COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

With Week 6 set to get underway on Wednesday night with a very interesting game with La. Tech traveling to the Rocky Mountains (why is La. Tech in the WAC?  Just makes no sense at all.) to play Boise State, we look back at Week 5 to select the Coaches Hot Seat Coach of the Week, “Goat” Coach of the Week, and thankfully for the third straight week will not be awarding the “Cry Baby” Coach of the Week. 

 

For the Coaches Hot Seat Coach of the Week we had several nominees on the ballot including:  Houston Nutt, Frank Beamer, Mike Riley, Nick Saban, Rich Rodriguez, Ken Niumatalolo, Kevin Sumlin, Ralph Friedgen, Pat Hill, Jim Harbaugh, Randy Edsall, and the winner is:  HOUSTON NUTT (Mike Riley was a very close second, but he got his big win at home!)

 

Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat Coach of the Week

Coach:  Houston Nutt

School:  Ole Miss

 

Could the Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat Coach of Week be anyone else but Ole Miss head coach Houston Dale Nutt?  Of course not!  Let’s just look at what happened in Gainesville last Saturday to understand how big of an upset Ole Miss over the vaunted Florida Gators really was.  Houston Nutt took over a SEC team at Ole Miss that DID NOT WIN A SEC GAME IN 2007!  Yes, DID NOT WIN A SEC GAME IN 2007!  In 2008, the Rebels got off to a tough start losing a game at Wake Forest that they could have easily won and lost to Vanderbilt at home in another tough one, but somehow Nutt got his team back up and ready to play against the defending Heisman Trophy winner in Tebow and the mighty Florida Gators!  With all that being said, let’s not forget that Florida has on their roster 2 to 3 times as much talent as Ole Miss and easily has twice as much speed at the ball-handling positions.  Urban Meyer believes he has the best quarterback in college football (although he has him running a high school offense), so there really should be no way that Ole Miss could go into The Swamp and beat the Florida Gators.  Really?  No, that was not the case though, because as good of a coach as Urban Meyer is, he refuses to utilize the talent that he has on his roster, and when a coach like Houston Nutt shows up with a hungry football team you have a recipe for a major upset.  Yes, a MAJOR upset, which is what Ole Miss going into Florida and winning really is, and Houston Nutt, his coaching staff, and his players should get all the credit in the world for playing a terrific and fearless game against the Gators in The Swamp!  Houston Nutt has done a great job at Ole Miss up to this point, handling the transition, changing the entire mindset in Oxford, putting offensive and defensive systems into place that the players can buy into, and keeping his team up and focused through a tough part of the early season.  As Bill Dooley has said, “In turning a program around, the hardest thing to do is convincing players that they can win.”  Congratulations to Houston Nutt for winning the Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat Coach of the Week! 

 

Next up for Ole Miss:  A big game against Steve Spurrier and South Carolina at home.

 

 

For the “Goat” Coach of the Week we had several nominees including:  Pete Carroll, Al Groh, Tommy Bowden, Kirk Ferentz, Phil Fulmer, Bobby Petrino, and the winner is:  PETE CARROLL

 

Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat “Goat” Coach of the Week

Coach:  Pete Carroll

School:  USC

 

Mike Riley did a tremendous job getting his team ready to play against the USC Trojans and he had a great gameplan that could get under Pete Carroll’s skin if executed correctly, and that gameplan did get under Pete Carroll’s skin.  To really try and understand what a HUGE upset that Oregon State over USC was, we took at look at the Oregon State roster and by our count there is only 1, maybe 2 players on the Beavers football team that Pete Carroll and his staff “might” offer a scholarship to.  Yes, the very real difference between the talent on Pete Carroll’s USC team and Mike Riley’s Oregon State team cannot be overstated, and watching how the Beavers took apart and even dominated to some extent the Trojans’ offensive and defensive lines was a stunning thing to see. 

 

With that being said, Pete Carroll is not the Coaches Hot Seat “Goat” Coach of the Week because of talent level advantage he had over Oregon State, but rather because he did not have his football team ready to play Oregon State last Thursday night and that is inexcusable.  It has been well documented recently about all of the letdowns that Carroll has had in recent years to teams that the Trojans were heavily favored to beat, and we believe that with Oregon State ’06, UCLA ’06, Stanford ’07, and now Oregon State ’08 we do not have a series of random of events, but a damn serious trend.  Inside the belly of the beast that is the USC football program Pete Carroll is in deep denial about what really happened in these recent shocking losses, because to deal with the problem Carroll would have to look into the mirror and directly deal with the weakness of his coaching style. 

