They all stink when they lose.
College football coaches, that is.
They’re propped up like gods when they win and regarded as buffoons when they don’t, and Week 6 of the season was just another example of all that.
We’ll get to Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman and Illinois’ Bret Bielema in a minute.
First, Texas and Miami fell from the ranks of the unbeaten and their coaches, Steve Sarkisian and Mario Cristobal, are being shredded for it. Sarkisian lost a rivalry game to Oklahoma — a year after blanking the Sooners 49-0 — and, for some unimaginable reason, didn’t use his timeouts to stop the clock as the Sooners burned most of the last two minutes with a game-winning drive. Cristobal gave away a win by running the ball instead of taking a knee with the lead in the final minute, Georgia Tech out of timeouts; a Hurricanes fumble led to the unthinkable.
Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher enraged fans with his overly conservative coaching in a 26-20 loss to Alabama. First, Fisher sat on the ball in the last minute of the first half with a 17-10 lead and two timeouts. Later, he punted on fourth-and-1 from the Alabama 45 in a 17-17 game. Trailing 24-17 in the fourth quarter, he again punted on fourth-and-makeable in Alabama territory. What is that nonsense?
But back to Freeman, who officially is having a very shaky second season. In the Irish’s first loss, to Ohio State, they had only 10 men on the field on their last two defensive plays as the Buckeyes went in for the winning score. Saturday at Louisville, the Irish just plain weren’t ready to play and got embarrassed 33-20. They looked rattled and drained.
“Our guys weren’t prepared,” Freeman admitted, “for whatever reason.”
We can think of one, and it rhymes with “poaching.”
And back to Bielema, whose Illini — 2-4 and lucky to not be 1-5 — have gone so far in the wrong direction, it’s fair to ask if the program is in any better condition midway through Bielema’s third season than it was on Lovie Smith’s last day. Heading into a 20-7 loss to Nebraska, Bielema complained the Illini didn’t have an identity on offense. Then they went out and proved it by failing on their opening possession to score from inside the 1-yard line. Should they go under center or in the shotgun? Sneak it or hand it off? They clearly had no idea, so they tried and failed at both.
“Extremely infuriating,” said Bielema, who called it “absolutely insane” for good measure.
Absolutely insane is a Bielema-coached team ranking 110th in the country — and last in the Big Ten, behind even Northwestern — at running the football. Is that why he’s in Champaign, to make the Illini even more of a finesse team than they were before he got there?
An even better question: When does basketball start?
