* For those of you who are grimacing at the prospect of another Alabama national championship, I have good news for you. On November 17th, the Citadel will not only beat Alabama, but pound them. You see, using the transitive property, we know that the Citadel is 235 points better than LSU. Alabama beat LSU by a mere 29 points. I'm looking forward to the Bulldogs beating the Crimson Tide by a whopping 206 points.
Jokes aside, this Alabama iteration is probably the best I've ever seen in my life. My standard bearer for this title is the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers. Look at what they did. They beat everyone they played by at least 14 points. After that 14 point win over Washington State, the next closest victory was by 23. This includes two road games against top-10 opponents and the de facto National Championship Game.
Alabama, meanwhile, has yet to win a game by less than 22, playing their usual stacked SEC slate. I really can't see anyone not getting blown out by them. Maybe Clemson.
Am I happy about this? Hell no. In fact, the CFP top 10 is riddled with teams that have competed for all the marbles many, many times. The only outlier is that same Washington State program that gave Nebraska their only semi-decent game in 1995. Go Cougs.
* David Beaty has been fired as the coach of Kansas, although he will be allowed to finish out the season. His first three years in Lawrence saw the Jayhawks go 3-33 overall and only one of those three wins came against an FBS foe.
This year? Three wins, all of them against FBS teams, two of them blowouts. That's progress! So now you fire him? How does that make any kind of sense?
If you're a Jayhawk fan, I completely understand that 3-and 4-win seasons are not good enough, even if it is better than the last few years. But that being the case, why on earth was Beaty kept through the offseason? Was the expectation that they'd go from 1-10 and 0-8 in the Big 12 to bowling in one year?
This isn't the only example of truly hapless team firing their head coach after he makes a little bit of headway. Hue Jackson guided the Browns to a 1-15 and 0-16 season in 2016 and 2017. This year, they double that win total in just 8 games, and throw in a tie against the vaunted Steelers, and now you fire him? Again I ask, why didn't you fire him in the offseason if this doesn't represent enough progress?
I realize that there were extenuating circumstances with Jackson's firing, namely his spats with offensive coordinator Todd Haley. But Jackson is well-respected throughout the league, and Haley is widely understood to be a big douchenozzle. Jackson deserved better than this.
* Count me among those puzzled by Maryland's botching of the D.J. Durkin debacle. It's not a huge surprise when a university goes to great lengths to protect its winning football coaches, and ousters of them are either protracted or don't happen.
But the key term there is "winning." What legacy, exactly, was Maryland trying to protect? He was mediocre (6-7) his first year in charge and worse (4-8) the second, which was 2017. Contrast that to the comparatively swift dealings Minnesota had with Tracy Claeys (who had turned Minnesota around; they've since regressed under P.J. Fleck) and Illinois' handling of Tim Beckman.
I'm not advocating for a lack of due process here and I'm certainly not agitating for winning coaches getting longer ethical leashes. But teams need to cut bait quickly with coaches that give their program a black eye, and Maryland's reluctance to do that was baffling.
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