http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...-football-misery-index-west-virginia/2849809/
The Misery Index Week 4: Moping in Morgantown
Dan Wolken, USA TODAY Sports 3:05 p.m. EDT September 22, 2013
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(Photo: Mitch Stringer, USA TODAY Sports)
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Let's go back to December 2010. The West Virginia football program was preparing to play N.C. State in the Champs Sports Bowl, a game that would conclude Bill Stewart's third consecutive 9-4 season.
Though the record was good on paper, fans weren't happy. From Day 1, Stewart had been a controversial choice to replace Rich Rodriguez, getting the job permanently less than 24 hours after he had led West Virginia to an upset victory agaisnt Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. To many Mountaineer supporters, it seemed like settling, like a decision made in emotional haste off of one game.
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Stewart had been well-respected as an assistant under Rodriguez, but his only experience as a head coach was a failed three-year stint at VMI in the 1990s. West Virginia booster Ken Kendrick even went so far as to publicly bash the hiring, calling Stewart "so overmatched it's not even funny."
Though West Virginia didn't make some huge backward slide under Stewart, enthusiasm for the program waned. Pressure to get back to a BCS bowl mounted. At the season finale in 2010, there were a reported 12,000 empty seats.
New athletic director Oliver Luck had to make a splash, so before the bowl game in 2010, he announced that the school hired Oklahoma State offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen, the hottest assistant in the country, to become coach-in-waiting at West Virginia. Essentially, Holgorsen would run the offense at West Virginia in 2011 and then take over for Stewart in 2012.
It was a complete mess. The relationship between Stewart and Holgorsen was awkward at best, dysfunctional at worst. Then in May, a Pittsburgh-based reporter said Stewart had called him the previous December and asked for help digging up dirt on Holgorsen. That set off a firestorm, which ended with Luck deciding to remove Stewart immediately and elevate Holgorsen to head coach one year early.
At first, it appeared to be a brilliant move. In Holgorsen's first season, the Mountaineers won the Big East's BCS bid and finished off a 10-3 season by thumping Clemson, 70-33, in the Orange Bowl. Holgorsen's spread offense looked almost unstoppable that first season, and even better, West Virginia was headed to the Big 12 in 2012 with a loaded roster. It seemed like big things were in store.
But as thrilled as the West Virginia fan base was to get rid of Stewart in 2010, those years aren't looking so bad in retrospect.
After winning 15 of his first 18 games as a head coach, Holgorsen has now lost 8 of his past 11 against Football Bowl Subdivision opponents including Saturday's 37-0 disaster against Maryland in Baltimore. West Virginia is now just 2-2 this season, with the wins coming against William & Mary (24-17) and hapless Georgia State (41-7). Against the two legitimate opponents they've played, the Mountaineers have been outscored 53-7. That's a big problem because West Virginia will see nothing but legitimate opponents from now until Nov. 16 when they travel to Kansas.
Holgorsen was somewhat of a media darling when he became the head coach. The wild hair, the crazy offense, the refrigerator full of Red Bulls in his office made for a great iconoclast narrative. But the reality of Holgorsen as a head coach has definitely lost some shine. It's probably too early to give up on him, but then again, West Virginia fans were ready to run Stewart, who died last year of a heart attack, out of town after much better seasons than Holgorsen's last two. That's why the Mountaineers claim the top spot in this week's Misery Index.
(Disclaimer: This isn't a ranking of worst teams, worst losses or coaches whose jobs are in the most jeopardy. This is simply a measurement of a fan base's knee-jerk reaction to what they last saw. The way in which a team won or lost, expectations vis-à-vis program trajectory and traditional inferiority complex of fan base all factor into this ranking.)
1. West Virginia: Rebuilding years can be forgiven. But rebuilding years after bad years almost never go over well with a fan base as passionate as West Virginia's. It's a problem that West Virginia is 2-2 right now while showing no signs of improvement. But the bigger problem is that Holgorsen squandered last year, going 7-6 despite fielding an offense with Geno Smith, Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey, all of whom are playing on Sundays. Never forget in evaluating West Virginia's misery that they were picked to finish second in the Big 12 last year and started 5-0 with consecutive wins against Baylor and Texas to open league play. The Mountaineers haven't just slumped since then, they've been in a 30,000-foot freefall. This year wouldn't be so miserable if West Virginia had played to its potential last season; this squad, however, is only compounding the problem.
2. Virginia Tech: A 60-something head coach with a long track record of success is suddenly watching his program slip – badly – while fans wonder if the game is passing him by. Sound familiar? Though the situation at Texas is getting far more attention, the Virginia Tech program looks like a shell of its former self right now. You knew the Hokies were in some trouble when players and coaches left a hapless 35-10 loss to Alabama in the opener feeling positive about the direction of the season. But after Saturday's triple overtime escape against Marshall, fans are now starting to realize that that this is a trend, not a fluke. After going 7-6 last season, Virginia Tech has been lucky to beat Conference USA teams the past two weeks, indicating they are more middling ACC program than national power. And while the Hokes will almost certainly make a bowl game this year, that's not the standard Beamer has set during his amazing run in Blacksburg.
