An Attempt to Explain Paterno and Curley Imitiating Colonel Klink

In consuming the same news stories and opinion pieces about Penn State's remarkably limp response to the football program's former defensive coordinator's unique way of expressing his commitment to children, I've been trying to make sense of the reaction of Tim Curley and Joe Paterno, among other.  Short of murder, child molestation is about as bad a crime as there is.  Jerry Sandusky committed repeated acts of molestation, such that he was observed at Penn State's football facilities on at least two occasions performing sex acts with boys.  This is not a case where authorities would have to rely upon the testimony of a child to determine whether a crime has been committed.  Sandusky was so brazen in his conduct that he committed these crimes in a place where he could be observed by adults, first a janitor and then Mike McQueary, who was a graduate assistant at the time.  Confronted with eyewitness testimony from adults on at least two separate occasions, Penn State's authority figures did nothing. 

This sin is especially grave because it is fairly common knowledge that individuals who commit acts of pedophilia are highly likely to perform the same crimes again.  The offense has a very high rate of recidivism because of the psychological pathologies involved.  Sandusky's crimes cannot be written off as a crime of passion that is unlikely to repeat itself.  Thus, the failure on the part of Penn State authority figures to act appropriately made future crimes by Sandusky a likelihood.  Every child who was assaulted by Sandusky after the 2002 incident can legitimately point a finger at Curley, Paterno, McQueary, and others at Penn State.  Almost certainly, those individuals (or, more precisely, their parents) will be hiring highly-capable lawyers (the victims will have their pick of the best plaintiffs' lawyers in the country) to point those fingers for them and Penn State will ultimately have to respond by writing some very large checks.

So how does this happen?  I would posit that athletic departments at major universities are places where the default response to any wrongdoing is to try to handle it in-house and to avoid reporting it to the appropriate authorities.  Major college football and basketball, the games about which so many of us choose to obsess, live a lie in at least two major respects.  First, those sports involve massive amounts of revenue paired with antiquated British rules enshrining amateurism as a defining value. The natural place for the money to flow is to the players who generate it, but the NCAA seeks to prevent that water from flowing to its natural destination: the players who create the revenue.  Second, colleges and universities have to lower their academic standards in order to admit the players who can make the difference between winning and losing.  They have to operate under the fiction that an individual with a 2.3 GPA and an 850 SAT score from a below-average urban or rural high school can compete academically with students whose credentials far out-strip those of the athlete and come from an environment that makes them much better prepared to process what the professor is saying, understand the assigned reading materials, and create coherent answers to difficult questions based on what they have learned over the course of a semester. 

Thus, the mission of athletic departments, unofficially, has to be to ignore reality. They have to look the other way when a star player is driving a car that is well beyond his present means.  They have to ignore the extent to which tutors assigned to the players are doing the players' assigned course work.  Athletic departments have to put in place compliance regimes that look good and act to stop the most obvious violations of NCAA rules, but at the end of the day, they cannot be cultures based on reporting all rules violations.  To use an analogy from another black market economy, la cosa nostra has to be the default rule.

If you want two illustrations of that culture at work, look at Ohio State and Penn State. Jim Tressel - a man with a sterling reputation prior to last December - received information from a former Ohio State player about NCAA violations made by his players. He did not forward this information as he was required to do by NCAA rules.  Various media outlets then found story after story of potential additional violations, each time leading Ohio State's Athletic Director, Gene Smith, to cut and paste a version of "this is all news to us" into the school's response.  When confronted with media reports that Tressel had sat on evidence of violations, Smith and University President Gordon Gee believed that a two-game suspension would suffice for Tressel.  It was only after a media firestorm that became hotter as a result of Smith and Gee's comical response that Tressel was fired, a fact that Ohio State later touted to the NCAA as evidence that it took the scandal seriously. 

Penn State's scandal involves conduct that is worse by several orders of magnitude than that committed by the Tat Five, but it follows the same pattern.  University officials receive evidence of wrong-doing, they try to keep the evidence in-house, and then their efforts to keep everything quiet are foiled when the criminal justice system gets involved.  And just as Gee embarrassingly claimed "I only hope that he doesn't fire me" when asked if he would terminate Tressel (a move that Ohio State was ultimately forced to take), Penn State President Graham Spanier issued a press release defending his recently-indicted administrators, another colossal miscalculation of how the media would treat the scandal.  Again, the default response to violations of NCAA rules or, in Penn State's case, the criminal of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was not to report the violations to the proper authorities.  Instead, it was sit on the evidence in the hopes that the problem would just go away and then for the university president to defend those who did the sitting.  Given the environment in which athletic departments operate, we should be upset, but we should not be surprised.

