Misery Index Week 12: Blue in Boise
There was a stretch in 2012 and 2013, after Boise State lost a slew of players to the NFL and then coach Chris Petersen to Washington, when it looked like the program might be losing its national relevance and dominant grip on the mid-majors.
During those two years, Boise State had made the decision to back out of its agreement with the crumbling Big East and return to the Mountain West but under a heavily incentivized agreement that would basically allow the school to make significantly more television money than its competitors.
When Boise State slipped to 8-5 in 2013 and then Petersen bolted for the Pac 12, there was some sneering that the Broncos weren’t worth the trouble and that the leverage their administrators used to negotiate the cushy Mountain West agreement was born from extreme hubris about their place in the college football world.
But even at that time, you never got a sense of concern from Boise State fans that their program was in trouble. They hired the highly regarded Bryan Harsin, rolled to the Fiesta Bowl in 2014 and were even talking about another undefeated run in 2015 and possible playoff berth.
Air Force goes to the air to thwart Boise State, 37-30
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For the first time, though, fans seem worried about the state of affairs in Boise after a 37-30 loss to Air Force on Friday. It was the Broncos’ second consecutive home loss after losing just three home games over the previous 14 years. It dropped them to 7-4 overall. It cost them any remaining shot of winning their division. And it signaled that they are no longer on a level above other good programs in the Group of Five conferences.
Though Boise State's ceiling was lowered considerably when quarterback Ryan Finley was injured on Sept. 18, the fan base was pretty happy with a 7-2 record as October came to a close. Another conference title was there for the taking.
But the consecutive home losses to New Mexico and Air Force have shaken the Boise fan base to its core. Harsin, 39, is suddenly going to have to prove all over again that he can maintain what Petersen built and do it with players he evaluated and recruited. Though it’s unfair to judge him based on a season where the starting quarterback was injured, this is a pretty new situation for Boise State fans, who haven’t seen a ton of adversity over the last 15 seasons.
How everyone responds at the end of the season and into 2016 will reveal a lot about whether it’s really time to worry.
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(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.)
(Disclaimer No. 2: Teams who have announced coaching changes will hereby excluded from future editions of the Misery Index, as fans can look forward to a new regime taking hold in 2016.)
1. Boise State: Some highly interesting and revealing quotes surfaced last week courtesy of San Diego State coach Rocky Long. Though he has taken shots at Boise State in the past about the famous blue field and deconstructed the notion of Broncos’ “mystique,” he was asked whether he was stunned that Boise State lost at home to New Mexico.
“I wasn’t stunned, no,” Long said. “People can beat Boise, even though Boise doesn’t think they can be beat.”
Whether Long's assessment is correct, it does speak to the sense around the league that Boise State views itself on a different level than its competitors but doesn’t have the goods anymore to back it up. In fact, since the Mountain West went to a divisional format with a championship game, the Broncos have appeared in it once in three attempts.
Every year, Mountain West teams become less and less afraid of them.
2. LSU: Whatever the Tigers needed to show their fan base and athletics director Joe Alleva to make the case that Les Miles should get another year, it’s safe to say a 38-17 loss at Ole Miss ain’t it.
The idea that Miles’ job is in serious jeopardy first came to the public eye last week via a column in the local newspaper, The Advocate, suggesting The Hat was coaching for his job over the final two weeks of the regular season. Miles’ buyout is enormous and changing coaches (when you include his staff and hiring a new coach) is probably going to come with a total price tag north of $20 million.
But the inept nature of LSU’s consecutive losses to Alabama, Arkansas and Ole Miss, combined with a distinct lack of achievement over the last three seasons, certainly has made it look more and more likely that a change will be made.
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Simply put, LSU has established a standard that it needs to compete with Alabama. The program has slipped further and further away from that since the 2011 national championship game, and there doesn’t appear to be a real strong relationship between Miles and Alleva to sustain through another season.
Firing Miles, should it happen, will be overwhelmingly popular within the LSU community and overwhelmingly unpopular outside of it. At one point, he was considered easily a top-five coach in the country with a national championship in his pocket. He will have no trouble finding another job if he wants it. But the LSU fan base and the administration apparently wants far more than what they’ve been getting. Best of luck to them.
3. Ohio State: When Buckeyes fans look back on 2015, it will be remembered as an unpleasant slog to 10-0 that created a ton of questions but for more than two months was buoyed by the memories of what they looked like at the end of 2014. It was all about keeping the faith in Urban Meyer and the vast amount of proven talent on the Ohio State roster in hopes that the team would finally click when it mattered.
That’s the funny thing about expectations, though. Last season the consensus was that Ohio State was really a year away from contending, so the surge through November and into the playoff felt like a joyride. This year, every time Ohio State didn’t win in a blowout, people asked what was wrong. Because the schedule was so weak, games seemed pretty boring and the outcomes almost predetermined so the only thing to measure was how good the Buckeyes looked and how they projected against other strong teams.
