COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

Albert Einstein once observed that:  “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one,” and once everyone here at Coaches Hot Seat got a good look at Week 2’s play the realities of the college football season in 2008 are starting to settle in.  One thing that has nothing to do with the game of college football, but is very important for our country, is that once one gets away from their own city and gets out into this great Republic they quickly realize what a hellava country we live in.  There is a persistent amount of bad news being reported everyday, but from the ground level out amongst the American people, we may have never been a stronger country than we are today.  It is just impossible to overstate how impressive our young people on our college campuses are and the passion that they bring to life, and to the game of college football is unmatched.  A few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat travel outside the US on a regular basis and there are lots of people overseas salivating at the thought that the US might be down for the count, but after looking the American people in the eye we can only paraphrase Mark Twain and say, The reports of “our” death have been greatly exaggerated.

 

Getting back to Mr. Einstein, at the Coaches Hot Seat Sunday Barbeque the main topic was the current reality of college football, and reality’s evil twin, fantasy.  The fantasy begins with the idea that the BCS is anything other than a massive fraud and fantasy (lock yourself down BCS Boys, for these legal briefs that keep getting circulated here at Coaches Hot Seat just get more interesting by the day), and there were a few teams revealed to be living in a fantasy in Week 2 as well.  Of course, the opposite of fantasy is reality, and the reality is that there is just some very good college football being played in this country, because for the first time in several years we are starting to see teams play entire games, with football being played until the clock runs out.  What else can be made of scores like 42-10, 51-14, 47-21, 42-0, 35-12, 56-17, 51-10, 52-26, 66-24, 69-0, 66-3, 48-28, 45-3, 52-3, 51-6, 56-26, 83-10, 29-0, 56-37, 69-10, 42-17, and 42-21?  Football is a 4-quarter game and both teams enter a football game willingly, and there is nothing wrong with a team continuing to play the game of football until there is 0:00 on the clock, albeit most of the time with their second and third teams.  The game clock exists for a reason, and all of these teams that were getting the hell beat of them have a responsibility to not quit and play until the clock says 0:00, just like the winning teams do.  This is not an issue of sportsmanship, but rather playing the game of football.  Play on!

 

There was much discussion at the Coaches Hot Seat Sunday Barbeque in the beautiful California sunshine about Saturday’s games, but we here at Coaches Hot Seat are about Ranking the Coaches, so with all the ballots now in, let’s get to the Post Week 2 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings. 

 

Top 10 Coaches on Post Week 2 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings:

 

1.  Ty Willingham, Washington– Ty Willingham is back in the No. 1 Hot Seat, mainly because the two men ahead of him, Tommy Bowden and Mike Sherman, got much needed wins in Week 2.  We all know the stupidity of the celebration call on Jake Locker by now, but our baseline for the University of Washington football program is not whether a player gets a celebration call which causes the team to get a PAT blocked that would have taken a game against BYU into overtime.  No, our baseline for the University of Washington is that a football program with as much tradition as UW should not be worried about celebration penalties, but about winning football games and championships.  There are three numbers that Ty Willingham can just not get around, 11-27 (.289), which is Willingham’s record and winning percentage at Washington.  Those numbers are just not acceptable at the University of Washington, and Ty Willingham knows it.  Coach Willingham fully knew what he was getting into at Washington, and he knows the daunting challenge that he now faces for the rest of the ’08 season, and we fully expect Ty to keep working very hard to put a winning team onto the football field.  Washington played very hard, led by their warrior QB Jake Locker, against BYU and we expect them to come out and play hard against Oklahoma on Saturday.  Ty Willingham faces a great challenge with Oklahoma coming to Seattle, but he should know that everyone of us here at Coaches Hot Seat would swap our place in the stands with him in a second, even if we had to take on his 4+ year record at Washington.  As Joseph Campbell once said, “Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.”  With the Sooners in Husky Stadium on Saturday, we are going to find out a lot about Ty Willingham and the Washington football program, and the Huskies should count themselves lucky to have such a great opportunity to do something historic, like knock OU off.

 

2.  Greg Robinson, Syracuse – After a home loss in the Carrier Dome to MAC team Akron, even Greg Robinson must know that he is deep trouble.  With Penn State coming to town on Saturday and seemingly determined to keep putting up wins for Coach Paterno, let’s just go ahead and say that Syracuse will be 0-3.  Looking at the rest of the ’08 Syracuse schedule, we only see one very probable win, a home game against Northeastern, and there is just no way Robinson can survive anything less than a .500 record this year.  With that being said, Robinson and the Orangemen need to put their heads down and play the game of football and make sure they represent Syracuse well in every game for the rest of this year.  We know Greg Robinson has worked very hard at Syracuse and that even if he is fired he will quickly land a NFL or college assistant job if he wants one, so no the days are not as dark as they seem.  Syracuse football can recover from its current state, because it has a rich football tradition, and if Robinson is replaced all it will take is the right guy, at the right moment, to make the Orangemen a player again in the game of college football.

