1. I don’t want to get on a soapbox, but …
Let’s see how I can say this, avoiding all calculation and confrontation while eliminating any semblance of offending the wonderful people in the states of Texas and Tennessee.
Are you people out of your mind?
Welcome, everyone, to the world of irrational fandom. Or as it’s more commonly known: the coaching hot seat.
MORE: SN Week 6 Top 20 | Who is the best team in college football?
“You’re only as good as the last time you screw up,” Dabo Swinney told me in the summer of 2012, when there were some in the upstate who were absolutely positive — beyond a doubt — that Swinney wasn’t the right coach because he couldn’t beat South Carolina and his team had just given up 18,000 points to West Virginia in the Orange Bowl.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Swinney’s teams at Clemson have won 36 of their last 43 games since 2012, including bowl wins over Ohio State, Oklahoma and LSU — and after last week’s thrilling win over Notre Dame, are primed to make a run at the College Football Playoff.
Now, we U-turn to the curious cases of Texas and Tennessee, because — like it or not — every program is connected in the land of everyone thinks they should win it all and only one does.
We’re five weeks into the season and nothing has gone as planned, and you better believe someone has to pay. The logical someone, of course, is the guy making $3 million to $4 million a year to win games.
Because how can Tennessee blow a 17-point lead at home to Oklahoma, and a 13-point lead on the road to Florida, and Butch Jones still be employed after this season? How can Charlie Strong, whose Texas team has one lousy win this fall and may not win more than three or four all season, lead the cash bovine at Texas if he’s losing by 50 to little ‘ol TCU.
It is here where I remind you of what was. In other words, this is what you’re asking for, lunatics:
— You want Texas to fire a coach who is a proven program builder and elite recruiter. Earlier this spring, 11 Louisville players were selected in the NFL Draft — all 11 were recruited and developed by Strong at a program that was an utter dumpster fire when he arrived.
That’s 11 more players than Texas had drafted the year before Strong arrived in Austin, when everyone wanted the last guy fired yesterday because Baylor and TCU zipped by Texas in the Big 12 commuter lane with better players. It’s not a drastic leap to think what Strong did at Louisville with player procurement and development, he will do again at Texas with bigger and better resources.
— You want Tennessee to fire a coach who took over a program that had three coaches in the previous four seasons, and had completely unraveled and become a shell of its former elite self. In those four seasons before Jones arrived, Tennessee fired a beloved former coach, hired a mercenary who left after one season (and left behind NCAA issues), and hired an overmatched legacy who made the previous two botched coaching decisions look brilliant.
So yeah, let’s blow it all up and start over.
“There’s no such thing as unrealistic expectations,” Strong told me this spring. “I don’t care what job you take.”
There is, however, realistic assessment. Texas is a handful of plays away from a completely different season; two in particular — a botched extra point and a botched punt — led to galling losses to Cal and Oklahoma State and are the difference between 1-4 and who knows what?
Jones and his staff’s biggest sin this season: they got conservative in the fourth quarter against Oklahoma, then didn’t learn and did the same against Florida (and blew a two-point conversion call).
These small yet critical adjustments are all part of developing a personality and an identity and learning how to win games. They’re painful and on a public stage, all while swimming in a sea of no room for error.
You can make a snap change and hope the next guy can find his way out of the mess, or you can suck it up and realize the guy you hired; the guy who won a conference championship at his previous stop (both Strong and Jones did) and has a proven track record of recruiting talent, will eventually make it happen.
Like Swinney did at Clemson. Like David Cutcliffe and Art Briles did at Duke and Baylor, respectively.
“There’s no magic formula,” Briles said. “If there were, your friend down the street could do the job.”
That would mean one less lunatic screaming about coaching change.
2. Buckeye logic
So Ohio State coach Urban Meyer has declared the Buckeyes are “on the border of being very good.”
Apparently, Indiana is, too.
3. Letting go
This is just around the time things went bad, quickly, for Everett Golson last year at Notre Dame.
The turnovers started to pile up, the big plays were overshadowed by unthinkable mistakes that gave away points, and Notre Dame went from unbeaten and on the CFP radar, to playing in Nashville for bowl season.
MORE: Week 6 ACC Power Rankings
Golson hasn’t committed a turnover yet — he had 23 last year — but if you take away a stat-padding game against Texas State to begin the season, the remaining numbers against USF, Boston College and Wake Forest (not exactly heavyweights), are surprisingly poor: 3 TDs, a below average 122.9 passer rating and a paltry 5.9 yards per attempt.
“You watch him on tape, and it looks like he’s not letting it go, like he’s doing everything possible to not screw up,” said one ACC defensive coordinator. “He’s not the same player; he doesn’t have the same zip on the ball that he had last year.”
FSU coach Jimbo Fisher says Golson has been the model teammate, that he has been most impressed by the way he has assimilated into the locker room and not disrupted chemistry. Not by the throws he has made.
Yet here’s the potential problem: by trying to reinvent who Golson is, Fisher had eliminated the one thing that made Golson so dangerous: his fearless attitude.
