll have to find playing time at William & Mary.

With that understanding, I asked Llewellyn if that knowledge makes things any easier, as a player during these weeks, to buy into their teams’ original messaging of not getting too caught up in how big and bad everybody makes Big Ten opponents out to be.

Unsurprisingly, Llewellyn said yes.

“After we played San José, I was like [to his teammates], there's no reason to be scared, no reason to go out there timid, or no reason to go out there already defeated… because they're a big school that they're going to be just inherently better, already better because of money, or because of a logo, whatever case may be, it all just comes down to preparation,” he said. “All those guys are the same exact guys that we are. They just are at a different school that may have more money. So, like I told them, a lot of those guys were probably at an FCS, they were probably at a D2, they were probably at a whatever you want to call it, and then just ended up transferring to a different school, a bigger school, because they had a productive year.

“That doesn't take away from the fact that they're normal football players that put their pants on just how we do. It's just a matter of them being at a so-called bigger school, and they just had a different opportunity than we have. And like, at the end of the day, if we take advantage of our opportunities, the sky's the limit for us, regardless of if we're playing Wisconsin or if we're playing Western Michigan. It's just a matter of putting your pants on, putting your helmet on, strapping up your helmet, and playing football once we get in between those white lines.”

Llewellyn noted that there are two major differences, to him, between facing the Power-league opponents and, frankly, everybody else.

One is that the linemen are bigger at the bigger programs.

The second is that the quarterback play can simply be better, too.

“As far as, like, the receivers and the running backs and the back end of things, I feel as though the speed is not too much of a a big jump from level to level. The biggest part about each level is the trenches, as far as your front four and your O-line, and then, honestly, just quarterback play as well too. Just how particular that quarterback is in his reads and how confident he is back there. That's where you can see the biggest difference, in my opinion, is how that quarterback is able to have a pocket presence, and then honestly, how he runs the offense as well.”