Week 2 College Football Review “What Must Be Done Eventually Should Be Done Immediately.”

The year was 2004. Florida had just fired Ron Zook after an embarrassing loss to a terrible Mississippi St. team. Then athletic director Jeremy Foley said those words when asked why Zook was fired in the middle of the season. Back then, if a coach was fired in season, it was usually before the last last game. Certainly not with four games to go and a record above .500 (the Gators were 4–3 at time). Zook was given the chance to finish out the season (he did, losing the next week to Georgia and then winning out the regular season including a shocking upset of Florida St. in Tallahassee on the night field was named after Bobby Bowden) and Florida worked it’s magic in the coaching search, beating Notre Dame to Urban Meyer and winning two National Championships in the next four seasons.

So why bring up 2004 Florida? Simple. USC fired Clay Helton. After two games and one loss. That just isn’t done barring strange circumstances. And I argued as much on twitter. People roasted me but they missed my point. I was never defending Clay Helton. I thought USC needed to get rid of him as soon as possible. I just didn’t think it would happen this week. But I remember 2004. “What must be done eventually should be done immediately.” USC didn’t heed those words for most of the last three years, but in the context of the here and now, they have done so, 2021 season be damned.

Is USC going to get as lucky as Florida did back in 2004? Not a chance. USC isn’t going to win the National Title in 2023 and again in 2025 with a Heisman Trophy winner in the year in between. But still, for USC as a program and likely for the Pac-12, this was a big step forward.

So given we have two coaches already out this season and it isn’t September 15th yet (Connecticut Randy Edsall retired effective the end of the season and then got told thanks but no thanks, please go away now), it’s time to look at some other situations where maybe the administration should be thinking about possible changes…already.

Note: All of these except one will be Power 5 jobs and Group of Five jobs are often playing for paychecks and therefore there isn’t a great read on them for another 2–3 weeks.

Nebraska and LSU — See the last two weeks of this post for these schools. Find Nebraska here and LSU here.

Texas Tech — Matt Wells is doomed. Texas Tech is moving into an uncertain future. The school forced Wells to fire his offensive coordinator and bring in a Texas Tech style Air Raid coach as the new coordinator, one who has coached there multiple times and played there. Comeback wins over bad Houston teams and close wins against Stephen F. Austin don’t mask how bad this situation is. Big 12 play is going to be unkind and Wells is going to be toast after year 3.

Florida St. — If you haven’t seen the play and the general disgust, let William Floyd’s shocking lack of restraint while cussing and then throwing his headset on a hot mic after one of the dumbest losses in history remind you.

So you say Mike Norvell should be fired. They fired Willie Taggart halfway through year two. Why isn’t Mike Norvell being held to the same standard as Taggart was. Simple. Florida St. has no cash. If they fired Norvell now or after the season, it would cost $20 million. I know what you are saying, Auburn managed it last year at the height of the pandemic. Auburn did. But Auburn wasn’t paying the previous coach $3.5 million per year through 2024 not to coach the team any longer. Florida St. is paying Taggart that and the combination means Florida St. can’t fire Norvell even if they want to. They don’t have the money.

The Washington schools — Nick Rolovich of Washington St. is easy. He sticks his foot in his mouth (see threatening to throw players off the team for being involved in the college football players union effort in 2020), he still hasn’t taken the vaccine and his team isn’t winning.

Jimmy Lake at Washington? I know it’s only year two and he won the division last season. But he won the division last season playing only home games and didn’t get the chance to play for the conference title. The talent level is dropping fast compared to the Chris Petersen days and John Donovan is one of the worst offensive coordinator hires since Tommy Tuberville tried to run the spread with Tony Franklin and no other assistants suited for it in 2008. Major changes have to be made here quickly, or this could get out of hand and drop into the bad old days of the mid-2000s fast.

Syracuse — Dino Babers is an offensive guru who can’t score points. Combine that with a lack of wins and you’ve got problems. Losing to Rutgers when on the hotseat is a bad look. Doing it 17–7 is far worse.

Duke — Hey David Cutcliffe… it’s time. Accept a noble retirement and ride of into the sunset as a school legend before the boulder comes crashing down entirely.

Georgia Tech — Geoff Collins isn’t doing well. Yes, the conversion from the triple option is long and arduous, especially at a Power 5 school. But it isn’t working here. Collins still will get to stay though since Georgia Tech doesn’t have money or a committed administration.

Miami — The ACC stinks. Manny Diaz needs to get back to Charlotte (no expectation of beating Clemson but a competitive game would be nice). Eventually the buck stops with the head coach.

