Misery Index Week 10: Exasperated in East Lansing
We are now at the point of the Michigan State misadventure of 2016 where it’s very important to analyze whether this is nature or nurture, whether it’s a massive failure in talent acquisition or the rot of disappointment infecting a program that has known nothing but success for a long time.
Because if it’s attitude instead of aptitude, Michigan State fans can probably take heart in the likelihood that Mark Dantonio will find a way to fix it. Sometimes teams get into a bad place mentally, prove to be more fragile than anyone knew and can’t get out of the funk until the season is over.
But if this is about the quality of players and coaches that Dantonio has assembled to take the Spartans into the post-Connor Cook era, a chilling new reality may be settling into East Lansing.
The Spartans lost 31-27 to Illinois — ILLINOIS, FOR GOODNESS SAKES — on Saturday to make it official: This isn’t a fluke. They’re just awful. One year after Michigan State was making its improbable push toward the Big Ten title and conjuring miracles against Michigan and Ohio State, they’re a 2-7 football team for which the end of the season cannot come quick enough.
Couch: Michigan State players aren't quitting; they're just that bad
It’s basically impossible in the recent history of college football to find a program that was considered one of the truly elite for a sustained period of time, then became a doormat overnight.
And of all the remarkable ways to quantify this slide, here’s perhaps the best context: Before this season, Dantonio had won 72% of his Big Ten games. Now, Michigan State needs to beat Rutgers next weekend to avoid the indignity of being the league’s only winless team.
Even the most pessimistic predictions for Michigan State this year after losing some very talented players such as Cook and offensive tackle Jack Conklin would have placed the Spartans somewhere in the middle of the Big Ten pack.
This projected to be a fringe top-25 team and a sure bet for a bowl game.
But this just seems like a different program, and though maybe it looks worse than it is because of injuries Michigan State has collected along the way, it was always pretty bad. This kind of collapse doesn’t happen to top-level programs, and it’s going to be a very, very long 10 months before fans get a glimpse of whether it was a crazy fluke or a cry for help.
College football's Week 10 winners and losers
(Disclaimer: This isn't a ranking of worst teams, worst losses or coaches whose jobs are in the most jeopardy. This is simply a measurement of a fan base's knee-jerk reaction to what they last saw. The way in which a team won or lost, expectations vis-à-vis program trajectory and traditional inferiority complex of fan base all factor into this ranking.)
FIVE MOST MISERABLE
1. Michigan State: On Feb. 19, Dantonio signed a new contract raising his total pay from $3.67 million per year to $4.3 million with various raises directed to staff members. It was a well-deserved reward for what the Spartans have accomplished, including last season’s playoff berth. In retrospect, Michigan State’s joyous announcement of the contract seems like bad timing and bad public relations.
Let’s be clear: You can separate what Dantonio has done in the past, which is phenomenal, from what has happened this year. It’s OK to criticize him. It’s OK to say he has flat-out failed this season. And it’s OK to say he needs to get fixed soon or else a lot of the goodwill and faith he has built up will be lost.
Hood, Trubisky lead No. 18 UNC past Georgia Tech, 48-20
2. Georgia Tech: For the Yellow Jackets, no opponent illustrates how the power structure in the ACC Coastal has shifted more than North Carolina. Paul Johnson beat the Tar Heels five times in his first six years, and they were often necessary wins in otherwise average seasons. But the last three years, North Carolina represents a frustrating reality for Georgia Tech: It has slipped to second-tier status in the ACC as its competitors have stepped up their game.
Now it’s North Carolina winning division titles and making regular top-25 appearances, and it’s Georgia Tech with questions about the long-term direction of the program. Despite gaining 518 yards of offense in Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech managed only 20 points and lost by four touchdowns, slipping to 5-4. It still seems likely the Yellow Jackets will reach bowl eligibility, but it may all come down to beating Virginia on Nov. 19.
Either way, this could be a very tense offseason for Johnson, whose defense mechanism in the face of criticism is to get cranky over Georgia Tech’s alleged lack of financial commitment not being commensurate with the expectations put upon him. But because this is now more of a trend than last year’s 3-9 fluke, fans will shift the conversation to 2017 when Johnson’s buyout drops to $3 million and the pressure will really be on for the first time in his tenure.
3. UCLA: You couldn’t have dreamed up a worst-case, total disaster scenario for the Bruins’ season more grim than what has actually occurred thus far. They have just one Pac 12 win, an enraged fan base, an assistant coach in Adrian Klemm working under an NCAA show-cause order for cheating, a star quarterback in Josh Rosen who has been shut down for the year because of injury and a head coach in Jim Mora who regularly makes himself look like a jerk.
If the NCAA invented some sort of mechanism for an entire program just opting out of the rest of the reason, UCLA should be first in line to pull the lever. This is a rancid, smoking, dumpster fire of a year at 3-6, but perhaps the silver lining is that it has exposed the dire need for major changes. Mora isn’t in trouble, but he needs to shake things up this offseason and that starts with his offensive staff. There was simply no point in recruiting Rosen if he was going to run a system that depended on a bad offensive line.