3. Texas: The Longhorns beat Kansas State, 31-21, which means Mack Brown should get a temporary respite from members of the university's Board of Regents attempting to publicly undermine him. We hope that's the case, anyway. After the ugly losses to BYU and Ole Miss, Texas should feel good about getting its first Big 12 win. But fans couldn't watch that game and come away with the feeling that all the problems are fixed. First, there's the injuries. Quarterback David Ash, who clearly makes a big difference in the offense, couldn't play in the second half due to a recurrence of concussion symptoms after missing last week. Star linebacker Jordan Hicks also left in the second half with an ankle injury and, according OrangeBloods.com, will miss the remainder of the season. And Texas' receiving corps is banged up as well. Beyond the injuries, though, Texas still has a lot to clean up on the defensive side and didn't exactly close out the Wildcats with authority in the fourth quarter. The competition will only get tougher from here.
4. UConn: It was right there for the Huskies on Saturday. After opening the season with a disastrous loss to Towson, then an emotionally bitter loss to Maryland and former coach Randy Edsall, everything would have been forgiven with a victory against Michigan. After taking a 21-7 lead early in the third quarter, it appeared that's exactly what would happen. Instead, the often painful history of UConn football added another chapter: A 24-21 loss to drop to 0-3 on the season. Though the Huskies should win their next two against Buffalo and South Florida, this one will linger. As we've noted before, this year has already been tough enough for UConn fans, knowing they've been left behind on the realignment carousel for now. Beating Michigan would've been huge for the athletic department's collective psyche.
5. Boise State: Who are these guys? After all these years of dominating out West, it's tough enough for Broncos fans to absorb what looks like a pronounced downturn in the program. But what's more disconcerting is how Boise State has seemingly abandoned the style of play that allowed it to compete on a national level. Chris Petersen's teams never got the five-star recruits with size and speed, but they always lined up and played tough, physical, big-boy football on defense and were innovators on offense. Now, the Broncos look just like everybody else who plays the no-huddle, pistol-based offense. It's a finesse team that struggles to get stops, and in a league where other programs do the same thing – but better – that's not a recipe for success. Petersen has never lost three games in a regular season, but at 2-2 it's now looking like a real possibility.
6. Michigan State: Only the Spartans could hold Notre Dame to 220 offensive yards and lose. It's clear by this point that Michigan State is going to be in and out of the Misery Index all season, as fans struggle to reconcile how they should feel about a team with such a great defense and such a pitiful offense. The Spartans are going to win some games, especially in the Big Ten, but Saturday was a blown opportunity. It seems Mark Dantonio has settled on sophomore Connor Cook as the primary quarterback, but he completed just 16-of-32 for 135 yards against the Fighting Irish. The quarterback situation is what it is, which means the Spartans have no margin for error at all. Football is supposed to be entertainment, and watching Michigan State is pure agony.
7. Tennessee: This won't be a permanent ranking for the Vols, because at some point reality is going to set in. The team isn't good, it's not first-year coach Butch Jones' fault and it's going to take a while to get it fixed. But still, it's jarring for Tennessee's fan base to confront what a deep hole has been dug by the comedy of coaching errors and mismanagement since Phillip Fulmer's firing in 2008. The overall positive vibe surrounding Jones' hiring and early recruiting success has been mellowed the last two weeks by a 45-point loss to Oregon and Saturday's 31-17 loss at Florida. Tennessee finished with just 220 offensive yards and committed six turnovers on a day when Florida lost starting quarterback Jeff Driskel to a season-ending injury. Tennessee fans are going to have to be patient – next year will likely be a struggle as well – but many of them didn't understand the roster was this bad.
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Tennessee quarterback Justin Worley (14) reacts after an incompletion on fourth down against Florida during the second half Saturday at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Florida won 31-17.(Photo: Kim Klement, USA TODAY Sports)
8. Nebraska: There were a lot of conflicting emotions Saturday at Nebraska. By the time audio of Bo Pelini's expletive-laced tirade from 2011 went viral this week, last week's embarrassing performance against UCLA was pretty much shoved to the side. But Saturday's 59-20 victory over South Dakota State was a reminder that Nebraska's defense still isn't very good, which is really the core problem right now. The Cornhuskers gave up 465 yards, including 227 on the ground to a Football Championship Subdivision team. Though the audio tape fiasco may have actually earned Pelini some sympathy – it was such a blatant, underhanded attack – this is all about performance, and Saturday's performance wasn't very reassuring.
9. BYU: The glow of that victory against Texas sure didn't last long, did it? Part of being a miserable fan base isn't just about whether your team wins or loses, it's how you are measured compared to your most hated rival. The psychological damage inflicted on the BYU fan base when Utah got a Pac-12 invitation was hard to measure, but it was telling that the almost immediate response from BYU's administration was to leave the Mountain West and declare independence. Sure, the Cougars wouldn't get the power conference cachet, but at least they'd play a national schedule and were relevant enough to strike their own TV deal with ESPN. But Utah's 20-13 "Holy War" victory Saturday night was the Utes' fourth straight in the series. That's the only scoreboard that matters.
10. USC: Watching the Trojans anymore is almost like a Coen Brothers movie – tense, awkward and often hilarious. Lane Kiffin got his second consecutive victory Saturday, and the Trojans are now 3-1 on the season, so that's something. But style points matter to the USC fan base, and this team earned none after compiling just 282 yards on offense in a 17-14 victory over Utah State. Give the Trojans' defense serious credit for limiting dynamic Utah State quarterback Chuckie Keeton to just 179 passing yards. But player for player, this game shouldn't have been in doubt in the fourth quarter.
Also receiving votes (Miserable, but not quite miserable enough): Michigan, Notre Dame, Purdue, SMU, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Air Force