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Bob Davie

Misery Index Week 12: Suffering in South Bend

Dan Wolken
USA TODAY Sports
After a strong start, Notre Dame has crashed back to earth, increasing the frustration for coach Brian Kelly.

Having been around the college football block a few times, the Misery Index has come to the conclusion that no job wears a coach out like Notre Dame. That's not to say the school hasn't made its share of mistakes over the last couple decades. It would be pretty easy to argue that none of the historical powers have made three consecutive worse hires than Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis.

But Brian Kelly? He wasn't a bad hire. He was the best coach Notre Dame could have hired following the 2009 season, and if the Fighting Irish had to do it all over again this year, it's far from a slam dunk they could do better.

Nearing the end of his fifth year on the job, though, Kelly just looks worn down by the whole thing. Two Saturdays ago, he got prickly with a reporter and threw quarterback Everett Golson under the bus following a 55-31 loss at Arizona State.

Then on Saturday, after losing to Northwestern 43-40 in a stunning collapse, Kelly almost seemed disoriented, failing to explain why he went for two with 10:34 to go after a touchdown that put the Irish ahead 40-29.

The two-point play failed, and the fact that Northwestern was able to tie the game with 19 seconds left highlighted the fact that there was really no great reason for Kelly to try it in the first place.

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Notre Dame has talent, is recruiting very well and remains as relevant as ever. The Fighting Irish might not be winning national titles, but they're not that far out of the mix. Relative to the last 20 years, things are OK at Notre Dame.

And even though Kelly has never been known as the best loser in the sport, this season definitely seems to have drained him. Is it the weekly on-field drama with an increasingly erratic Golson? Is it the academic stuff that led to four players being suspended or dismissed in the preseason? Maybe it's everything.

Notre Dame is a unique, terrific job with great resources, tradition, facilities and advantages enjoyed by only a handful of programs. But it's also a more difficult job than the traditional powers because of the academic requirements, the Notre Dame honor code and the fact that school administrators are legitimately trying to quote-unquote "do it the right way."

And the pressure. Oh, the pressure.

There are certain programs where the intensity of the fan base and the media create a constant unstable environment in which only the strongest, most well-equipped of coaches can survive. Alabama. Texas. Florida. Ohio State. Michigan. Maybe Southern California. Those are Notre Dame's only peers in that regard.

But even in that elite stratosphere, Notre Dame is different. The moment things go bad there, it's as though the universe is collapsing. The program, in many ways, is like the Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail until there's nothing left.

It might be that in this media environment, the lifespan of a Notre Dame coach is only about five or six years. Fix it, win as much as you can and move on to something more sane.

Not that there's any excuse for losing to Northwestern this season. There isn't. But it's college football, and Notre Dame was never as good as its 6-0 record once indicated. Regressing to the mean hasn't been pretty, to be sure, but it's not as dire as the atmosphere around Notre Dame today might reflect.

The question now is whether Kelly might just get fed up with it all — or if Notre Dame fans will care either way.

(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: By virtue of their decision to make coaching changes, Florida, SMU, Kansas, Troy and Buffalo are hereby excluded from this and future editions of the Misery Index, as fans can look forward to a new regime taking hold in 2015.)

1. Notre Dame: It's sort of ironic that when Florida fired Ron Zook in 2004, Notre Dame was looking for a coach at the same time, having just fired Ty Willingham. It's unlikely both jobs will be open again, but how might history have changed if the Irish had gotten Urban Meyer out of Utah before the Gators? Heck, if that had happened, Brian Kelly might have ended up at Florida after winning big at Cincinnati. In any event, the here and now has put Kelly in a spot where he'll have to spend the winter explaining away why Notre Dame collapsed after getting into the national title discussion the first half of the season. No longer are the Fighting Irish a good, unlucky team. They're a mediocre team that played above its head in nearly knocking off Florida State and has come crashing back to reality. The problem is simple: The personnel isn't good enough. There's a lot of talent at some positions, but the Fighting Irish are woefully understaffed at others. The good news is Kelly is recruiting at a very high level and understands he needs to go head-to-head and beat elite programs for players consistently for Notre Dame to get where it wants to go. That won't stop those who dislike his sideline demeanor or other idiosyncrasies from putting every minor failure on his shoulders.