 

Anyone that has watched USC practice, and several us here at Coaches Hot Seat have watched the Trojans practice on several occasions (thanks to Pete for keeping his practices open) have to be impressed with the focus on competing, physical play, the challenges that the USC players personally face at each practice, and the vital importance of Trojan players executing in practice if they want to start and play on Saturday.  At the center of every USC practice are Pete Carroll and his personality which then finds itself into every USC football player in a very direct way.  When and if Pete Carroll and his personality are not “ON” USC will always be in danger of losing football games, and Pete Carroll is usually not “ON” when the team they are facing in the next game is not a perceived threat to Southern Cal.  As Keith Jackson said during a phone conversation with the ABC announcing crew in the middle of the Virginia game earlier this year, “Only the USC Trojans can beat the USC Trojans.”  Not only was Keith Jackson right, a lot of people have pointed out that USC is vulnerable when a decent opponent that is big underdog pops up on the Trojans’ schedule, and the game last Thursday night at Oregon State was just another case study of what will continue to happen if Carroll does not take action in the weeks when his Trojan team could be susceptible to an upset.  Pete Carroll can easily correct this problem in the future if he recognizes the games where his team could be “trapped,” if he makes sure to provide a shock to his team that will get them focused on the upcoming opponent that could beat them if the Trojans were not ready to play.  An example for last week’s Oregon State game, which we predicted before the season that USC would lose (http://www.coacheshotseat.com/PeteCarroll.htm), we would have recognized the danger that Oregon State poised and we would have drastically changed up the USC practice regime, by maybe taking the team over to the LA Coliseum for a mini-scrimmage that would have also included showing the team a presentation on the big screen at the Coliseum highlights of the times that Oregon State has played well in recent games.  Of course, we would show highlights from the ’06 Oregon State game and after showing those highlights we would have had a handful of USC players that were on the ’06 team that lost to OSU, but are not currently on the team, and have them tell the team Oregon State was very dangerous opponent.  At the end of the mini-scrimmage at the Coliseum, and showing the highlights of Oregon State on the big screen and having some former USC players talk about the recent loss to OSU, we would had done some conditioning drills to really get the players attention.  We would have broken the team into 4 parts and have them do conditioning drills that were competitively based so that the portion of the team that “won” the conditioning drill would be able to head to the locker room until only the last section of the team was left.  The reason that we would have done the above type of things is that we would have noticed early in the week that the team was flat and that they were tending towards not being ready to play Oregon State, and when something like that confronts a coach, CHANGE to the practice schedule is a must.  It can be a trip to the beach to run sprints, toss the football around, and a cook out, or it can be something as little as changing the practice venue to the home stadium.

 

Whatever we would recommend, there is one thing that we do know, what Pete Carroll has been doing before some of these heavy favorite games in recent years has not been the right thing to do.  We would like to think that Pete Carroll and the Trojans have learned a good lesson with the Oregon State game, but we think that the Trojans are now vulnerable in a couple of other games this season:  at Arizona and against California at the Coliseum.  For the other remaining USC games the Trojans will either be very fired up to play the games or they will be so much more talented that they will win easily, but there is still danger lurking on the USC schedule, and let’s hope Pete Carroll recognizes that danger this time around and deals with it before the games are kicked-off.

 

Next up for USC:  A big game against Oregon at the LA Coliseum.

 

 

Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat “Cry Baby” Coach of the Week

Coach:  No Award this week

Team: 

 

There you have the Coaches Hot Seat Coaches Awards for Week 5. 

 

Let’s hope we have a great Week 6.

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There are times when one’s Bullshit Meter should really be tuned in, including:

 

1.  When a guy that has worked his entire life on Wall Street tells the American People that we either give him $700 BILLION DOLLARS to spend however he sees fit or the entire American economy will come to a stop. 

 

The Answer to that Bullshit Statement is:  This is America buddy and we supposedly have a capitalistic free-market system so we need to let our supposedly free markets determine the real price of companies, commodities, and securities.  If your buddies on Wall Street had not been running an overleveraged and undercapitalized Las Vegas style casino, it would not take a bailout of these Greedy Bastards on Wall Street by the American people to get their asses out of a sling.  Let’s get back to free-market capitalism and find out what all of these companies that are carrying all this crap on their books are really worth.  If they are worth ZERO because they have made poor investment decisions in the past then those companies stocks should go to ZERO.  There is only one way we will find out what these companies are really worth, and that is to use our free-markets to determine their true value.  If you are not for that idea you are either a communist or a socialist.

 

A second time when one’s Bullshit Meter should really be turned on high is when people say things like:

 

2.  Every week counts in college football because it is a playoff from day one.  The regular season in college football is paramount because teams must win every week or they are out of the national title hunt.  Lose a game and your team is done.

 

Of course, anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows the above is BULLSHIT.  The college football season is not playoff, but is just a regular season, a regular season just like in every sport in collegiate athletics which is always followed by a postseason playoff tournament to determine the national champion.  People that try to defend the BCS with the “every game counts in the regular season” argument cannot explain the 2007 season when a team in LSU loses its second game of the year in the last game of the regular season and still finds its way to the national title game.  Was LSU the best team at the end of the regular season?  There was no way to really know, because unlike every other sport in collegiate athletics, college football is little more than a beauty pageant with one bogus poll, a coaches poll, and a bunch of computers that are run by computer geeks that we doubt have ever played a down of football in their lives.

