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    • North Carolina faces uncertain future
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    North Carolina faces uncertain future

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    We live in a society that struggles with the concept of age. People are living longer, working longer, and are becoming increasingly resistant to the idea that they should fade into the background and pass the torch to a new generation.

    In a sense, it is ambitious. We all want to be vibrant and productive in our 70s and 80s. At the same time, clinging to power seems selfish and delusional when the results are no longer there.

    North Carolina coach Mack Brown, now 73, has had an incredible life in college football. It began as a head coach in 1983 when Appalachian State named him head coach at age 32. It took him to Tulane, then North Carolina, then Texas, where he won a national championship and had a decade-long streak of success that few have ever matched.

    Brown eventually made his way to the TV booth when his run at Texas fell through, but he always wanted another chance on the sidelines. North Carolina and athletic director Bubba Cunningham gave him one in 2019, when Brown vowed that his goal was to win a national title at a place that meant so much to his life and career.

    It seemed very romantic then. Now it seems ridiculous.

    Brown is not going to win another national title. Will he even survive this season?

    After North Carolina’s embarrassing 70-50 loss to James Madison on Saturday, Inside Carolina reported that Brown’s emotional locker room speech suggested he might walk away. But after cooling down, Brown told ESPN he would be back at work on Sunday.

    This is not sustainable.

    Here are the facts. In his second stint at North Carolina, Brown’s record is 41-28. In his first four years, the Tar Heels have been ranked at the end of the season just once: No. 17 in the final poll of 2020. That’s especially disappointing considering that up until this year, he’s had top-tier quarterbacks like Sam Howell and Drake Maye on his roster. The loss to James Madison underscores the problems Brown has had with his defensive coordinators, from Jay Bateman to Gene Chizik and now Geoff Collins, the former head coach of Georgia Tech.

    Has it been a disaster in the grand scheme of things? No, not at North Carolina, which has consistently been one of college football’s biggest underachievers. But has Mack’s second stint in Chapel Hill been a success? It would be unfair to say yes.

    At an age when most of his contemporaries have left the stage, does it make sense for Brown to stick around? Not if the goal is for North Carolina to have a football program that can compete for ACC and national titles.

    It’s sad, uncomfortable and rude to say it so bluntly, but even a beloved Hall of Famer like Brown reaches a point where it no longer makes sense to lead a college football program that wants to win at the highest level.

    Losing to James Madison in such a devastating way will fuel that conversation. And that’s why North Carolina ranks No. 1 on the Misery Index, a weekly measure of which fan bases are feeling the most angst.

    Four more in misery

    TCU: Since appearing in the College Football Playoff national championship game — and yes, he said he appeared instead of played because the Horned Frogs didn’t play much football that night against Georgia — TCU has lost nine of its last 16 games. And the frustration of that plight was on display Saturday when Sonny Dykes lost his cool multiple times and was ejected early in the second half of a 66-42 loss to SMU.

    When was the last time you saw a college football coach get ejected from a game for two unsportsmanlike conduct offenses? But when was the last time you saw a program come close to the top of the sport and then completely regress to a level of mediocrity that looks far more permanent than the success they had two years ago? Let’s face facts. TCU’s 2022 season was a fluke. Perhaps one of the biggest flukes in college football history. And now TCU isn’t even the best program in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, let alone the state of Texas, let alone the Central time zone, let alone the Big 12, let alone the country.

    Virginia Tech: By mid-October of last season, the Hokies were 2-4 and going nowhere. Brent Pry, the second-year head coach, was leaning toward the hot seat. Whit Babcock, the longtime athletic director, was being criticized for a second consecutive disappointing football hire.

    But then Virginia Tech turned it around, winning five of its last seven games to go 7-6. Hokie Nation suddenly felt great. With more returning starters than anyone else in the ACC, expectations were rising. Pry was the star of the town. The Hokies were back!

    Of course, that was before any games were played. And now that we’re a month into the season, we can definitively say the Hokies are not back. If anything, they’ve become irrelevant again. They stink.

    Virginia Tech’s 26-23 loss at home to Rutgers leaves them at 2-2 (they lost a season opener to Vanderbilt), and now we have to re-examine last year’s run to a winning record. The Hokies finished with wins over Wake Forest, Syracuse, Boston College, Virginia and Tulane. Not exactly Murderers’ Row. Maybe this year’s schedule will be just as lame, but no one will be fooled. The Hokies are in big trouble.

