Lane Kiffin has been a college coach for 134 games. When’s the last time you said, “Man, that’s an incredible win.” I don’t know how he did it?”
Here’s the answer: At the end of the 2011 season, while coaching Southern California, Kiffin took on a team in the midst of a postseason suspension and won on the road at Oregon, which was ranked No. 4 and directly in the national championship race.
That being said, could you name Kiffin’s second best win by ranking? It was at the end of the 2020 season when Ole Miss defeated No. 8 Indiana in the Outback Bowl. Indiana, people. Indiana.
The point of this historical exercise is that there is now a fairly large sample size that suggests that Kiffin – who wins a whopping 65% of his games – will beat most of the teams he should beat, but essentially never the kind of delivers a program-changing performance or even a credibility-building win that most coaches need to get even a fraction of the publicity he does.
To be clear: Top 10 teams are, by definition, hard to beat. You can’t always expect that, especially at a place like Ole Miss, which is often middle of the pack in the SEC.
But it would be nice to do it every now and then. And Ole Miss is the most pathetic fan base in America this week because it’s in its fourth year and it hasn’t happened yet.
So the Misery Index isn’t about identifying the worst teams in the country. It’s about getting deep into the psyche of the people who live and die with your program and finding out who hates their entire life because of one college football game in a given week.
Ole Miss fans often live in this area because of the school’s status as one of those programs that can occasionally produce greatness, only to be forced back into reality by one of the SEC’s bluebloods. Somehow you get used to it after a while. But this time, against arguably the weakest Alabama team of the last decade, Ole Miss fans had every right to believe they could win this game.
And they didn’t come particularly close.
Ole Miss’ 24-10 loss was a statement from Nick Saban: Alabama could make a lot of mistakes and might not have the most dynamic offense these days. But it’s still much better at winning football games than Kiffin’s team, whose offense was bogged down most of the game and also missed opportunities to make big plays when they were available.
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Kiffin, who was Saban’s offensive coordinator from 2014 to 2016, may have lost the game earlier in the week when he made a comment based on film suggesting that cornerbacks coach Travaris Robinson was calling Alabama’s defense instead of coordinator Kevin Steele .
Why should he do that? Maybe he just believed it to be true and couldn’t help but say it out loud. Perhaps he was trying to provoke and play mind games with an Alabama team that had its hands full after a few poor performances this season. Perhaps he was trying to take the pressure off his own team by finding a theme that would soak up all the oxygen during game week.
No matter the reason, it was a bad idea. Kiffin should know by now that Saban and Alabama will never be given a bad guy. And given his terrible record in games like this — not just against Alabama, but pretty much any good team — maybe it’s time to think about trolling less and practicing more.
Four more in misery
Notre Dame
Let’s start with this. In the most important game of Notre Dame’s season and Marcus Freeman’s coaching career to date, the Irish had ten players on the field. After a timeout ordered by Notre Dame to organize its defense. When Ohio State only needed one yard to win. How does this happen? How do you live with that unless you win a national championship? In the game so far this year, that numerical advantage at the line of scrimmage was most likely the difference between Notre Dame pulling off a truly monumental win or suffering a 17-14 loss. There were plenty of other moments that opened the door down the stretch, including questionable clock management on the Irish’s previous offensive possession, a missed interception and Notre Dame’s decision to rush three plays before the game-winning touchdown on third-and-19 .to achieve space. But that’s all 50/50 football stuff. It happens. If you have 10 on the field and you have to stop a run up the middle or you lose the game? This is unacceptable and an expensive lesson for the 37-year-old Freeman. “It is up to us. We have to do better,” he told the media. More precisely, you have to get better.
Clemson
For the second time in the last three seasons, the Tigers’ College Football Playoff hopes are over at the end of September. After previously making the CFP six years in a row, this is a change that Clemson fans won’t particularly like. But it’s also the new reality of being replaced at the top of the ACC by Florida State, which went to Death Valley, was outplayed for most of the game and still won 31-24 in overtime. Given the amount of attention given to Dabo Swinney’s rejection of the transfer portal as a roster-building mechanism, it was probably fitting that the game-winning touchdown came via receiver Keon Coleman, who was plucked from the portal after two seasons at Michigan State.
However, the focus will be more on Swinney’s game management, which is fair. Clemson played poor situational football, from questionable calls at crucial points to timing issues to overtime in which quarterback Cade Klubnik made a poor decision to throw the ball on third-and-1 when Swinney wanted a running play (maybe , in the future, that). should be clarified rather than giving him a run-pass option). Oh, and Clemson’s kicking situation was so bad that this week it brought back Jonathan Weitz, a former backup who had left the school and was about to start a new job in New York. In the end, he was asked to make a 29-yarder with 1:45 left to take the lead, which he predictably failed to do. From 2015 to 2019, everything Swinney touched turned to gold. Now it seems like he can’t do anything right. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but the bottom line is that at 2-2, Clemson is just ahead for the remainder of Clemson’s season.