 

Of course, there is a common sense alternative to the bogus BCS, and that is a College Football National Championship Tournament, which would settle in a fair and legitimate way the real National Champion in football every year.  Therefore, Coaches Hot Seat presents what the shameful people behind the BCS should be working to put together, a National Championship Tournament, that is if the BCS Boys weren’t too busy counting money and holding onto their precious power to give a damn about the players, the coaches, and most of all the fans.  Yes, the fans are who the BCS Boys really resent and are only too happy to tell to go to hell as Big East commissioner did earlier this year when he said:

 

“I know this is not what a lot of fans want to hear, but they’re not responsible for crafting what we have in college football.”

 

Really?  Can you say arrogant ass?  Why yes we can.

 

Let’s get back to what the college football postseason should look like and that is a postseason tournament that gives all league champions an opportunity to play for the national title along with a group of “At-Large” teams that are selected to fill-out the tournament from the next best teams after the conference champions.

 

Therefore, we present the Coaches Hot Seat College Football National Championship Tournament.  Assuming that 9 conference champions would get automatic invitations into this postseason tournament and the next 7 “At-Large” teams would be selected to play in the tournament, below are the first round matchup for the College Football National Championship Tournament if the season had ended after Week 5.

 

College Football National Championship Tournament

 

Round 1 Games

 

Oklahoma – #1 Seed

Florida – #13 Seed

 

Ball State – #16 Seed

Texas Tech – #8 Seed

 

Missouri – #4 Seed

Tulsa – #15 Seed

 

Alabama – #3 Seed

Ohio State - #12 Seed

 

Virginia Tech – #14 Seed

BYU - #7 Seed

 

Penn State – #6 Seed

Georgia – #11 Seed

 

Texas – #5 Seed

USC – #9 Seed

 

South Florida – #10 Seed

LSU – #2 Seed

 

Yes, these First Round Matchups are the kind of serious meaningful games that should be played in college football’s postseason, especially instead of the bogus and meaningless exhibition games of the BCS.  What a fraud the BCS is holding itself up as something determines a national champion, when all of the BCS games are played 30-something days after the end of the regular season and are practically meaningless execpt for a bowl game trophy.  What a joke the BCS is…

 

On the other hand, there is a legitimate alternative to the bogus BCS and that is the:

 

College Football National Championship Tournament

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Week 5 is in the books and what a great Saturday of football it was.  We watched a replay of a number of games yesterday at Coaches Hot Seat Central and there is so much we would like to talk about but there is just not the time in the day with all of us going full-speed in our full-time day jobs.  There is no sport in America like college football and the incredible efforts made by coaches and players just to get to Gameday each week is certainly not appreciated enough by the average college football fan, because the level of play this year across the entire game has never been higher.  Of course, there is that Florida offense that our children could do better than if they were calling the plays in Gainesville!

 

Let’s get to the analysis of the Top 10 Coaches in the Post Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings:

 

1.  Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee – We got a good laugh out the comment from Phil Fulmer that Tennessee was going to open up the QB competition after another bad performance by starting Vols’ QB Crompton against Auburn.  We laughed at that comment, because Crompton may be one of the worst and least competitive QBs that we have seen in the SEC in years, and we have no doubt that there are at least a dozen people here at Coaches Hot Seat that even in their early 40’s could beat out Crompton for the starting QB job.  Why could we beat our Crompton?  We would fight and compete on every play instead of giving up so easily and throwing the ball away when it looked like we might get hit.  If our receivers were covered, we would tuck the ball and look to get upfield running for some yards.  We would do what QBs are supposed to do:  Provide leadership, show guts, fight on every play, and make the lives of the defenders a living hell.  What Crompton needs is an injection of a little Johnny Unitas, but since that is not going to happen, he needs to buck up and become a leader on his own.  As for Phil Fulmer, watch out for Northern Illinois this Saturday, which is now coached by long-time winner Jerry Kill.  NIU will not be afraid of the Vols and if someway or somehow Northern Illinois should come into Neyland Stadium and beat Tennessee…..  Well, Phil Fulmer might be fishing next week instead of getting ready for Georgia.