The initial response is FSU is unbeaten and Golson hasn’t committed a turnover. This, of course, means nothing.
The meat of the schedule begins this week against rival Miami, and ends in five weeks with a critical game at Clemson. The Golson of the first month of the season may not beat Miami — and absolutely won’t beat Clemson.
The turnover-plagued Golson of 2014, as crazy as it sounds, has a better chance to beat both. It’s up to Fisher to find that workable, safe medium.
“It’s really close to being really, really good like you want it,” Fisher said.
4. The two-point decision
OK, let’s make this very clear. So simple, in fact, that there is no second-guessing.
Dick Vermeil, Super Bowl-winning coach with the NFL’s Rams, came up with a two-point conversion chart in the 1970s while he was offensive coordinator at UCLA (he was later head coach of the Bruins).
The chart is said to still be used by many NFL teams. If we’re going by this chart, it’s pretty clear that Tennessee coach Butch Jones made a spectacular mistake in not going for two when leading by 12 against Florida — and Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly made the right call by going for two when trailing by 12 against Clemson.
There are other charts floating around where the decision also includes time of game and probability that you’ll convert the two-point conversion (probability, really?). For the sake of sanity for all involved, let’s eliminate as much debate as possible.
Print it. Learn it. Love it.
5. The Weekly Five
In the wake of Nick Saban grandstanding and ripping the media for having Alabama “dead and buried” after the loss to Ole Miss, here are five more irrational upcoming proclamations from the Nicktator:
1. How are our kids supposed to tackle Fournette when he’s stepping on their facemasks?
2. We were fine until Kyle Field started shaking.
3. Hey, you try and go win in Starkville in November.
4. They call them Hogs for a reason.
5. You know, Butch was going to figure it out at some point.
6. Running to stardom
So three straight 200-yard games impresses you. Let me show you a more defining number for LSU tailback Leonard Fournette.
In four games this fall, Fournette is averaging 216 yards per game. The next closest tailback is Tyler Ervin of San Jose State, who is 56 yards behind at 160.2.
MORE: SEC MVP race: Fournette or Chubb? | Watch Fournette run — seriously, watch this
If that doesn’t do it for you, consider this: the next closest Power 5 tailback is Georgia’s Nick Chubb — and he’s 67 yards behind at 149.
Fournette is averaging more yards per game than 103 teams, and has more rushing touchdowns (11) than 94 teams. In four games, he’s already more than halfway to LSU’s all-time single season rushing record (1,686 yards by Charles Alexander in 1977) and nine touchdowns from breaking LaBrandon Toefield’s school record for touchdowns in a season (19 in 2001).
7. Following the one who followed
Ron Zook followed Steve Spurrier and went 23-14 in three seasons. Urban Meyer followed Zook and won two national titles.
Will Muschamp followed Meyer and went 28-21 in four seasons. Jim McElwain followed Muschamp and is one game from doing something Spurrier and Meyer never did: win his first six games as the Florida coach.
MORE: What we learned from Florida's win over Ole Miss
All it takes is a win at Missouri, a team that beat Florida 42-13 last year in Gainesville, and has won two of three between the teams since arriving in the SEC.
8. Earning it at Utah
Here’s Kyle Whittingham, Utah’s underappreciated, undervalued coach whose every big moment in Salt Lake City has been overshadowed and overlooked.
It began in 2008, when after three years of being compared to his predecessor Urban Meyer, he led the Utes to an unbeaten, 13-0 season — and all he heard was Nick Saban proclaiming Alabama didn’t care about playing in the Sugar Bowl (well, well, another Saban excuse).
MORE: This week's Pac-12 Power Rankings
Whittingham’s school-record 33 wins from 2008-2010 was seen as a byproduct of playing in the Mountain West, a ridiculous theory that was unfairly underscored by 18 wins in his first three seasons in the Pac-12.
Four years later, after upgrading the roster from MWC to Pac-12 standards, the Utes won nine games and Whittingham nearly left after years of battling with the Utah administration. Fast forward to this season: it should come as little surprise that when the Utes beat Oregon in Eugene last month by 42, it was because the Ducks weren’t at full strength.
When the Utes manhandled Michigan in the season opener, it was only Jim Harbaugh’s first game. When the Utes beat ranked Cal this weekend, giving them the three best wins of any team in the nation, what’s the next excuse?
9. All Hail the Victor
A quick recap of the state of Michigan football over the last 11 months: despair, delight, adoration, anticipation, and eventually, possibly, exaltation.
Is it really a stretch to say Michigan is playing better than anyone in the Big Ten? Is it much further of a reach to say Michigan, with both Michigan State and Ohio State at home, could win out and win the Big Ten and — holy mother of Harbaugh, get to the College Football Playoff?
Wal-Mart won’t be able to keep enough khakis on the shelves in the state of Michigan.
10. U (C)an’t (F)inish
And you wanted a spot at the big boy table, UCF.