Now Rosen is injured; in fact he has been the last month, but Mora has done himself no credit by playing games with the information that has been floating out in the public sphere. Then, when he finally revealed to sideline reporter last week that Rosen won’t play again this season, he was asked about it following a 20-10 loss at Coloardo and flippantly responded, “Josh who?” as if it wasn’t relevant information. Newsflash, Mora: The only reason for fans to be interested in your program at all next year is if Rosen is healthy and playing, so you might want to think it through the next time someone asks.
Insider: Special teams blunders hamper Irish — again
4. Notre Dame: Brian Kelly is about to enter Charlie Weis territory. In the modern history of Notre Dame football, only Weis has coached a season in which the Irish won fewer than five games, dropping that 3-9 dud in 2007. Even Bob Davie’s worst season was 5-7 and Gerry Faust’s was 5-6. Weis got two more years, but he was never the same. Now we’ll see if Kelly can recover from the nadir of his tenure. An ugly season got even more difficult to rationalize Saturday with a 28-27 loss to Navy, which is a good outfit these days but still an interesting barometer of what’s happening at Notre Dame if you look at the history.
There’s a reason Notre Dame has lost to Navy only four times since 1964, and the correlation is pretty clear. It just shouldn’t happen if Notre Dame is operating at its appropriate level. And that big-picture reality is more important than the quote-unquote “controversy” over Kelly kicking a field goal with 7:28 remaining instead of going for a fourth down, then watching Navy’s triple-option offense bleed out the rest of the clock.
The only thing that really matters now is whether Notre Dame loses to Army next week for the first time since 1958 (which only encompasses 14 games) and just how bad it gets in the closing stretch against clearly superior teams in Virginia Tech and Southern California. Even in a bad season, it’s always good for a coaching staff to be able to take something positive into the spring. Through 10 games, it’s really hard to find even one thing to build on here.
Snap judgments from college football's Week 10
5. Pittsburgh: Over the first 21 games of the Pat Narduzzi tenure, there has been some restlessness under the surface over a handful of close losses. But the other way to spin it is that Pittsburgh has been in every game and never gets routed — proof of the Narduzzi toughness that he’s imparted on the program. But Saturday’s 51-28 humbling at Miami wasn’t just the first blowout loss of the Narduzzi era, it was further confirmation of how difficult a climb it is always going to be for Pittsburgh to get out of the monotony it has been in since the 1980s.
For all the NFL Hall of Famers and grainy highlights the program has produced, Pittsburgh has only exceeded eight wins three times since 1982. And in a year where Miami is down, Virginia Tech has a first-year coach and North Carolina is good but beatable, it’s pretty dispiriting for Pittsburgh to go 0-3 against the teams it needs to beat in the ACC Coastal.
Pittsburgh will almost certainly make its ninth consecutive bowl, but the destinations of those games over the last decade have been less than inspiring: Annapolis, Fort Worth, Detroit, Birmingham, Charlotte and El Paso. At this point, doesn’t every fan who has stuck with Pitt this long at least deserve a December trip to Florida?
No. 7 Texas A&M has playoff hopes damaged after loss to Mississippi State
MISERABLE, BUT NOT MISERABLE ENOUGH
Texas A&M: The fun lasted fewer than 96 hours. After the College Football Playoff selection committee gave Texas A&M the gift of a No. 4 ranking, the Aggies had every right to spend the rest of the week speculating about what might happen if they ran the table and finished 11-1. How would the résumé stack up to Washington? Who would they need to root for and against over the last month of the season? Was this going to be the year a conference got two teams into the semifinals?
Well, all that's over now. Texas A&M went to Starkville and threw up on itself in a 35-28 loss to the worst Mississippi State team since Dan Mullen’s first season, ending any talk of the playoff in College Station. The history of Texas A&M dictates that the Aggies will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but do you really have to be this predicable?
Cincinnati: We were going to give the Bearcats a break this week because this season has been such a mess that there’s really nothing fans learned from a 20-3 loss to BYU that they didn’t already know. This is a foundering 4-5 program that is probably going to make a coaching change sooner rather than later, which in theory will provide some relief off in the distance. But when you’re already down, the last thing you need is a public relations fiasco gone viral.
It happened Saturday when coach Tommy Tuberville was captured on camera snapping “Go to hell…get a job! Get a job!” at a fan who heckled him as he walked off the field. This is basically the last thing Cincinnati needed right now, as the simmering frustration of an under-the-radar fan base is now national clickbait.
Cincinnati coach Tommy Tuberville tells heckling fan to 'go to hell'
Oregon: Other than the inconvenience of asking Nike founder Phil Knight to spend a whole bunch of money, is there really a good argument at this point for retaining Mark Helfrich? The Ducks got boatraced again, this time 45-20 at Southern Cal, and at this point the only reason to show up for an Oregon game would be if they handed out free bumper stickers that read: “Honk if you’ve scored 40 points on the Ducks.”