 

2.  Ty Willingham, Washington – After watching the Stanford – Washington game again, the one thing you have to admire that even after all of the turmoil and problems at UW under Willingham, the Huskies are still playing hard on every play.  Willingham is now 11-29 (.275) in his fourth season at Washington and those are numbers that are just impossible to get around.  It is all water under the bridge now, but if we had been sitting with Ty Willingham at Stanford when the call came through from Notre Dame 7 or so years ago, our advice then would have been to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”  A few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have been to a couple of dozen Notre Dame games in the past 10 years, and Ty Willingham was just a terrible fit for the Irish.  It has nothing to do with Ty’s race, but all to do with his personality and style, which fits a lot better with the low-key Stanford campus than the gigantic magnifying glass in South Bend.  Still though, Willingham would probably tell you that he has had some great experiences in his life up to this point, and by no means does Washington have to be the last act of his career.  Yes, Ty can retire to the Palo Alto area (Ty, remember the sun is almost always out and we can play golf about 325 days a year in the Bay area!) and play golf four times a week, including making that 2 hour drive down to Pebble Beach every once in awhile.  Yes, if things don’t work out at Washington for Willingham the world is not going to come to an end, and there will be plenty for Ty to do both on and off the football field if he chooses that direction.  Whatever happens, we just hope the Huskies keep playing hard, keep going to class, and keep moving towards their bachelor’s degree.  Maybe the on-the-field performance of the Washington Huskies is not much better since Willingham got to UW 4 years ago, but many of the off-field problems have been cleaned up and if there is a “next” head football coach at UW he will reap the benefits from Willingham’s fine work.

 

3.  Al Groh, Virginia – The Virginia football program is now unraveling right before everyone’s eyes and it does not take a football coach to watch the game against Duke and see that many of the Cavalier players do not give a damn about playing football for their school.  Lack of effort, stupid penalties, stupid mistakes, and most disturbingly that an “I don’t give a damn” attitude by Virginia players all over the field in the game against Duke was a common sight.  We don’t know the dynamic of what is going on inside the Virginia football program, but we can see what is going on when they step onto the football field, and the only two words that seem to fit are:  PITIFUL AND DISGRACEFUL.  Duke was the football team on the field last Saturday playing with fire, playing with desire, and playing like they had a head coach that was determined to find 22 guys that wanted to play football for Duke University.  Very simply, David Cutcliffe is going forward and Al Groh is headed over the hills in the opposite direction.  Virginia is sitting at 1-3 and has left, Maryland, East Carolina, North Carolina, at Georgia Tech, Miami, at Wake Forest, Clemson, and at Virginia Tech.  Wow!  Every one of those teams will want to win the game against Virginia more than the Cavaliers will, and it is not out of the realm of possibility that UVA could end the ’08 season with a 1-11 record.  With that thought in mind we have been asking people either at UVA or in the state of Virginia what Al Groh’s buyout would be at the end of this season, and we have heard numbers between $5 million and $7.2 million, which raises a damn interesting question:  Why does a guy with a career. 565 winning percentage record at Virginia have a multi-million dollar buyout?  The answer to that question will be found out eventually, and we just hope that the answer to that question does not go back to an individual, because the UVA boosters/alumni that would have to help pay that multi-million dollar buyout might just hold someone responsible for putting that buyout into Groh’s contract.

 

4.  Greg Robinson, Syracuse – We would recommend that Greg Robinson go ahead and get a good moving company lined up and have his agent start talking to people if Robinson hopes to get an assistant coaching job somewhere for next season.  Maybe a year off would be a good idea for Robinson though, because it looks to us that Greg could use a break.  A year on the beach or living on a golf course would probably do the trick, but after that it would be back to work, because 57 is way too young to retire permanently.  Yes, this bye week for Syracuse seems ideally situated and we hope Robinson can keep his Orangemen playing hard as they get ready for a trip to West Virginia and that someone at Syracuse makes sure that all of the football players at SU are keeping up with their studies so that when the next coach does arrive he will not have to start off really behind the 8-ball.  Syracuse is a very good school, and a Syracuse degree will be worth a lot to these young men in their future lives so we hope that people on AD Gross’ staff are keeping an eye on such things.

 

5.  Joe Glenn, Wyoming – After the 45-16 loss/debacle to Bowling Green at home by Glenn and his Wyoming Cowboys, we would recommend that Joe Glenn go ahead and get his fishing rods and fishing gear cleaned-up and ready to go for 2009, because he will most likely not be the head football coach at Wyoming next season.  Hey, Glenn might want to go ahead and get his agent talking to a few of the multiple number of TV networks that are covering college football these days, because Glenn has plenty of personality and plenty of knowledge about football and we think he would be a hit as game or studio analyst.  Getting back to this football season, if Glenn does want to return in 2009, a win on the road at New Mexico will be a necessity.  After the game with the Lobos, we see a very interesting game on the schedule when Wyoming travels to Tennessee on November 8, which could be the “Lame Duck Head Coaches Match-Up Game of the Year” with Phil Fulmer facing off against Joe Glenn.  Yes, that should be an entertaining game and certainly Fulmer and Glenn should have good laugh before this game kicks off!  Maybe they should just go fishing that day instead of coaching their teams.  That might make their fans bases happy at least!