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Then they finally faced a strong team and lost, 17-14 to Michigan State. Which means Ohio State is probably out of the playoff race barring a whole lot of chaos. And that’s what the Buckeyes deserve because this Ohio State team hasn’t beaten anyone of quality and never showed signs of returning to their end-of-2014 form.
At least the fans have a scapegoat in co-offensive coordiantors Tim Beck and Ed Warinner. They were thoroughly unimpressive managing the Buckeyes’ wealth of offensive playmakers, but in the end this all falls on Meyer. And in the wake of Ezekiel Elliott’s postgame comments criticizing the playcalling, there has to be a bit of fear that Ohio State’s lockerroom may not have been the Disneyland fantasy Meyer was selling all year and that another Florida-like culture collapse may be just around the corner.
4. Iowa State: There are really only two memorable things about the Paul Rhoads era in Ames. One is the 2011 upset of Oklahoma State that kept the Cowboys out of the national title game and opened the door for Nick Saban’s second national title at Alabama. The other is his “So Proud” postgame speech after beating Nebraska in 2009, which went viral on Youtube and became something of a meme. Basically, anytime Iowa State did anything good, you had to attach “So Proud” to to the end of it.
But if that Nebraska game was the “So Proud” moment of Rhoads’ tenure, Saturday’s 38-35 loss to Kansas State was the complete opposite. There is absolutely nothing to be proud of from this second-half meltdown that saw the Cyclones squander a 35-14 halftime lead. In fact, Iowa State still led 35-28 and got the ball back with 1:31 remaining when Kansas State failed to convert a desperation fourth down.
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But on the very next play, Iowa State running back Mike Warren fumbled, and Kansas State tied the game four plays later (including a 42-yard completion) with 42 seconds remaining. Then on the second play after receiving the kickoff, Iowa State fumbled again when quarterback Joel Lanning was sacked. Kansas State recovered at the 22-yard line and kicked a 42-yard field goal to win.
And with that, it was pretty much assured Rhoads’ seventh season would his last. He was fired on Sunday with an 8-27 record over his last three years and 16-44 record in the Big 12. And though this is not a good time to be looking for a coach, particularly at a school where everybody knows it’s tough to win, that was a completely inexcusable loss for a guy who desperately needed a win - and something else to be proud of.
Snap judgments from Week 12 of college football
5. Arizona: Everything about this season has felt off for the Wildcats. There have been big injuries (starting when star linebacker Scooby Wright went down in the season opener, came back, but went down again). There have been public complaints from Rich Rodriguez about what time the Pac 12 starts games. There was no bye week, which meant a brutal stretch of 12 consecutive games.
There were bad losses, culminating with a resounding 52-37 loss in the Territorial Cup to Arizona State. And there were constant rumors that Rodriguez would like to snag a job on the East Coast.
Arizona is going to a bowl game at 6-6, but all in all this a pretty disappointing season. So maybe it’s a good thing that it’s over. But it will also make for an interesting few weeks because while other teams will still be playing, Rodriguez will theoretically be free to talk with athletics directors who theoretically would like to hire him.
Whether he actually gets offered a job good enough to take is unclear. And who knows whether he would actually leave at the end of the day. But this whole situation has had the distinct feel of a program that peaked last year when it won the Pac 12 South and then regressed to a more realistic point.
Arizona is and forever will be a basketball school, which can be both a blessing and a source of frustration for a coach like Rodriguez. At Arizona, you can have a season like this and not feel any real heat. But nobody would argue this year was any fun.
6. Cincinnati: If you were monitoring the score of this game via some Web page or app on Friday night, you might have thought there was a malfunction in the system. First South Florida was leading 13-0, which became 27-0 by the end of the first quarter, which became 51-3 by halftime. Fifty-one. And yes, it was correct.
Never mind how it happened, it is almost statistically impossible for any college football team to amass a 48-point lead in the first half over any other college football team. Even the biggest FBS-FCS mismatches aren’t typically that lopsided. Yet that’s what occurred in Tampa in a 65-27 victory, and even though South Florida has been playing very well over the last month that is an absolutely atrocious performance for Cincinnati and Tommy Tuberville.
In fact, it’s been a pretty atrocious season given that the Bearcats were picked to win the American Athletic Conference and still kind of carry the reputation of a program that is slumming it outside the Power 5 after doing very well in the old Big East. And it's not a great look for Tuberville, 61, who came in with a long list of accomplishments and a big salary but has not exactly built on the success of predecessors Butch Jones and Brian Kelly.
In fact, Cincinnati by all appearances is backsliding after a pair of good but not great 9-4 seasons. Though Cincinnati boasts skilled quarterbacks and receivers, its defense has been a complete mess, and it tends to lose to pretty much every good team it plays. And juxtaposed against the young, energetic coaches that are winning games in the AAC, it makes Tuberville look disinterested and old to his fan base (even if that’s not a completely fair characterization). With Cincinnati desperate to get the attention of a Power 5 league, they can't afford to sink much further.
