Misery Index Week 7: Ominous in Oxford
On Feb. 6, 2013, the Ole Miss coaching staff went into its recruiting war room anticipating a day that would forever change the trajectory of the Rebels’ historically mediocre program. No longer satisfied with being a bridesmaid in the SEC West, Hugh Freeze had come into Oxford preachin’ and recruitin’, preachin’ and recruitin’, and the results were about to show in a major way.
As the hours went by, almost every pulse of the fax machine was worthy of celebration. Letters of Intent came in that day from four prospects rated as five-stars, only one of which came from Mississippi.
The idea that Ole Miss could pull a Robert Nkemdiche out of the Atlanta suburbs or get a last-second commitment from Laremy Tunsil over Georgia and Alabama or land Laquon Treadwell from Chicago of all places was always viewed as bizarre.
Though Freeze had brought an up-tempo offense to Ole Miss and generated some positive momentum in his first year by going a surprising 7-6, his track record was nothing at all like the established big-time coaches he was beating out for recruits. And Ole Miss, as a program, had no history of being able to land players like the ones they were getting in 2013.
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Suspicions about what seemed to be a significant recruiting anomaly hovered over the Rebels. Rival fan bases and coaches smirked at Freeze’s sudden success. NCAA investigators went sniffing around the state of Mississippi, finding only some old violations that predated Freeze.
Just like that, he was seemingly on the way to a three-year window of guaranteed success with a core of recruits who showed right away that they had legitimate NFL talent.
Only now it’s Year 3, closing time for the vaunted Class of 2013 is coming and what does Freeze have to show for it?
Well, he has two wins against Alabama, which isn’t nothing. But he also now has a loss to Memphis and a season that has gone off the rails just a few weeks after being declared national championship contenders.
And he has a fan base that now realizes, once and for all, that Ole Miss probably is always going to be Ole Miss, and that Freeze’s weaknesses as a coach are not going away.
That’s not a terrible thing, really. Though Ole Miss is not likely to ever win a national title — Who is outside of the bluebloods? — it actually has a marginally better football history than it is usually given credit for. And if Freeze is just a great recruiter and very average coach, that’s probably going to net more wins in the long run at a place like Ole Miss when you have to face Alabama, Auburn, LSU and the rest week in and week out.
Snap judgments from Week 7 of college football
Still, this era of Ole Miss football is almost certainly going to go down as a missed opportunity. Nkemdiche, Tunsil, Treadwill and Tony Conner are probably all headed to the NFL draft after this season, and others such as linebacker C.J. Johnson, defensive back Trae Elston and receiver Cody Core will run out of eligibility.
In other words, 2016 always was going to be a rebuilding year for Ole Miss. Which meant that Freeze absolutely had to squeeze the most out of 2015.
And so far, he has not proved capable of doing it.
The magic Ole Miss had at Alabama — and despite Alabama's five turnovers, the Rebels looked very much like the better team that night — is gone. Two weeks later, they got handled at Florida 38-10. And now their world is turned upside down having lost to Memphis, a school their effete, mint julep-sipping fan base looks down on like a community college for people who can’t get into Ole Miss.
But Memphis happens to have a pretty good football team this year, and the Tigers fell behind 14-0 before promptly tearing Ole Miss apart in every aspect of the game. Freeze was outclassed on the sidelines by Justin Fuente, and the Tigers quite simply looked like the better team.
It was the kind of performance that could make a fan base turn on a coach. Of course, Freeze isn't going anywhere, not after being given a $4.3 million contract through 2018. Time to go do some more recruiting.
(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 upcoming coaching changes, Southern California, Maryland, South Carolina, Illinois and North Texas are hereby excluded from this and future editions of the Misery Index, as fans can look forward to a new regime taking hold in 2016.)