 

6.  Kirk Ferentz, Iowa – After a good start to the ’08 season for Ferentz and the Hawkeyes against three cupcakes, there has been a major step backwards as Iowa has lost to Pitt on the road and must troubling, to Northwestern at home.  We believe that Ferentz will need to get to 6-6 to keep his job at Iowa, and sitting at 3-2 and with a remaining schedule of at Michigan State, at Indiana, Wisconsin, at Illinois, Penn State, Purdue, and at Minnesota, we are having a lot of trouble finding 3 more wins on the Iowa schedule unless they really start playing a lot better football.  The worse case scenario for Ferentz:  He gets Iowa to 5-6 entering the last game on the road at Minnesota and then loses to the Gophers and second year coach Tim Brewster.  There would be no excuse for a head football coach in his tenth season at Iowa to lose to a second year coach at Minnesota, and a 5-7 record for the Hawkeyes would almost certainly mean a new football coach at Iowa.

 

7.  Tommy Bowden, Clemson – After starting the season with a team loaded with talent Tommy Bowden must now face the reality that his football team is not only not playing up to its potential, but he also might have a football team that will quit when faced with a set of tough circumstances.  If Tommy Bowden has a football team that will quit on him, then Tommy Bowden’s job is now on the line with a trip to Wake Forest, Georgia Tech a home, a trip to Boston College, and at trip to Florida State on the slate for the next 4 weeks.  Clemson could very easily lose all 4 of those games, and if they did lose those 4 games, Tommy Bowden’s coaching career at Clemson would be over, because that would mean a 6-6 record would be the best that the Tigers could do in ’08.  6-6 with the talent on this Clemson football team would be a travesty.  Anything less than 8 wins with the talent on this Clemson football team would be a travesty, and that is why Tommy Bowden and his coaches better figure out in hurry how to get this team motivated or everyone on this Clemson staff will be looking for a new job come December.  One thing we have noticed is that when games get tight, Clemson tightens up, and that is just no way to win football games.  There are a lot of ways to motivate people to do things, using both punitive and positive type approaches, but in the end what it really gets down to is that the players have to think that the coaches both give a damn about them and that their coaches are competent in their jobs.  Paul Bryant was incredibly tough on his players, but those players knew deep down that he gave a damn about them, and there was no doubt in their minds that he was competent in his job.  Right now, from our perspective, the Clemson players are questioning whether their coaches give a damn about them and they are starting to question their competency.  That is a sure fire recipe for a coaching change.

 

8.  Sylvester Croom, Mississippi State – Even though Mississippi State played better against LSU, the 2-headed QB experiment that the Bulldogs have been running this season until the LSU game has been an unmitigated disaster.  Now sitting at 1-4 and with Vanderbilt, at Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, Kentucky, at Alabama, Arkansas, and at Mississippi left on the schedule we are having a hard time finding any sure wins, and maybe only 2 more wins overall.  Two more wins would add up to 3-9 record for ’08, and that would be a major step-back for Sly Croom after a successful 2007 campaign.  We doubt if Sly Croom would be fired for going 3-9 in ’08, but if Houston Nutt continues to move Ole Miss forward and finds a way to beat Miss. State this year, then there is no way the questions about Sly Croom’s status will not start to get asked.  Sly Croom had a nice run there for awhile with the clueless Mike Shula and very loud Ed Orgeron on the schedule each year, but with Nick Saban and Houston Nutt now anchoring those two spots on the schedule and Bobby Petrino in Arkansas, the SEC West may now be a division that Miss. State will not ever have the firepower to deal with.

 

9.  Mike Sherman, Texas A&M – We don’t know exactly what is going on at Texas A&M with Mike Sherman, but whatever it is, it is not good.  After opening the season with a loss to Arkansas State, beating a mediocre New Mexico team on the road, getting blasted by Miami, then a 0-3 Army team comes into Kyle Field after getting beat 35-7 by Temple, getting beat 28-10 by I-AA New Hampshire, getting beat 22-3 by Akron, and almost beats Texas A&M.  What?  The question must be asked:  What the hell are Mike Sherman and his staff doing at Texas A&M?  Now at 2-2 and the Big 12 schedule looming, Sherman better figure out something in a hurry or the 2008 Aggie season could turn into a damn disaster.  With at trip to play Oklahoma State up next, don’t think that Gundy and the Cowboys want take the opportunity to blast the Aggies if given the chance, and after Oklahoma State there are at least 4 or 5 more games that look like they will be very difficult to win.  Texas A&M and Sherman are staring at a 4 win type season if the Aggies don’t start playing better football, and we have some serious concerns if A&M could recover in both recruiting and how far they would fall behind in other areas to other teams in the Big 12 for the foreseeable future if they put up 4-8 in ‘08.  There just would be no good excuse for A&M to have a losing season in 2008, and if they do put a losing record this year, and another losing record in ’09, that would most certainly mean an end to the Mike Sherman experiment in College Station and right behind Sherman going out the door would be A&M athletic director Bill Byrne.  Now if that possible scenario doesn’t focus Mike Sherman and Bill Byrne’s minds, then nothing will.

