CFB Week 8 (10/16-10/18) News and Picks (2024)

Coaching tenures always end badly with anger and hurt feelings all the way around. Either a coach leaves because he’s seeking greener pastures or he’s canned. Almost no one ever resigns when things are going well.

Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez is one of the few who left a great situation on his own terms, and without aiming for another coaching gig. He’s just about the only big-time head coach in recent years who took off with the fan base still wanting more (again, without going to take another coaching job). Bill Snyder left Kansas State when the team was struggling. Lloyd Carr had been called to resign for years, even with a slew of success. Those situations are as good as it gets. Even Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden, arguably two of the five greatest coaches ever, aren’t about the scrutiny with a sizeable portion of their respective fan bases ready to move forward. Paterno even has his team in the thick of the national title chase and there’s still talk about what happens next.

Coaches are usually remembered more fondly when they’re gone. Even though Clemson should bring in a big-time head man who could finally get the program over the hump, Bowden will be missed in a lot of ways.

“For 16 years, ever since the Hiss case, you've had a lot of fun. Just think how much you're going to be missing. You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore.” … There’s a common misconception that the college football coaching fraternity is an old boys’ network. That’s the NFL, and it’s definitely the NBA. Once you’re out as a big-time college football head coach, you’re almost always out for good when it comes to getting another elite-level gig.

Many think Bowden should be able to find another college head coaching job almost instantly, or whenever he’s ready, but does it really work to go through someone else’s trash? Coaches who get fired, or are strongly suggested to move on (count Houston Nutt in the latter category), rarely get another shot, and when they do, it almost never works. Getting fired from the pros (Pete Carroll, Steve Spurrier, Dennis Erickson, Butch Davis, June Jones, Mike Sherman, Dave Wannstedt) doesn’t count. I’m talking about the guys who were at one of the top college jobs and got fired, and not the ones who leave for other options.

How’s the Ty Willingham experience going at Washington? Remember when Mike Price was on the verge of jumping to a big gig somewhere after a little bit of early success at UTEP? (Message board discussion topic for the day: Where would Alabama be right now if Price had been able to keep the Tide job?) Ohio has been fine, but nothing special under Frank Solich. Hal Mumme is just now having a little bit of success at New Mexico State, and Bill Lynch is struggling at Indiana the year after taking over for the late Terry Hoeppner.

So out of all the coaches, there are just three retreads, guys where were fired from previous top jobs who are now working out. 3) Howard Schnellenberger, Florida Atlantic The Owls won the Sun Belt title last year but are struggling this season.
2) David Cutcliffe, Duke – Don’t scoff. At 3-2, this is already the best Duke season since 2003. The program hasn’t won more than four games since 1994.
1) Ron Zook, Illinois – He’s the one. This is the only real recent example of one program’s trash being another program’s treasure. Good luck finding that next big job, Tommy.

“We have news for the beautiful people. There's a lot more of us than there are of you. I know there's alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams, you might have been called a spaz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you're a nerd or not, why don't you come and join us? Come on. No one's really gonna be free until nerd persecution ends.” … If you’re a big-time head football coach, you cannot lose to 1) your arch-rival and 2) the smart, small schools your program has amassed a ridiculously lopsided record against. It doesn’t matter if a smart/small school has one of the nation’s better secondaries (like Vanderbilt), it doesn’t matter what its record is, and it doesn’t matter if the smart/small school has turned into a conference power with a league title and a 24-7 record over the previous 31 games (like Wake Forest). If you lose to the smart/small school, bad things happen and heads end up rolling.

You know Wake Forest and Vanderbilt can play, and I know Wake Forest and Vanderbilt can play, and the coaches who study their opponents on film certainly know that Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Stanford, and to a lesser degree, Duke and Baylor, can play. Good luck trying to sell that to Jim Bob Booster or Earl and Gladys RV, who are used to setting their watches to the annual layup.

193 yards of total offense, 56 rushing yards, and a loss to Arkansas. Oooooops ... Again, when you’re an Auburn and you lose to a Vanderbilt, the fan base gets grouchy. Offensive coordinator Tony Franklin got the boot because Tommy Tuberville couldn’t fire his players, or himself, and while the Tiger offense really does appear to be sputtering, remember one key element here … Auburn plays in the SEC.

I wrote something to this effect last year and it bears repeating. You can’t get all geeked up about the SEC being the be-all-end-all conference and then wonder why your team isn’t beating everyone 57-3. Auburn ran for 321 yards against UL Monroe and threw for 248 yards against Southern Miss. The O really wasn’t that bad, and just about everyone acknowledged that it was going to be a bit of a work in progress. The SEC season hit and, shock of shocks, the games became tight.

The SEC has seven of the top 21 defenses in America, and that doesn’t count LSU, who can obviously lay the lumber a little bit, and Mississippi State, whose D is much better than the statistics because the offense doesn’t provide any support. That also doesn’t include Vanderbilt, who’s currently 22^nd in the nation in scoring defense. The one defense that doesn’t quite fit the SEC mold? Arkansas, and in game one after Tony Franklin, the offense struggled even more than usual despite facing the league’s worst defense (and it’s not even close).

