DAN WOLKEN

Misery Index Week 8: Adrift in Austin

Dan Wolken
USA TODAY Sports

There’s a school of thought in the coaching business that once you get on the hot seat, you never really get off. Once fans and boosters have made up their minds that change is needed, they can only be convinced otherwise for a little while, until the next calamitous event takes place.

Texas Longhorns head coach Charlie Strong.

Charlie Strong might well go down as the greatest example of this in the history of college football because, truthfully, he was on the hot seat at Texas from Day 1.

You knew it when Red McCombs, one of biggest of the big-money boosters at Texas, went on radio in San Antonio shortly after Strong was hired and said: “I think he would make a great position coach, maybe a coordinator.”

Not only was that a cringeworthy thing to say about the first African-American coach in school history, but it was ridiculous on merit. Strong had just coached Louisville to 11-2 and 12-1 seasons with a Sugar Bowl victory against Florida, but here he was arriving in Austin having to justify how he got the job before he had signed a recruit or called a play.

There was no honeymoon for Strong, just skepticism. And he has never really been off the hot seat since.

After Saturday’s 24-21 loss at Kansas State, it’s probably never going to happen. It’s not officially over for Strong, of course, but the climb toward keeping his job for another year just got a whole lot steeper.

Athletics director Mike Perrin recently gave some credence to the notion that eight wins would be enough progress to continue with Strong into 2017. To get there now at 3-4, Texas would have to win out. Perrin brushed aside reporters’ attempts to get a comment from him Saturday afternoon, and it’s hard to blame him for the silence at this point.

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There’s not much more to say. Strong is 14-18 overall and 10-12 in the Big 12. So many of those losses include a debacle of one sort or another (special teams continue to be an issue, and this time the offense was mediocre), and it’s getting harder and harder to find real progress in any of these games.

Texas seems so far away from contending for anything meaningful that it’s almost impossible to make the case for patience. And now the environment at Texas is so toxic, it’s worth wondering what could happen in 2017 short of a conference championship to turn the tide of opinion in Strong’s favor.

(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. Texas: If the decision for change already has been made, it almost seems more humane to make it public now rather than allow Strong to have to face the tension and criticism day in and day out until the end of the season. Even for all the money these guys make, this is a miserable way to go through life for the next month and a half.

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But at the end of the day, what’s the case Strong can make right now to stay for another season? That he’s recruited a couple of highly ranked classes? You’re supposed to do that at Texas. It’s the lowest bar possible for that job. What he hasn’t done well is hire assistant coaches, manage game situations and fix glaring problems like the special teams follies that seem to happen week after week.

Even the most ardent Strong supporters have to admit that much, and it seems like there are fewer and fewer of them these days.

2. Ohio State: Urban Meyer loses so rarely that each one seems like a major event. Last season, after the Buckeyes inexplicably lost at home to Michigan State without its starting quarterback, their chemistry issues were exposed by Ezekiel Elliott going public with complaints about not getting the ball. This time, after a 24-21 loss at Penn State, Meyer seemed to take things a little more in stride.

Because unlike that Michigan State game, Ohio State will control its own destiny. If it wins out, including at home against Michigan, the national title goals are still alive. On the other hand, Ohio State fans have every right to freak out right now because given what they’ve seen this season, does it really feel like this team has the stuff it needs to go take on Alabama?

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“We’re not a great team right now,” Meyer said, and he’s right. The Buckeyes had two key kicks blocked, giving Penn State a chance to come back in the fourth quarter. Their offensive line was mediocre. And frankly, they just have’t been that scary since the win at Oklahoma way back on Sept. 17. Something’s going on, and this loss will either galvanize Ohio State to play better like it did at the end of last season or more cracks will be exposed. Meyer’s coaching greatness is largely about finding ways to foster motivation and chemistry, but that can be a difficult tightrope if the entire locker room isn’t pulling in the same direction. Meyer has a month to get it right.

3. Ole Miss: With recent news that the NCAA had broken its investigation into the football program off from the infractions in women’s basketball and track, the cloud hanging over Ole Miss will remain in place for several more months and almost certainly bleed into the 2017 recruiting class. Depending on the findings of a probe into the Laremy Tunsil text messages that became public on NFL Draft night and other rocks the NCAA is turning over, it could even drag into next football season given the still unscheduled hearing and possible appeal after that.

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One of the easiest things Ole Miss could do to potentially head off sanctions down the road is self-impose a bowl ban for this season, which is officially going nowhere after a 38-21 loss at LSU dropped the Rebels to 3-4. Of course, to do that, Ole Miss would essentially be admitting to the severity of the wrongdoing that has been alleged by the NCAA. And that’s a tough thing to do when the entire public relations strategy for Ole Miss has, for nearly a year, been built around the idea the that Ole Miss’ “mistakes” were either not that serious, not intentional or not committed by the current coaching staff.

