Football experts will tell you that the true mark of a head coach is the results he begins to accrue when the roster is entirely his. He can’t claim the last guy left the cupboard bare any longer or hide beyond a stacked roster. It’s his destiny to rise or sink with the players he’s recruited and a roster that he cultivated. For Ball State Cardinals head coach (and program alum) Mike Neu, that time is squarely now, as he enters his fifth year at the helm of the SS Cardinal in Muncie.
That isn’t the paragraph I had planned to write for 2020, given that my 2019 preview called for Neu to be replaced.