Bo Pelini and Nebraska took a beating Saturday at Wisconsin.

2. Nebraska: Few coaches have changed their image in the course of a year as much as Bo Pelini. Though it's clear making him seem more likable to fans and media members was orchestrated, at least he made the effort. In the end, though, self-deprecation only goes so far when you give up 56 unanswered points to Wisconsin and allow running back Melvin Gordon an FBS-record 408 yards on 25 carries. And that's the thing with Pelini, the former defensive coordinator. When it goes bad with his team, with his defense, it goes really bad. Last season all four Cornhuskers losses were by double-digits. In 2012 they lost 63-38 to Ohio State and 70-31 to Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game. Meanwhile, you have to look really hard to find victories against ranked teams on Pelini's résumé. Sure, they can handle the Purdues of the world, but it's a whole different story against the better teams in the league. Meanwhile, Nebraska fans yearn to be nationally relevant again and on some level find it ridiculous that they moved to a supposedly superior conference and yet play a weaker schedule. Nebraska finishes with Minnesota and Iowa, so there's a good chance the Huskers will finish 10-2. But what would that really mean? Is the program any closer today than it was one, two or three years ago to being what Nebraska fans want it to be? And yet, it's not like Pelini has been awful enough to fire, particularly this year. So the Cornhuskers likely muddle on, though losses like Saturday make it increasingly difficult for him to score public relations points by exploiting poor cats.

3. Pittsburgh: This has been a ridiculous season in every way possible at Pitt, a program that is perpetually less successful than it seems on the surface. Pitt is still a good name in college football because of its long list of NFL alumni and that nice run in the late 1970s and early 1980s and that whole Western Pennsylvania football thing. But if you really look at it, the 1990s were a wasteland and the 2000s have barely been better, if only because everyone goes to a bowl game these days and somehow an 8-4 Pitt team in 2004 lucked its way into the BCS thanks to the Big East's automatic bid. Other than that? Bleh. Meanwhile, Paul Chryst's third season looks like his worst yet, even though the Panthers avoided Florida State, Louisville, Clemson and Notre Dame in the ACC's schedule rotation. Pitt has lost six of its last seven games, most of them in crushing fashion. Saturday was no different, as Pitt led for 46 minutes, 7 seconds against North Carolina only to lose 40-35 on a touchdown with 50 seconds remaining. Pitt isn't exactly the type of program where you should just cycle through a new coach every three years, but something is definitely not working. Chryst is 17-19 as a head coach, and it's not like the ACC has been a beast. This is going to be a head-scratching and frustrating offseason for Pitt fans, as they'll once again be asked to remain patient and let Chryst continue recruiting to his smashmouth style of play while knowing deep down the mediocrity is likely to continue.

4. Illinois: If you're a fan of the Fighting Illini, you're asking two questions today. First, what in the world are we doing here? And two, why does Tim Beckman still have a job? Beckman has been Illinois' coach for 34 games. He has won 10 of them against the following opponents (in chronological order): Western Michigan, Charleston Southern, Southern Illinois, Cincinnati, Miami (Ohio), Purdue, Youngstown State, Western Kentucky, Texas State and Minnesota. That's Illinois football, folks. Or at least, it is right now, which is pretty comical when you consider that Ron Zook was fired following back-to-back bowl seasons. Of course, that's not the full story. Zook was mediocre at best for four consecutive years after going to the Rose Bowl in 2007. It was time for a change. But Beckman has dug a far deeper hole for the next coach to climb out of, and regardless of when the coaching change comes, that's a difficult proposition for fans to swallow. Sitting in a cold, empty stadium in Champaign, Ill., in October and November to watch more years of bad football before the next guy shows signs of life? What fan really wants to deal with that?