UCLA
No game is over after one play from scrimmage, but if you’re a Bruins fan, you could have turned off the TV on Saturday and comfortably predicted what would happen over the next 59-plus minutes against Utah. And none of it was good. The Utes’ 14-7 victory was as confident and comfortable as ever seen in a game decided by a score, and it probably should have been as highly touted freshman quarterback Dante Moore scored one Pick-Six took the first snap. From that moment on, UCLA no longer looked like a team with a great chance of accomplishing anything offensively, which shouldn’t happen when Chip Kelly is your coach. Although the Bruins finally put together a long drive to score points midway through the fourth quarter, the remaining possessions totaled 152 yards on 58 plays. Moore should have plenty of good days as a college quarterback, but it’s not that easy when the other team is physically overwhelming. Utah was basically everywhere and Moore didn’t have much of a chance to get oxygen. UCLA will win some games this year, but it will be pretty hard to watch against any team with a good defense.
Virginia Tech
Now that Tennessee is good again, college football apparently needed a new Tennessee. What we mean is a program that has grown its fan base with great success in a time that is no longer relevant to what matters now, and the memory of that success confuses everyone about what the expectations should be and what should be must get out of a multi-year spiral. Much like Tennessee, Virginia Tech has few natural advantages other than the passion of its fan base. There are a lot of good players in the state of Virginia, but convincing them to come to a small, remote college town in the mountains isn’t the easiest task. Former Hokies coach Justin Fuente wasn’t good at this particular part of the job. And it has left their program in very bad shape as they spin the coaching wheel for the second time since Frank Beamer’s resignation. But in an era where roster turnover can occur fairly quickly, it’s fair to question why Brent Pry is losing 24-17 to Marshall after already losing to Purdue and Rutgers. Performances like these give Virginia Tech a good chance of becoming the worst team in the Power Five
tendency towards misery
Deion Sanders
For the first time ever, the Misery Index includes a fan base that doesn’t actually belong to a school. Real Colorado fans who have watched bad football for years understand what happened in Oregon’s 42-6 win and can’t be too upset about it because everything is bad right now. But Prime fans, who never really watched or cared about college football before he moved to Boulder, are completely upset with how the Ducks used all the attention on Colorado as motivation, using fake punts from their own end highlighted fielding, unnecessary fourth-down conversions and bravery from coach Dan Lanning. Sorry to break it to you, but Colorado is still far from a top team despite its magical 3-0 start. And Oregon made sure everyone knew it. But here’s some reality: There will be a few more days like this. College football won’t just clear the way for Deion’s championship parade. This is competition, folks. To get used to something.
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Minnesota
With more than 17 minutes left, the Gophers led Northwestern 31-10. Against a team that has struggled with all sorts of off-field dysfunction following the firing of coach Pat Fitzgerald this summer, Minnesota probably felt like it was in pretty good shape. It didn’t feel that way at the end of the game after completely blowing the lead before suffering a humiliating 37-34 loss in overtime. Minnesota fans don’t ask for much, which is why it’s a great place for PJ Fleck to be treated like a hero who won eight or nine games without his “Row the Boat” culture that always seemed a little contrived, right In principle, taking a closer look seems to be effective. But it would be perfectly acceptable if Minnesota fans asked him not to lose games like that to the worst team in the Big Ten.
Texas Tech
If you can’t score two touchdowns, you shouldn’t be allowed to call yourself an Air Raid program. Texas Tech, one of the Air Raid originals under the late Mike Leach, did not do much airing or raiding in West Virginia. In fact, Texas Tech completed just 15 of 43 passes in a 20-13 loss, putting them at 1-3 this season. Admittedly, the weather conditions were harsh with rain and some wind. But they were tough for both teams. Texas Tech managed to lose despite having a 321-256 total yards advantage and a plus-2 turnover battle. It also didn’t help that starting quarterback Tyler Slough suffered an early injury and was unable to return. But backup Behren Morton has enough experience to think Texas Tech would be better than 2 of 18 on third down. The Red Raiders have lost all three games against FBS opponents this year by one point.
Connecticut
The Huskies were one of the nicer stories last season, achieving bowl eligibility in Jim Mora’s first season. The hope this created was even enough to put UConn on the Big 12’s expansion radar, which many fans were happy about, although the current situation of playing independent football and being a Big East member in everything else was difficult for the basketball program Men worked pretty well. But fast forward a few months, and it’s pretty clear that UConn’s schedule doesn’t need to get any more demanding any time soon. Coming off a 41-7 home loss to Duke in front of a few thousand spectators that dropped to 0-4, this is more like UConn, which convinced school administrators to give up on big dreams in football and instead focus on sports where she can win.