 

3.  Chuck Long, San Diego State– Chuck Long and his San Diego State team played well in South Bend against Notre Dame, but it is impossible to know if Notre Dame is any better than the team that SDSU lost to in Week 1, Cal Poly.  Yes, the challenges are great at San Diego State, but we find it hard to believe that if Chuck Long got the same effort out of his Aztecs that he got from them against Notre Dame on Saturday, that Long’s record at SDSU would not be a lot better than 7-19 (.269) in his third season.  The challenge for Long is to get his San Diego State players to play hard whether the opponent is Cal Poly OR Notre Dame, and if they can do that then the Aztecs have a chance to win a few games this year.  San Jose State and Idaho are up next for San Diego State, and if they can play hard they should have a good chance to win both of those games, and there is just no excuse for a team that had Notre Dame beat to lose to Idaho at home.  Win the San Jose State game, get to 1-2.  Beat Idaho and get to 2-2.  Then go from there.  Hell, that’s all you can do!

 

4.  Bill Stewart, West Virginia – We love Bill Stewart’s passion for the game of football, but Stewart should understand completely that he is coaching a team at West Virginia that anyone here at Coaches Hot Seat could coach to 9 wins in ’08.  This West Virginia football team is loaded with talent, has a terrific QB and leader in Pat White, and there is just no excuse for the Mountaineers to lay such an egg like they did against ECU on Saturday.  Skip Holtz has a nice team at East Carolina, but he does not have the talent that West Virginia does, and Stewart’s team did not come out and match the passion and fire of the Pirates and that is why they got whipped 24-3.  Yes, 24-3 is a whipping when you have more talent than the other team, and with a trip to Colorado looming, Stewart had better get his West Virginia football team back on track in a hurry, because a loss in Boulder would make it a disastrous 1-2 start to the ’08 season.  West Virginia has the talent to challenge for the National Title in 2008, and it is Bill Stewart’s job to give his team an opportunity to win a conference and national championship.  After Saturday, it looks like there is a lot of work to do in Morgantown, so get to work!

 

5.  Ralph Friedgen, Maryland– After a lackluster win over Delaware in Week 1, Friedgen and the Terps went down to central Tennessee and got beat by a Sun Belt team in Middle Tennessee.  Taking nothing away from Rick Stocktill’s team at MTSU, there is just no reason for an ACC team to lose to a Sun Belt team.  The talent difference is huge, the money spent is huge, the size of the schools is huge, and by getting beat by MTSU, Ralph Friedgen is on the Hot Seat, and Ralph is a honest enough of a man to realize that.  Maryland has California coming into College Park this Saturday and they have an opportunity to get their ’08 season back on track against a Cal Bears team that is still getting their feet underneath them.  Cal is going to put a lot of pressure on the Maryland defense, and Friedgen and his offensive staff better figure out in hurry how to put some points up on the board.  Besides the offense, Friedgen needs to figure out why his last couple of year’s teams are not playing with the same passion of his first few teams at Maryland.  There is a noticeable difference between Friedgen’s early teams at UM and his team this year and last, and Friedgen needs to look inward at what he is doing different that is causing him to not get the most out of his Maryland football team.  As always, the problem usually exists with the man in the mirror, and Friedgen is the man in the mirror in this case.

 

6.  Charlie Weis, Notre Dame– We all watched a replay of the Notre Dame – San Diego State game this afternoon over ribs and beer and if we were an opposing head coach on Notre Dame’s schedule this year, we would be licking our chops to get a shot at the Irish.  After talking about it earlier today, we could not remember a time when a coach won a game and moved up in the Coaches Hot Seat Rankingsin any significant way, but with the game that the Irish played against San Diego State, it is entirely appropriate that Charlie Weis finds himself back on the Hot Seat.  Charlie Weis is not an idiot, and as much football game tape that he has watched in his life, he surely knows that his Notre Dame team must get a lot better if they hope to win some games in ’08.  With San Diego State behind them, Weis and the Irish should know that there is not one team left on their schedule that is afraid or intimidated by the name Notre Dame, and that means that either the Irish can begin to play the game of football (which they didn’t for 3 quarters Saturday) or they will lose a lot of games this season.  We here at Coaches Hot Seat are not the only one’s that are thinking along these lines, because the two people we had at the SDSU-Notre Dame game talked to “hundreds” of Irish fans after the game and they were ALL “very concerned” with what they saw in the game.  Up next is Michigan, and this is a MUST WIN game for Charlie Weis.  There is just no excuse for a head coach in his fourth year at Notre Dame to lose to a first year coach at Michigan, especially with all of the changes that Rodriguez is implementing in Ann Arbor.  After watching the Irish play on Saturday, Charlie Weis’ biggest worry better be that his team comes out and matches the intensity of what will be a very fired-up Michigan team.  Rich Rodriguez is not going to tolerate his players not giving their all on every play, and if the Wolverines come in and dominate the Irish, Charlie Weis is going to be in deep trouble.  The Michigan game is like the Battle of the Little Big Horn for Notre Dame, and Charlie Weis better hope he is Sitting Bull and Rodriguez is General Armstrong Custer.  If Weis ends up being Custer, LOOK OUT!