Paterno and Urkin

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 11

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU Tigers	1
2	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	1
3	Stanford Cardinal	1
4	Alabama Crimson Tide	-3
5	Oregon Ducks	1
6	Boise St. Broncos	-1
7	Oklahoma Sooners	--
8	Arkansas Razorbacks	--
9	Clemson Tigers	1
10	USC Trojans	1
11	Kansas St. Wildcats	11
12	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	5
13	Texas Longhorns	2
14	Georgia Bulldogs	--
15	Michigan St. Spartans	1
16	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	7
17	Ohio St. Buckeyes	2
18	Houston Cougars	--
19	Wisconsin Badgers	-7
20	Virginia Tech Hokies	1
21	Nebraska Cornhuskers	-12
22	Southern Miss. Golden Eagles	--
23	South Carolina Gamecocks	-3
24	Michigan Wolverines	-11
25	Penn St. Nittany Lions	-1
Dropouts: Texas A&M Aggies

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Random Thoughts from the Weekend:

• The Penn State indictments unleashed a torrent of ill-considered opinions on Twitter, the likes of which I haven’t seen for a long time.  At least two otherwise respectable commentators were calling for the Penn State football program to receive the death penalty, as if: (1) there are provisions in the NCAA’s rulebook that cover reporting of child molestation; and (2) Penn State is a repeat offender in the department.  Short answer: the NCAA doesn’t concern itself with criminal law.  There are authorities in central Pennsylvania who are tasked with enforcing the state’s laws that seek to protect children from predators like Jerry Sandusky and require that certain authority figures report allegations of abuse; the NCAA’s province is to enforce its own laws, which generally have to do with enforcing the concept of amateurism and preventing programs from gaining an unfair competitive advantage.  I seriously doubt that anyone can make a passable case that Penn State received an advantage by virtue of Sandusky’s reprehensible conduct.
• In a strict football sense, the indictments should get Penn State out of a sticky situation.  They have a legendary head coach who is grimly clinging to his position, regardless of his inability to perform the basic functions of the role, because he is afraid of dying shortly after retirement like Bear Bryant.  Now, Paterno’s limp response to a graduate assistant telling him that his former defensive coordinator – a man who still ran a football camp at Penn State – was raping a child in the program’s showers gives Penn State a solution.  And this doesn’t even require Penn State to deal with the fantasy that Paterno, the most powerful individual in the athletic department (or possibly the entire university), was unaware of the prior allegations.  In every other sense, this is a disaster for Penn State.  The program’s image is inextricably linked with that of Paterno.  JoePa always projected the impression of a man of unimpeachable ethics, which his defenders often used to distinguish him from Bear Bryant.  Now, that is all gone.  The program and its godfather have been embarrassed and the taint from this scandal will stick with all of them for a long time.  More tangibly, the fact that various decision makers at the school did so little to deal with an incredibly serious issue and as a result apparently allowed multiple assaults to take place on university property is going to expose the school to major civil liability.  These are expensive mistakes that Penn State’s brass made.
• In the realm of “it’s pointless to ever make predictions,” how many people would have guessed that: (1) Nebraska, which has had an excellent recent defensive record coming into the Big Ten, would be able to stop Michigan State, but no one else in the Big Ten; or (2) Michigan, which was averaging seven yards per play coming into the weekend, would put up less yardage that just about every other team that Iowa has played?  Count those two results as reminders that we are dealing with teenagers whose performances will vary from week to week.  Except for LSU and Alabama, I guess.
• I felt conflicted in making my ballot.  In my heart of hearts, I think that Alabama is the second-best team in the country.  With Stanford having played a weak schedule so far and Oklahoma State confirming my suspicions that they are a good offense-average defense team, I would take the Tide over either of those teams on a neutral field, probably by a touchdown in both cases.  On the other hand, if you go based on resume, then the Tide have to be behind the Cowboys and Cardinal.  The SEC just isn’t strong enough this year for the Tide to develop a national championship resume without a win over LSU, especially since they did not play the two best teams in the East.  Moreover, if LSU has one of the spots in the title game, then the Tide cannot make a good case that they should get a second chance at the Tigers when they blew the first chance at home.
• I will admit that I have little interest in seeing Oklahoma State in the title game.  I have nothing emotional against the Pokes, but they just seem like Oregon Junior to me and we already played that game last year.  Team with a powerful offense and questionable defense, thousands of ludicrous uniform combinations that involve shades other than the school’s official colors, success as the result of a very wealthy benefactor…  Not again, please.
• Ralph Friedgen has to be laughing his ass off right now.
• Did Saturday night mark the most depressing home game in Tennessee history?  The Vols came in at 3-5, having gone 0-for-October.  Meanwhile, their most hated rival and another conference foe were playing in a one versus two matchup that Vols fans probably would have preferred to watch than their own wheezing offense.  And nothing says “this game doesn’t matter” quite like Bob Rathbun on the call.  But hey, at least they set up a true state title game with Vandy by beating Middle Tennessee State.

