Here’s a simple but big question to throw at you, right out of the gate: How much did you think college football changed this weekend?
That question isn’t meant to be confined to the College Football Playoff race, or to the polls, or to hot seats. Think broadly. How did this weekend change the sport in your eyes?
While you begin to toss around those questions, consider the ideas submitted below:
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When we look back on this decade in college football, week four of the 2015 season might acquire a much larger identity or cast far longer shadows over the sport than many pundits and fans might currently imagine.
Hmm — that seems like a pretty big statement there, sir, you might be saying inwardly. Late-September weekends often give way to very different developments in October and November. True enough.
Yet, the point being driven at in this piece is not so much a final verdict on teams, programs or coaches. The point is that week four of the season has set up some very compelling dramas of all kinds. On a team-based level, the likes of Utah, Ole Miss, and Northwestern — not accustomed to being the center of attention — will have to bear that spotlight for at least a little while, if not longer. That’s captivating.
Programs we’re used to seeing at the top of the mountain or close to it — Auburn and Oregon in particular, opponents in the 2011 BCS National Championship Game — have been struck down. Alabama, Georgia Tech, Tennessee, Missouri, and others have been wounded, but could still get off the mat in conference play. We can’t wait to see what happens.
Most of all, though, week four has given us a season in which — over the next two months and into 2016 — we are going to find out what several big-name coaches are made of. This is the most riveting part of the season other than the chase for the four playoff spots and the Heisman Trophy.
Let’s briefly discuss some of the men who have been brought to a crossroads in their respective careers:
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Bret Bielema remains “Oh-for-Close” at Arkansas, meaning that he’s still winless in one-score games with the Hogs after a familiarly painful fourth-quarter breakdown against Texas A&M. This was supposed to be — if not “The Year” for Woo Pig Sooie — a year in which the Razorbacks moved into the nine-win club and gained a higher-tier bowl bid.
It will almost certainly not be that; the Hogs will have to run the table to get there in the regular season, and go 7-1 to make nine wins possible after the bowls.
From all appearances, Bielema is being smacked down at Arkansas… and the cruel twist involved is that non-SEC teams are doing the smacking alongside SEC opponents. Bielema arrived in Fayetteville as a highly-credentialed coach, a man who made three straight Rose Bowls with his own players, not someone else’s. That his teams are still losing close ones — which dogged him in his later years in Madison as well — casts a cloud over a coach whose smashmouth style ought to be tailor-made for digging out slobberknocker slugfests with scores of 17-13.
Bielema has a massive buyout the next two years, so he’s not going anywhere. He’s not on a hot seat, though the natives are definitely restless in WPS County. Yet, while his seat might not be toasty, his reputation is very much at stake. This situation exists for a few other highly visible coaches in the sport.
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Todd Graham, after winning the 2013 Pac-12 South and then beating Notre Dame on Nov. 8 of last year, certainly gave the appearance of a man who was changing the culture in Tempe with Arizona State. After getting blasted by USC and looking awful on offense yet again, however, the Sun Devils’ season looks lost. This was the precise implosion Phoenix residents have seen far too often over the past 30 years. Graham was supposed to prevent it from happening, but here we are.
Graham isn’t on the hot seat, but his legacy as a coach is very much on the line in the next months and in 2016.
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Mark Helfrich just reached the national championship game. He outcoached Jimbo Fisher in last season’s College Football Playoff semifinal in the Rose Bowl. He bounced back from a bad 2013 season. In many ways, he’s proved a lot. Yet, in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately profession, one unthinkably wretched performance against Utah has led a number of writers, including my colleague Bart Doan, to express — with considerable justification — a deep sense of concern about the present and future of the Oregon football program. A lot of commentators are saying “it’s the end of an era” in Eugene… and they might be right.
Yes, Mr. Helfrich, your legacy is on the line right now, even though your job isn’t (and shouldn’t be).
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Last yet anything but least, we give you the coach whose reputation might be squarely on the line more than any of his colleagues anywhere else in the United States: Guz Malzahn.
Jake Nazar of SB Nation‘s LSU and Maryland sites — And The Valley Shook and Testudo Times — spoke for many when he unfurled this accurate observation:
https://twitter.com/ATVS_JakeNazar/status/647965314693636097
You probably have an opinion on Gus. I do, too. Those opinions don’t matter, but what does matter is that Malzahn certainly has a legacy to reclaim (and improve).
In one sense, he’ll always (and rightfully) be seen as something more than Gene Chizik, since he returned to Auburn to win the SEC and finish as the national runner-up in 2013. Yet, having a big season and then tumbling into oblivion would be quite Chizikian, and Malzahn doesn’t want to have that label slapped across his forehead. There’s no hot seat in play here, but at least Tommy Tuberville more or less maintained Auburn as a steady program, one which never fell off the cliff the way Chizik’s 2012 team did. Is the Gus Bus also going to crash through that “DO NOT GO BEYOND THIS POINT” barrier and into the bottom of a desert canyon, just like Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius?
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Recovery: It’s not just for Alcoholics Anonymous or psychotherapy; it’s also for coaches who are faced with the fights of their careers right now.
The 2015 college football season will continue to fascinate us due to the playoff chase and the Heisman race, but the pursuit of a restored legacy by several visible coaches will also lend great texture and drama to the months (and years) ahead.