1. Ole Miss: Here’s a story about Hugh Freeze. Back in 2009, he desperately wanted the Memphis job. He had just spent two years at Lambuth, an NAIA school, and was well-known in Memphis because of his background there as a high school coach. He had the backing of the media and some powerful people at FedEx. Instead, the school’s former athletic director chose an alum, Larry Porter, who turned out to be one of the worst hires in recent memory.
Freeze went to Arkansas State as offensive coordinator in 2010 and then head coach the following year, and when he got a chance to play Memphis, he made sure to get his point across. As he settled into his news conference after beating the Tigers 47-3, Freeze asked one of his staff members: “Is the Memphis media coming?” The following week, he went on the radio and made sure everyone knew the score could have been worse had he not let up in the fourth quarter.
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It was a Tour de Freeze, and as the Misery Index watched Ole Miss’ meltdown, we could not help but wonder whether that ego came back to the surface and got in the way of common sense. Up 14-7 in the second quarter and facing third-and-1 at the Memphis 10-yard line, Freeze used Nkemdiche — the best defensive lineman in America — for a short-yardage carry. It’s something Ole Miss has done several times this year, largely because of deficiencies in the running game and an inability to get push from the offensive line in obvious running situations.
But this time it didn’t work, and even worse, Nkemdiche got a concussion on the play and missed the rest of the game. Then, instead of taking the points for a 17-7 lead, Freeze recklessly went for the fourth down and got stuffed. The game turned from there and Ole Miss was never the same. And that’s a bad, bad, bad thing not just for Ole Miss but potentially the SEC.
If Ole Miss wins out, it will be the SEC West champion — and though that seems highly unlikely after what we’ve seen, consider that the Rebels’ toughest remaining games (Texas A&M, Arkansas, LSU) are all at home. Can you imagine Ole Miss winning the SEC, then missing the College Football Playoff because of a loss to … Memphis? That’s the stuff of an all-time Misery Index.
2. Michigan: There is one thing preventing Michigan from being No. 1 on this list. The Misery Index, see, is about more than just one week or one play. And though the ending to Saturday’s 27-23 loss to Michigan State was one of the all-time gut punches and will forever be part of this rivalry, it is undeniable that the Wolverines are ahead of schedule under Jim Harbaugh.
If you accept the premise that Michigan was never going to be good enough to win the national championship this year, then the most important thing is showing the potential to do so in the future. And Michigan has shown that potential, even though Saturday was an undeniable setback. But in the end, Michigan played well enough to win the game and wrestle back control of the state from the undefeated Spartans.
In fact, Michigan wins the game in practically any scenario other than the one that happened with punter Blake O’Neill dropping a low snap and being unable to control the ball or fall on it amidst a crowd of green-and-white jerseys. So while it’s the most painful and ridiculous loss Michigan will ever suffer in this rivalry, in a weird way it represents further proof that Harbaugh is going to win big there sooner rather than later.
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3. Indiana: You only get so many opportunities at Indiana to get to six wins. For all the schedule engineering that programs can pull off to all but rig their appearances in bowl games, Indiana still has to find two wins in the Big Ten somewhere every year to make the postseason. It has happened only once since 1994, when coach Bill Lynch scratched out a 7-6 record with a trip to the Insight Bowl (now called the Cactus Bowl). It was all downhill from there.
Thus, what happened Saturday against Rutgers was inexcusable for Indiana and coach Kevin Wilson. Up 52-33 entering the fourth quarter, Indiana completely collapsed with three turnovers in the final 15 minutes, allowing Rutgers to come all the way back to steal a 55-52 win. That doesn’t happen. It can’t happen.
And now a season that started 4-0 for Indiana has pretty much crumbled dating to Oct. 3 when the Hoosiers were on Ohio State’s 6-yard line in the final minute, needing only one play to tie or potentially win with a two-point conversion. Now the Hoosiers will face three consecutive ranked teams before finishing the year at Maryland and at Purdue. Theoretically, the Hoosiers should be able to get to 6-6 and perhaps save Wilson’s job. But the fourth quarter gag on Saturday leaves them absolutely no margin for error.