Separate thoughts on LSU-Bama to follow…   

An Exercise in the Importance of Playing Nobodies

Team A and Team B are fairly similar this year.  They both have good defenses and weak offenses.  They both play in major conferences.  Behold, the majesty of a chart showing their similarities:

	Team A	Team B
Sagarin Predictor	80.40	78.24
Sagarin SOS	68.38	75.20
SRS	9.9	6.12
SRS SOS	2.75	5.86
Pts Per Game	21.4	26.0
Pts Allowed Per Game	12.4	19.5
Scoring Margin	+9.0	+6.5
Yards Per Play Gained	5.1	5.6
Yards Per Play Allowed	4.2	4.5
Yards Per Play Margin	+0.9	+1.1
Turnover Margin	+6	-8

Overall, the picture you would draw from this table is that these teams are pretty close to one another.  Team A would be a 2-3 point favorite on a neutral field according to Sagarin and SRS.  Team A’s scoring margin is a little better, but their yards per play margin is a little worse.  Team A is definitely better in the turnover department, which reflects good luck, weaker opponents, some sort of skill at protecting the ball and preventing opponents from doing the same, or some combination thereof.

Am I going to give it away by saying that both teams have been suspect at the quarterback position this year, with Team A relying on a walk-on and Team B relying on true freshmen during the meat of their schedule?  How about if I said that Team A lost a home game to Alabama by 16 after scoring a garbage touchdown and two-pointer in the final minutes, while Team B lost to the Tide by 28 after losing their quarterback midway through the proceedings?  And for a final connection, the offensive coordinator of Team A’s meager attack used to be the head coach for Team B.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Team A is Penn State and Team B is Florida.  Penn State is 8-1 and ranked 16th in the BCS rankings.  They lead their division by two games. They are three up in the loss column.  If they can simply avoid a three-game losing streak to end the year, they will play in the first Big Ten Championship Game.  The narrative for their season is “Joe Paterno, still getting it done” (at least by reporters who are relying on the fact that their readers haven’t actually watched Penn State play this year).  Florida is 4-4 and unranked.  In fact, I doubt that may voters even gave them a second thought when filling out their ballots.  Their most famous fan in the blogosphere is writing this obituary:

But don't say this is all necessary. It's not. Meyer's struggles in his first year got him to nine wins. [NAME REDACTED] learned and unlearned basic arithmetic on the job and still won seven games. This team will lose to Vanderbilt. This team will lose to South Carolina. This team will lose to Florida State, and they will miss a bowl game for the first time since the pre-Spurrier era. That is not good coaching. That's failure, and boring, depressing failure at that. At least fight James Franklin at the fifty when you're done losing to Vandy, Will, and thus give us something to cheer about. Gut a reporter mid-question, or sleep in a tree stand on campus and when someone asks you what you're doing, whisper "hunting, son. Hunting."

Go mildly insane just to keep us all awake. Don't go pointing to a crack in the model and tell us it's a goddamn feature. That's bullshit, and there's enough of it on the field to feed us all for the next year or so with ease.

Isn’t the major difference between these teams their schedules?  If Florida played three creampuffs plus Alabama in the non-conference slate and then feasted on a pu-pu platter of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue, and Northwestern for league opponents (with the two most “challenging” opponents at home), wouldn’t it stand to reason that the Gators would also be 8-1 (5-0)?  And if Penn State had an October of Alabama at home, LSU and Auburn on the road, and then Georgia at a neutral site, isn’t there a very good chance that they would have gone 0-4, especially if they would have played at Auburn without their starting quarterback?  I’m as guilty of this as anyone, since I ranked Penn State (albeit 8/9 spots below the human polls) and not Florida, but is there really a major difference between the teams?  If they met in a bowl game, wouldn’t we just expect a 16-13 type game that would swing on one or two big plays?  Yes, there is a good chance that the big play would be a Florida turnover, but it is just as likely that it would be RaiDemps getting loose.  After all, I doubt that Penn State encountered players like that when they were running rampant through the lower half of the Big Ten.

Now, an obvious counter to what I’m saying is “there are a lot of teams that would be 8-1 against Penn State’s schedule or 4-4 against Florida’s, especially when you factor in Florida’s quarterback situation over the course of October.”  That’s a variant of the “what would our record be if we played Boise State’s schedule” argument.  It has a certain degree of merit, but it points to the importance of looking at how a team won or lost its games.  Boise State was a legitimate national title contender last year because they dominated weaker opponents in a manner that one would expect from a top five team.  To a slightly lesser extent, the same is true this year.  If Penn State were 8-1 with a loss to Alabama and comfortable wins over a stretch of bad-to-mediocre opponents, then the comparison to Florida would be invalid.  That’s not the case at all.  PSU needed a late touchdown to come from behind against Temple.  They led Indiana 6-3 until the end of the third quarter.  They led Iowa 6-3 until the fourth quarter.  They beat Purdue by five and Illinois by three, both at home.  Conversely, Florida won their four games in September comfortably, they were blown out by Alabama and LSU (as would just any any team in the country), and then they lost close games to Auburn and Georgia.  The way that Florida and Penn State have played this year lends to the conclusion that they are very similar teams with very different records.

One final thought: if you think that this is just another attempt by me to show my disdain for Penn State football as currently constituted (namely as an homage to the dotage of a once-great, but now irrelevant coach) and the Big Ten as a place where serious competitive pressures are a thing of the past, you are absolutely right.

