College football week 11 thread: Lion Eyes

3-17 against top 10 teams ain’t cutting it. Franklin is a goner.

 

This is exactly where the MegaSuperConference idea is going to bite coaches in the ass. Everybody on the hot seat is going to be climbing on top of each other trying to get away from the flames when all the good teams have to play more good teams every week.

For every winner, there's a loser. So adding the likes of Texas/Oklahoma or four west coast teams suddenly makes it harder for the tier-two schools in the B1G and SEC and rack up enough wins to keep the boosters happy. If 10-2 doesn't cut it, what happens when you're 7-5 or 6-6 every season?

You can schedule all the directional schools and Bums of the Week you can, but if your schedule now includes Michigan and Ohio State, plus any combination of Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA, good luck even getting 10 wins.

9-3 or even 8-4 is going to be a damn good season. And a number of pretty decent teams are going to drop below .500 just because there aren't enough Vanderbilts or Northwesterns out there to feast on.

 

Oftentimes it's just one team having 25 players in its recruiting class and another having 22. Those Nos. 23-25 players may never be more than second- or third-team players, but they'll nudge that year's ranking up a little.

And that's before we take injuries/transfers/police blotters into account that can make a No. 10 recruiting class in 2020 worth something far less in 2023.

 

Willie Taggart sucked out loud. If you fault FSU for running him off then you may as well just declare that no coach can ever be fired mid-contract for on-field results ever, which is contrary to the entire history of sports.

 

I didn't realize he had DJ Durkin and Bobby Petrino as coordinators at A and M. Yikes. TexAM just always seems to be a place where coaches go to cash a check and never really do anything.

 

That stinger during the Herbstreit commercial is savage.

 

Mississippi State fired Arnett, the guy who took over when Mike Leach passed. I think that at least part of what's going on is that the portal opens in three weeks or so, and the AD's want to have someone in place when it opens if they're going to make a change. Odds are that if you wait and fire your head coach after the season you won't have your hire done fast enough to not miss the vital early days of transfers.

 

No. He isn't a goner.

Not unless you can determine where this buyout money is going to come from, or if this buyout would impact the NIL funds.

There's a lot more to it than #FIREFRANKLIN. At the very least, they are going to have to melt that buydown a bit (it's $8M less every year). Otherwise, he's going to keep turning out those unsatisfying 10-2 teams until 2031. ... or worse if some of the western clubs start beating them.

It's on them, or at least it's on former AD Sandy Barbour. They gave him the 10 years.

 

I'm obviously not a PSU fan but my wife has two degrees from there. Franklin was able to muscle this last contract through sheer extortion because he, despite losing to a shitty Illinois in 19 overtimes, had his best-rated recruiting class lined up. They knew if he fled for USC or LSU (and I honestly don't even know if those schools were even looking at him, but I'm sure his agent was saying otherwise), he was going to poach that entire class like he did when he left Vanderbilt for PSU.

I always thought the answer at that time was to secretly fly down to Charlotte and slide a blank check under Matt Rhule's nose. He was obviously stumbling at the NFL level and he would check so many boxes for Penn State boosters -- State College native, played at PSU and a personality (and skin color, and I think this is more important than people realize ) that is the opposite of Franklin.

I also don't know if shoving a coach out the door for 10-2 is the right answer. As someone who has watched his own school toss two 8-4 coaches out the door only to wallow along anyways, there's no guarantee an upgrade is out there.