Last year, SB Nation’s Bill Connelly wrote about the perils to which average and above-average football programs expose themselves when they fire a coach who has been winning games, except that now he’s not winning enough games. He dubbed this situation “Glen Mason Territory”.
What happens is that a team (typically, a 2nd-tier Power Five program) is in the doldrums, suffering from a string of losing seasons. The university’s AD hires a new coach who then comes in and rights the ship. Instead of losing season after losing season, the program now enjoys winning seasons. The team starts going to bowl games, say, five over the course of seven years. The fans are loving it. They want more. The boosters want more. The athletics director wants more.
Except that the head coach cannot deliver more. It’s usually not his fault. There’s often a set of structural limitations in place, and despite the community’s clamoring, the coach, despite all he has done, cannot deliver on the expectations that have been unintentionally raised. In other words, the coach did raise the bar of performance expectations, which was great for a while. Now the fans and everyone else take this for grant, and want it raised even further, which is an impossible task. Instead of accepting this frank fact of life, the fans call for the AD to do the feel-good thing, which is to fire the coach and replace him someone who (they think) deliver on these raised (often, unreasonable) expectations.
Let us briefly consider the namesake of “Glen Mason Territory” for a moment as an example. Glen Mason was a former Ohio State coordinator who did an impressive salvage job at Kansas in the 1990s. Minnesota hired him in 1997 for a similar turnaround. Despite the Golden Gophers’ past tradition (having won multiple national titles in the 1930s and 1940s under Bernie Bierman), the program had been absent from the national conscious since most of the 1960s (having won the whole thing, oddly, in 1960).
Mason started to deliver in 1999, winning eight games that year, including a massive upset over then, No. 2 Penn State. The following year, they sent Ohio State’s national title aspirations into an early death spiral, in the Horseshoe, no less. As Bill Connelly tells it further:
“The Gophers would bowl again in 2000 and 2002, then surge in 2003. Behind the punishing combination of Marion Barber III and Laurence Maroney, they beat Penn State and Wisconsin on the way to a 9-3 regular season, then Oregon in a Sun Bowl thriller to reach 10 wins for the first time since 1905.
The problem: he never won 10 again. The Gophers started 2004 5-0 and reached 13th before losing five of six down the stretch and needing a bowl win to salvage 7-5. They went 7-5 again in 2005 and were on the doorstep of a third straight seven-win season in 2006 before blowing an enormous Insight Bowl lead to Texas Tech.
A year after a contract extension, Minnesota used the bowl collapse as impetus for panic. Despite seven bowls in eight years — for a program that had been almost absent from college football’s consciousness for nearly four decades — the school pushed Mason out.
The program had grown stale, you see, and needed young energy. “I believe the program needs a new vision to reignite fan enthusiasm,” said athletic director Joel Maturi.”
The question in the mind of many of the readers by now is, ‘why couldn’t Minnesota “got over the hump”, so to speak?’ One reason, at the time, was facilities. If a Big Ten recruit went to, say, Michigan, Ohio State, or even Penn State on visits was able to take in the grandeur of their home stadia, they would be most unimpressed by seeing the Metrodome as their potential home stadium if they chose to don the Maroon & Gold. Having been on the sidelines for a game there once, I personally can vouch for how sterile a place it is. Despite the university’s best efforts to jazz it up with bunting and national championship banners in the school’s colors all over the place on game day, it remains sterile, even negatively inspiring. As one of my fellow student managers at the time said so succinctly, “that place just sucks the life force out of you.”
Seeing things along those lines, one can appreciate the difficulties that Mason had to overcome in attaining the success his team enjoyed. But in the end, it wasn’t good enough. Why? Answer: expectations that have been raised beyond reason.
Notice in Connelly’s writing how he cited then-AD Joel Maturi saying the program had “grown stale”. Such wording is a symptom of the fallacious “this-is-who-we-now-are mentality”, when a program long in the doldrums all of a sudden enjoys a spate of success. Pretty soon, the fan base starts to take this newfound success for granted, and becomes increasingly restless when the coach fails to deliver even more success, more than the program is structurally built to deliver under modern constraints.
