UCLA fired Karl Dorrell today. Wow, I can’t believe they would do such a racist thing.  They fired an African American coach that didn’t perform.  And they did so when he had FOUR MORE YEARS left on his contract.  The humanity!  He’ll only get $2 MILLION for doing a mediocre job!

Oh.  My.  God. 

Racists!  All of those Bruins out there in warm, sunny beautiful California!  They fired him because he’s a minority!!!

Nevermind that they hired him in the first place (when he was still African American), and that UCLA provided him with a great chance to run a football program at a prominent west coast FBS school.  Forget about the fact that his record  at 35-27 wasn’t acceptable to his superiors.  Forget about the fact that they made him RICH.

Because it’s all because of the color of his skin!  And Karl sure thinks that’s the case.

Dorrell did a good job from Sunday to Friday (sound familiar?), but couldn’t quite get things done on Saturdays.

Although he helped clean up the program, that was only part of what Guerrero wanted.

“The other was to build this program into a consistent winner, a program that would be in the national discussion on a regular basis,” Guerrero said.

Fortunately for UCLA, no one cares all that much about their football program beyond Westwood (and maybe Brentwood), so no one will publish the cries/excuses/hype-ridden stories designed to inflame and incent.  Refreshing, I’d say. 

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In a story on ESPN today, Charlie once again takes all the blame for this season.  Class act, all the way.  But, we know already that.  We also knew that we were young (see Dead Horse Post below), that Charlie wants to win NOW, and that he’s recruiting over the next few weeks.

The most interesting part of the article to me is the last portion:

Weis also said too much was made of the fact he said two weeks ago he plans to meet with his former colleagues on the New England Patriots coaching staff to analyze Notre Dame’s offense and defense.

“Who better to sit there and look at things and say, ‘I wouldn’t have done that’, or ‘What were you doing here, than guys that are friends of yours,” he said.

Some critics have said Weis has taken too much of an NFL approach to practices, focusing more on technique rather than hitting and other basics, and seeking advice from the pros may not be the answer. But Weis said he and his staff also will be talking with other college coaches to try to improve.

After Charlie mentioned talking to the Pats, message boards lit up, and ‘experts’ (e.g. bloggers with too much self-importance and/or anti-Charlie venom) said he was off making the same mistakes again and that he wasn’t willing to learn.  “He’s all NFL!” was the chant.  “These are kids, not NFL players!” posters pointed out.  And I agree with the thought - Charlie made severe mis-steps along these lines this year.  But that doesn’t mean that talking to the Pats is a bad thing.

The reaction among fans/posters/bloggers/media reveals the danger inherent in taking Press Conference quotes and running with them like it means you know the inner-workings of a coach’s (that’s any coach) mind or program.  Per the above, Charlie and his staff are clearly willing to, and are planning to, work with other college staffs to exchange some thoughts/methods/processes/plans.  Note:  And we already knew this from last year.  While it was an ill-conceived/failed experiment in the spread offense, Charlie DID go to WVU last year to LEARN.  Yep, he showed he was interested in learning from other college coaches, and now he’s willing to again.

In the future though, I think it might behoove (behoove, I am on a roll with my M-freaking BA DomerMQ) all of us to not read into Charlie’s statements too too much.  If he says he’s going to the Pats to talk over the season and get feedback, this does NOT mean that he’s not going to talk to other college coaches.   He just didn’t mention it.  Just like if he says he’s going to run the ball next week, it doesn’t mean that he won’t pass.

Just like if I say Michigan (sucks!) sucks, it doesn’t mean I think OSU doesn’t.

See what I mean people?  They ALL can suck, even if I don’t mention any team other than the skunk-bears.

