May 24, 2013

Better to Have Loved and Lost…?

January 9, 2009 by 16 Comments

As the college football season has now drawn to a close, and my own personal distaste for the “Tim Tebow is the best Qb and human being ever!!” bandwagon now will go dormant at least for six months, now is the time for the other 118 programs in Division 1A to take stock, wrap up their recruiting, and gear up for spring ball and beyond in 2009.

And that got me to thinking about something I heard at the tail end of last night’s BCS Championship tilt: the Fox guys were talking about Bob Stoops and his now well-documented struggles in BCS games. Given the general fan base of this blog, it caused me to compare that with the recent BCS struggles of Jim Tressel’s Ohio State Buckeyes as well.

By the numbers, there are two of the top programs of this decade in NCAA football, and both have done well against their biggest rivals, going a combined 13-5 against Texas and Michigan. Since Stoops’ and Tressel’s 1999 and 2001 hires, respectively:

Stoops – 10 seasons (109-24, 6-4 vs. Texas)
5 conference titles (6 conf. title games)
7 BCS bowl games (2-5)
4 national championship games (1-3)
1 National Championship (2000)

Tressel – 8 seasons (83-19, 7-1 vs. Michigan)
5 conference titles (shared in 2002, 2005, 2008)
6 BCS bowl games (3-3)
3 national championship games (1-2)
1 National Championship (2002)

If your favorite school/team were looking to hire a new coach, and you looked at those numbers as a coach’s total resume (21 seasons; 8-10 conference titles; 13 BCS bowl games, seven of which were for a national championship; and two national championships), you would jump at the chance, right?

So why, then, are there schools of thought that suggest that Stoops and Tressel are holding their teams back?  Bob Stoops is on a 1-5 bowl streak, and those five losses are ALL BCS games (including three straight national championship losses). Someone more clever than I compared him to Marty Schottenheimer, which is simultaneously a great compliment and a perceived slight all at once. There’s a running joke I found all over the Internet: “What do ganja and Bob Stoops have in common? They both get smoked in bowls.” His one-time moniker of Big Game Bob is skating on thin ice.

After OSU’s loss to USC, the forum at Bucknuts.com had a familiar ring: “I’ve had enough of Tressel,” followed up by a reply: “I knew we would get one of these threads sooner or later.” Tressel has lost three straight bowl games, being embarrassed in two of them (both national championship games), and some have said that his coaching (both he and his staff) has not helped matters.

Granted, my team of choice is currently suffering through its worst year ever, but I have to ask… what gives? This question for me is two-fold:

1) Is “getting there” enough, or do the fans of these schools view coming in second as failure? Vince Lombardi once famously said, “If winning isn’t the only thing, why do they keep score?” As fans of OSU, would you rather go to one national title game maybe every 15 years and win it, or go to three in six years and lose two of them in rather humiliating fashion? Are you frustrated with losing BCS games, when the real alternative for the majority of the other teams in the country is not going to BCS games at all? Are the standards that much higher?

2) More to the meat of the issue, did these two coaches spoil their fanbases by both winning a national title in their second year at their respective schools, thus contributing to the magnification of future NC game failures? As OSU fans, did Tressel pulling off what might be one of the biggest upsets in college football history in 2002—and then following that up with 3 consecutive bowl wins, including two more Fiesta Bowls—set the bar so high for Tressel? Stoops’ Oklahoma team in 2000 came from relative obscurity in to win a national title, followed that up with wins in the Cotton Bowl and Rose Bowl after the 2001 and 2002 seasons, and has since then been a juggernaut in the Big 12, making (and losing) five additional BCS games.

While it might seem a bit crazy from the outside to want to push resumes like these out the door, I find myself wondering how Florida State fans feel about Bobby Bowden, since the 1990s allowed him to create his own terms of employment at Florida State. Apparently, some are none too pleased.

What do you think, OSU fans? Will there ever be a time when Tressel wears out his welcome with you? To carry the Schottenheimer comparison a little further, is there ever a time in your imaginations that might necessitate a Schottenheimer-14-and-2-firing? Would you rather be pre-emptive at some point than have OSU’s program become Florida State’s?

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  • Steve

    As hard as it has been the last three bowl games, I would rather lose to the top competition than win the Capital One Bowl.

    As long as we keep beating Michigan and winning the Big Ten (our primary objectives), Tressel should be considered an excellent leader of this program.

  • http://www.waitingfornextyear.com Craig

    When you end up having to read Pat Forde smash your pride into bits like an egomaniacal lunatic, laughing your hopes and dreams into the bottomless abyss on ESPN.com two years in a row, it makes you think maybe getting there isn’t worth it. That is just loser talk though. To compete and to win requires a complete lack of the fear of failure. If you are afraid of losing on the biggest stage then you aren’t prepared to win. So, while it sometimes might feel worse to get there and drop the big one, I think as time goes by you can start to appreciate the opportunities.