By All Means, Run Play-action With Braxton Again

Braves & Birds Ballot - Week 6

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	--
2	LSU Tigers	--
3	Oklahoma Sooners	--
4	Clemson Tigers	--
5	Wisconsin Badgers	--
6	Boise St. Broncos	--
7	Stanford Cardinal	--
8	Oklahoma St. Cowboys	--
9	Oregon Ducks	--
10	Arkansas Razorbacks	--
11	Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets	--
12	Arizona St. Sun Devils	--
13	Auburn Tigers	--
14	Michigan Wolverines	--
15	Texas Longhorns	--
16	Florida Gators	--
17	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	--
18	Kansas St. Wildcats	--
19	Illinois Fighting Illini	--
20	South Carolina Gamecocks	--
21	Texas A&M Aggies	--
22	Nebraska Cornhuskers	--
23	Virginia Tech Hokies	--
24	Florida St. Seminoles	--
25	Georgia Bulldogs	--

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In search of a coherent thought from the weekend…

• I didn’t even bother watching the fourth quarter of the Alabama-Florida game.  After Jeff John Brantley went out, the result was patently obvious.  Freshman quarterback running a complicated pro-style offense against a vintage Nick Saban defense?  What’s the point?  Suffice it to say that when I woke up and saw that Jeff Driskel had completed two passes in over a half of action, I was not surprised.  The other reason why I gave up on the game is that Florida’s offensive line looked like the late-dynasty Miami front.  Maybe the ‘94 Orange Bowl Miami line, the one that looked like it had gotten soft over the years and got dominated by the Nebraska defensive line?  Alabama had complete control over the line of scrimmage, which indicates to me that Florida had bigger issues in its last two years under Urban Meyer than simply offensive scheming when Meyer replaced Dan Mullen with Steve Addazio.
• Remember when Utah fans used to brag about how their team was so much better than those of the Pac Ten because they had a good record against Pac Ten teams?  How’s your start of conference play outside of the Mountain West working out?
• So I guess the big irony is going to be that Steve Spurrier has put everything together in Columbia except for a functional quarterback.  With the exception of the Doug Johnson/Jesse Palmer/Noah Brindise era, the one thing that Spurrier would always produce at Florida was a productive quarterback.  Shane Matthews begat Danny Wuerrfel begat the interregnum begat Rex Grossman.  After seven years at South Carolina, Spurrier has yet to find an above-average starter under center.  Stephen Garcia might go down as one of the worst four-year starters in the history of the modern SEC.  As a senior, his completion percentage is a smidge over 50%, he is averaging 7.15 yards per attempt, and he has nine picks against four touchdowns.  Garcia is throwing an interception every 13 attempts.  Garcia is wedged in between Chris Relf and Larry Smith in the SEC passer efficiency rankings.  Garcia’s numbers are terrible despite stars at running back and wide receiver, an offensive line that is at least competent, and a Heisman-winning coach who has a track record of producing great passing games, albeit a track record that ends in 2001.  It’s funny that Spurrier has bent every disciplinary rule to keep Garcia on the team.  You would expect a coach to be so lenient for a star player, not the black sheep of the program.  If Georgia fans need to feel good about their chances to win the East this year, they need only look at Garcia and Florida’s offensive line.  That makes this weekend’s trip to Knoxville a big game.
• In the ongoing adventures of the Queen of England, Penn State eked out of Bloomington with a 16-10 win.  Against a dreadful Indiana team that has already lost to Ball State and North Texas, Penn State’s quarterbacks combined for a 16/36 performance.  It took Penn State 43 minutes to score a touchdown.  So, by all means, let Joe Paterno stay forever!
• Michigan has allowed ten points total in their last three games.  Admittedly, Eastern Michigan, San Diego State, and Minnesota is anything but a murderer’s row, but after watching the Wolverines allow 37 points to UMass and 35 to Indiana during the same stretch last year, the concept of tackling, rushing a passer, and covering receivers is novel.  If you need to illustrate the importance of coaching to someone from the “only the players matter” school, the transition from Greg Robinson to Greg Mattison is a great example.
• Another example of the value of coaching: the USC defense.
• And speaking of “hey look, an actual defense!,” the Georgia Bulldogs, everyone!  3.3 yards per play allowed against Ole Miss and then 3.2 against Mississippi State.  Shut down the Bray-K 47 this Saturday and Todd Grantham will have a lot of believers in this state.
• So who had Kentucky going under 200 yards against LSU?  Me neither.
• For those of you who watched games with actual offenses on Saturday, it’s hard to describe just how bad the Ohio State attack was.  At one stage in the second half, they had 87 yards in offense and 68 yards in penalties.  Yes, I know that they are missing a number of players because of Tatgate (by the way, you don’t get to use this as an excuse when you are already using it as a “we’ve already been punished” defense to the NCAA), but this is still a team with a good amount of talent on offense.  Moreover, the Bucks had all spring and summer to figure out how to move the ball.  With a mobile, inexperienced five-star quarterback, they are still running the same I-formation plays, Dave followed by play-action.  With personnel that screams for a zone read-based offense, the Bucks are rolling merrily along as if Terrelle Pryor were still under center.  And the funny thing is that a spread offense would have fit him better, as well.  Everything that Buckeye fans griped about Jim Bollman?  It was all true.
• And speaking of teams that I dislike that have also won for years with inept offensive coaching, everyone say hello to Virginia Tech.  Three points and 3.9 yards per play in a critical home game.
• Game of the year in the ACC: Clemson at Georgia Tech on October 29.  Who had that before the year?
• Playing Nebraska got Wisconsin’s strength of schedule all the way up to 117th in the country.  Wobbly from playing an opponent that didn’t arrive at Camp Randall in a junk, the Badgers will take a break from their exertions with a bye week followed by a visit from Indiana.  They will not play a road game until October 22.  More than half the season will have passed before they have played a team on its home field.  And I am supposed to take this team seriously as a title contender?  I’d take Boise State’s resume over Wisconsin’s.  At least the Broncos have an excuse for playing a weak schedule other than Barry Alvarez’s DecentOpponentPhobia.  (Can you tell that this subject animates me?)   