So give the man a little credit, and maybe assume that he doesn’t necessarily tell us EVERY SINGLE one of his thoughts/ideas/plans in his PC’s.   I agree he deserves scrutiny after this year, but we sit back and attack things from every angle from our comfortable little couches, while he’s on a road to Minnesota to lock up another recruit to help turn this program around.   I believe he’ll study this year feverishly, and he’ll ask top Pro coaches to do the same, and he’ll swap information, formation and trickeration with other college coaches.  And he’ll come out a better coach for it.

UPDATE:

Good Charlie quote from Irish Eyes:

“I’m definitely going to use college resources, but I think you guys greatly overrate the pro system when it comes to Xs and Os,“ Weis said. “All you’re doing when it comes to that, an analysis of your system, is the X and O part. That’s one small part of the grand scheme of things. When I say that I’m going to utilize the Patriots as a resource, why wouldn’t I? They’re the people that have the most familiarity with the Xs and Os part of the system.”

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There are 119 teams in the Bowl Subdivision of college football. So there are 119 teams in college football that could, by the rules, participate in bowl games after the end of the regular season. There are 32 bowl games in 2007, meaning there are 64 teams participating in college football bowl games this year. About 54% of all bowl subdivision teams get to play in bowls this winter.

So how good are these teams? And how good, really, are the “elite” teams that made it into the BCS games? What about the supposed National Championship contenders, LSU and Ohio State?

To figure that out, I started to look at the Sagarin ratings of every team participating in bowl games, paying particularly close attention to their schedule rankings and their win-loss records. You can view the data I collected here:

As you can see from the data, the average SOS for the bowl-bound teams in 2007 is, um, well, I wont say “pathetic,” but I will say “extraordinarily mediocre.” Of all the bowl teams in 2007, the average SOS is 57.5. So the teams that are going to the bowls aren’t exactly a bunch of upper-tier world-beaters. It’s really just a collection of 64 teams that are, by and large, “ok.” Against that 57.5 average bowl ranking, the teams have managed an average record of about 8 wins and 4 losses. Of all the teams, only 11 managed to play against schedules ranked in the top 11. Only four managed to play against top-10 schedules. Not a single bowl in 2007 will feature 2 teams that both played top-25 schedules.

And really, when you consider that 64, or more than half, of all bowl subdivision teams get to play in a bowl game, those numbers aren’t that shocking. We’re not really talking about the cream of the crop, right? So let’s talk about what’s supposed to be the cream of the crop: The BCS Bowl Contenders. They’ve managed to look just as mediocre and underwhelming as the rest of the bowl teams. Managing only a 54.6 average schedule rating, they did manage to win about 10 games and lose 2. Real leaders of the pack, aren’t they?

I will say, of the teams playing in the BCS, LSU really is probably most deserving of a shot at the national championship. They played against the 21st rated schedule in the country (toughest among all 2007 BCS teams and 10th toughest among all bowl teams) while compiling 11 wins and 2 losses. Ohio State, on the other hand, won 11 games, sure, but they did it against a less-than average 60th rated schedule.

To get a sense of what teams should really be impressed with themselves and their bowl-playing status, I decided to take their schedule ratings and divide them by their total number of wins. I figured that way I could easily see what teams did pretty darn well over the season while taking their level of competition into consideration. It’s not terribly sophisticated data analysis like Biscuit would know how to perform thanks to his “MBA,” but at least I’m pretty. Anyway, the results of my math gave each team a number. A small number, that I’ve called “Team Quality Win-Loss Rank” for completely arbitrary and uncreative reasons, generally indicates that a team has won a relatively large number of games against a relatively difficult slate of competition. LSU’s number is 1.9, correlating with a lot of wins against a top-25 schedule. OSU’s number is 5.4. Hawaii, with their snazzy undefeated record and BCS game invitation, got a 11.42. Why so high? Well, they get to divide their schedule rank by all those wins, but their schedule rank is 137 - an impressive feat when there are only 119 bowl subdivision teams in college football. You read that right. Hawaii’s schedule was ranked below some non-bowl subdivision teams. And by “some,” I mean “many.”