Les Miles and LSU lost for the fourth time this season on Saturday, falling to Arkansas.

5. LSU: In some ways, LSU is the Rosetta Stone for interpreting the entire college football season. If you're inclined to believe the Tigers are a good football team, it helps frame the accomplishments of Alabama and Mississippi State and perhaps excuses the three-point loss Ole Miss suffered in Baton Rouge. If you think the Tigers are pretty mediocre, that changes quite a bit with regard to how those teams fit into the playoff picture. Saturday's effort — a 17-0 loss at Arkansas, snapping the Hogs' epic SEC losing streak that stretched back to Oct. 13, 2012 — would support the mediocre theory. The truth is, outside of a few great moments, LSU has been pretty painful to watch this year. The Tigers' offense stinks, its quarterback situation stinks and there was never really any glimmer of coming back after falling behind 10-0 at halftime in Fayetteville. That's a pretty hopeless existence, when the game is over once you fall behind two scores even against a team that hadn't won in the SEC for more than two years. LSU has had a lot of ugly offensive performances, but 123 yards against Arkansas has to rank right at the top. The whole thing was just a mess. Quarterback Anthony Jennings had 87 yards on 12 completions, and the Tigers rushed for 36 yards on 32 attempts. It probably wasn't too surprising; Arkansas was favored by oddsmakers, after all, and going on the road one week after the emotional loss to Alabama was always a difficult spot. Still, LSU fans will not look favorably on this season given the Tigers' strong defense and a lot of young talent that never really hit its stride.

6. Stanford: Is Stanford over? Not literally, of course. Stanford will continue playing football next year and the one after that and the one after that. But is Stanford over as the program that made America love Nerd Nation, the program that bullied its way to the top of the Pac-12, the program that defied history and recruiting rankings to crash the BCS for four consecutive years? That remains to be seen, but fans have to be a bit concerned about the backslide this year to 5-5 and the possibility the Cardinal will miss the postseason for the first time since 2009. Yes, that's right — with games remaining at California and UCLA, Stanford is on very thin ice to make a bowl game, which would be a true disappointment considering they were expected to contend for the Pac-12 title. Here's the truth: An entire generation of great Stanford players cycled out of the program after last season, and a new generation has cycled in. Are they going to be good enough? Who knows? That's college football, and that's why everyone has a chance in this day and age. If you hit on a bunch of guys who weren't heavily recruited (like Stanford did the last four years), you have a chance to exceed expectations. If guys you counted on don't pan out (like Stanford quarterback Kevin Hogan), you're going to struggle. Don't discount David Shaw's ability to get it fixed, but the fact is Stanford's wins this year are against UC-Davis, Army, Washington, Washington State and Oregon State. The Cardinals' inability to beat anyone of substance shows they're now in the middle of the pack. Next season will be huge in figuring out whether they can get back to the upper echelon.

7. Texas A&M: Is Kevin Sumlin on the way to becoming the SEC's next Mark Richt? A nice guy who never seems to be short on talent but gets tagged with being a perennial underachiever because his teams are so wildly inconsistent and tend to lose games they have no business losing? That's sure what it looks like. How about this for a stat: Sumlin is 13-6 at home as Texas A&M's head coach and 4-6 at Kyle Field in SEC games. That's poor by any measure, especially given the hype (and the ensuing contract extensions that have made Sumlin one of college football's highest-paid coaches). Sure, you can argue Texas A&M is a young program, and you can argue that most of the losses came against ranked opponents. And hey, if all else fails, just look at the recruiting! But the thing about the SEC is that everybody recruits well. Getting five-star players is nice, but in that league, it's often your five-stars against their five-star players. So you better have some coaching substance behind it. Does Sumlin have it? Saturday's 34-27 loss to a very average Missouri team, again at home, is the kind of game that makes you wonder if the Aggies will ever be consistent enough under Sumlin to win titles. This is a hard enough league even if you're winning the ones you're supposed to win. Now Texas A&M isn't even doing that very effectively.