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7. Syracuse: This is another program where a coaching change seems almost inevitable, whether it’s a good idea or not. Scott Shafer was a continuity hire after Doug Marrone left for the NFL, but he has slipped from 7-6 to 3-9 and now 3-8 coming to the end of his third season. Fair or not, continuity hires are graded on a curve, and Shafer hasn’t maintained what Marrone started.
Syracuse plays hard, particularly against good opponents, but it has won just one ACC game each of the past two seasons, both against Wake Forest. That isn’t going to cut it in an ACC that, if nothing else, provides a lot of opportunities for coaches to pad their records and get to bowl games without beating many quality opponents.
Syracuse has now lost eight consecutive games. The season finale against Boston College, which is also 3-8, may be one of the worst games in league history.
8. Memphis: The modern-day apex of Memphis football might have been reached on Nov. 3 when the College Football Playoff committee slotted the 8-0 Tigers at No. 13 and many people felt that they were ranked too low. It was almost surreal: This is Memphis football? Well, in reality, it wasn’t. Though Memphis had been very impressive for the first two-thirds of the season, there was always an underlying fear about the team’s remaining stretch that included some of their toughest games.
The Tigers did not handle it well: Thoroughly outplayed by Navy, heartbroken at Houston after blowing a 20-point lead and pounded at Temple. Now 8-0 has turned into a legitimate losing streak and the shine has come off a bit, which is unfortunate since a second consecutive 9-3 regular season (if the Tigers can beat SMU next week) would finish off one of the great stretches in program history.
But it might always come with a tinge of wistfulness that Memphis didn’t seize the opportunity to win the American Athletic Conference and get into a New Year’s Day bowl game, particularly with a quarterback in Paxton Lynch who seems to be tracking toward the NFL Draft next year and a coach in Justin Fuente who is going to have a pick of several high-level job offers.
Even if Fuente stays (and Memphis has reportedly offered him north of $3 million per year to do just that), history says it will be just as hard (or harder) to maintain what Memphis built than it was to get to this point. Either way, that No. 13 ranking seems like a long time ago.
9. Duke: Can you remember the last time a team collapsed so completely after a bit of adversity? The Misery Index certainly doesn’t. Sure, the Blue Devils had every right to be fuming mad after the Miami debacle three weeks ago. And nobody could blame coach David Cutcliffe for venting that night and again the next day about why instant replay couldn’t get the call right in Miami’s 30-27 miracle “victory.”
But at some point you have to move on. Duke obviously hasn’t. Because Cutcliffe is such a good coach, many expected him to turn the disappointment into a positive and get his team to play hard the rest of the season and perhaps even win the ACC Coastal division title. But since Miami, Duke has lost 66-31 to rival North Carolina, 31-13 to Pitt and then in shocking fashion Saturday at Virginia 42-34.
Shocking because Virginia is a very bad football team that is likely going to fire its coach and yet was able to quickly take a 21-0 lead on the Blue Devils. Maybe Duke was never as good as its 6-1 record once suggested, but the subsequent games do not suggest a natural market correction. They suggest a team that was mentally broken and has simply packed it in for the rest of the year. And that's sad because any time Duke gets to a bowl game it should be celebrated by its fan base. This will not be a season worthy of celebration.
10. Louisville: The entire premise of rehiring Bobby Petrino and taking on his personal baggage and general reputation for treating people poorly was that Louisville’s move to the ACC necessitated a big-time coach to help navigate the jump in competition level. And who better than Petrino? He already had won there, his offense puts up big numbers and he was available at the time (and somewhat rehabilitated from a coaching commodity standpoint by virtue of his time off and re-entry into the business at Western Kentucky).
But Petrino’s second go-around with Louisville has been a bit choppy. Last season the Cardinals scratched out a 9-4 record, but mostly thanks to a defense full of players recruited by former coach Charlie Strong while Petrino’s offense sputtered along. This season the defense hasn’t been as good (no surprise since a number of those Strong-recruited players are gone) and the record has regressed to 6-5, even as the offense has improved. Still Louisville ranks just 73rd nationally in scoring and 69th in total offense, which are very un-Petrino like numbers.
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Louisville has feasted on the weak (Syracuse, Virginia, Wake Forest and BC) while really not doing much against the big boys this season, including Saturday’s 45-34 loss at Pitt. Meanwhile, Louisville’s quarterback situation has been a carousel all season with freshman Lamar Jackson doing some good things but not playing consistently enough or throwing the ball well enough to earn Petrino’s full trust.
Next week is a huge moment for Petrino’s second tenure as they go to Kentucky. If Louisville can win and maintain their dominance of the state, all will be well. If things go poorly in Lexington, however, Petrino will not have a happy fan base heading into 2016.
Honorable mention (Miserable, but not miserable enough): Kansas, Penn State, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, UMass, Ball State, Fresno State, Colorado, Louisiana-Lafayette, Tulane.
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