NC State — Dave Doeren is somehow coaching his 9th season at NC State. When you’ve been at a place nine years and never won anything, losing meekly to Mississippi St. is a bad look.

Navy — Normally I would never include a service academy on a list like this, but when the athletic director fires the offensive coordinator against the wishes of the head coach, bad things are afoot. Especially since Ken Niumatololo has been there forever and results have slipped and become far less consistent in recent years. Getting killed by Air Force didn’t help.

Each week I’ll put every game into one of six categories, explained and listed below. I might even talk about a few of the games.

Classics — These are why we watch the sport. Don’t expect one every week. Unless you just time traveled forward from 1990 or 2007. Then I can’t help you and I hope you have a way to go home.

Oregon 35, Ohio St. 28 — The Pac-12 has a pulse. In a huge game no less. Meanwhile the Ohio St. defense has massive problems. Getting carved up by Anthony Brown and run over by Oregon isn’t a good look for a team with Ohio St.’s talent level.

Good Solid Football — Close Games, 14 point wins in major games. The building blocks of a good weekend of games.

Notre Dame 32, Toledo 29 — Is Notre Dame bad? Is Toledo good? Are we just working the kinks out of the system? Can this performance be written off to the short week after a night overtime game on the road? Not sure. Just be happy you won Irish fans.

Arkansas 40, Texas 21 — Texas has no lines. At all. And Arkansas exploited that, mercilessly. Texas is also being forced into a quarterback change already. More mobility required.

Memphis 55, Arkansas St. 50 — These two clearly didn’t get the memo that we are playing defense this season.

BYU 26, Utah 17; Miami 25, Appalachian St. 23; Army 38, Western Kentucky 35; Liberty 21, Troy 13; Kentucky 35, Missouri 28

Entertaining Bad Football — Games that can be written about forever. But not because they were good. You probably saw something you’ve never seen before and neither team involved is winning more than 7 games.

Pittsburgh 41, Tennessee 34 — This is the spirit animal game of this category. Tennessee quarterback Joe Milton has amazing arm strength. And might be the most inaccurate non-option quarterback to start a game for any team all season. He seriously could overthrow prime Usain Bolt on a dead sprint. What chance do Tennessee’s receivers have.

Wyoming 50, Northern Illinois 43; TCU 34, Cal 32; Vanderbilt 24, Colorado St. 21

I Watched It So You Didn’t Have To — Nobody liked watching Michigan St. around 2015–2017. Not even their own fans. And they were good in those years. Lots of games in this section.

Texas A&M 10, Colorado 7 — There is no way A&M should be ranked in the top 5–10 after this nonsense, even with the backup quarterback. Colorado hasn’t played a lick of defense since about 2002. Even in the rare event they were good in that time. Needing a late touchdown just to get to 10 points and win the game is really bad.

Iowa 27, Iowa St. 17 — Iowa is going to be in this section a lot this season. They are going to win a lot of games and almost all of them are going to feel like slogs that will never end. Just like this did.

Florida 42, South Florida 20 — This was a bad game played by Florida who now has a quarterback controversy the week of the Alabama game. Egads. Nothing good will come out of that this week.

Coastal Carolina 49, Kansas 22; Penn St. 44, Ball St. 13; South Carolina 20, East Carolina 17; Minnesota 31, Miami (OH) 26; Oklahoma St. 28, Tulsa 23; Rutgers 17, Syracuse 7; Nebraska 28, Buffalo 3; Temple 45, Akron 24; South Alabama 22, Bowling Green 19; Mississippi St. 24, NC State 10; Texas St. 23, Florida International 17 (OT); SMU 35, North Texas 12; New Mexico 34, New Mexico St. 25; Oregon St. 45, Hawaii 27

The Bakery — Did your team schedule a directional school, a school from a lower division or some team where the only point is to strike up the band 62 times in 3 hours? You’ll find your team here. Unless something went wrong.

Alabama 48, Mercer 14 — Nick Saban is made because the backups gave up a score and the game didn’t appear as out of hand as it actually was. So business as usual in these FCS games.