It may just be the fact that, for the first time since 2004, ND isn’t involved in the BCS series, but I’m not feeling terribly compelled to watch many of the bowl games. To get a sense of which games I really should watch, I took my new-fangled “Team Quality Win-Loss Rank” of each team in each game and averaged it out for each game. The BCS Championship game actually ranks pretty well here with a 3.7. Which, I have a feeling, will turn out to have a lot more to do with LSU and their levels of competition than with anything having to do with a Troy Mythless Ohio State. I mean, they don’t even have the Ginn Family on the Buckeye sideline!

Interestingly, Michigan (sucks!) and Florida provide a fairly compelling match-up in the Capital One Bowl. Florida sports the 9th ranked schedule with 9 wins and 3 losses. Michigan (sucks!) has the 35th ranked schedule with a record of 8-4. If Michigan (sucks!)’s team is healthy, and Llloydd Carr can rally the troops one last time, then Ron English’s defense should only give up about 73 points to the Tim Tebowed Spread Option attack of the Gators. Can Florida’s defensive backfield do anything to slow Mario Manningham long enough to eek out a 73-40 win?

Another potentially interesting bowl-game: Oregon vs. South Florida in the Sun Bowl. Oregon may have actually found a post-Dennis Dixon’s Knee version of an actual offense. And they put together an 8 and 4 record against the #7 schedule in the country. The Ducks go up against the Bulls in the closest thing this bowl season has to a meeting between 2 teams that both played top-25 competition (The Bulls had a slate rated #28).

After noticing that there are only 11 teams in bowl games that played top-25 schedules, I decided to see who the 14 teams that also played top-25 schedules were, and what their season results looked like. On first blush, a person who knew very little about college football might look at these numbers and determine that it’s a very bad idea to play top-25 schedules.

1. #1 - Washington: Finished 4-7 with a bunch of vicious and rabid “Dawg Fans” howling for a coaching change.
2. #2 - UCLA: Finished 6-6 with a bowl bid (the toughest schedule with a bowl big, obviously) and fird Karl Dorrell today
3. #3 - Nebraska: Finished 5-7. Fired their head coach and brought in LSU’s DC this weekend.
4. #4 - Cal: Started out looking nearly unstoppable, then fell off a cliff like no other team in the country, finishing 6-6 with a bowl bid.
5. #5 - Arizona: Finished 5-7. HC Mike Stoops narrowly avoided the axe by winning the last 3.
6. #6 - Duke: 1-11. Fired HC Roof last week.
7. #7 - Oregon: 8-4 and looked unstoppable so long as Dennis Dixon could walk.
8. #8 - South Carolina: 6-6 with Spurrier missing a bowl game for the first time in nearly 2 decades.
9. #9 - Florida: 9-3. Urban Meyer couldn’t lie himself out of 3 losses.
10. #10 - Stanford: 4-8. Jim Harbaugh has at least made The Tree an aggressive tree. Nobody at Stanford noticed.
11. #11 - Washington State: Went 5-7 and then “resigned” head coach Bill Doba.
12. #12 - Syracuse: Went 2-10, but, whatever. They’re Syracuse.
13. #13 - Notre Dame: Went 3-9 and forced Mark May, sitting in a studio in Connecticut to ask, “Is this heaven?”
14. #14 - Tennessee: Finished 9-4 and caused me to remark, “Wow! Tennessee is playing in the freaking SEC Championship Game!?”
15. #15 - Colorado: Dan “Obi Wan” Hawkins went 6 and 6, got a bowl bid, and should have the entire Big 12 on notice.
16. #16 - Vanderbilt: Went 5-7. Had a great time doing it.
17. #17 - Oregon State: Finished 8-4 with a bowl bid. I will not make any clever jokes about Beavers.
18. #18 - Florida State: Went 7 and 5, got a bowl bid, wonder if they’ve got the next Joe Paterno on their hands.
19. #19 - Iowa State: Went 3-9 but don’t really care because they beat Iowa
20. #20 - Oklahoma State: The greatest show on turf wen 6 and 6, got a bowl bid.
21. #21 - LSU: Went 11-0 in regulation. Went 0-2 in triple-overtimes. Will play for the MNC sometime in 2008.
22. #22 - Mississippi: Went 3-9 and fired Coach Orgeron faster than he could say “ham.”
23. #23 - NC State: Started out 1-5, fought back to 5-5, got the football world talking, and then flat-lined to a 5-7 finish with a blowout loss to, gulp, Maryland.
24. #24 - Missouri: Finished 11-2, and beat Kansas in what was called “the most important game in the history of these 2 programs.” I’m sure Missouri will enjoy watching Kansas play in a BCS game.
25. #25 - North Carolina: Went 4 and 8 and wonder how long until someone buys out Butch Davis.

