Tag: Misery Index

Gators earn spot on USA TODAY Sports Misery Index after Week 11

Between the football’s teams struggles on the field and the allegations surrounding Todd Golden off the court, things are pretty miserable in Gainesville.

Florida football took a beating on Saturday from the Texas Longhorns in their first showdown since 1940, falling flat in Austin to the tune of a 49-17 final score in which the home team left little doubt about which was the better team.

The blowout defeat gives the Gators five losses against four wins with three more games remaining to reach the magic six-win mark. [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag]’s crew has suffered a great deal of attrition to the injury bug and a lack of depth has really come back to bite them.

As a result, the Gator Nation continues to lose its patience with the incumbent regime — despite the school pledging allegiance to its third-year skipper — as has the national media. The most recent loss did little to temper emotions, earning a spot on USA TODAY Sports’ misery index on Sunday.

“This has been a season of bloodlust in Gainesville,” author Dan Wolken notes. “Not only do Gators fans want head coach Billy Napier gone, they’re equally done with the athletics director who hired him. But Scott Stricklin’s statement Thursday that Napier would be returning for 2025 presumably ends that debate. Napier will be back, and apparently, Stricklin’s job is safe too.”

As the late Billy Mays used to say, “But wait, there’s more!”

“On Friday, however, Florida’s student newspaper The Alligator reported on disturbing allegations against men’s basketball coach [autotag]Todd Golden[/autotag] that led to a Title IX investigation. Suddenly, the entire athletic department looks like it’s going up in flames.”

Cue the “everything is fine” meme. Things are certainly not trending in the right direction and Golden’s alleged infractions undo what was once a lone silver lining for Florida’s two top sports.

“It’s impossible to say what this is all going to mean for Florida’s athletic leadership,” Wolken continues, “especially when the university is looking for a new president who would presumably make some of these decisions. Meanwhile, asking fans to have faith in another year of Napier gets awfully difficult after a 49-17 loss to Texas.

“Yes, the Longhorns are a much better program right now, but Florida failing to be competitive after Napier’s vote of confidence will only inflame a large number of Gators fans who believe wholesale changes are necessary to compete in the SEC anytime soon.”

Next up for Florida

The Gators return to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium to host LSU in college football’s Week 12. The Southeastern Conference matchup will kick off at 3:30 p.m. ET and will be broadcast on ABC.

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Kentucky football tops the week nine Misery Index from USA TODAY Sports

Kentucky football comes in at number one in the USA TODAY Sports Misery Index.

After three straight losses, Kentucky football is at a point they haven’t been in quite some time. They’re all but eliminated from bowl contention, and fans have mostly decided the season is over.

It has been a frustrating year, and one that has fans feeling some anger over the direction of the program. Many are ready to move on from Mark Stoops as head coach.

These are the reasons that USA TODAY Sports analyst Dan Wolken has Kentucky football atop the misery index rankings this week.

Related: Who is at fault for Kentucky’s offensive failings

Wolken correctly points out that Stoops is one of the ten highest paid coaches in college football, and fans expect more after all this time. Wolken says:

He makes $9 million a year and is among the 10 highest-paid coaches in the country, largely because he’s turned down multiple opportunities to leave. You’d probably stay too for that kind of contract, the theory being that life will be good if you win seven or eight games. Unlike most fan bases in the SEC, Kentucky fans are never going to expect a national championship in football.

It’s an interesting situation with Kentucky football. Few people believe a national championship is on the horizon, but sometimes a staleness sets in, especially when the standards set aren’t being met.

Wolken add:

Stoops can be forgiven for a bad season, which this clearly has become. But after a dozen years, it’s easy to lose a fan base’s enthusiasm for struggling to make minor bowl games and losses to South Carolina, Vanderbilt and a bad Auburn team.

Kentucky will try to close the season strong, and maybe Stoops can win some of the fanbase back. Right now, however, Wildcats fans are certainly pretty miserable.

Heartbreaking OT loss at Tennessee lands Florida on Misery Index

The overtime loss at Tennessee was a spectacular failure, earning Billy Napier a spot on this week’s Misery Index from USA TODAY Sports.

It was a game that the Florida Gators could have won, but once again — like seen many times over the past three seasons — coaching decisions seized defeat from the jaws of victory.

Alas, the Orange and Blue fell to the Tennessee Volunteers in Knoxville on Saturday, dropping the game in overtime, 23-17.

The special teams unit, which had been among the best in the nation coming into the weekend, was not in tip-top form but the playcalling deserves plenty of the blame. Of course, inopportune penalties once again sunk Florida’s ship at key moments in the matchup.

As a result, [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag] and Co. find themselves on USA TODAY Sports’ Misery Index put together by Dan Wolken for the second time this fall. He had the following to offer on the Gators’ efforts in Week 7.

“There are a handful of coaching decisions Gators fans will nitpick from their 23-17 overtime loss to Tennessee, but let’s zero in on the last one,” Wolken begins.

“It came after Florida scored a touchdown with 29 seconds left, putting them in position to either tie the game or go for two and the potential victory in regulation,” he continues.

“Billy Napier, who needs some pretty dramatic improvement in the second half of the season to keep his job, at first sent the offense onto the field. But after a shift at the line of scrimmage that confused Tennessee, the Vols called timeout as you would expect them to do in that situation,” Wolken notes.

“But instead of sticking with his conviction, Napier came out of the timeout and sent the kicking unit out to tie the game — a bad idea that got worse after the Gators completely stalled out in overtime.

“Why in the world did Napier change his mind? He told reporters, ‘We just felt like let’s play overtime’ after Tennessee called time. Not exactly a profile in courage on Florida’s sideline.”