    I am not preaching by the way. I need to adjust my own “woe-is-me” attitude in all this too. I am guilty of sometimes just wanting to slink into obscurity for a minute to avoid the next ESPN pile-on when some SEC team runs all over Ohio State at a home game in the sun for the national championship. At the end of the day though, I should check myself for thinking like a loser, I guess.

    Thinking like a loser comes so natural to us Clevelanders, though. :-)

  • DCBucks

    Ohio State is 4-3 in 7 BCS bowl games.

    I would rather play the best teams and lose than beat Notre Dame every year. Tressel runs a good program. He needs to improve his coordinators. But he’s done far more with less talent than Cooper ever did with more.

    [DP Note: John Cooper's OSU team won the Sugar Bowl after the 1998 season, but I didn't count that for the purposes of this post since it was about the coaches specifically.]

  • The Bambino

    I’d rather play in National Championship game and lose than win ANY other bowl game (including the other BCS games). As Herman Edwards said, “You play…to win…the game.”

    And if you ain’t playin’ in it, you ain’t gonna win it, thats for darn sure.

  • http://web.me.com/dennymayo/Dennis_and_Kate/Dennis_Blog/Dennis_Blog.html IRB?

    My frustrations stem from being the butt of jokes – when in all actuality all Tress has done is make the team a consistent winner. DC is in ACC country, and is mighty close to SEC land, which leads to a lot of jokes about OSU. Most of this comes from jealousy and I can get over that.

    In terms of Tressel even overstaying his welcome, I don’t see that. I think he’ll retire at the end of a contract and make his own way out without staying too long for his own or the university’s good.

  • Glaumdawg

    I am happy with the job Jim Tressel has done with the Buckeyes, and as of this point I’d give him an overall grade of B+ . Before this season started I would have had him at an A-, but the loss to USC and the way the Boekman/Pryor situation was handled lowered him a notch.

    I feel that the main source of frustration with Tressel, from my standpoint, is his insistence on calling all of the offensive plays. Specific examples are escaping me at the moment(I’m at work and should not be on here).

    Maybe I’m way off base here and nobody else feels the offensive play calling is the most maddening aspect of being a Buckeye fan. Am I wrong?

  • brad in atl

    Maybe RAC would be a good fit at OSU?

  • Adam

    Who cares what the pundits think. I am thrilled with the Tressel Era and he will go down in OSU history second only to Woody Hayes (maybe even above!?).

    DP, this made me feel better about the loss to Texas which truly crushed my spirits all week. You gotta have thick skin when you play in the big ten and are compared to the SEC. So they have great weather all year round, lower academic standards and run crazy non-pro offenses… that doesnt give them the right to say they are the only conference worth following or watching.

    Tressel is the man and I wouldnt trade him for any other coach in the country.

  • Adam

    @ Glaumdawg

    Your right. I think Tress should consider hiring someone to call plays. Its becoming too much to handle with everything else on his plate. He needs a protage…

  • jcm

    OSU fans have become spoiled. Four straight BCS appearances, four straight top 10 finishes, and we complain about them? Ask a Wolverine fan if they’d like to trade places. Hell, ask a fan of any school other than Florida!

    Losing bug games is no fun, and getting blown out sucks too. But the fact of the matter is, the Buckeyes have mattered in every January for the past four years. I’d much prefer that to watching my team win some meaningless December game.

  • Ricky

    If I thought it was because of Tressel that we had lost those games, maybe I would be slightly upset, but I don’t think it can be put entirely on him. In the Texas game, Tressel did everything he could do to keep OSU, a team with less talent than Texas, in the game, and we would have won if not for a blown tackle, the only blown tackle OSU had all game. While LSU was a mild blowout, they were playing what was essentially a home game in the Sugar Bowl, and they also had more talent at their disposal. While Tressel did not coach a great game, you can’t put it all on him. The only thing Tressel has not done a good job lately has been recruiting, but that changed starting with last years class. Before last year, he had fallen behind Florida, USC, and the like, but last years class and this years class have been great and I think Tressel now realizes that he needs to work harder in recruiting.

    To answer the real question, it is better to get there and lose than to not get there at all. Everyone that says crap about OSU is just pissed that their teams aren’t good enough to make BCS bowls let alone the championship game. They have such short memories, it wasn’t very long ago at all where Tressel owned BCS games. The Fiesta Bowl this year convinced me that he still has what it takes to bring national championships back to Columbus.