4. Penn State: We are not sure what it says about James Franklin that he is 36-23 as a head coach despite an offense that frequently looks dysfunctional. Franklin, after all, made his reputation as an offensive coach at Maryland and Kansas State, so it does not compute that his teams at Vanderbilt and Penn State have largely been oriented around coordinator John Shoop’s defense.
Franklin would tell you that because of talent deficiencies at Vanderbilt and the personnel he inherited at Penn State, he has never truly been able to run the offense he wants to run. But at some point, even given the NCAA sanctions that have sapped Penn State’s depth and forced the Nittany Lions to go young up front, you have to show a pulse offensively.
David Jones, the highly respected columnist from The (Harrisburg, Pa.) Patriot-News and the foremost media authority on Penn State football, wrote this Saturday following a 38-10 loss to No. 1 Ohio State: “The problem for (Penn State) was their own offensive system is not one at all. It’s a crazy quilt of mismatched parts tossed together to no certain effect. It’s a pro-style quarterback being used with a bastardized playbook, an O-line using converted defensive linemen because it must, coached by a staff that would rather be running zone-option-read. It’s a chaotic mess.” Ouch.
This may be the most unusual dynamic in all of college football. At 5-2, Franklin is probably going to overachieve — again — it probably won’t be appreciated by the Penn State fan base because the offense at times looks so ugly.
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5. Virginia Tech: We feel pretty confident that some eyebrows were raised in Blacksburg last week when South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier walked away from the game, saying he didn’t want to be one of those coaches who hangs on too long. Well, Frank Beamer is essentially the same age as Spurrier and finds himself in much the same position, coaching a program that is clearly on the decline. Will Beamer step away at the end of this season or force athletics director Whit Babcock to make some difficult and perhaps uncomfortable decisions?
This really felt like a make-or-break year for Beamer. Virginia Tech has gone 7-6, 8-5 and 7-6 the last three seasons even though the ACC has been very mediocre outside of Florida State and Clemson. There was a lot of hope in Blacksburg that this year would be a bounce-back for Beamer, who has shown no indication that he wants to give up coaching.
Losing quarterback Michael Brewer to a broken collarbone in the season opener was bad luck, and maybe it’s not fair to evaluate Virginia Tech fully until next week when he is expected to start. Still, Saturday’s 30-20 loss at Miami continued the general aura of mediocrity that has defined Virginia Tech since the 2011 ACC championship game. Chances to salvage this season are dwindling.
6. Texas A&M: It is probably foolish to keep bringing up Kevin Sumlin’s name in correlation with the opening at Southern California for a variety of reasons, particularly because Texas A&M has proved to be a place that will pay a coach $5 million per year to deliver middle-of-the-pack finishes in the SEC West and lose lots of big home games with very little consequence. It’s nice work if you can get it.
Still, the routine of hyping Texas A&M before a massive, program-defining home game and then watching the Aggies suffer the same fate over and over is starting to get a little tired. At some point, Texas A&M actually needs to win one of these, right? Maybe the Aggies are just young; maybe they’re truly a year away. But it’s hard to defeat that narrative of Sumlin running a bit of a loose ship when you fall behind 28-6 to Alabama because they’re just more physical, more disciplined and better prepared.
Having said that, it would not be a surprise if the Aggies are 10-1 headed into LSU on Nov. 28 with the SEC West title on the line. The schedule is extremely friendly from here to there, with only next week’s game at No. 23 Ole Miss posing a significant physical challenge. After that, it’s a diet of South Carolina, Auburn, Western Carolina and Vanderbilt, which means the Aggies could win 10 games without a single top-25 victory (unless Ole Miss got back into the polls later).
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That’s the kind of fool's gold that will keep Sumlin quite secure at Texas A&M and reeling in highly ranked recruiting classes. But Sumlin is just 5-8 in SEC home games, which is a tough way to sustain a national power. At some point that needs to change or else Texas A&M will be doomed to be what it’s spent hundreds of millions to escape: A second-tier program with a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood.