That would at least add some levity to a very sad situation in Eugene, where the 3-6 record and the obvious trajectory of a former national power screams for change. The bigger question now is whether Oregon stays within its insular culture and grabs Scott Frost or makes a big-money play for a more established coach, which could end up in double the disappointment if it doesn’t work.
UConn: There’s no doubt Connecticut is the most entertaining boring program in college football thanks solely to the weekly weirdness of Bob Diaco. But that only applies to those of us who don’t care about the wins and losses. Those who do can’t be pleased or entertained at the moment. Give Diaco credit for acknowledging the obvious when he called this 3-7 season a “Molotov cocktail of ugliness,” but pure earnestness still doesn’t justify why things have gone so sour.
The most recent of his questionable decisions was lifting the redshirt on freshman quarterback Donovan Williams in a 21-0 loss to Temple, something Diaco he’d previously stated he would not do given how poorly this year has gone. On one hand, there’s something to be said for getting your next quarterback some real game experience in a low-pressure situation to build toward 2017. On the other hand, when you’ve already ruled out such a move because it would be wasting a year of his eligibility, Diaco’s flip-flop looks more like desperation.
Arkansas defense shuts down No. 9 Florida
Florida: Both of Jim McElwain’s first two seasons have followed the same pattern. We start by question how this team is going to win any games at all, then we marvel about how amazing Florida’s defense looks and how much they’re overachieving before finally realizing that the offense is so bereft of talent that it’s ultimately going to collapse. The problem is, it seems Florida’s players understand that trajectory as well.
When it became clear last season the offense was getting worse, not better, the defense eventually checked out as well late in the season. The same thing appears to be happening now, as Arkansas just overwhelmed the Gators 31-10. Florida fans aren't fooled by the No. 16 ranking and 6-2 record. This is a mediocre team that doesn’t have a single good win or a functional offense.
TOO SHOCKED TO BE MISERABLE
Baylor: It was inevitable that at some point this season, after everything the players have had to deal with around the program, their will to continue competing would be tested. That moment has arrived. After a tough loss to Texas, then perhaps the most controversial week of the season when it comes to the public narrative around the Baylor sexual assault scandal (including assistant coaches going public with grievances), the Bears pretty much shut down in a 62-22 loss to TCU. At this point, it would be a surprise if Jim Grobe is able to salvage the team’s chemistry and interest over the final four games.
Final Whistle: Losses continue for tone-deaf Baylor
North Caraolina State: Just one defensive stop away from wrapping up a victory against Florida State that could have rescued the season and solidified Dave Doeren’s job status, the Wolfpack yielded passes of 27, 37 and 19 yards in a span of five snaps to lose 24-20. “We’re not finding that one play it takes to break open a game like that,” Doeren said. Of course, that explanation covers 95% of why big underdogs rarely close the deal against blueblood programs. That last play is often the most difficult one to make.
Arizona: Here it is, absolute rock bottom of the Rich Rodriguez era. It simply can’t get worse than a 69-7 loss at Washington State that Rodriguez called a “nightmare.” From the Fiesta Bowl to the New Mexico Bowl to 2-7 and generally uncompetitive in the Pac 12 in a span of 24 months? It almost seems impossible, but here the Wildcats are with a lot of things to fix for next year beyond the massive number of injuries they’ve suffered. Because at some point, the damage to a program is as much mental as it is physical, and Rodriguez will be tested for his therapeutic skills as much as his football acumen.
South Alabama: If you're a player, coach or fan of this relatively young program, how do you reconcile what could have been an incredibly memorable season with the disappointing reality of their bellyflop in Sun Belt play? In any random year, logic would tell you a Group of Five team that won at Mississippi State and beat a nationally ranked San Diego State team would be polishing its résumé for the Cotton Bowl right about now. Instead, South Alabama is wondering how it all went wrong with a 1-5 record in Sun Belt play, including Saturday’s awful loss to Louisiana-Monroe. Now we know the fluke was winning those big games, not losing all the others.
Played in/Played out: Auburn, Washington State, Penn State rise
Kansas State: The Wildcats are two plays away from being 7-2 and right in the thick of things in the Big 12. Instead, they’re 5-4 after a 43-37 loss to Oklahoma State that ended with Kansas State on the doorstep of the end zone. That’s the second heartbreaker in Big 12 play for the Wildcats, who missed a 43-yard field goal to beat West Virginia in early October.
FIVE TOTALLY REAL AND IRRATIONAL MESSAGE BOARD THREADS
► “Not much separation between LSU and Bama” — tigerdroppings.com
►“Do programs with “tougher” athletes have as lavish facilities?” — TexAgs.com (Texas A&M)
►“Notre Dame feels like Sears in an eCommerce world.” — NDnation.com
►“This team will be rotten next year too.” — spartanmag.com
►“New Iowa AD in five years: Theo Epstein” — HawkeyeReport.com
HIGHLIGHTS FROM WEEK 10