 

7.  Phil Fulmer, Tennessee– Phil Fulmer had an off-week after the disastrous loss to UCLA in Week 1, and let’s hope that he got his Tennessee players’ attention during the break, because the Vols have Florida, Auburn, Georgia, and Alabama on the schedule over the next 7 weeks.  Unless Tennessee improves over their game 1 performance, they will lose all 4 of those games, and if Phil Fulmer is 3-5 on October 25 he will be coaching for his job in the 4 remaining games.  Phil Fulmer, and Tennessee AD Mike Hamilton should not be under the illusion that just because Fulmer got a new contract in the offseason, that he cannot be fired come December.  A losing season by Tennessee in 2008 will lead to Phil Fulmer’s firing, and if AD Hamilton won’t do the firing, he will find himself out of a job as well.  Tennessee fans, and more importantly big boosters and prominent alumni, are not going tolerate mediocrity, and that means that Fulmer and his staff better be playing every game, no make that every play, like it could be their last one.  A good start would be a blowout of UAB on Saturday.  Anything less than a convincing win over an undermanned UAB team will mean that Fulmer still does not have his players full attention.  Play hard Vols!

 

8.  Al Groh, Virginia – If it wasn’t bad enough that Al Groh started a QB that has evidently admitted that he used alcohol and marijuana while on supervisory probation, the Cavaliers looked almost as bad against I-AA Richmond as they did against USC in the opener.  Anyone after watching the Virginia – Richmond game that believes that UVA is playing anywhere near it’s potential is living in a delusion, and the only saving grace for the Cavaliers is that they are playing in a conference that several I-AA teams could probably win this year.  Groh and his Virginia team go to UConn on Saturday to play a team that they barely beat at home in ’07, and a win against the Huskies will be a very important game to win with several tough games looming, including East Carolina on October 11.  The expectations at Virginia are not to win or even compete for a National Championship every year, but there would be no excuse for UVA to ever put up a losing season.  If Groh doesn’t get to .500 in ’08, or even if he hits that mark, there will more than likely be a new head football coach in Charlottesville come January 2009. 

 

9.  Tommy Bowden, Clemson– Even after a nice win over The Citadel, Tommy Bowden and his Clemson Tigers are still reeling from that butt kicking they were administered on opening night against Alabama.  As Pat Dye said about another football game, but fits well here: Alabama “took them (Clemson) out behind the barn and took away their manhood.”  When you lose your manhood on national TV, you don’t get it right back by showing up to practice on Monday or beating a team like The Citadel.  There is only one way for Clemson to get it’s manhood back and that is to reel off 3 more straight wins over NC State, South Carolina State, and Maryland, before the big game against Wake Forest on October 9.  Clemson has twice the talent or more of its next 3 opponents, and if Clemson can kick-off to Wake Forest on 10/9 with a 4-1 record, they can redeem themselves with a great showing against the Deacons.  Of course, the Wake Forest game would provide another chance for the Tigers to fall flat on their face, and we have one recommendation for Tommy Bowden and his staff it would be:  Don’t let that happen.  Coaches Hot Seat could fly 9 of our members to Clemson tomorrow and take over the coaching duties there and not lose more than 2 games from what is left on the Tigers schedule with this very talented team, so we fully expect Bowden & Company to beat what a bunch of guys sitting around a table eating barbeque and drinking beer in California could do.  Recommendation to Tommy Bowden and his staff:  Really don’t let that happen!  If not, then Clemson University will need a new head football coach come December.

 

10.  Mike Price, UTEP -  Mike Price does not have the horses to beat the Texas Longhorns, but we are sure that he expected more out of his Miners than a 42-13 home loss to UT.  Mike Price does not have to prove to anyone that he is a good football coach, because he proved at Washington State that he can put together winning teams in one of the toughest places in the country to recruit to.  What Price would like to do is to show that consistently winning football can be played at UTEP, and that is always going to be a very difficult goal for anyone, even if UTEP had a Hall of Fame coach in El Paso.  What can be achieved at UTEP is a football program that can go toe-to-toe with any team in their conference in every outing, and can certainly play with any team in a non-BCS conference.  After 50 games at UTEP, Mike Price is 25-25 (.500) and he needs to get his Miner football team rolling soon if he wants to have a successful ’08 campaign.  Hal Mumme and New Mexico State are up next for UTEP, and Price needs to get his team ready to play a very tough NMSU offense, and make sure they have totally forgotten the first two losses to Buffalo and Texas.  As with all football teams and everyone in life, an unrelenting focus on the right now, this very moment, is the key to winning football games and succeeding in life.  What is that Sanskrit Proverb?

 

“Look well to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In it lies all the realities and varieties of existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day, for it and it alone is life! Such is the salutation of the dawn.”

 

Another Monday dawns and we are off to Week 3 of the 2008 College Football Season! 

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