    Chestnut brown: The reason you want Hugh Freeze to coach your program is to score points. That’s why you ignore the NCAA violations at Ole Miss, the inappropriate calls that got him fired, and the general sense of inauthenticity that has made him the college football version of Jimmy Swaggart for the past decade.

    It’s not a bad trade-off, in theory. If you believe the entire sport is a cesspool, then Freeze is worth the bad press — as long as he wins.

    But in two years at Auburn, Freeze’s cost-benefit analysis has hit a snag. His team isn’t winning. It’s not scoring. It’s not entertaining for anyone, unless punting and committing an unusual number of turnovers (14 in four games) is your idea of ​​a good time.

    Auburn’s 24-14 loss to Arkansas, which dropped the Tigers to 2-2, should definitely put Freeze on a short leash. If you want to be an offensive guru, you have to do better than 14 points, which is what Auburn has done so far against the only power conference teams on the schedule in California and Arkansas.

    Freeze version 2.0 simply doesn’t work in the SEC. And if you’re going to blame the quarterback position — neither Payton Thorne nor Hank Brown have ever looked like one — then you have to blame Freeze, too. He’s had two years to improve that position, and so far there’s zero promise for a better future.

    Oklahoma: Jackson Arnold was one of the top quarterback recruits in the country, and it was a huge coup in January 2022 when Brent Venables got the Denton, Texas, native to commit to the Sooners. But recruiting rankings don’t guarantee success at the college level, and the Sooners are going through some major growing pains with Arnold.

    While the story of Tennessee’s 25-15 victory in Norman will focus primarily on Vols coach Josh Heupel, who won a national title as Oklahoma’s quarterback in 2000 and was Bob Stoops’ offense coordinator for four years before being fired, the real story is about Arnold.

    He completed just 7 of 16 passes for 54 yards, threw an interception and fumbled in the first half when the Sooners were within sniffing distance of the end zone. He was replaced by Michael Hawkins, who wasn’t great but looked more steady and confident in the second half. If Oklahoma had had 60 minutes of decent quarterback play, it might have surprised the Vols. Instead, the Sooners appear a step or two below where they need to be in the SEC. The quarterback situation is going to be a major point of contention for Oklahoma in the second half of the season as they evaluate what it takes to compete at this level.

    Miserable but not miserable enough

    Nebraska: Stop us if you’ve heard this before. The Huskers found a way to lose a game they absolutely should have won. It’s not as devastating this time around, because Nebraska is clearly on the right track under Matt Rhule, and quarterback Dylan Raiola is a wickedly good freshman who should eventually get the Huskers into the College Football Playoff mix. Still, Nebraska missed a 39-yard field goal with 3 minutes left and went on to lose 31-24 in overtime to Illinois. That dropped the Huskers to 17-43 in one-score games since the start of the 2015 season.

    Vanderbilt: No program in the country is as reliably bad in crucial moments as the Commodores. Year after year, coach after coach, recruiting class after recruiting class, Vanderbilt’s ability to lose winnable games has been as consistent as the sunrise. The Commodores had their chances to pull out a big win at Missouri on Saturday, but kicker Brock Taylor missed a 50-yarder with 3:06 left in regulation for the lead and a 31-yarder to send the game to a third overtime as Vanderbilt lost to Missouri, 30-27. And it’s not that Taylor is a bad kicker: He made a 57-yarder earlier in the game, but just couldn’t score when the pressure was on. That’s exactly what’s happening at Vanderbilt, where head coach Clark Lea is now 2-23 in the SEC.

    Northern Illinois: The Huskies had two weeks to bask in the glory of beating Notre Dame on Sept. 7, and they took full advantage of the interview requests and social media attention they received. But the party ended on Saturday when they lost 23-20 at home to Buffalo in straight overtime. Somehow, Northern Illinois’ defense gave up just 184 yards, but lost when Upton Bellenfant — perhaps the best name in all of college football — made a 37-yard field goal for the Bulls in overtime.

    State of Mississippi: The Bulldogs are coming off their worst season in nearly two decades. Under Sylvester Croom in 2006, Mississippi State finished 3-9 and fired him two years later. That led to a long run of success under Dan Mullen, who raised expectations at one of the most challenging programs in the SEC. It goes without saying that Jeff Lebby will have a hard time living up to those expectations. Mississippi State is now 1-3 in Lebby’s first season after a 45-28 drubbing at the hands of Florida at home, which came just a week after a 24-point loss to Toledo. To be fair to Lebby, most of Mississippi State’s roster moved on after last season when Zach Arnott was fired. But it’s clear now that this is going to be a very painful and lengthy rebuild.

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