You're Not Getting to a Jury with this Claim, Counselor Mandel

Stewart Mandel alleges that Ralph Friedgen and Bill Stewart suffered adverse employment actions (fancy law-talking term, +1), at least in part, because of their age. In how many ways is he wrong? Let's count:

1. If Mayland and West Virginia have legitimate, non-discriminatory business reasons to support their employment decisions, then Friedgen and Stewart don't have employment claims. What could that legitimate business reason be? Scroll down to the bottom of Mandel's article:

West Virginia is just three years removed from a BCS bowl appearance and shared this year's Big East title, but Luck believed the program had lost its sizzle.

"Our season ticket base has declined from Stewart's first year to the present time," said Luck. "We've had only two crowds since 2004 under 50,000, and both of those took place in the last couple of years. That to me is an indication that our fans aren't satisfied with the product."

Maryland had a similar but more drastic problem. With the enthusiasm of Friedgen's early tenure (three straight 10-win seasons from 2001-03) a distant memory, the Terps averaged just 39,168 per game this year at 54,000-seat Byrd Stadium. On the field Maryland showed considerable promise, led by freshman quarterback Danny O'Brien, the ACC's Rookie of the Year. But with several assistants expected to follow Franklin to Vanderbilt, Anderson, who called his move a "strategic business decision," made it clear Monday he had no desire to let Friedgen rebuild his staff and continue coaching the current group.

The football programs at Maryland and West Virginia, like the football programs at most schools, pay for their athletic departments. They pay the debt on stadium renovations, they pay for non-revenue sports, and they pay for bloated administrative staffs. If attendance is down (and one can assume a corresponding decline in donations), then the Maryland and West Virginia football programs will struggle to pull their weight. Is Mandel really going to argue that athletic directors should twiddle their thumbs while their fan bases show less and less interest in their football programs? Can there be a more legitimate reason to push a coach out than this?

(Side note: do we give Mandel credit for including in his article a rationale for Maryland's and West Virginia's actions or do we criticize him for burying at the end evidence that refutes his lede?)

Part of what made the Terps and Mountaineers unappealing this year were their pedestrian offenses. The two teams tied for 69th in yards per play. Their new coaches - Dana Holgorsen and Mike Leach (we presume) - are offensive experts. Mandel mentions the examples of Gene Chizik and Chip Kelly as guiding the decisions at issue here, but he ignores the fundamental lessons that the success of Auburn and Oregon teach: we are in a Spread-led offensive age in college football. There can be no denying that Auburn and Oregon are headed to Glendale because of their cutting-edge offenses. West Virginia fans don't need to have long memories to recall when their program was last nationally prominent and what the driving force was for that halcyon era.

2. On the question of whether older coaches are discriminated against, Title VII recognizes the existence of a bona fide occupational qualification as a defense against a claim of age discrimination. For instance, a construction company doesn't have to hire a 70-year old man for a position that entails strenuous lifting. Likewise, because the position of a college football head coach is an extremely demanding position in terms of the time commitment required, it seems possible that a school could fire a coach for not being able to put in the hours anymore. (I'm thinking of two particular examples right now in Tallahassee and State College.) I'm not saying that Ralph Friedgen and Bill Stewart were unable to meet the time demands of being a college football head coach. Rather, I'm making a general statement that there would be instances where a school could say "look, if you don't have the ability to watch film until 2 a.m. every day or go on recruiting visits for a solid month, then you can't be a head coach."

3. What bothers me the most about Mandel's argument is the fallacy that a head coach is solely responsible for the record of his football team. To come back to the Queen of England, this bothers me the most when writers wax lyrical about Joe Paterno, still winning games. Joe Paterno has only slightly more to do with coaching his football team as you or I do. This was perfectly obvious when health problems relegated him to the press box in 2008 and he "coached" up there without a headset. Penn State's resurgence over the past six season has been the direct result of Paterno being phased out so Tom Bradley and Galen Hall can run the team.