Consider, again, Minnesota. Sure, the Twin Cities might produce several players talented enough to compete at a high level, but much of the rest of the roster is made up of recruits from Ohio who were passed over by the Buckeyes. In explicably, you’ll find a few players from Florida and Texas (e.g., Marion Barber III) in there, too. But the immediate point is, there is not enough local talent from which to draw in order to build up a roster that can consistently vie for the national title. The only team in such a predicament that has come close to such viability is Oregon (proving that there is always an exception to the rule), with maybe Washington to a lesser extent.
So Mason was already dealing with that structural roadblock to meeting unrealistic expectations, in addition to the stadium, which was a potential turn-off to recruits. Not until 2009 did they open up TCF Bank Stadium on the school’s main campus. Had Mason had this shiny new stadium at this disposal then, things might have been a little different (emphasis on ‘might have been’).
Consider weather, too. Sure, Minnesota is a great school, and the Twin Cities are reasonably happening, but it’s also cold…very cold. Most recruits might choose to brave the cold winters in Columbus, Ohio, or even State College, Pa., or even Ann Arbor, Mich., but they’ll draw the line at the next-level frigidity of the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Can one blame them?
Of course, asking the reasonable thing, which is for the fan base to take these structural obstacles into consideration to damper their unrealistic expectations is apparently too much to ask these days. These unrealistic expectations lead to impatience, which leads to rash decisions. So naturally they fired Mason. They brought in Tim Brewster as his replacement. Brewster promised to recruit, to be the ‘shot in the arm’ the program needed, etc., and proceeded to go 15-30. For comparison, Mason went 64-57. Will the Gopher faithful give charismatic young coach P.J. Fleck the chance to duplicate Mason’s efforts? That all depends on if they learned anything from this experience.
Other fan bases seem not to be have learned, and have suffered the consequences as a result. To wit:
Arizona State fired Todd Graham, despite his 7-5 regular season record in 2017. The program had not been competitive consistently since the Frank Kush years of the 1970s. Bruce Snyder did the best job in recent years, leading the Sun Devils to almost win the national title in 1996. Snyder’s leadership proved that the Sun Devils are capable of high ceilings, but brief ones. Arizona State has hired former NFL head coach Herm Edwards in his stead. It remains to be seen if this risky hire will pan out, but at least it is an interesting hire. One thing that ASU does have going for it is that it’s located in a geographical spot with an endless summer, a campus that sports tons of pretty co-eds, and the Phoenix area is a decent hotbed for good recruits. Theoretically, the right coach could set the entire Pac-12 on notice, as Bruce Snyder did in the mid-to-late 1990s.
But as Bill Connelly wisely points out, schools without such advantages who nevertheless act on the impatience born of unrealistically raised expectations can suffer major consequences.
On the heels of 11- and nine-win seasons, Boston College pushed Jeff Jagodzinski out because he deigned to interview for other jobs. They were 2-10 four years later and haven’t reached nine wins since.
Ron Zook took Illinois to nine wins and a Rose Bowl in 2007, and after a two-year reset, got them back to 7-6 in both 2010 and 2011. He was fired. Illinois has averaged 3.7 wins per year since.
Dan McCarney won at least seven games five times in a six-year span at Iowa State but was let go after a 4-8 downturn in 2006. ISU has not topped seven wins since, though that could change with an upcoming bowl game.
To be sure, current ISU head coach Matt Campbell has made Jack Trice Stadium a perilous place to play for undefeated teams, as top-ten West Virginia just learned last night the hard way.
Ralph Friedgen took Maryland to seven bowls in 10 years, and after a two-win collapse in 2009, rebounded to nine wins in 2010. Maryland has averaged 4.7 wins per year since firing him.
NC State pushed Tom O’Brien out in 2012 after 24 wins in three years. Their best three-year win total since: 22.*
Dave Doeren has brought NC State back to respectability (and rankings), but it has taken the program several years to return to this spot.
David Cutcliffe won seven or more games for five straight years at Ole Miss, peaking with a 10-win campaign in 2003. But after a 4-7 reset in 2004, he was fired. The Rebels would top four wins twice in the next seven years.