 

10.  Greg McMackin, Hawaii – Greg McMackin took over from June Jones a Hawaii football team that has put up a 23-4 record in the past two seasons, and with a 1-3 start for the Warriors to the ’08 season the question must be asked:  What the hell is going on in Honolulu?  Since McMackin was on the Hawaii staff as the defensive coordinator it was assumed that he would be able to keep the good times rolling at Hawaii, but from what we have seen from McMackin’s Hawaii team, they are just not very well coached.  With a trip to Fresno State up next we are going to go ahead and say that Hawaii will start 1-4, and as we look over the rest of the Hawaii schedule we don’t see more than 3 or 4 more wins.  A 3-10 or 4-9 record by McMackin with Hawaii coming off a Sugar Bowl trip would be a major disappointment and would be a big step backwards for the Hawaii football program.  The first thing that McMackin needs to do is to get the Hawaii offense back to playing aggressive offensive football and it also looks to us that the edge that Hawaii used to have with their physical play on both offense and defense is gone.  We will be watching closely to see if McMackin can turn around the Hawaii football team this year and if they can get back to the type of football that they have been playing the last couple of season.

 

Well, there you have the Top 10 Coaches Post Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings.  Just some great football was played last week, and we look forward to another great week with some very interesting games where there are already some very interesting odd/lines out on. 

 

Let’s have a great Week 6!         

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After the conclusion of Week 5 in college football there are now 18 teams (see below) that are still undefeated and 31 teams with only 1 loss.  That means that 15% of the college football teams in the I-A division are still without a loss, and 41% of the college football teams have one loss or less.  How many teams will be undefeated at the end of the regular season?  The BCS Boys are praying for two, because they care only about one thing, trying to justify one of the greatest frauds on the earth in the BCS, but we would guess right now that come early December there will ZERO undefeated teams left in I-A college football. 

 

Which team has the best chance of being undefeated at the end of the regular season?  We would guess the:  Oklahoma Sooners 

 

Undefeated Teams:                                               

Week 2 – 52 teams

Week 3 – 39 teams

Week 4 – 27 teams

 

Week 5 – 18 teams – Undefeated Teams

Week 5 – 31 teams – 1 Loss Teams

 

Undefeated Teams Left on September 28, 2008 (Alphabetical)

 

1.	Alabama	5-0
2.	Ball State	5-0
3.	Boise State	3-0
4.	BYU	4-0
5.	Connecticut	5-0
6.	Kentucky	4-0
7.	LSU	4-0
8.	Missouri	4-0
9.	Northwestern	5-0
10	Oklahoma	4-0
11.	Oklahoma State	4-0
12.	Penn State	5-0
13.	South Florida	5-0
14.	Texas	4-0
15.	Texas Tech	4-0
16.	Tulsa	4-0
17.	Utah	5-0
18.	Vanderbilt	4-0

 

1 Loss Teams Left on September 28, 2008 (Alphabetical)

 

1.	Air Force	3-1
2.	Arizona	3-1
3.	Auburn	4-1
4.	Boston College	3-1
5.	California	3-1
6.	Cincinnati	3-1
7.	Colorado	3-1
8.	Duke	3-1
9.	Florida	3-1
10	Florida State	3-1
11.	Fresno State	3-1
12.	Georgia	4-1
13.	Georgia Tech	3-1
14.	Kansas	3-1
15.	Kansas State	3-1
16.	La. Tech	2-1
17.	Maryland	4-1
18.	Michigan State	4-1
19.	Minnesota	4-1
20.	Nebraska	3-1
21.	North Carolina	3-1
22.	Notre Dame	3-1
23.	Ohio State	4-1
24.	Oregon	4-1
25.	Pittsburgh	3-1
26.	TCU	4-1
27.	USC	2-1
28.	Virginia Tech	4-1
29.	Wake Forest	3-1
30.	W. Michigan	4-1
31.	Wisconsin	3-1

 

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After watching another great Saturday of college football, we have 17 Observations from Week 5:

 

1.  Urban Meyer needs to stop worrying about the number of plays his offense runs, and start worry about running QUALITY offensive plays – After the Tennessee game Florida coach Urban Meyer said in solemn tones that he was unhappy with the new clock rules and that his precious offense was not getting enough plays.  Urban, forget the new clock rules and focus on coaching your football team.  Which brings us to our second observation….