Let's ask this question: why did Maryland and West Virginia win this year? Maryland had to have won in no small part because of James Franklin. Maryland obviously thinks highly of Franklin because they anointed him as Friedgen's successor. With Franklin and other assistants leaving, Maryland was losing a large secret of their success. The case is even more compelling with Stewart. West Virginia won because of their defense, which is coached by holdover Jeff Casteel, and talent that was largely recruited by Doc Holliday, who is now the head coach at Marshall. Can someone explain what role Stewart played in WVU winning nine games this year? Anyone? Bueller? And we haven't even gotten around to mentioning the obvious fact that the Terps and Mountaineers benefited from playing in weak conferences. According to Sagarin, Maryland ranked 60th in strength of schedule and West Virginia ranked 73rd, so it's not as if either team had to survive the Bataan Death March to achieve a good record.

4. I'd be interested to hook Mandel up to a lie detector and then ask him the following two questions:

If you were a Maryland fan, would you rather have Ralph Friedgen or Mike Leach as your coach?

If you were a West Virginia fan, would you rather have a Bill Stewart-Jeff Casteel combo or a Dana Holgorson-Jeff Casteel combo leading your program?

The answers to both questions are fairly obvious, which invalidates the complaint about age.

From Negative Grohmentum with Love

For the uninitiated, Negative Grohmentum is the effect that teams whose coaches win conference coach of the year will usually see their teams get worse (and often significantly worse) the following season. It's named after three-time ACC Coach of the Year and newly-minted defensive coordinator on the Flats Al Groh, who managed to win the award and regress on a regular basis. Here's what the numbers looked like last summer:

There's no doubt that we have a strong correlation between a coach winning coach of the year and then his team getting worse. 78% of the teams in this situation this decade have seen their record regress the following year. 34% of the teams in the sample saw their record get worse by at least three games. By way of comparison, Phil Steele likes to look at net close wins and yards per point in finding teams that were especially lucky or unlucky in the previous season and are therefore due for a correction. (Page 299 if you're following along at home.) Teams with three net close wins have been weaker or the same the next year 76.7% of the time. Teams with 11.56 offensive yards per point or less have been weaker or the same 72.3% of the time. Teams with 19.85 defensive yards per point or more have been weaker or the same 77.6% of the time. Again, 78% of the teams whose coach won coach of the year have been weaker (not just weaker or the same, but weaker full-stop) the next year.

So how negative was the Grohmentum last year?

SEC - Nick Saban improved by two games, Bobby Johnson regressed by 4.5 games, and Houston Nutt was unchanged.

Big Ten - Joe Paterno was unchanged.

Big XII - Bob Stoops regressed by 3.5 games and Mike Leach regressed by two games.

ACC - Paul Johnson improved by 1.5 games.

Pac Ten - Mike Riley regressed by one game.

Big East - Brian Kelly improved by 1.5 games.

So four coaches saw their teams get worse, three got better, and two were unchanged. Three of the six BCS conferences were won by coaches whose teams should have gotten work. 2009 was a bad year for Negative Grohmentum. Anyway, if we are still buying that it has an effect, here are the coaches whose teams would be taking a step back this year:

SEC - Nick Saban
Big Ten - Kirk Ferentz
Big XII - Mack Brown
ACC - Paul Johnson
Pac Ten - Chip Kelly
Big East - Brian Kelly

We seem to have some mortal locks for regression this year, but how much guidance do we need to know that Alabama is unlikely to match a 14-0 season or that Iowa, Texas, and Georgia Tech will have a hard time doing better than they did last year? Negative Grohmentum is having a low self esteem moment.

Benching a Legend

Chelsea are facing an interesting problem right now: captain/club legend/Mr. Chelsea John Terry is playing like utter dung. I've never been Terry's biggest fan. I immediately approach all English stars with the assumption that they are overrated by the English media. (I am rethinking that position with every goal that Wayne Rooney scores, now that he's playing with a proper winger instead of a preening ballhog [admittedly, a preening ballhog who scored 42 goals in a season].) Terry always struck me as a guy who played hard all the time and did flashy things like clearing balls off the line, but his positional sense was not perfect and he wasn't the quickest of central defenders. Rio Ferdinand would have gotten Terry's hype as England's best defender if he didn't have cornrows. Still, I was willing to concede that Terry was a good central defender, that he was a capable organizer of a backline, and that he was rock solid in the air.

This season, however, Terry's form has left him. His well-publicized dalliance with the mother of former best friend Wayne Bridge's child and his resulting shaming (including the loss of the captaincy for England) is clearly weighing on him, as strikers are beating him left and right. The Chelsea backline, which was the only defense in Europe to contain Barcelona during its treble-winning campaign, is now leaking goals left and right. This month, Chelsea bled two goals in a loss to Everton, two in a first leg loss to Inter, and then four over the weekend at home to Manchester City. Terry was directly responsible for conceding goals in each of the games. The Blues, who came into the month as favorites in the Premiership and one of the favorites in the Champions League, have now lost their lead in the former and will need to reverse a 2-1 deficit against Inter in the latter. In short, John Terry is blowing his club's chances at winning the two big trophies at stake.