Pitt pushed Dave Wannstedt out after after 26 wins in three years. The Panthers have averaged 6.6 wins since.
Despite seven ranked finishes in 11 years, Syracuse fired Paul Pasqualoni after he hit a dry spell. He went 4-8 in 2002 then rebounded to only 6-6 in 2003-04. Syracuse went 10-37 under replacement Greg Robinson and has averaged 4.4 wins since Pasqualoni.
Dino Babers has methodically built Syracuse into a better program, but consider that the hiatus between this decent year and Pasqualoni’s last season is 13 years.
Phil Fulmer took Tennessee to 15 bowls and five SEC championship games in 16 years. He won the national title in 1998 and won at least eight games 14 times. He fell to 5-6 in 2005 but rebounded back to 10 wins in 2007. After a second five-win reset in 2008, he was fired. The Vols have hit the eight-win mark twice in the nine years since.
But what about Georgia, you ask? That’s really not an exception to the rule after all. Mark Richt had been consistently winning at Georgia but failed to bring home a national championship trophy. Nick Saban and others did have something to do with that, but again, it’s almost too much to expect folks to be reasonable, especially in SEC country, where “it just means…more”. So, they fired Richt and brought in Alabama assistant coach Kirby Smart. And he too, won games, even played his former team for the national title. And lost, because Nick Saban’s Alabama these days is a consistent juggernaut. Nevertheless, Smart succeeded where Richt failed. So firing their way out of Glen Mason Territory has panned out for Georgia thus far, but that’s because they have access to tons of NFL-potential talent in Greater Atlanta, their own backyard. So there.
The conclusion to which Connelly arrived in his article is that a school cannot simply fire-a-coach its way out of “Glen Mason Territory”. Why? Let us consider basic reality. Football, unlike economics, is a zero-sum game. When one team wins a game, that means that team’s opponent had to lose that game. Not all teams can be championship-viable teams all the time. It is simply impossible. Furthermore, because of this zero-sum fact of life football (and most other sports), not everybody can be good all the time. Even traditional powers have had down years (just look at Alabama in between the Mike Dubose and Nick Saban years).
Second, not all teams are built to be national-title contenders. Again, one key factor is, does your state produce enough local talent to compete nationally? In states like California, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, or Florida, (borderline case: Arizona) that is a given. Even Oklahoma does not produce the players it used to (to be sure, even during the glory days of Bud Wilkinson, OU has had to recruit Texas to be successful). The only state north of the Sunbelt that can remotely compete on that scale is Ohio. Everyone else has to recruit from those states just to be in a position to win games, period.
Also, unlike in the pros, where teams choose the players, in college, the players choose the programs. That means that many blue chip recruits who have options are not going to flock to the Arctic climbs of Minnesota, or the isolated, wind-swept plains of Nebraska if they can land a scholarship at Georgia or LSU or even TCU instead. Ohio State has managed to stay viable despite its cold winters due to the total commitment of the university, plus the community and state at large, to muster every last resource needed to attract the players necessary to compete at that level.
When a coach raises the bar of performance expectations but cannot raise it further, it’s usually not the coach’s fault. It’s program history for one. Georgia, for example, only has two national titles, one from 1942 and from 1980; the former being shared with Ohio State. As discussed at some length, it’s also infrastructure (e.g., facilities and access to NFL-caliber talent), and program support. But dealing with these issues ranges from difficult to impossible. Instead of dealing with these realities like responsible people, too often people take the feel-good way out (in reality, a dead end) and kill the messenger by firing the very coach who improved the team’s standing and situation in the first place.
(Note: All rankings are current AP [week 14] unless otherwise noted.)