So of the 25 teams with top-25 schedules, only 11 made it to bowl games. 5 of these teams fired their coaches. Probably about 4 or 5 more either will fire their coach, or will put him on the hot-seat, or will pray that Joe Paterno hasn’t blabbed about the secret to life after death. So, using incredibly bad statistical analysis, an insanely small sample, and pretending to have no notion of how college football works, I’d say there might be a trend here.

Amazing Strength of Schedule Fact of the Year
The BCS Teams’ average SOS for 2007 is 54.6 and only 1 BCS team has a top 25 schedule. In 2006, the average SOS for BCS bowl teams was 29.3 with 5 top-25 schedules. In 2005, the average SOS for BCS bowl teams was 24.5 and the BCS featured 5 top-25 schedule teams as well. Also a fun fact: In both 2005 and 2006, there were 2 BCS games between top-25 schedule teams. In 2007, there isn’t a single such match up in any bowl game at all.

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 The BCS Tonight:

WVU is out with a horrible performance against Pitt.  Mizzou blew it against a pretty-good Oklahoma team.  So 1 and 2 are gone…

Who should play in the BCS Championship game.

Ohio State?  Who lost at HOME to the freaking Zookster’s Illinois team?  Who won a weak Big 10 conference and last played what seems like a year ago?  Yeah, they’re probably in.  But that seems incredibly weak.  Are we all really ready to see them choke again?

And if OSU is in, who’s the opponent?

Georgia makes sense if the voters and the computers got it right prior to this week.  They were the #4 team ahead of Kansas, Va Tech and LSU.  But, Georgia has 2 losses.  Not the best losses in the world either - to South Carolina earlier in the year and to Tennessee more recently.  That’s Tennessee that LSU beat tonight.  And, Georgia didn’t win the conference.

Some think that LSU should leapfrog up and play OSU.  Really?  2-loss LSU?  With those losses coming against UNRANKED Kentucky and UNRANKED Arkansas?  I don’t care if they were both in triple OT.  An NC team shouldnt be going into OT with 2 unranked teams, and they shouldn’t lose both games.

What about Kansas?  They played a pretty weak schedule but were undefeated until a week ago.  Mizzou handled them pretty well.  How can you put Kansas in and not put Mizzou in?  But you CAN’T put Mizzou in after that shellacking by OK tonight.

(Anyone ready for the playoff talk again yet??? I freaking am, this is absurd!)

The last team you can really consider is Va. Tech.  They played a solid game to beat BC to win the ACC.  They have 2 losses, against LSU and BC - both quality, highly ranked teams.  But LSU blew them out in VT’s worst game of the year…the first BC game could’ve gone the other way easily. 

I know it’s a tough call, and I don’t pretend to think it’s “right” (playoffscoughcoughplayoffspleasecough), but I go with this order:

1) OSU

2) Kansas

3) Va Tech

4) LSU

5) Georgia

Yes, I know Kansas played a weak schedule and stunk it up against Mizzou.  But they have 1 loss, against a Top 10 team (this week Top 10-can obviously change shortly after today).  I think Va Tech should be next in line to play OSU after KU.  They have 2 losses, but the first game at LSU was their stinker for the year and they’ve played much better since.  The first BC game could’ve gone either way, and they redeemed themselves in the conference championship game.   Their 2 losses are against quality, top tier opponents.

