ESPN College Football

Is there such a thing as a Big East coach being hated because he wins too much?

The answer is clearly no when you look at the current group of head coaches. Three of them have never coached in a Big East game. Three are going into their third seasons in the league and are barely above .500. Paul Pasqualoni has a bushel-full of victories, but nearly all of them came at Syracuse two decades ago.

So let us take a dip back into history to find an answer. Here are the all-time winningest coaches in Big East history, by overall percentage. I am using this statistic because many of the biggest winners do not stick around the Big East for long.

• Larry Coker, Miami: 35-3 (.921)
• Dennis Erickson, Miami: 42-6 (.875)
• Brian Kelly, Cincinnati: 34-6 (.850)
• Bobby Petrino, Louisville: 21-4 (.840)
• Butch Davis, Miami: 51-20 (.718)
• Bill Stewart, West Virginia: 28-12 (.700)
• Rich Rodriguez, West Virginia: 60-26 (.698)
• Frank Beamer, Virginia Tech: 108-48-1 (.691)

The conclusion is an easy one: Much more than one hated coach, Miami was a hated team because of all the wins it racked up while playing in the Big East from 1991-2003. That includes two national championships and seven Big East titles, more than any other school. Coker was never vilified or hated. The man is impossibly nice.

Davis' image took much more of a hit at North Carolina because he left the place in scandal, with two major investigations hanging over the program. While at Miami, he was lauded as the man who saved the program from NCAA sanctions. It is hard to hate a coach who won 10 games only once in his career.

Erickson simply took over for Jimmy Johnson and continued what was started.

But the assignment is to find a coach hated for winning. Let's look at some of the other names on the list. Kelly and Petrino were hated much more for the ways they left their programs. Kelly only coached three years in the Big East; Petrino only two in the Big East. I can't imagine their short stays struck fear into the hearts of opponents, despite all the victories.

So let's turn the focus to Rodriguez. He, more than any of the aforementioned coaches, probably fits the bill. In his final three seasons in Morgantown, Rodriguez won two league championships and had three 11-win seasons. His team went undefeated in league play in 2005, one of only two teams to accomplish the feat in the past seven years. He won with swagger and style, and some of the best athletes in Big East history.

But I used the word probably. Because as great as Rodriguez was, his on-field coaching career in the Big East will be defined by what he didn't do in 2007. West Virginia was ranked No. 2 in the country going into the regular-season finale against Pitt in the always-heated Backyard Brawl. Win, and the Mountaineers would be playing for the school's first national title. Pitt was already out of the bowl picture, entering the game at 4-7. West Virginia was a 28 1/2-point favorite.

Slam dunk, right? Well, you guys know what happened. Pitt pulled one of the biggest upsets in the series, and Rodriguez went packing to Michigan. The loss will always follow Rodriguez, despite all of his wins in the league. On the day he needed a win most of all, he failed. But that loss did not make him a villain in Morgantown. Leaving did.

That is why it is hard to anoint any Big East coach as somebody hated for winning.

Current Big East coaches' career records in the league:

• Paul Pasqualoni, Syracuse and UConn: 112-63-1
• Doug Marrone, Syracuse: 17-20
• Butch Jones, Cincinnati: 14-11
• Charlie Strong, Louisville: 14-12
• Skip Holtz, USF: 13-12
• Steve Addazio, Temple: 0-0
• Paul Chryst, Pitt: 0-0
• Kyle Flood, Rutgers: 0-0

Our theme today, as part of our "Love to hate" week at ESPN.com, is "Left in the lurch." This is about coaches who bailed out on a Pac-12 program at an unexpected or awkward time. We're not including Urban Meyer leaving Utah for Florida or Jim Harbaugh leaving Stanford for the San Francisco 49ers because their departures were not unexpected and came only after unprecedented success.

Of course, these situations vary greatly in terms of circumstances and reaction. There aren't many college football jobs out there considered better than one in the Pac-12, so most of the coaches who bailed out on their programs left for the NFL.

But here is a sampling from the Pac-12. Feel free to provide your own thoughts below.