COACHES Wish I were him: Gus Malzahn, Auburn
Glad I’m not him: Nick Saban, Alabama
Lucky guy: Dan Mullen, Mississippi State
Poor guy: Paul Johnson, Georgia Tech
Desperately seeking a clue: Kyle Whittingham, Utah
Desperately seeking a P.R. man: Tom O’Brien, Penn State
Desperately seeking sunglasses and a fake beard: Dabo Swinney, Clemson
Desperately seeking … anything: Will Muschamp, Florida
TEAMS Thought you’d kick butt, you did: Ball State (defeated Miami, Ohio 55-14) Thought you’d kick butt, you didn’t: Northern Illinois (defeated Western Michigan only 33-14)
Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you did: New Mexico (lost to Boise State 45-17)
Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you didn’t: South Florida (lost to Central Florida 23-20)
Thought you wouldn’t kick butt, you did: Texas (defeated Texas Tech 41-16)
Dang, they’re good: Florida State
Dang, they’re bad: Idaho
Did the season start? Rutgers Can the season end? Purdue
Can the season never end? Auburn
GAMES Play this again: No. 3 Ohio State 42, Michigan 41
Play this again, too: No. 4 Auburn 34, No. 1 Alabama 28
Take a look at this again, while you’re at it: No. 13 Oregon 36, Oregon State 35
Never play this again: Ball State 55, Miami (Ohio) 14
What? San Jose State 62, No. 16 Fresno State 52
Huh? Penn State 37, No. 15 Wisconsin 24
Are you kidding me? No. 10 South Carolina 31, No. 6 Clemson 17 Oh – my – God: No. 4 Auburn 34, No. 1 Alabama 28
NEXT WEEK
(rankings are current AP (post-week 14, pre-week 15) Ticket to die for: No. 3 Auburn vs. No. 5 Missouri in the SEC Championship game
Best non-Big Six vs. Big Six matchup: (none)
Best non-Big Six matchup: LA-Lafayette @ South Alabama
Upset alert: No. 10 Michigan State vs. No. 2 Ohio State in the B1G Championship game
Great game no one is talking about: Bowling Green vs. No. 16 Northern Illinois in the MAC Championship game, Fri.
Intriguing coaching matchup: George O’Leary of UCF vs. June Jones of SMU
Who’s bringing the body bags? No. 20 Duke vs. No. 1 Florida State
Plenty of good seats remaining: Memphis @ UConn
They shoot horses, don’t they? South Florida @ Rutgers
Week 14 in review:
Wow. Many end-of-year (or NEARLY end-of-year) weekends that bill themselves as “Rivalry Week” rarely live up to the hype. Much of the time, the rivalry games end up as rather one-sided affairs. Not this time, though. Take the Ohio State-Michigan game, for example. On paper, it should not have been anything of a contest at all. But the Wolverines showed up in this game as they had not done so all year. Sure, they looked formidable against Notre Dame early in the season, but they brought their game to a whole level above that in giving the Buckeyes the biggest fight of the season. It was fitting that they saved their best game for their last of the season, and against their sworn enemy from Columbus. In the end, a one-point margin of victory helped preserve the Buckeyes’ undefeated season and a shot at the BCS title game.
The “Egg Bowl” rivalry between Ole Miss and Mississippi State also lived up to its tradition, in more ways than one. For starters, it returned to its Thanksgiving Day timeslot for the first time in several years. For another, the game was close and hard-fought right to the end, with the Bulldogs pulling out the victory they needed to become bowl-eligible.
Duke-North Carolina may be known for its bitter basketball rivalry, but today, the football rivalry was a big deal and a good game. The Blue Devils ended up winning, narrowly, 27-25, and in so doing they clinched a spot in the ACC Championship game for the first time ever.
Another such game that looked one-sided on paper but in reality was hard-fought to the end was the LSU-Arkansas match-up on Friday. It seems not to matter how well LSU has done in the year, or how mediocre or play the play of the Razorbacks may be, but the Hogs always seem to bring their “A-game” when they play the Tigers. Perhaps the trophy for which they play is sufficient motivation, as “The Boot” (it is shaped in the manner of Arkansas and Louisiana together on a map) weighs 175 pounds.
Yes, there were rivalry games that were rather one-sided affairs. The Florida-Florida State game, usually played in or around the last weekend of the college football season, was almost always the game of the week back in the 1990s. That started to change a decade ago when FSU’s on-field performance began to deteriorate. But recently, the Seminoles have made the right moves to return to football factory status, while the Gators’ collective performance has seen much better days. The outcome of Florida State’s 37-7 win therefore came as no surprise.