Duke 49, North Carolina A&T 17; Boise St. 54, UTEP 13; Utah St. 48, North Dakota 24; Oklahoma 76, Western Carolina 0; Clemson 49, South Carolina St. 3; Cincinnati 42, Murray St. 7; Wisconsin 34, Eastern Michigan 7; Ole Miss 54, Austin Peay 17; Arizona St. 37, UNLV 10; North Carolina 59, Georgia St. 17; Auburn 62, Alabama St. 0; Kent St. 60, VMI 10; Virginia Tech 35, Middle Tennessee 14; Georgia Tech 45, Kennesaw St. 17; Wake Forest 41, Norfolk St. 16; Michigan St. 42, Youngstown St. 14; Northwestern 24, Indiana St. 6; Tulsa 69, Morgan St. 20; Purdue 49, UConn 0; Central Michigan 45, Robert Morris 0; Boston College 45, UMass 28; West Virginia 66, Long Island 0; Western Michigan 28, Illinois St. 0; Charlotte 38, Gardner-Webb 10; UTSA 54, Lamar 0; Washington St. 44, Portland St. 24; Marshall 44, North Carolina Central 10; UCF 63, Bethune-Cookman 14; Louisiana Tech 45, Southeast Louisiana 42; Old Dominion 47, Hampton 7; Southern Miss 37, Grambling 0; Louisville 30, Eastern Kentucky 3; Baylor 66, Texas Southern 7; Kansas St. 31, Southern Illinois 23; Texas Tech 28, Stephen F. Austin 22; Louisiana 27, Nicholls 24; Indiana 56, Idaho 14; Maryland 62, Howard 0; LSU 34, McNeese 7; Fresno St. 63, Cal Poly 10; Nevada 49, Idaho St. 10

Snuff Films — Remember Alabama 50, USC 3 in 2016. How about LSU 52, Virginia Tech 7 in 2007. Or maybe most of the Ohio St.-Michigan games played in the last 15 years. You get the picture. These game always involve teams that shouldn’t be in The Bakery that week.

Georgia 56, UAB 7 — Nobody expected UAB to win. But this was insane. Poor UAB offense. Poor any offense against the Georgia defense. But the revelation here was Georgia’s offense which exploded behind backup Stetson Bennett. Don’t worry. There is no quarterback controversy here like at Florida. We’ve seen enough of Bennett against higher level teams to know how that ends.

Stanford 42, USC 28; Virginia 42, Illinois 14; Florida Atlantic 38, Georgia Southern 6; Air Force 23, Navy 3; Houston 44, Rice 7; Michigan 31, Washington 10; San Diego St. 38, Arizona 14

Oh No! — Did you lose to a team from The Bakery?

Duquesne 28, Ohio 26

Jacksonville St. 20, Florida St. 17 — After the rage up above, enjoy the pure joy from the Jacksonville St. announcing crew.

Rankings — These are my personal rankings. Normally I’ll have something to say about a lot of these teams.

1 Alabama (2–0) — Ho hum. The murder machine heads to Gainesville next.

2 Oklahoma (2–0) — Running clock in the 4th quarter. Wow.

3 Georgia (2–0) — Just won 56–7 against a team that beat the team that just beat Florida St. 30–3. The transitive property is dumb, except in situations like this when it isn’t.

4 Iowa (2–0) — So far so good. Another team hit with a crowbar, stuffed in a burlap sack, beaten to a pulp and dumped down at the river.

5 Oregon (2–0) — I’m still not sold but results are results, especially this early in the season.

6 Cincinnati (2–0) — The real season starts Saturday vs Indiana

7 Ohio St. (1–1) — CJ Stroud and the offense will only get better from here. The defense? CJ Stroud and the offense will only get better from here.

8 Clemson (1–1)

9 UCLA (2–0) — Be very careful this week. Fresno St. had Oregon on the ropes a week ago.

10 Penn St. (2–0)

11 Michigan (2–0) — No I’m not joking. Haven’t done anything wrong yet.

12 Florida (2–0) — Is the best thing for Florida for Anthony Richardson to start at qb? Or miss the game entirely injured? Because the Gators aren’t going to win.

13 Texas A&M (2–0) — Going to be a long year of unwatchable games, the majority of which the Aggies will win.

14 Notre Dame (2–0) — Nobody really knows…see above

15 Ole Miss (2–0)

16 Auburn (2–0)

17 Arizona St. (2–0)

18 Arkansas (2–0) — It is quite the accomplishment for your leading rusher to have 75 yards and you rush for over 300 as a team.

19 Wisconsin (1–1) — They just don’t seem quite right.

20 BYU (2–0) — Make it 2–0 in the Pac-12 for the Cougars with a chance at 3–0 Saturday…What? They aren’t in the Pac-12 but the Big 12? Le sigh Pac-12. Le sigh.

21 UCF (2–0)

22 TCU (2–0) — The jury is clearly out on this defense after giving up 32 to Cal.

23 Boston College (2–0) — Consider this more of a recognition ranking since they are about to start losing with quarterback Phil Jurkovic out for the season.

24 Coastal Carolina (2–0) — Still no non-Kansas Power 5 wins ever for this program.

25 Michigan St. (2–0) — Shockingly entertaining after a decade of being unwatchable (but good more often than not).