On the other hand, is there really anything left this season to save? Whatever potential this team once had (and it did hold three-score leads on Florida State and Alabama before folding in the second half) is now gone, replaced by a defense that has backslid and a turnover-prone Chad Kelly at quarterback. Of course, if that Belk Bowl berth is worth rolling the dice for, go right ahead.

4. Texas Tech: Kliff Kingsbury isn’t just losing football games at an alarming rate, he’s subjecting his fan base to mental distress every time the Red Raiders have to play on defense. The numbers are just a horror show: 117th nationally in total defense, 123rd in scoring defense,104th in passing yards allowed, 121st in turnovers gained.

Bad teams score a lot of points on Texas Tech and good teams score even more. Yes, this is a young defense, but it’s a trend in the program that goes back to the beginning of Kingsbury’s tenure. When you score 59 points against Oklahoma but lose because you gave up 66, that’s not what this sport is supposed to be. And yet it happens, to some degree, with regularity at Texas Tech, where offense is no longer exciting because of what happens immediately after.

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This is now an embarrassment that spans multiple coordinators and multiple recruiting classes without an obvious payoff down the road. There is practically no chance Texas Tech will buy out Kingsbury this season, but at 11-20 in the Big 12 for his career there has to be accountability coming at some point. Fans mostly cheered when Tommy Tuberville ran off to Cincinnati and they could bring a beloved alumnus home, but in all honesty is this really better?

5. UConn: There’s only one person in the world who takes seriously the idea that UConn and Central Florida are rivals in any sense. That person, however, is UConn’s coach. Yes, when Bob Diaco arrived in Storrs, the UCF program was coming off a victory in the Fiesta Bowl and so it made some sense for him to use UCF as an example for what he wanted to achieve.

Of course, Diaco didn’t leave it at that. He singlehandedly declared it a rivalry after beating UCF in 2014, dubbed it the “Civil ConFLiCT,” bought a cheap-looking trophy and put a countdown clock in UConn’s football office. UCF, hilariously and justifiably, has dismissed this entirely. There is no historical tie, no geographical basis — absolutely nothing other than Diaco’s imagination — on which to bill this game as a “rivalry.” Which made it all the more hilarious when UCF, after beating UConn 24-16, simply left the field Saturday without even acknowledging the trophy.

According to Neill Ostrout of the Journal Inquirer (Manchester, Conn.), a UConn staff member finally picked it up, put it on the UConn bench and threw a towel over the top. UConn didn’t just lose a game Saturday, which happens a lot. But it’s not every day the trophy you invented gets completely dissed by the team that won it.

MISERABLE, BUT NOT MISERABLE ENOUGH

Missouri: We have now reached the point of Barry Odom’s first season where you can no longer blame the schedule. Middle Tennessee at home in the middle of October should have been a good pivot point for the Tigers to regroup and prepare for some winnable SEC East games down the stretch. Instead, it has become a moment of crisis for the program after a 51-45 loss.

Missouri fans who have watched this team play recently are probably not surprised, but giving up 133 points over the last three games is alarmingly out of character given how good the defense was last season when Odom was the coordinator. This has been a bad year-long run for Missouri, from the tension of the protest to Gary Pinkel’s retirement and a difficult coaching search to athletics director Mack Rhoades bailing for Baylor. Missouri desperately needs something to feel good about, but this team isn’t giving it to them.

A 52-49 double overtime loss at Cal drops coach Mark Hefrich and Oregon to 2-5.

7. Oregon: The Ducks fan base is at the all-too-familiar Misery Index moment of teetering between rooting for the team to reclaim its season or an all-out collapse that will force the administration’s hand into big changes. In reality, the former isn’t possible anymore, not after a 52-49 double overtime loss at Cal that dropped Oregon to 2-5.

The miracle isn’t coming, only more losses to cement this as the worst Oregon team in at least a decade and probably longer depending on how bad it gets.

Meanwhile, with every loss, Oregon fans will descend deeper into the fantasy that Chip Kelly will return from the NFL to rescue to the program before it completely craters. Of course, the reality is that even if Kelly decides the NFL isn’t for him, Oregon could have major competition. And what would be worse for Oregon’s ego — keeping Helfrich for another year or losing out to, say, LSU in a bidding war for Kelly?