Same thing for the Purdue-Indiana game. While Purdue owns the series by slightly more than a 2-1 margin, today, they did not show it, as the Hoosiers beat the Boilermakers 56-36, and four of Purdue’s touchdowns came in the last 20 minutes of the game, leaving the Boiler Faithful to scratch their heads all the more.
Then there was the “Iron Bowl,” that annual storied match-up between Auburn and Alabama, arguably the most intense, heated, and passionate of all the in-state rivalries. Through much of the season, the game was not on many peoples’ radar screens. Not after Auburn’s dismal performance last year; not even when the Tigers were slowly getting better and better with each game under new head coach Gus Malzahn. Yet by game time, they worked their way up to the No. 4 team in the nation, giving the engaged observer pause that this match-up could be one of the most epic in the history of the rivalry. The game remained close throughout regulation, and technically was tied up at its end, as the last second ticked off during a field goal attempt. That same attempt came up short; short enough that an Auburn returner was able to field it in the end zone, before promptly running out of it straight up the field. Wait a minute, the observers were telling themselves, nothing is going to come of this. Nothing hardly ever does. Yet the returner kept dodging a few would-be tacklers as he ran along the sideline. In fact, he continued to run past a few more would-be tacklers before all jerseys of the opposing color were in his proverbial rear view mirror. Wait, can this actually happen? OMG, it IS happening! But this NEVER happens! And yet it IS! I am in shock.
The Iron Bowl, it turned out, was not just an incredible game in this history of this most-storied of rivalries. THIS was a shot heard ‘round the world, and we are all still in shock from it today.
Still, not a bad turnaround from going winless in the SEC last year to having only one loss this year, even now potentially vying for a shot at the national title. Guz Malzahn deserves “coach of the year” accolades for that alone.
Oh, and Stanford-Notre Dame turned out to be a very watchable game in its own right. If that’s not enough, Steve Spurrier proved that he is the man yet again by schooling Dabo Swinney in Columbia, with his South Carolina Gamecocks trouncing the Clemson Tigers 31-17. Had his squad not blown the game to hot-and-cold Tennessee earlier in the year, they would have punched their ticket to Atlanta to represent the East division in the conference championship game. Instead, the team that will have that honor will be, inexplicably, Gary Pinkel and the Missouri Tigers. Such is the world of college football at the end of the 2013 regular season. What a way to cap things off, and best of all, there is a great after-party next Saturday with more games on the slate!
As mentioned in the previous installment, I have ranked the bowl games by category, with the major criterion being level of desirability to view, partly on my end, partly on the end of the average viewer who is NOT a certifiable college football addict like yours truly!
This second installment is of bowl games about which I am rather interested, which is, to me, higher than “moderately interested:”
New Mexico Bowl (Albuquerque, N.M.), Sat., Dec. 15, 1:00 PM EST
Arizona (7-5) vs. Nevada (7-5)
Chris Ault leads the now-Colin Kaepernick-less Wolfpack back to a bowl game to take on the rejuvenated Arizona Wildcats in a fairly evenly-matched game in the Land of Enchantment. Speaking of which, Enchantment Bowl has a nicer ring to it than New Mexico Bowl, doesn’t it? But I digress. What makes this game truly interesting is that there will be lots and lots of yards gained on the ground by both sides. How do I know? Both teams each have some of the leading rushers in the FBS this season, in Ka’Deem Carey (is the apostrophe really necessary? Then again, the name is already made up, so might as well be stylin’ while we’re at it!) for Arizona and Stefphon (sic) Jefferson for Nevada (one too many consonants in that first name, don’t you think?). Moreover, both teams also sport mediocre run defenses. It all adds up to lots of rushing yardage gained on both sides of the ball, with an inability to stop each other on the other side. Think: the equivalence of Baylor-Texas Tech, ground game edition! The fact that the hilarious writers at EDSBS referred to both of these two teams as the plague monkeys of their respective conferences is the icing on the cake!