Experience and bright, shiny appearances don’t always mean talent. You know, like Cougars … Congratulations, you’re witnessing history. This might turn out to be the worst ever crop of senior pro quarterback prospects.

Before the season, according to most of the insiders, the top five senior QBs the scouts were looking at were 1) Purdue’s Curtis Painter, and now he’s on the verge of being benched. 2) Louisville’s Hunter Cantwell has completed just 57% of his throws with seven touchdown passes and six interceptions. 3) Clemson’s Cullen Harper has been benched for Willy Korn. 4) Missouri’s Chase Daniel is a fantastic college quarterback, but at around 5-10, isn’t seen as anything more than a second day pick and a backup at the next level. 5) Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell is also supposed to be a second day prospect, at best.

There’s a very real possibility that no senior quarterback goes in the first three rounds, and that’s being generous. Early entries can’t be blamed. The best quarterbacks in the 2008 Draft, Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Brian Brohm, Chad Henne, John David Booty, Colt Brennan, and Andre Woodson, were all seniors. And that’s where the juniors come in.

Matthew Stafford, Tim Tebow, Mark Sanchez, Nate Davis, and Colt McCoy could all use more seasoning as far their pro potential, but they’d all be taken ahead of any of the seniors in the 2009 Draft. The NFLers would love to get their grubby mitts on Sam Bradford, too.

Oh yeah, and there’s that little matter of the debilitating pain you’ll enjoy for the rest of your life ... Why should the underclassmen stay in school? NutriSystem and Dancing With The Stars. To all of the star players, get your degree so you’ll have something to do when football is over. Otherwise, you could be a Hall of Fame quarterback, the greatest receiver of all-time, the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, or the winningest head coach in NFL history, and the best you can hope for is to publicly lose weight or to shake your booty for approval. It could be worse; you could be a washed up actor and enter the lost refuge of the damned, a.k.a. TotalGym commercials.

And to the loser, you have to actually sit through the movie followed by an hour-long George Lucas symposium defending Jar Jar Binks and his dippy infatuation with aliens… Congratulations to the LSU band for winning a $25,000 prize for the band that came up with the best rendition of the Indiana Jones theme. Wisconsin’s band misunderstood the rules and played the theme from Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade. The Badger band might have lost, but it got to see big breasted women making out with each other.

Considering how miserable Michigan has been, the collapse in Ann Arbor is looking worse and worse, the defense couldn’t come through against Ohio State, and the Penn State embarrassment was part byproduct of the losses to the Wolverines and Buckeyes and part getting exposed. The entire team isn’t blameless, but the biggest issue has been the quarterback play. Allan Evridge, a senior who has been around the program long enough to know what he’s doing, doesn’t have a feel for the pass rush, hasn’t come through in the clutch, and he hasn’t used his running ability nearly enough.

2. Clemson
The team didn’t show up for the Alabama game and has yet to unleash its fury going 1-3 against FBS teams. The big concern coming into the season was the offensive line, but outside of the loss to the Tide, it hasn’t been all that bad. The defensive front was supposed to own space in opposing backfields, and it hasn’t happened with a stunning lack of a pass rush. A team with James Davis, C.J. Spiller, Aaron Kelly and Cullen Harper should be averaging more than 26.7 points per game. Take out the wins over Citadel and South Carolina State and the Tigers are averaging just 15.2 points per game. And now the program is undergoing an overhaul.

1. Blowing off losses
USC had blown out Ohio State and had two weeks off to rest up and prepare for Oregon State. Clunk. Oh well, no big deal. Currently ranked fourth in the Coaches’ Poll, when, not if, Texas, Alabama, and/or Penn State lose, USC will slide into the national title game if it wins out.

Florida lost to Ole Miss, probably the SEC’s 10^th best team, and maybe lower. Oh well, no big deal. Win the SEC title and finish with just one loss and it’ll be off to shoot for a second national title in three years.

Georgia got destroyed by Alabama (at least in the first half). Missouri lost at home to Oklahoma State, LSU got its doors blown off by Florida, and Kansas collapsed against South Florida. Oh well, no big deal. If any of them win out, they’re likely going to play for the national title. And that’s the problem with the system and it’s been the problem in the analysis of how the season is going.

The first BCS rankings come out next week and, unfortunately, the computer part of the system will remain relatively moot compared to the two human polls. The idea of the BCS is to be able to adequately compare the shape and landscape of a full season, but that doesn’t really happen since the humans who account for two-thirds of the equation will, as always, punish a late loss and forgive an early one.

If Texas loses a 34-31 shootout at Kansas late in the year, it’ll probably be dropped below a one-loss USC because the Oregon State loss happened early in the year. If Alabama loses at LSU, certainly a respectable defeat, it’ll likely fall below the Trojans and possibly a one-loss Oklahoma. How do we know this? Oklahoma lost in a near-even shootout against Texas this week and dropped from No. 1 to sixth behind Texas Tech and USC. Voters drop teams that lose, and that’s not always fair.

Here’s begging the pollsters to keep the USC loss to Oregon State, the Florida loss to Ole Miss, the Ohio State blowout loss to USC and the Georgia first half against Alabama in the discussion over the next six weeks. A loss is a loss. In the national title chase, the defeats can’t be blown off.