 

2.  Why does the University of Florida run a high school offense, or rather why does the University of Florida run a MEDIOCRE high school offense? – We have been watching the Gators’ offense with great interest over the past couple of years, and there is no doubt that Meyer and Company have recruited some terrific talent to Gainesville, but why in the hell do they put all that great talent in what is nothing more than a MEDIOCRE and very unimaginative offense?  Which brings us to our third observation…

 

3.  Wasn’t that fourth down call by Florida at the end of the Ole Miss game the DUMBEST call you have ever seen? – OK, everyone on the planet knows that Meyer/Mullin are going to run Tebow straight ahead on fourth and one, and what does Meyer/Mullin do?  Run Tebow straight ahead into the line on fourth and one.  If Meyer/Mullin are going to make those kinds of very DUMB and UNIMAGINATIVE calls, why not the both of them just go to a local eatery in Gainesville and send back a stumblebum to make calls when the entire game is on the line.  At least the stumblebum would have the sense to see all that speed that the Gators can put on the field and get the ball into the hands of one of those playmakers instead of running Timmy “I am going to play like a madman from here on out” Tebow!  DUMB, DUMB, DUMB…..  Which brings us to our fourth observation….

 

4.  Isn’t Urban Meyer the special teams coach at Florida?  If Meyer is so involved in special teams at Florida, then why on the critical play of the game to send the game into a possible overtime did his PAT team basically not show up for the play and get the critical kick of the game blocked?  Probably because the Florida PAT team is not getting coached up very well because Meyer/Mullin are spending so much time drawing up elaborate plays for critical fourth down situations.  Yes those are great plays!  Run Tebow into the line.  Run Tebow into the line.  Run Tebow into the line.  Genius in action! 

 

Memo to Urban Meyer:  Here is an honest opinion of your Florida football team, because we are not going to kiss your or any other coach’s ass.  You are running a MEDIOCRE HIGH SCHOOL OFFENSE.  Only a moron would call that Tebow into the line play on fourth down when everyone on the planet, even the stumblebum’s in downtown Gainesville knew that was the play you were going to run.  Quit worrying about BULLSHIT, like the new clock rules, and start COACHING your football team.  There is more to being a head coach than recruiting, and you and your coaching staff are getting about 50% of what you should be getting out of the massive amount of talent that you and your staff have amassed in Gainesville.  Running Tim Tebow into the line of scrimmage is not a gameplan, and when you start playing real football teams, you and Mullin are going to find that out.  You just lost to a team in Ole Miss that maybe had 2 or 3 players that you would have offered a scholarship to.  Now how does that feel that you got whipped by a bunch of kids that you wouldn’t even give the time of day to?  Lastly, there are at least 100 high school coaches in Florida that run a better offense than you are running right now.  Realizing that, “How is your Gator offense working out for you?”

 

5.  If Bobby Petrino is not going to coach his football team then what in the hell is the University of Arkansas paying him to do – Please, don’t tell us about a lack of talent, the problem at Arkansas is a lack of effort on both the players and coaches part.  Petrino looks like he has hardly done anything at all since he arrived in Fayetteville, and after blowouts to Alabama and Texas, where his team basically quit twice, the question has to be asked:  Does Bobby Petrino even care about coaching anymore?  If he does, then his team will start playing football instead of the games of tiddly-winks that they have been playing.

 

6.  If we were looking for Army recruits to go to Iraq, the last place in America we would look at would be the Clemson football team – Yes, Clemson played hard against Maryland, for about a half, but when the tough got going, they basically quit.  This Clemson team is not like a wet paper bag, this Clemson team is not like a wet piece of tissue, this Clemson team is like AIR.  Yes, like AIR, because there is NO THERE, THERE for this Clemson football team, and we have not seen a team in years that more personifies the Paul “Bear” Bryant saying than the Clemson Tigers under Tommy Bowden:

 

“The first time you quit, its’ hard.  The second time, it gets easier.  The third time, you don’t even have to think about it.”  Paul “Bear” Bryant

 

Clemson is now on about ninth time that they have quit under Tommy Bowden.  As the headline in an article said after the Clemson debacle against Alabama, “Clemson is All Hat, No Cattle.”  We could not have said it better.

 

7.  Mark Richt said earlier this week when asked if Georgia would react like Clemson did if Alabama came out and “hit them in the mouth” that:  “We are not Clemson” – Really?  At least Georgia did not quit in the second half like Clemson did against Alabama, but there have to be some serious questions asked now if Richt had his team prepared to just play Alabama, or if he had them prepared to play a “physically demanding football game?”  We think he had the Dawgs prepared to play Alabama, and that Alabama team that does not exist anymore.  What Mark Richt should really be worried about this morning is that his two lines got shredded and that a physical team can run right over the Bulldogs.

 

8.  Is Washington any better today than they were when Ty Willingham arrived in Seattle 4.5 five years ago?  It is impossible to answer that question with anything but, NO.  A fourth year coach at Washington should always beat a second year coach at Stanford, especially at home, and this loss by Huskies just raises more questions that only have very bad answers.  Except for Washington State, we don’t see one game left on the Washington schedule that the Huskies will be able to win without an incredible effort, especially if they have to play them without starting QB Jake Locker.