New Orleans Bowl, Saturday, Dec. 22, 12:00 PM EST
East Carolina (8-4) vs. Louisiana-Lafayette (8-4)
If I miss this game, it won’t be the end of the world. It used to be that we CFB fans would look forward to this game because it kicked off bowl season. Now, it’s just another bowl. Still, it pits two solid teams within their respective conferences against each other, which was my rationale for designating this game the “Best Non-Big Six Matchup” for this set of bowl games.
This used to be called the Silver Bowl, but that was before sponsorship took over bowls big time. Soon, they renamed this game after a slightly classed-up version of Earl Scheib. That notwithstanding, this could be a decent match-up. On one hand, Steve Sarkesian has worked diligently to bring the Huskies back to respectability. On the other hand, Boise State has had a slightly down year compared to their last several. Could be interesting.
Old conference rivals reunite in this bowl game, between a squad that hit the wall when they reached the real meat of their schedule, and a team that gradually improved throughout the year. On paper, the Mountaineers are more talented than the Orange, but will the former have time to regain their energy? Plus, the game is in [new] Yankee Stadium: how cool is that?
Fight Hunger Bowl (San Francisco), Sat., Dec. 29, 3:15 PM
Navy (8-4) vs. Arizona State (7-5)
So which is it going to be, the Pinstripe Bowl or this one? I choose this one, my “intriguing coaching matchup” bowl game pick, and for multiple reasons. For one, you have one coaching philosophy of pounding the rock vs. the opposing one that amounts to a watered-down “west coast” offense. But that’s not all: on one side is Ken Niumatalolo and his apparent philosophy of family, loyalty, dedication, etc., and in the opposing corner is the notoriously mercenary, leave-in-the-dead-of-night Todd Graham. Very intriguing indeed!
(What used to be the Insight Bowl, and before that, the Copper Bowl) Okay, so the Spartans have been no team to write home about this year, given their inability to, you know, score touchdowns. Meanwhile, on TCU’s side, their performance this year has been one of peaks and valleys. Where the Horned Frogs are with respect to their highs and lows will determine whether they mop the field with MSU, or the game remains a defensive struggle. What could really set things off, though, is if the two teams show up in their chrome purple and green helmets, respectively (oh boy, oh boy!)!
Music City Bowl (Nashville, Tenn.) Mon., Dec. 31, 12:00 PM
North Carolina State (7-5) vs. Vanderbilt (8-4)
Last year, the Wolfpack was in the Belk Bowl, and defeated a young Louisville team. It looked like they were really up-and-coming. They return to a bowl game this year, and fire Tom O’Brien. It makes no sense. Will head coach-in-waiting Dave Doeren lead the team, or will Tom O’Brien play out the string? Or will the assistant coaches be left to watch over this mess before Doeren comes in to right the ship? All this will be moot anyhow, since this is a glorified home game for Vandy, who by all rights should kick N.C. State’s butt. And that’s what’s really enticing; would it not be grand to see the Commodores win a bowl game? Goodness knows they have earned it!
College football on a Sunday night instead of pro football? Yes, please! Plus, this game is my “intriguing no-coaching matchup,” given that Kent State’s erstwhile coach Darrell Hazell took the Purdue job and Arkansas State’s erstwhile coach Guz Malzahn bolted for Auburn.
Heart of Dallas Bowl (Dallas), Tues., Jan. 1, 12:00 PM
Purdue (6-6) vs. Oklahoma State (7-5)
Okay, how on Earth did this become a New Year’s Day bowl game? I know that the Cotton Bowl is no longer played in the Cotton Bowl (stadium, that is), but that does not mean that this manufactured bowl game deserves to be on the same day as the Capital One, Outback, Rose, and other bowls that have earned being on this date. That aside, this game is a rematch of the 1997 Alamo Bowl. Just don’t expect the Boilermakers to beat the Cowboys 33-20 like they did 15 years ago. In fact, expecting the score to be reversed in the Pokes favor might be an overestimation. Still, Purdue is playing in it, so one has to watch it.
(Note: All rankings are current AP [post-week 10, pre-week 11] unless otherwise noted.)