Carlo Ancelotti's dilemma with Terry is interesting to me because it comes up all the time in sports and it is one of the most difficult to resolve: how does a team deal with a declining icon. Florida State went through a decade of declining results because they struggled with a resolution to Bobby Bowden's tenure. Penn State went through a similar funk in the first half of the aughts with Joe Paterno because Joe got the message and became the Queen of England. Moving from coaches to players, the Red Sox are going through such an issue with Jason Varitek and David Ortiz. The Yankees will go through such an issue with Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter. (Mariano Rivera, I'm convinced, is a cyborg.) The Braves went through it with Smoltz and Glavine and may go through such an issue with Chipper, although he appears to have the self-awareness that Bobby Bowden lacks and will take himself out of the picture if he can no longer perform. The Angels went through it with Garret Anderson. The Chargers just went through an issue with LaDainian Tomlinson. The Packers were going through it with Brett Favre before he arrested his decline in 2007. The Spurs may go through it with Tim Duncan.

For Terry and each of the players I listed (save for Ortiz), the difficulty for their employer is doubled by the fact that they are all homegrown. It's one thing to cast aside a mercenary who came to your team; it's another to bench a player who has never worn another uniform. As sports fans, we want to think that the players care as much about the colors as we do. That comforting thought/delusion is easier with players who come up through the youth team/minor leagues/draft. I have one Braves jersey and John Smoltz's name is on the back. I have three Barca jerseys: Messi, Puyol, and Iniesta, all of whom are products of La Masia.

It's easy to call for the benching of a player whose relationship with the team is purely business. It feels disloyal to do the same for players whom we believe to have some sort of familial connection to the team. It's like banishing a son. With crunch games against Inter and Manchester United coming up in the next month, it will be fascinating to see how Chelsea handles its slumping son.

Random Thoughts From the Weekend

I'm totally comfortable with TCU playing for the national title. On a neutral field, I'd take them over Iowa or Cincinnati right now.

OK, I'm pretty close to admitting the error of my ways on Georgia Tech. The Jackets played defense on Saturday for the first time in eons. I also snickered to myself watching Virginia try to run the spread a day after Tony Barnhart claimed that the Hoos had gone "back to basics." Last week was not the best for Mr. College Football.

I updated my Facebook status during the Michigan game to state that I had always wondered what it would look like if an entire team showed up to a game drunk. The game was to Michigan what the Tennessee game was to Georgia: just a total system failure on all fronts, a performance that was significantly worse than the team had played before. The somewhat out-of-character nature of the game didn't stop my friend Carlos from unleashing the following texts in the space of an hour:

Are you beginning to have doubts?

I am sorry, but I will not accept this for much longer.

RR is still G-d to you, right?

His staff is a joke.

Kiffin has Tennessee competing with the No. 1 team in the country. Year one.

F*** you. Apologist.

Lloyd could do no right, but RR is your definition of perfection.

No comeback? RR can do no wrong, right?

He SUCKS.

Sooner or later, give me results.

We looked poorly coached out there. Brian Kelly won today with his third string QB.

0-2 against MSU. 0-2 against PSU. Lloyd? 10-3 and 9-2.

You don't know what you have until you lose it.

I'm not doing a very good job of being the Michigan therapist.

My support for Alabama earlier in the season was based on the fact that Greg McElroy was playing at a level of which John Parker Wilson could only dream. Now, McElroy can't hit anyone and Alabama has reverted to last year's edition. It's interesting that the top two teams in the SEC are both in a world of hurt when they hit the red zone. I'm at a loss to explain it.

I have a friend who swears that coaches are interchangeable gym coaches and that 90% of all results can be explained by talent and natural variance in performance. He ought to use Pitt as an example. Either Dave Wannstedt figured out how to coach or his solid recruiting has Pitt looking like a legitimate team.

Could Jimbo Fisher have received a bigger endorsement than the Noles' performance on Thursday night? His offense went up and down the field on a quality defense, digging Florida State out of a big deficit and saving what's left of their season. Meanwhile, the defense staffed by Saint Bobby's cronies managed to get shredded by the worst offense in the ACC, all while Bowden looked on like the spectator that he is. (If Joe Paterno is Queen Elizabeth, I guess that makes Bobby Juan Carlos.) If there is a good argument against Fisher being the head man next fall, I've yet to hear it.

ACC Atlantic versus Big XII North. I don't have a punchline here. They're both just bad.

Five Outlandish Predictions, Take Five

As per tradition, my friend Ben, the irrationally optimistic Georgia/Saints fan, and I will make five loopy predictions for the upcoming college football season. Thanks to the incredibly convenient label that I created for the posts, you can revisit our previous hits and (mostly) misses. In 2008, Ben took the 0-fer and yours truly got two out of five, hitting on Ole Miss's big season and East Carolina beating West Virginia.