7. Purdue: It’s bad and not getting better. After a tiny flash against Michigan State that gave the Boilermakers one drive to win or tie at the end — they, of course, didn’t capitalize on it — they’ve followed with losses of 41-13 to Minnesota and 24-7 to Wisconsin. That brings Darrell Hazell to 5-26 overall with just two wins against FBS opponents and a 1-18 record against the Big Ten.
Whether it’s right, wrong or indifferent, nobody survives that in this day and age of college football. At some point, it costs more for a school to keep a coach in terms of lost ticket sales than it does to fire him, and Purdue is probably at that point. It feels inevitable.
The problem for Purdue, however, is that it’s hard to find much hope that the next hire will be some sort of slam dunk. Athletics director Morgan Burke is more than likely going to have to just spin the wheel on the next Mid-American Conference up-and-comer (or someone of similar credentials) and hope that he picks the right one.
8. Georgia Tech: The sickest part of Georgia Tech’s nosedive to 0-4 in the ACC is how long it took for Paul Johnson to build the kind of credibility and cachet his team had at the end of last season and how quickly it all fell apart. For years, Johnson fought off the narratives about his offense and his recruiting and seemed like he finally got to a place where people were willing to just accept Georgia Tech for what it is as a program. That might mean some 7-6 years but also could mean something awesome with the right combination of experience and personnel and good fortune.
There was no more hot seat talk, no more worrying about his infamous fourth-down gambles. It would have been nice for Georgia Tech fans to ride that wave for a few years and just enjoy what Johnson brings to the table. Of course, when you follow an Orange Bowl-winning season with this mess, it’s not enjoyable at all.
The Yellow Jackets are 2-5 and likely to be 2-6 after playing Florida State next Saturday. And that means Georgia Tech’s proud streak of 18 consecutive years in a bowl game is in serious, serious jeopardy. That’s mind-boggling given the fact Georgia Tech was picked to win the ACC Coastal, but it's quickly becoming reality.
9. Kentucky: The entire history of Kentucky football is basically one big missed opportunity, but even within that context the year 2015 could go down as the most nauseating season in program history. The Wildcats are a couple plays away from being 6-0, and had they actually converted those plays against Florida and Auburn they would be in the driver's seat for the SEC East.
Instead, those dreams are probably gone after a 30-27 loss to Auburn and the focus will have to be getting to six wins which is very doable given remaining games against Charlotte, Louisville and Vanderbilt. That will be nice for Mark Stoops if and when it happens.
But man, if there was ever a year where it set up for Kentucky to do something great, it was this one. All the historically good teams the Wildcats have to play — Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, Georgia and even Louisville — are lesser versions of their normal selves. It sounds crazy, but the East was there for the taking. Now, Kentucky will have to settle for table scraps.
10. West Virginia: The Misery Index has heard some chatter in recent days that head coach Dana Holgorsen may be in trouble. West Virginia has a new athletics director in Shane Lyons (formerly the No. 2 in charge at Alabama), and Saturday’s 62-38 loss to Baylor dropped the Mountaineers to 0-3 in the Big 12.
Having said that, the tough part of the schedule is almost out of the way. Even if West Virginia loses to TCU on Oct. 29 to fall to 3-4, it would have a great chance to run the table and finish 8-4. West Virginia is clearly not on the same level as the top programs in the Big 12, but it hasn’t yet proven to be a dumpster fire, either.
So what’s the expectation level for a program that was consistently in the top-25 when it was playing in the Big East but had some natural advantages in that league that it doesn’t possess now? Holgorsen is 11-19 in the Big 12, which isn’t good. But the next few weeks could go a long way toward determining whether he’s worth some patience or whether West Virginia fans are headed toward an all-out revolt.
Honorable mention (Miserable, but not miserable enough): UCLA, Boise State, Cincinnati, Kansas, Ball State, Nevada.
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