COACHES Wish I were him: Nick Saban, Alabama Glad I’m not him: Rich Rodriguez, Arizona Lucky guy: Bo Pelini, Nebraska Poor guy: Paul Chryst, Pittsburgh Desperately seeking a wake-up call: Tom O’Brien, N.C. State Desperately seeking a P.R. man: Dave Doeren, Northern Illinois
Desperately seeking sunglasses and a fake beard: Danny Hope, Purdue Desperately seeking … anything: DeWayne Walker, New Mexico State
TEAMS Thought you’d kick butt, you did: Stanford (beat Colorado 48-0) Thought you’d kick butt, you didn’t: Florida (beat Missouri 14-7) Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you did: Temple (lost to No. 11 Louisville 45-17)
Thought you’d get your butt kicked, you didn’t: Pittsburgh (lost to No. 4 Notre Dame, 29-26, 3 OT) Thought you wouldn’t kick butt, you did: Vanderbilt (beat Kentucky 40-0)
Dang, they’re good: Texas A&M Dang, they’re bad: Purdue Can’t stand prosperity: Arizona (lost to UCLA 66-10)
Did the season start? Missouri Can the season end? Memphis Can the season never end? Louisville
GAMES Play this again: No. 1 Alabama 21, No. 5 LSU* 17 Never play this again: Northern Illinois 63, UMass 0 What? No. 16 Texas A&M* 38, No. 15 Mississippi State* 13 Huh? No. 23 Texas* 31, No. 18 Texas Tech* 22 Are you kidding me? TCU 39, No. 21 West Virginia* 38, OT Oh – my – God: UCLA 66, No. 22 Arizona* 10
* rankings are from Week 10 as opposed to Week 11
NEXT WEEK Ticket to die for: No. 15 Texas A&M @ No. 1 Alabama Best non-Big Six vs. Big Six matchup: (no really good match-ups) Best non-Big Six matchup: Louisiana-Monroe @ Arkansas State Upset alert: No. 11 Louisville @ Syracuse
Must win: No. 22 Mississippi State @ No. 9 LSU Offensive explosion: Baylor @ No. 14 Oklahoma (or Tulsa @ Houston) Defensive struggle: Missouri @ Tennessee Great game no one is talking about: No. 13 Oregon State @ No. 16 Stanford
Intriguing coaching matchup: Gary Patterson of TCU vs. Bill Snyder of No. 2 Kansas State Special Election Night Special: Ball State @ Toledo (Red vs. Blue)
Who’s bringing the body bags? No. 4 Notre Dame @ Boston College
Why are they playing? Louisiana-Lafayette @ No. 7 Florida
Plenty of good seats remaining: UMass @ Akron (notwithstanding Tulane @ Memphis)
They shoot horses, don’t they? Army @ Rutgers
Week 10 in Review:
Bama passes the test: Last week’s “Ticket to die for” certainly lived up to its billing, as The Crimson Tide duked it out with the Bayou Bengals in Death Valley. A normally mistake-free Alabama reversed that trend throughout much of the game and started making more mistakes than usual. Top-notch opponents tend bring out more mistakes than usual, to be sure. In the end, Bama’s offense finally decided to start executing. This sudden development clearly caught LSU’s defense off guard, and The Tide easily scored a TD when all they needed was a field goal to tie. With only a minute to go, LSU failed to score on the second Hail Mary play. Bama passed the test against what might be its toughest opponent of the entire regular season.