Ben's Five

1. Charlie Weis keeps his job this year, but loses it the following year. I think his entire offensive line is composed of seniors. [Three seniors and two juniors, but who's counting? -Ed.] You are looking at a huge drop off the next year. Also, they will have the sexy players back, Tate, Floyd and Clausen, meaning they will be overrated in the pre-season. I don’t think much of that win at Hawaii last year, and remember the total domination by USC as a greater indicator of their progress under “Schemer.” As a side note, what if they lose to Nevada in the opener? Remember, the Wolfpack are coached by a Hall of Famer and have fielded some decent teams recently. Plus ND did lose to the ‘Cuse last year, at home no less. If that happens and he loses to your beloved Wolverines the next week, does Tenuta become the interim coach by week 3?

[I'm not sure what to think about Notre Dame. On the one hand, Weis strikes me as a bully whose teams get punked every time they pick on someone their own size. Notre Dame fans are generally a clever bunch and will figure or have figured this out. On the other hand, so much talent!]

2. BC crashes very very hard. They lost a lot when Jags left and I think the bottom out this year. The ACC is slowly getting better, in large part to Butch Davis getting things going in Chapel Hill, Tom O’Brien implementing his program at State, and Bowden pursing the Paterno model and letting Jimbo run things in Tallahassee. (I do have an issue with the Swinney hiring, but I really like his hiring of Steele to coach the D, so I will give him two years). Firing a dynamic coach who was making chicken soup with… is a huge mistake. Matt Ryan was a talent, but he blossomed under Jags and what BC did last year with all the injuries was very impressive. BC has killed all of that with their principled stance.

[Way to go out on a limb by predicting bad things for BC, a team picked to finish fifth in a six-team division. After last year, this is Ben picking out a streak-breaker at closing time. Let's hope she doesn't order the double pork chop platter at the Waffle House.]

3. UGA far exceeds Vegas’s expectations, which are 8 wins, by winning 10 games. They win at Stillwater and at Knoxville. They also beat LSU at home, South Carolina at home and on the road in Fayetteville. They lose to Florida and possibly Tech. People seem to forget that Richt keeps pumping in these top ten classes while Tennessee has been down and SC has been average. Talent will win out and UGA has it.

[This is not unreasonable. I'm on record as thinking that Georgia will do well in the opener. Hell, with Georgia's record against defending national champions, I'm surprised that Ben doesn't foresee glory in Jacksonville.]

4. Pete Carroll’s tree will not take root yet. (Ask Nick Holt and Ed Orgeron.) Kiffin in Tennessee and Sarkisian in Washington will do horribly this year. Washington may have the hardest schedule in the country and will struggle to win 3 games. Kiffin has no QB in Tennessee and even though he recruited well, those guys are way too green to play in the SEC. They will not win 10 games between the two programs.

[I agree with this, as well. USC's regression on offense after Norm Chow left does not speak well of Kiffin or Sarkisian. Vegas has these two combining for 11 wins, so going nine or fewer is a smidge of a risk.]

5. Michigan will far exceed expectations and will win 9 games. Their schedule is a joke, and they should be 3-1 OOC, at least. If they beat ND in Ann Arbor, than 10 wins is clearly attainable. That means that they only have to go 6-2 in the Big Ten to hit the number. Outside of PSU and Ohio State, who scares you as a Michigan fan? Iowa is in Iowa City and they play Sparty at East Lansing. Color me unafraid. Maybe Illinois, but just look at the coach on the other side. It is cliché by now, but Rich Rod turns things around in year two. He has the schedule to do it.

[From your lips to G-d's ears. As will be clear from my first prediction, I'm high on at least one team on Michigan's schedule...]

Michael's Five

1. Iowa finishes ahead of Penn State and in the top two in the Big Ten. I don't quite understand why Iowa isn't getting more love this preseason. Did they win nine games last year solely because of Shonn Greene? The line in front of him, which returns three starters and plugs two seniors into the open spots, had nothing to do with it? The defense that allowed 16 points per game and 97 yards rushing per game in Big Ten play and returns eight starters had nothing to do with it? Iowa wins in State College and the game of the year in the Big Ten is November 14 when the Hawkeyes travel to Columbus.

2. Arkansas finishes ahead of at least one of Alabama, Ole Miss, and LSU. They have 18 starters back, one of the best coaches in college football on the sideline, two legitimate SEC running backs, and an enormous upgrade at quarterback from Casey Dick to Ryan Mallett.

3. Georgia Tech loses four games and is out of the race in the ACC Coastal by November. I'm banking on Negative Grohmentum here, along with ACC defenses being a little more savvy to Tech's offense. The games against Virginia and Virginia Tech in the second half of October will be the Jackets' Waterloo (or Kursk, if you're Eastern Front inclined like I am). Tech has a dreadful record in Charlottesville and if there's one team you'd trust to slow down the Tech running game, it's the Hokies.

4. Baylor makes a bowl game. If Indiana, Vandy, and Arizona have all made it in recent years, it's time for the Bears to break their duck. After watching their performance in Lubbock at the end of last season, I'm fully on the Robert Griffin bandwagon. How about a trip to El Paso to play Stanford?

5. Steve Spurrier retires at the end of the year and is replaced by Charlie Strong.