Tight end Ryan Yurachekj and Marshall are winning games (10-0) but losing the battle of perception.

8. Marshall: Here's a new one for the Misery Index. How is it that the fan base of a 10-0 team could be miserable? When that 10-0 team is losing the battle of public perception and can't get even an ounce of respect from the only people that matter. Marshall has rolled over everybody in Conference USA by an average of 33.5 points in six league games, and the Thundering Herd are clearly a quality football team. But there's no way to spin the strength of schedule. It's pitiful. In addition to the C-USA dregs, Marshall played Miami (Ohio), Rhode Island, Ohio and Akron in the non-conference. All of them are awful. There are 45 teams in the country, minimum, that would probably have the same record as Marshall playing that schedule. Still, Marshall fans fervently believe their team could play with anybody in the country, and many are arguing they deserve a spot not just in the top-25 but in the four-team playoff given their record and the nationwide parity. That's not going to happen, of course. But it certainly makes this historic season for Marshall fans a bit less enjoyable when the team's work isn't being recognized by the College Football Playoff selection committee — and might not even be good enough to get the Group of Five spot in a New Year's Day bowl.

9. Washington: When the Huskies lost Steve Sarkisian to conference rival Southern California and then turned around and hired Chris Petersen from Boise, many fans celebrated it as a coaching upgrade. It may very well turn out that way down the line. But this has undeniably been a tough first season for Petersen at the major conference level, with Saturday's 27-26 loss to Arizona dropping the Huskies to 6-5 overall and 2-5 in the Pac-12. This comes on the heels of cornerback Marcus Peters being dismissed from the team, the eighth player to be suspended or dismissed since Petersen arrived. Saturday's loss continued the pain. Washington pretty much dominated the game. It had 129 more yards of offense, a huge time of possession advantage (36:05-23:55) and a 26-21 lead entering the fourth quarter. But the Huskies committed 13 penalties and lost on a 47-yard field goal that happened only after Casey Skowron's initial miss was negated by Petersen calling timeout. The old "ice the kicker" trick backfired in a big way on Petersen, which is kind of the way this year has gone for him. Coincidentally, this is the first time he's lost five games in a season as head coach. And unlike in Boise, where Petersen had enough goodwill built up to survive a rough patch or two with his fan base, he's starting from scratch with Washington fans. So far, he hasn't shown them much.

Chris Petersen's first season at Washington has been a struggle.

10. Kentucky: The final indignity for Kentucky will come on Nov. 29 when the Wildcats lose to in-state rival Louisville to complete a fall from 5-1 to 5-7 and miss going to a bowl game. In some ways, it would be easier if Kentucky fans could just rip that inevitability off like a Band-Aid, get it over with as soon as possible. Instead, they'll have to wait nearly two weeks to get the finish they know is coming. Until then, they'll be left to wonder exactly how all this happened. Kentucky was riding so, so high on Oct. 11 after beating Louisiana-Monroe to get within a game of bowl eligibility. In some ways, the Wildcats already should have been there, with their only loss coming at Florida after a controversial call kept the game going into a second overtime. Since then, however, it's just been one debacle after another for Mark Stoops and Co.. His defense has completely fallen apart late in the season, yielding 113 total points against Georgia and Tennessee, and all the positive momentum has vanished. There are certainly things to like about Kentucky's future still, especially with the talent Stoops is bringing in, but this will be a bitter way to let go of those bowl dreams.

Honorable mention (Miserable, but not miserable enough): Oklahoma, Southern Miss, Kent State, Clemson, Ball State, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Tulsa.

GALLERY: HIGHLIGHTS FROM WEEK 12

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