SEC Breathers: Between this and upcoming Saturday and the one to follow, it seems as though the bulk of the SEC, stud and cellar-dweller alike, will take a breather from beating up on one-another and instead focus their brutal energies on lesser opponents, be they, say, fodder from the Sun Belt Conference (e.g., Louisiana-Lafayette at Florida), or FCS teams. Case in point: Samford ventures up to Lexington to play Kentucky in two weeks. Alabama will no doubt easily dispatch with Western Carolina that same day. Missouri is somewhat an exception in that they will play middle-of-the-road Big East foe Syracuse. A curious annual constant is Wofford getting annihilated by South Carolina. Tennessee already had their little break with Troy. Vandy will conclude its season by taking its respective break against Wake Forest. Arkansas barely escaped from their little breather, beating Tulsa only 19-15. Auburn’s break, though, also comes two Saturdays from now when Alabama A&M comes to the Loveliest Little Village on the Plains. Even Texas A&M is getting in on the act and playing Sam Houston State on the 17th. Curiously, no such break comes for Ole Miss, Mississippi State, or LSU. Still, do the teams that are taking a break, either this week or next, feel that their conference schedule is so brutal that they think they need such breaks before it is time for the ol’ sprint to the finish? As a suggestion for improvement, surely Notre Dame could be squeezed in to one of these schedules, as the Irish feel they are “back,” and could be given an opportunity to test that idea. It would give the fans a lot more excitement than Wofford or Sam Houston State, that’s for sure.
Jekyll-and-Hyde Longhorns: At first, it seemed as though Texas was caught off guard by West Virginia’s high-powered offense and narrowly lost in a high-scoring game. That idea quickly vanished in Dallas the following week when the Horns got embarrassed by Oklahoma. Squeaking by Baylor in an even more high-scoring affair than that against the Mountaineers raised further concerns about Texas’ defensive woes (poor fundamentals, inability to make basic tackles, etc.). Then, inexplicably, they win on the road. And not just on the road, but in Lubbock, against Texas Tech, which in recent years has been one of the toughest places to play in the Big XII Conference. Even more inexplicable is, while Texas did have occasional recurring issues with their defense (the same sort that has visibly plagued the Longhorns for the last month), by virtue of holding the Red Raiders to only 22 points, the defense clearly made key stops this time.
Granted, Texas Tech’s offense has been a tad inconsistent this year, scoring 49 points one week then being held to 24 the next, and so on. Nevertheless, they walloped West Virginia and won in a shootout over TCU, making everyone take notice of their high-powered offense.
The “so-what” in all of this is that one of the hallmarks of a well-coached team is that you know what sort of performance to expect from week to week. Was the past month a temporary slump for Texas, or are they to be up for one week, down for the next? Time will tell if their defeat of Texas Tech has halted the bleeding, or if they will perpetrate the apparent “Jekyll-and-Hyde” mystery with a sub-par performance against Iowa State next week. Conversely, if they obliterate the Cyclones at home next week, it will bode well for the rest of the season, when they will need it the most against TCU, followed by No. 2 Kansas State.
Quietly undefeated: The Louisville Cardinals are 9-0 for the first time in program history. Not even Bobby Petrino managed such a feat when he put the Cards on the map and coached them to their first ever Orange Bowl-berth/victory. The only team that defeated them in that memorable 2006-2007 season was Rutgers, in Piscataway, N.J. Interestingly enough, that is where Louisville concludes its regular season this year, potentially for all the marbles in the Big East. But before the Cards look too far ahead, they need to focus on the next game. Syracuse is their next opponent, and Louisville takes them on in the Carrier Dome, where they are tough (though not impossible) to beat. Coach Charlie Strong would be well-served to remind his sophomore-dominated team that this upcoming match-up is a potential trap game, and that they must focus their preparations accordingly.
Another one bites the dust: The University of Kentucky opened up the floodgates in 1996 for a whole slew of coaching changes at years end when they fired Bill Curry. Soon after that, the inept Jim Colletto of Purdue resigned, and at season’s end, so did Lou Holtz and Notre Dame and even Gene Stallings at Alabama, just to name a few. Could UK have started a similar apparent chain reaction in 2012, having just fired Joker Phillips? Time will tell. Joker was, by all accounts, an honorable representative of the Wildcats, and A.D. Mitch Barnhart was lavish in his praise of the man in an open letter on UK’s official website. Ultimately, it was a business decision. Phillips simply lacked the skill set to effectively lead the largest revenue generating division of UK’s athletic brand (he was 12-23). At best, only about 10,000 fans showed up at Commonwealth Stadium to see the Wildcats get trounced by traditional conference bottom-feeder Vandy. Obviously the program has been headed in the wrong direction for the past couple of years, and Mitch Barnhart made a prudent business decision to try to rectify this problem.
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