As the unofficial coach-hunting season opens in college football, we begin our tour in Columbia, Mo., home to the Missouri Tigers, a disappointment in the last two autumns of Larry Smith’s seven-year tenure.
Smith’s dismissal seems a foregone conclusion after an embarrassing 38-17 loss to archrival Kansas last Saturday, on homecoming in Columbia, no less. The Tigers (2-4) have won only two of their last 12 games against Division I-A opponents and have beaten the hated Jayhawks only twice under Smith. The 61-year-old Smith, 32-42-1 at Missouri and under contract through 2003, may know it’s coming. But he doesn’t like it and this week he fired back at fans who have been blistering him on talk shows and the Internet.
“I know this: Fans have a very short memory,” Smith said. “If you play great one week, you don’t hear about it. When you don’t play well, they’re going to bring it up. I think that’s basically the mentality of our culture.
“Everybody thinks one thing: On a professional level, all they do is shuffle coaches and baseball managers all the time. It trickles down to college and they think that if you’re not having success just get rid of the coach and the coaching staff and that’s going to solve the problem.”
It rarely does, of course. In college football, stability is everything. Schools that regularly run coaches off campus struggle to break the hire-and-fire cycle.
With that in mind, let’s move on to our next campus: Southern Cal, which fired Smith after the 1992 season.
Unlike Mizzou, USC has an enviable football history. But the Trojans never quite have figured out how to replace John Robinson, who brought home the school’s last national title in 1978. Ted Tollner lasted four seasons. Smith made it through six. Robinson came back and lasted five.
Guess who reportedly is considering firing its coach again this year?
That’s right. Old USC.
Midway through his third season, Paul Hackett is 17-14 at Troy. Entering this year, most Pac-10 observers agreed that the Trojans had the most talent in the conference. USC underscored that view with season-opening victories over Penn State, Colorado and San Jose State. Then came Pac-10 losses to Oregon State, Arizona and Oregon, the last two in Los Angeles.
USC is out of the Rose Bowl race by Halloween. And that may mean Hackett will be out of a job by Thanksgiving weekend. The irony there is that USC finishes the regular season against old rival Notre Dame, the final stop on our coach-hunting tour.
Here we find a surprise. Unlike Missouri and USC, Notre Dame appears likely to retain its coach, Bob Davie.
Savaged by fans when Notre Dame slipped to 5-7 a year ago, Davie won few followers over when he didn’t try to beat top-ranked Nebraska in regulation Sept. 9 in Notre Dame Stadium; the Irish lost 27-21 in overtime. But Davie has kept the Irish afloat despite losing his starting quarterback two weeks into the season.
At 4-2, the 20th-ranked Irish are very much in contention for a lucrative Bowl Championship Series berth. Davie still might be in trouble if the Irish take a nosedive. But Notre Dame’s gutsy play against a brutal opening schedule and its courageous response to critical injuries will make it very difficult for the school to fire Davie.
Of course many subway alums will want to see Davie go no matter how this season turns out. But fans tend to be neither patient nor realistic. They don’t have to be. Their futures aren’t at stake.
Smith tried to break some news to Trojan faithful after USC lost the now-defunct Freedom Bowl to Fresno State in 1992.
“Names and logos don’t mean anything,” Smith said. “You don’t beat someone just because of your name and your logo.”
A few days after Smith uttered those memorable words, USC canned him.
Missouri recently changed its logo, adopting a more ferocious-looking Tiger. But the team remains toothless. By the time the Jayhawks completed their rout Saturday at Faurot Field, thousands of Mizzou fans had bolted for the parking lots.
“If you’re playing great, they’re going to stay,” Smith told reporters in Columbia. “If you aren’t playing great, they’re going to leave and go drink.”
And they won’t be toasting their coach. They’ll be torching him.
Lies and statistics: Notre Dame has the 108th-rated passing offense in Division I-A. The Irish throw for an average of 120.5 yards per game. That’s about a foot per game better than 109th-rated Navy, which averages 120.2 yards.
The 4-2 Irish walloped the 0-6 Middies 45-14 last weekend.
Ducks take wing: It would require a team of mathematicians to work out the possible outcomes of the Big Ten race. But the Pac-10 title could come down to this weekend’s showdown between 21st-ranked Arizona and No. 7 Oregon, the only unbeaten teams in Pac-10 play.
Off to its best league start since 1957, Oregon already has knocked off UCLA, USC and Washington and a victory over the Wildcats would give the Ducks the tiebreaker advantage over every contender but 2-1 Oregon State, which it meets Nov. 18 in Corvallis.
“We feel we can beat anybody, but I haven’t heard anybody in this locker room talk about the Rose Bowl,” Oregon receiver Keenan Howry said. “We are always focused on the one game each week.”
Arizona has a tougher stretch run. Each of its final four opponents–UCLA, Washington, Oregon State and Arizona State–has a winning record.
Five whiffs: Oklahoma is No. 1 in this week’s Sagarin Football Ratings. The Sooners are idle this week after whipping Texas and Kansas State the last two weeks. Next week they play host to Nebraska, first in both major polls, in a renewal of one of college football’s better rivalries. The Cornhuskers tune up against Baylor in Lincoln this week. . . . Here’s one reason Oklahoma looked so good in a 41-31 win Saturday at Kansas State: the Wildcats missed 17 tackles, five on Antwone Savage’s 74-yard touchdown reception in the third quarter, according to K-State coach Bill Snyder. Despite the loss K-State still has a shot at the national title because it plays Nebraska. If it wins that game it would set up a possible rematch with Oklahoma in the Big 12 playoff. At 12-1, K-State would have a strong case for the Orange Bowl. But don’t tell Snyder.
“If we’ve got delusions as to the national championship at this particular time, we’re making some serious mistakes,” he said. “Yes, we do control our own destiny. That’s still in front of us. That just depends on us.”
Sidelines: Northern Illinois struggles for respect, but it may find some in this week’s Sagarin ratings. The Huskies check in at No. 31 this week, ahead of such titans as UCLA (35th), Alabama (36th), Texas (37th), Tennessee (39th) and Southern Cal (44th). . . . With the first Bowl Championship Series rankings due out Monday, the computer wizards once again will take center stage. Chicago-based mathematician Jerry Palm, who has projected the secret BCS rankings accurately before they have been released over the last two years, says Nebraska and Virginia Tech are in the top two spots this week. The BCS uses a complicated formula of the two major polls, eight computer ratings, won-lost records and strength of schedule to determine which teams will play for the national title in the Orange Bowl.
Tennessee vs. Alabama always is played on the third Saturday in October. This year the game brings the third quarterback change for the 2-3 Volunteers. It’s freshman Casey Clausen’s turn.
“We need someone to take charge,” coach Phillip Fulmer said. “Nobody has really just taken command of the job.”
Clausen follows redshirt freshman A.J. Suggs, who replaced opening-day starter Joey Mathews. It’s a good thing Chris Simms decided to go to Texas. The Vols might be on their fourth quarterback by now. . . . How ’bout those Ball State Cardinals? After breaking the longest losing streak in Division I-A at 21 games, the Cardinals have dashed off two straight victories. They’ll look to make it three in a row Saturday at Buffalo, which is 1-5 and ought to re-examine its decision to move up to Division I-A.