    And besides, Oklahoma lost to BOISE STATE. That’s absurd! Boise State! When OSU loses to a mid-major, come call me but until then, leave OSU alone and direct your hate to Oklahoma. Boise freaking State

  • http://www.waitingfornextyear.com RockKing

    Anyone who calls for Tressel’s head is a fool. Now, wishing Tressel would turn over the reigns of the offense, that’s one thing. That’s fair. But to wish that ANYONE other than Jim Tressel was overseeing the OSU football program is just plain ridiculous (unless that person was Urban Meyer, I guess…..hard to argue with that one).

    Jim Tressel took a program that was consistently a Big Ten contender and a traditional 8-15 ranked team, and turned it into a consisten Big Ten Champion and a National Title contender almost yearly. I would never wish to go back to the Cooper era.

  • RC

    I think the biggest issue is the way they have lost. We are the laughing stock in parts of the country, and even in Columbus the refrain this week has been “at least they showed up” etc. OSU Football should NEVER have “Moral” victories. Period. Having said that, if we hadn’t have been humiliated as a school, fanbase and “our” team the three big losses prior to this, I think we would all have been fine with great effort and a thriller.

    But, adding it onto the fact that we expect to compete at the elite level most years, and we currently are NOT doing that, that is why I for one am in no mood for “moral” victories this week. Fine, we win what is obviously a poor conference with padded stats to seem all is great in the defensive rankings, but when confronted in the past three years (since 2005, really) by elite teams, we fail, miserably. Texas in 05 and 09 were elite, we lost both (very close); USC, LSU and UF were uber elite, and we weren’t ever in the game, except for LSU until the 3rd. Suppose we don’t go to the title games the past two years, I’m fine with this close loss, but the trend of losses needs addressed.

    Heads need to roll and get a new game plan. Watching Alabama and Utah, does anyone think we would have won against them? Both offenses and defenses attacked, used unorthodox plans and had competitive seasons. Texas ran us out of the building on Monday with a semi-surprise attack via the sustained no huddle. Where was our attacking D all season? We did attack much more aggressively, but with maybe three plays left in the game, and TX needing a TD, why bring the entire team? It wouldn’t have run the clock out with a sack or lost the game with a first down, but a TD killed us and there was absolutely nobody back “just in case.” Attacking was fine, but bring 6 guys and leave 2 back. Our O is pretty lame though. Little imagination.

    Sorry, this is long, but as to the original question, if Tressel doesn’t shake up his staff (Bollman is hated by the players, and they tend to ignore him altogether. They are largely whiners though. From a rather well sourced in law, who knows nearly all of them personally) and sack Heacock altogether, then yes, he will have a slightly warm seat. But look at Tennessee, Fullmer won, and was removed (although with greatly different ending than what Tressel currently has) 10 years later. I think Stoops though, is in hotter water though

    Tressel has to make some changes. Period

  • http://www.waitingfornextyear.com RockKing

    “Bollman is hated by the players, and they tend to ignore him altogether.”

    That is flat out WRONG and a VERY bushleague comment. Ask Brewster what he thinks of Bollman. Ask Shugarts. NEITHER of those guys would be here were it not for Bollman. Bollman is a very highly respected offensive line coach and he’s a recruiting force of nature. He’s not as good of an offensive coordinator, but he’s an offensive coordinator in title only….the offensive system is Tressel’s.

    As for Heacock, well, just look at OSU’s defensive rankings under him. Defense is not OSU’s problem. At all.

  • brwnsgrl

    @jcm – exactly what I was thinking.

    I remember in the early 90s when we would only win about 8 games a season. I was in the ‘Shoe for the “one of our greatest games ever” Michigan tie in 1992. Now that was real pain…Tressel is not perfect, but I would certainly rather lose in a big bowl game than lose to Michigan every year and then lose again in the “We came in 3rd in the Big Ten” Bowl.

  • S-Dub

    We got killed by Florida, but we lost one of the most explosive college players ever, after he contributed a TD on the first play of the game (and smith got fat after winning the heisman).

    LSU and OSU weren’t even supposed to be in the national championship game, in what was considered by some a rebuilding year, after losing a heisman QB and a bunch of starters on Defense.

    And this year OSU was just simply over rated. The O-line was terrible (I.E. Boone/Browing, etc…) We had almost no pass rush all year outside of Thaddeus Gibson, Beanie was hurt for the biggest game of the year against USC, and TP is a 19yr old kid playing in the Fiesta bowl against a team who has a heisman candidate at QB.

    Any other team in the Big 10 would love to be us, most teams in the SEC, Big 12, and Pac 10 would love to have the success we have every single year. I say give The Sweater Vest a 10 year extension and let’s go.

    Our recruiting was down a couple years ago and your seeing the guys from Ray Small’s class as seniors now. our ’07 and ’08 classes will be big contributors next year and we’ll see those stud O-lineman we got.

    Just wait and see.