Unless you count teams like Iowa, who beat the everloving SHIT out of Ohio State :)
yeah, true road games with college students are tough.
There’s a reason Alabama only plays 4 true road games a year, besides the home $.
…and the other shoe drops. My Dawgs plotzed big time. Boo.
My bad. Jinxed it.
Georgia still controls their own destiny. Notre Dame on the other hand is fucked.
As it should be. I loathe ND, not quite sure exactly why, but I have since I was a kid. Maybe in a past life I was persecuted by Catholics.
Half my family are ND fans based solely on us being catholic and ND being “catholic” the other half are USC fans because we are from LA and a lot of us went there. I hate ND but I also want to see them have marginal success for the sake of the rest of the family. We got destroyed by them this year though so fuck em.
I used to work with a ND alum and I kidded him when ND played Boston College that the Catholics would have divided loyalties in the game between the Jesuits and the Congregation of the Holy Cross.
Tennessee puts Butch Johnson out of his misery as coach about 12 hours after Mizzou beat them 50-17.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. I generally am OK with coaches jumping jobs based on the fact that universities don’t show a lot of loyalty to coaches who aren’t winning enough. But Jones was the poster child for greedy coaches trying to just plain cash in on some success and doing so in a completely ham-fisted manner. Despite outwardly claiming that he never wanted to be anywhere other than Cincinnati (not different from most on-the-move coaches), he was brazenly at the airport of literally every place that had a coaching vacancy. The worst was that he apparently had agreed on all the details of a contract with Colorado, only to hear on his way out of town that Tennessee was moving on from trying to woo Charlie Strong - leaving Colorado in the very embarrassed position of having leaked the hire to the local media only to get left at the alter.
I used to have an issue with that stuff and then I realized that these guys are trying to position themselves with the best opportunities possible. Considering the lack of loyalty coaches get from universities, I really can not begrudge them doing what’s best for their careers. Moving on from Cincinnati to Tennessee is a no brainer, as is passing on Colorado, and really Colorado has no one to blame but themselves as Jones owed them zero loyalty and he wasn’t signed. As far as the whole “I love this place and never want to leave” rhetoric, my alma mater, Western Michigan, experienced that last year when their very successful head coach P.J. Fleck, jumped to the Big Ten. In previous years I would have been pissed but now I can accept that it’s the smart move and no amount of disappointment can change that. There was probably a lot of truth in his claims, I believe he did love coaching at WMU, but passing up that opportunity to stick with a mid major would have been silly, career wise.
Yeah, as much as I loathe most of the bullshit around NCAA sports these days, for coaches, it’s a business, and their employers are not going to show them any loyalty either, because they too have their agendas. It’s pretty much an every person for themselves environment, and fans are stupid if they expect a coach to turn down more money or better status or whatnot just to stay at Ginormous State U or whatever.
If you want to hate Butch Jones I think ignoring concussion protocol and burning a kid’s redshirt status for a couple of plays is reason enough. That said, I definitely have more sympathy for coaches than athletic departments and would not begrudge them for moving on to a better job (wouldn’t you?). Well, I might feel different if it was my alma mater, but then DIII sports don’t move the needle much.
First: I don’t “hate” Butch Jones, I have no respect for him. I haven’t followed Tennessee football closely enough to have known about the concussion incident - I have no problem with firing a coach for playing someone he knows has a concussion.
Second: I started by saying that I’m fine with coaches changing jobs. But there are ways to do it with class and integrity, and then there is the way Butch Jones did it.
Sadly, neither class nor integrity factor much into the NCAA these days, at least in Division I.
True - but neither one excuses the other.
I agree, couldn’t have happened to a more deserving asshole. As a Bearcat myself, I watched Mark Dantonio build Cincinnati’s football program to actual relevance then leave for Michigan State. I had no hard feelings, he deserved it, and I wished him nothing but success. I was pleased when Brian Kelly arrived and carried on Dantonio’s work, building the program to a national level while posting a 34-6 record. When Kelly left for Notre Dame I was disappointed, but again, it was to lead a storied program with which he had connections and had long held forth as his “dream job”. Sad as it was to see him go, it was understandable.
When Butch Jones arrived it was from the same program we’d lured Kelly away from. At first Jones seemed like a mirror image of Kelly…and things were good. But Jones was a lesser version of Kelly in every way, from football strategy to recruiting to glad-handing with alumni and boosters. It also quickly became apparent that Jones saw Cincinnati as a stepping stone to a Power Five job, and was rumored to be interviewing for Power Five head coaching vacancies even before his first season with the Bearcats had ended. As Kelly’s recruits began to graduate and move on, it became apparent that Jones was not as good at recruiting talent, probably because he spent more time flying around to job interviews than to recruiting visits.
When Jones left, originally for Colorado, then suddenly for Tennessee, it was a shitshow. Cincinnati bent over backwards to keep him, and he made all kinds of statements seemingly indicating his willingness to work with them on a contract restructure, while all the while knowing full well he was already on a plane to somewhere else. The fact that he screwed both Cincinnati and Colorado in his hop to Tennessee just shows what kind of person he is. The fact the he played injured kids at Tennessee and cost a kid a year of eligibility for a single series in one game just reinforces that. Tennessee is better off without him. I hope he never sees another Power Five head coaching job again.
Meanwhile, back here in Bearcat land, we suffered through the Tommy Tuberville era (29-22) and ended up with some of the worst recruiting classes we’ve had since the pre-Dantonio days. Luke Fickell seems to be changing that, with some recruits for next season already inked that are better than most of what we’ve seen the past 4 years. Everyone here knows that Fickell is only at UC long enough to rebuild the program, then he’s off to a Power Five school for sure…and we’re all good with that. I think fans here now understand that Cincinnati should not be a destination job, that the Bearcats have far more success when led by young, hungry coaches who want to stay 2-4 seasons, build a nice resume of success, then move on. When all parties involved understand that and are OK with it, good things happen. Maybe, someday, if re-alignment puts Cincinnati into the Power 5, then we might reconsider being a “destination” for some successful coach looking to spend a decade leading a winning program and retiring…but that’s a long way down the road.
Yeah, it’s a nasty cesspool across the board.
Chip Kelly will be announced as the head coach of Florida tomorrow or Thursday.
I hope they don’t give him control of general manager duties.