The college coaching silly season is so funny. Coaches get fired and coaches get hired and the people who cover this sport are supposed to immediately weigh in on moves as “slam dunks” or “disasters.” We all know we don’t have enough evidence to knee-jerk react our way into knowing anything right then and there, but the nature of the business is that we have to say something. So we hesitantly boisterously offer an opinion – “Big State will never recover from this hire!” – and move on with our lives. It doesn’t matter that much to us, so we consider it for the exact amount of time we basically took to make that statement.
The best part is when people go back years later and bring it up. LOL YOU SAID THIS COACH HAD UPSIDE AND WAS A GOOD HIRE AND HE WAS TRBL LOOK HOW DUMB YOU ARE. Yup, I was dumb. It was six years ago. Six years ago I didn’t even know how to properly make a bed and you couldn’t trust me with your dog on a weekend because I probably would end up letting it wander the streets of East Cleveland. You sure fooled me.
But it is fun to see how we perceive things in the moment vs. adding historical context years later. In hindsight thinking the Sun revolved around the Earth was dumb as heck, but at the time, yeah sure, why not? People think some really stupid things now that we already know are going to look even stupider 50 years from now. If you can’t have a sense of humor about all of it, then why are you even writing about college football in the first place?
Anyway, here’s the mailbag for this week. I hope you enjoy it. And if I’m wrong, go ahead and tell me. It doesn’t bother me. It really doesn’t. I’m just here making sure the checks cash and nobody hates me enough to egg my house or steal the packages off my front step (They’re Christmas presents for my friends and family, so please don’t do that.)
@ChipNBogey: Why am I not seeing the Youngstown State coach on the potential list for these big CFB jobs?
Ah yes, Bo Pelini. The Cat Daddy. We all remember Pelini being swallowed up by the coaching shell game last year and ending up at Youngstown State to hang with Jim Tressel. At the time you fell into two camps: (1) Pelini shouldn’t have been fired because he wins a bunch of games and Nebraska has an overinflated sense of worth and they’re going to end up hiring someone who is basically Pelini or worse than Pelini and then what (the Georgia-Mark Richt problem of this year) OR (2) Yeah, Pelini’s never making Nebraska NEBRASKA again, plus his temper and cussin’ is just too much and he’s a distraction and this isn’t what we want NEBRASKA FOOTBALL to be about.
The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. Nebraska finished 5-7 this year under Nice Guy Mike Riley. But the Cornhuskers are likely going to make a bowl because there aren’t enough .500 teams this year. (Riley, to his credit, agrees with not taking a bonus for making a bowl.) Pelini is coming off a 5-6 season with the Penguins, and his very public blowups happened again, this time leading almost directly to a loss for his team earlier in the season.
Do I think Pelini will coach at the FBS level again? Yes. Could he – and should he – be doing it for someone in 2016? Yes. Will it happen right away? Probably not. People are still a little gun-shy about hiring him on, and athletic directors talk. Nobody wants a very public problem, even from a coach who can coach and do a pretty good job of it. Pelini will be back at a noteworthy program soon, it just might take a year or two.
@SamHammonds: what is the best food to eat at a bowling alley
It really depends on the bowling alley. As a kid, bowling alley pizza was the truth. It has that texture and consistency you can only find at bowling alleys and skating rinks, and I wish there was a way to pay about $6 and get that if you’re really craving it. It’s not good pizza. Don’t be fooled into thinking I believe that. It’s nostalgic pizza. And any time I taste something similar, I time travel, and I need that sometimes.
But the best food to eat? You’re probably looking at any of those frozen appetizers out of the gigantic bag that get thrown into the toaster oven or dropped in the frier. Fries, mozzarella sticks, potato skins, jalapeno poppers. Sure, it’s the same stuff you can get at Costco, but it tastes fine, your likelihood of getting sick is very low, and it fits the bowling alley aesthetic. You’re really just there to have fun with your friends and drink a couple pitchers anyway.
@SBN_UGod: How many years in the wilderness did Illinois doom their football program to last week?
The Bill Cubit thing makes very little sense to me, even after a week of thinking about it. By giving him two years, you’re basically saying, “yeah we’re not keeping this guy around.” By hiring him in the first place, you’re punting on your program for at least those two years but since football is about recruiting, you’re also adding the four years of each of those two years of recruits. So that pretty much gives you six years of “Oh no what have we done?” discussion out of Illinois. It’s a headscratching move for sure, and one I don’t think I would have made if I was an athletic director. But I’m not an athletic director, not yet anyway. Either commit to him or go a different direction. But pick one. Don’t try to play this halfway game. Halfway measures never work in college football.
If you really want in-depth analysis of this, I suggest you listen to this week’s it me, college football. We brought Tom Fornelli on, and we talked about Illinois for at least 10 minutes, which is longer than anyone should talk about Illinois without proper protection.
@furrer4heisman: other than “it’s football,” give me one reason to watch each of the group of 5 title games
This is fun! Okay, going to do this in 140 characters or fewer for each. Here we go:
MAC Championship (Bowling Green vs. NIU): This game never disappoints, especially this year with Matt Johnson slinging it in that high octane Dino Babers system.
AAC Championship (Temple vs. Houston): The American has been extremely good football all year long, and watching Temple try to stop Greg Ward and the Coogs’ offense will be great.
C-USA Championship (Southern Miss vs. Western Kentucky): Brandon Doughty is so dang good, and Southern Miss won nine games for the first time since Larry Fedora was there.
Mountain West Championship (Air Force vs. San Diego State): The Falcons run the ball super well, and the Aztecs seem to always win the turnover battle. Contrasts in styles are fun.
@MayorBurnsy: Hi @martinrickman longtime reader here, how many National Championships will Scott Frost win in his first season at UCF?
None. And that’s okay! I think UCF would’ve been better off with Babers (as reports suggested earlier in the week), but Frost can run a good offense, that’s for sure. There’s a risk here any time you hire a coordinator to be a head coach, but UCF must have seen something they liked in him (aside from being able to get him cheaper than other coaches would’ve been). And Frost must have seen something he liked in UCF, since he has been rumored for other jobs in the past. I hope this is a happy marriage. I like it when UCF is good at football.
@ChrisMottram: what should be the criteria for deciding which 5-win teams get bowl bids? i say mascots
Mascots are a good criteria, but I kind of am thinking outside the box here. I believe you should go based on famous alumni, and a committee should be put together (I will head it up, and my first choice for VP would be Danger Guerrero) to make the determination of which schools’ famous alumni are better than others among the five-win teams. Then we place them in the bowls ourselves.
To go one step further, a famous alum must coach the team (like how you can have celebrity shots in beer pong) to add extra interest in said bowl game seeing as a five-win team is not that exciting in any bowl, much less the Potato Bowl or whatever. Just imagine Stevie Nicks on that San Jose State sideline. Now there’s some intrigue.