 

9.  How GOOD is Penn State?  VERY GOOD.  Congratulations to Coach Paterno for keeping this team together after the selfish actions of a few Nittany Lions. 

 

10.  How GOOD is Oklahoma?  As we said last week, Oklahoma has not played this GOOD in years.  The Sooners are VERY GOOD!  The trick now will be for Bob Stoops and is staff to not go to sleep against one of the upcoming opponents, which they have done at least once in each of the last few years.  Maybe they should show that ’07 Texas Tech game around the football offices to remind everyone that slacking off has its consequences.

 

11.  How GOOD is Alabama?  We don’t know yet, because they have not played a team that has physically challenged them.  By all rights this should be a 7 win team in Saban’s second year at Alabama, but with many SEC teams going backwards, it looks to us that there is only 1 team in the conference that can beat the Tide: LSU.  Bama and LSU meet in Baton Rouge on November 8 for what will be the game of the year in the SEC.  This game will be for the SEC Championship, because the winner of the Eastern division will just be mince meet for the Tide of the Tigers in Atlanta.

 

12.  How BAD is Virginia?  VERY BAD after losing to Duke and first year Blue Devils coach David Cutcliffe.  Taking nothing away from the job that Cutcliffe has done, there is just no excuse for Virginia to lose to Duke.  It is about to get very ugly in Charlottesville.

 

13.  How GOOD is Ohio State with Terrelle Pryor?  VERY GOOD but they must get more physical on both lines of scrimmage if they want to play with the top teams in college football.  Wisconsin will be a good test for the Buckeyes, because the Badgers will be spitting bullets after that disastrous loss to Michigan.

 

14.  How BAD is the Auburn offense?  VERY BAD.  The Auburn offense plays with almost a complete lack of confidence, almost as if they are afraid to screw up because of what will happen if they do.  Offense cannot be played tentatively, but rather must attack the opposing defense wherever they find a weak spot, and sometimes at the defense’s strongest point.  Auburn needs to quit trying to go around people and start going right at people, because usually the weakest link in a defense is straight ahead.  If they don’t have the personnel to whip anyone at the line of scrimmage, OK, but if they do have some MEN up front on the offensive line of scrimmage then start taking it to the other teams.  Memo to Tubby and Tony:  Either commit to run the spread offense or run the old Auburn offense, because the hybrid of the two is going to get both of you fired.

 

15.  Are the Seminoles and Bobby Bowden back?  We sure hope so.  They played well against Colorado, now they need to keep it up.  The game against the Buffs was the first game in years under Bowden when it looked like the Seminoles were actually having fun playing the game of football.  Now, they just need to keep getting better.

 

16.  Why is Skip Holtz negotiating a contract with ECU in the middle of the season?  Since Holtz and ECU started talking about a new contract, the Pirates are 0-2 and almost lost to Tulane as well.  Here is what a coach should say if an AD starts talking about a new contract during the season:  “Get out of my office.  I am under contract. I am fairly paid, and I have a football team to coach.  We will talk in December.”  Holtz did not do that, and he is paying a heavy price for not keeping the focus on this football team, because if ECU can beat Virginia Tech, they should be undefeated right now.

 

17.  We said when Bo Pelini was hired at Nebraska that he was going to have to learn to control himself on the sideline and against Virginia Tech he got flagged for a “Sideline Penalty” for vehemently arguing what was a bogus late hit call on one of his players.  Because of Pelini’s penalty late in the fourth quarter, Virginia Tech moved that much closer to the goal line and then scored a touchdown when if the Hokies had been held to a field-goal the difference would have only been 8 points instead of 12.  Nebraska did come back and scored another touchdown and if they had held Virginia Tech to only a field goal on the earlier possession they would have had an opportunity to go for two to tie the game.  With an ACC crew working the game, Pelini should have been mindful of what he could get away with, and he only hurt his team by getting out of control on the sidelines and giving the Hokies another 15 yards closer to the end zone.  Live and learn, live and learn.  We bet Pelini doesn’t make that mistake again…..

 

Well, there you have some observations from Week 5 of the 2008 college football season.  We will have a lot more to say with the release of the Post Week 5 Coaches Hot Seat Rankings on Monday morning, but for now we here at Coaches Hot Seat have Sunday to ponder another Saturday of great college football and the death of the Great One:  Paul Newman. 

 

One of America’s greatest sportswriters, Dick Schaap, wrote a terrific book that had one of the best titles ever, Flashing Before My Eyes and over the past 24 hours the work of Paul Newman’s life both on and off the screen has been “Flashing Before Our Eyes.”  What a great career, what a great life, what great American, what a great MAN.  Yes, Paul Newman will be missed, but his work on the movie screen and his charitable foundation will live on, and we are damn glad that we had the privilege to just be on the same planet with the man during his life.

 

Thanks for all the great memories Mr. Newman…..

 

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