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8. Stanford: How many ways are there to quantify the ineptitude of this offense? The Cardinal rank 125th nationally at 305.2 yards per game with just 10 offensive touchdowns in six games. By comparison, Arizona State running back Kalen Ballage scored eight touchdowns by himself in a game earlier this season against Texas Tech.

With Stanford falling to 4-3 after a 10-5 loss to Colorado, it’s now clear in retrospect how valuable quarterback Kevin Hogan really was to the program. Without any passing threat, it's just been exponentially tougher to maximize Christian McCaffrey, who is down to 5.1 yards per rushing attempt from 6.0 last season. Every game is a grind for Stanford, and this season will go down as not only the worst for David Shaw but the least fun of his tenure — which is a shame given that they have the most electric offensive player in the country.

9. Mississippi State: When you’re well coached but not overly talented, you play a lot of games on the razor’s edge. A decent number of those games have gone in Dan Mullen’s favor over the years, but this year they’re all going against him. The Bulldogs have lost four heartbreakers, including 40-38 Saturday on the last play of the game when Kentucky’s Austin MacGinnis drilled a 51-yard field goal.

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Mississippi State just doesn’t have much to show for being competitive and playing hard, and their reward in early November is a schedule that includes games against Alabama, Texas A&M and Ole Miss. These are brutal lessons to learn for a relatively young team and a fan base that has gotten used to the good life over the last half-dozen years.

10. Michigan State: This has gone from a blip to a crisis to so far off the cliff that perhaps fans can rationalize as a complete outlier and a total anomaly rather than a trend. The indignities seem to get worse each week, this time a 28-17 loss at Maryland that would seem to indicate the Spartans have mentally checked out of this season.

Maryland piled up 247 rushing yards on 42 attempts and threw for 200 more, which makes this Michigan State team completely unrecognizable from the defensive juggernauts fans have been used to seeing. With Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State still to play, the 2-5 Spartans will need to pull multiple massive upsets to avoid staying home for the holidays.

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TOO SHOCKED TO BE MISERABLE 

BYU: You might think BYU fans would be desensitized to last-possession finishes by now, as only one game the entire season — a 31-14 win at Michigan State — has been drama-free. Still, the wild swing of emotions from week to week just won’t end.

One week after beating Mississippi State in overtime, the Cougars were back on the roller coaster with a 28-27 loss at Boise State, a game that will be remembered for Kalani Sitake’s bizarre decision to fake punt on fourth-and-19 from his own 5 yard line. Your fan base has been traumatized enough this season, coach, without subjecting them to that kind of maniacal football.

Iowa: Kirk Ferentz is good at math when it comes to his contract, which was recently extended to 2025 at an average of $4.5 million per year. He isn’t as good when it comes to calculating fourth-and-5 against Wisconsin with 5:30 remaining and his team down 14-6. Ferentz elected a field goal, which missed, then compounded the problem with a postgame explanation that made little sense. “You have to score twice,” he said following the 17-9 loss.

Marshall: Has any program in the country nosedived as dramatically and unexpectedly? After going to three consecutive bowl games and running up a 20-4 record against Conference USA opponents, the Herd have been brutal this year at 2-5. They reached a shocking low point Saturday with a 27-24 loss at home to Charlotte, a start-up program that joined the league last season.

TCU: The trust in Gary Patterson’s program is such that many fans projected the Frogs to be in the playoff this season as the Big 12 champion despite losing one of the best quarterbacks and probably best receiver in school history. (In fairness, they brought just about everyone else back). In reality, though, TCU has turned out to be ordinary at best, with Saturday’s 34-10 loss at West Virginia the latest example.

2016 college football TV schedule

South Alabama: No team in the country has a record more difficult to reconcile than the Jaguars.They have arguably earned the two best non-conference wins in program history this season, beating Mississippi State in the season opener and handing San Diego State its only loss thus far. Yet within its own league, which theoretically should be easier competition, South Alabama is a stunning 0-4 and in last place after a loss to Troy earlier this week. It’s hard to celebrate beating an SEC team and a good Mountain West team when you fall on your face in the Sun Belt.

FIVE TOTALLY REAL AND IRRATIONAL MESSAGE BOARD THREADS      

“Worst coaching staff in footbalk (sic)” — bucknuts.com (Ohio State)

“Please do not give Herman a raise” — CougarDigest.com (Houston)

“This is a 7-10 year rebuild.” — hogville.net (Arkansas)

“If we cheated to win a Sugar Bowl, damn glad we did.” -— nafoom.com (Ole Miss)

“I really believe we should reach out to Randy Edsall” — the-boneyard.com (UConn)

HIGHLIGHTS FROM WEEK 8