LSU in the NC would be a joke, and would be a result of the lemmings of the SEC conference hype having their way.  LSU lost to TWO unranked teams.  That is not worthy of an NC berth.

There is no easy answer here.  I’d love to see the final BCS Top 8 play one another in a playoff so we could really get to a definitive answer.  Instead, we get to see how the coaches and the computers all view the football world.  It makes for great discussion, but there’s no way to get to a ‘right’ answer. 

What do you all think?   Who would you put in the NC game?  Would OSU be there?  Who should they play?  Hit us up in the comments, I want to know if I am completely whacked here or what. (And don’t just say ‘yes, Biscuit, you are whack’.  Please.) 

 

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Awww, sorry fellas, how sad!  Les Miles wants to stay at LSU. 

From his press conference: 

“There was misinformation on ESPN and I think it’s imperative that I straighten it out. I’m the head coach at LSU, I will be the head coach at LSU, I have no interest in talking to anyone else. I have a championship game to play and I’m excited about the opportunity of my damn strong football team to play in it. And that’s really all I’d like to say. It’s unfortunate I had to address my team with this information this morning. With that being done, I think we’ll be ready to play. There will be no questions for me; I represent me in this issue, please ask me after. I’m busy. Thank you very much, and have a great day.”

Even though he was “Bo’s guy” and a perfect Michigan fit and blah blah blah, it looks like Miles is going to turn Michigan down to stay in LSU. (Poor little Brian is all sad and frustrated.)

Shocking?  Not at all.  MQ said it previously in his ‘nightmare scenario’ post that prompted all the little skunkbear fans to freak out and post numerous idiotic comments on this site.  But, turns out MQ (as he is wont to be) was right.    Heck yeah, I used the word ‘wont’, I rule.

So far we know the following:

Les Miles doesn’t want the job.

Michigan can’t get Miles’ DC Bo Pelini because he is going to the Cornhuskers.

Kirk Ferentz doesn’t want to be a skunkbear.

Tommy Tuberville is likely to stay at Auburn with a nice little contract extension.

The ’stache won’t be at Michigan.

And since Jim Harbaugh trashed Michigan’s academic standards (or lack thereof), that door is likely closed.  And he said it is.

So what does that leave the UM faithful with?  Not much.

Greg Schiano at Rutgers?  Maybe.  How about Ty Willingham?  He may be looking for a job soon.

PS - All is conjecture until contracts are signed, but we reserve the right to mock the skunkbears any time we choose.  Currently, no one wants that job.  Miles could still change his mind - there’s no contract as of today - but that doesn’t limit the newsworthiness of all of this back and forth at Michigan’s expense.  Awwww…

UPDATE:  UM fans are FREAKING OUT on their message boards.  There is a strong mix of people saying some mix of the following:

1)  F&*^ Les Miles, he is an idiot anyway!

2)  Oh my God, Les Miles was our only chance at a good coach, what will we do now?

3)  CBS loves the SEC and hates Michigan, they suck!

4)  Mike Debord is our only hope - mediocrity is on the way!

This is quite fun.  Karma is a bizo, ain’t it skunkbears?

 

UPDATE:

Ooops!  UM got rejected again! And again!

Kirk Ferentz turned Michigan down for the second time this week, and Greg Schiano also said he’d rather stay at Rutgers.  Rutgers!  Over the Michigan job.  

I thought ND had the lock on messy coaching searches, but Michigan has now taken the cake.  I mean, this makes the O’leary fiasco look tame.  Then again, we ended up with Ty as a result, so unless Michigan hires Willingham they’re likely to end up better than we did in that scenario.  But the search itself has redefined FUBAR.

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