Coming up for the Gators

The Gators host the Kentucky Wildcats inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 19. Kickoff is set for 7:45 p.m. ET and will be broadcast on the SEC Network.

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Miami, Cristobal top Misery Index as the world blasts embarrassing Georgia Tech loss

After a costly, unnecessary fumble against Georgia Tech cost Miami its first loss, coach Mario Cristobal and the Hurricanes are under fire.

Mario Cristobal and the Miami Hurricanes are under major scrutiny after one of the most embarrassing college football losses of recent memory on Saturday.

With just 37 seconds left and Georgia Tech out of timeouts, all the Hurricanes had to do was kneel. Instead, they ran the ball, and the ensuing fumble set up the game-winning Yellow Jackets drive.

The nonsensical decision has remained the subject of national ridicule. USA Today’s Dan Wolken reserved a spot atop the Week 6 Misery Index for a decision he said “99.99 percent of functioning humans would not be able to understand.” ESPN’s Paul Finebaum called the choice one of the most inexcusable decisions in the history of the sport.

Scooby Axson, Wolken’s USA Today colleague, called it the “worst loss of the year.” In a weekly piece awarding grades to different programs, Axson gave the Hurricanes an “expulsion,” mocking not only the decision-making by Cristobal but the lack of defensive discipline that surrendered 74 yards in the final 26 seconds.

Cristobal admitted after the game that he should have called for his team to kneel out the clock, but his explanation for why he didn’t seemed nonsensical at best.

“We should have taken a timeout right there at the end,” he said. “Thought we’d get the first down, and we talked about two hands on the ball. But that’s not good enough.”

A ‘disappointing’ home loss to Auburn puts LSU on misery watch

For the second time this season, LSU lands on the USA TODAY Sports misery index.

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LSU’s disappointing loss at home against 22-ranked Auburn still is not sitting well with Tiger fans in Louisiana and around the country. Head coach

LSU landed on USA TODAY Sports’ Misery Index, a weekly measurement of knee-jerk reactions based on what each fan base just watched.

In discussing what awaits Orgeron now, a lot of media types have invoked Gene Chizik, the former Auburn coach who won a national title with Cam Newton and then was fired two years later. But unlike that Auburn program, LSU is unlikely to completely spiral. Instead, the Tigers will just be in a lot of coin flip games, which means they’ll come out on the wrong end sometimes. That’s the simplest explanation for losing to Auburn, 24-19, which hadn’t happened in Death Valley since 1999.

When you can’t run the football at all (32 yards on 25 carries) and your defense gives up a couple of big plays, you’re susceptible to a decent Auburn team executing a late 92-yard drive to steal a win. Paired with LSU’s season-opening loss at UCLA, the trajectory is now clear, pointing toward a mediocrity that is much more sustainable than LSU’s 2019 brilliance. Given their thirst to win titles, LSU probably won’t put up with it for very long.

Since LSU won the national championship in 2019, Ed Orgeron and the Tigers have won eight games and lost seven. A turbulent COVID-19 season coupled with a very up and down 2021 season has some in the college football world and in Baton Rouge wondering of Orgeron deserves to be on the hot seat.

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After escaping Starkville with a win against Mississippi State, it looked like the lackluster Tigers of the third and fourth quarter of the game a week ago came to play the Auburn Tigers. On Saturday, Auburn left Death Valley with a win for the first time since 1999.

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LSU’s abysmal running game was once again subpar (32 yards on 25 carries) and the defense, which had played relatively well for most of the game, let Auburn go down the filed in a 92-yard drive to seal the win.

Other teams featured on the Misery index after bad losses Saturday include Florida, Oregon, Miami, and Missouri.

Where the Gators rank in USA TODAY Sports’ Misery Index after Week 5

Florida’s ability to seize defeat from the jaws of victory made it an appropriate addition to Wolken’s index and even gave a serious challenge for the top spot.

It was a game packed with excitement, but unfortunately, things did not go the Florida Gators’ way in the end as the Kentucky Wildcats defended their home turf in a 20-13 victory on Saturday night. The win keeps UK undefeated on the season while the loss dropped UF to a 3-2 record, which includes a losing 1-2 record in Southeastern Conference play.

Dan Wolken at USA TODAY Sports published his college football misery index notebook on Sunday morning, which predictably included the humbled Orange and Blue. While the urge to place the Gators at the top of the list was present, Wolken ultimately placed them in second behind the flailing Oregon Ducks. Here is his take after Week 5 of college football action.

The Misery Index strongly considered putting the Gators No. 1 in this week’s ranking, but was afraid of getting flagged for a false start. Why not? Florida committed eight such penalties in a 20-13 loss to Kentucky, including two on the final drive after reaching the Wildcats’ 5-yard line. Beyond the inexcusable penalties at awful times, it was another one of those head-scratching games from Dan Mullen where his reputation as a great play-caller loses out to his reputation as a poor game manager.

For instance, Gators fans were livid that Mullen didn’t even try to put a drive together at the end of the first half when they got the ball back with 1:46 remaining and was content to run out the clock. This was also a game where it seemed like Anthony Richardson, the exciting redshirt freshman quarterback, should have gotten more than a handful of touches to try and spark the offense.

Instead, Kentucky beat Florida at home for the first time since 1986 by committing fewer penalties and making big special teams plays — which was enough to win despite being held to 224 yards of offense and 1-for-9 on third down.

So there you have it: Florida’s ability to seize defeat from the jaws of victory made it an appropriate addition to Wolken’s index and even gave a serious challenge for the top spot. Hopefully, the Gators can rebound from this nadir and get back on the winning track ahead of the Georgia game at the end of the month.

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