• [+] Enlarge
  AP Photo/Don RyanPete Carroll stunned USC fans when he left after the 2009 season to coach the Seattle Seahawks.
  California got dogged twice. First, after going 10-2 in 1991, Bruce Snyder bailed on the Golden Bears for Arizona State. It's rare for a coach to jump from one conference program to another, and it certainly hurts more. Then, in 1996, Steve Mariucci lasted just one year in Berkeley before jumping aboard with the San Francisco 49ers.
• Dennis Erickson twice left Pac-12 teams for sunnier pastures (at least in theory). After two years at Washington State, Erickson bolted for Miami after the 1988 season. Then, after a strong run at Oregon State from 1999-2002, Erickson left Corvallis for the San Francisco 49ers. He has repeatedly said that was the worst move of his career.
• Dick Vermeil lasted two seasons at UCLA. After going 9-2-1 in 1975 and upsetting No. 1 Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, he left for the Philadelphia Eagles.
• Rick Neuheisel shocked many when he left Colorado for Washington before the 1999 season for a million-dollar contract, which was at the time considered exorbitant. He left behind NCAA sanctions for the Buffaloes and immediately got into trouble with the Huskies. It didn't make folks in Boulder feel any better when the Huskies and Neuheisel swept a home-and-home series over the next two years.

But two departures really stand out.

Don James is on the short list of greatest college football coaches of all time. In 18 seasons at Washington, from 1975 to 1992, he won a national title and four Rose Bowls. He went 153-57-2 (.726) and set a then-record of 98 conference victories. From 1990-92, the Huskies won 22 consecutive games.

He is the Dawgfather.

And that's why many Huskies fans will tell you the lowest moment in program history is when he resigned in protest of NCAA and Pac-12 sanctions on Aug. 22, 1993. (James really, really didn't like Washington president William Gerberding and athletic director Barbara Hedges, either).

His resignation just before the season forced Washington to promote defensive coordinator Jim Lambright, a good man and a good defensive coordinator but not an ideal fit as head coach. Other than a Rose Bowl victory after the 2000 season under Rick Neuheisel, things have never been the same in Husky Stadium. Not yet, at least.

A more recent shocker: Pete Carroll bolting USC after the 2009 season for the Seattle Seahawks.

Carroll's hiring in 2001 was widely panned, but all he did thereafter was build a college football dynasty, winning national championships in 2003 and 2004 and falling just short of a third consecutive title in 2005 in a thrilling loss to Texas. He went 97-19 (.836) in nine seasons (11-2 versus rivals Notre Dame and UCLA), won six BCS bowl games and finished ranked in the AP top-four seven times. He won 34 consecutive games from 2003-05 and coached three Heisman Trophy winners and 25 first-team All-Americans.

So, yeah, he accomplished a lot. And many thought he would coach USC for life, though many others also suspected the lure of the NFL would prove too much.

It was the timing of his sudden, stunning departure that frustrated many Trojans fans. While Carroll has repeatedly denied oncoming NCAA sanctions had anything to do with his decision to leave, that's a hard line to buy. He skipped town after a 9-4 season that featured blowout losses to Stanford and Oregon and left behind a team with a two-year bowl ban and deficit of 30 scholarships over three seasons.

Still, not unlike how James is viewed by Huskies fans, Carroll is mostly spared the wrath of Trojans fans because of what he accomplished.

There's no question, however, that both programs were left in the lurch.

1. Jimmy Johnson has been out of coaching for more than a decade, and out of college football for nearly 25 years. But he knows enough about the University of Miami to know that he likes second-year coach Al Golden. “I told Al he’s doing it the right way,” Johnson said Tuesday at his College Football Hall of Fame press conference in New York. “He’s an outstanding recruiter. He’s very disciplined. I think he’s the perfect guy to get Miami back on track.”

2. The Big Ten athletic directors backed away from commissioner Jim Delany’s trial balloon of playing semifinal games on campus. It is, in theory, a good idea to even the playing field. But it ignores the history of bowls and the celebratory nature of the traditional postseason. All sides seem to want to integrate the playoff system into the bowls as much as possible. The battleship that is college football’s postseason doesn’t turn easily.

3. A very happy 100th birthday Thursday to Ace Parker, one of the greatest American athletes of the prewar era. Parker starred for Wallace Wade at Duke from 1934-36 as a single-wing tailback (5.9-yard rushing average), punter and defensive back. The 1936 Blue Devils went 9-1 with seven shutouts. Parker won the NFL MVP Award in 1940 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Parker also played outfield for two seasons for the Philadelphia Athletics (1936-37). He is the oldest living member of the Pro and College Football Halls of Fame.

NEW YORK -- When asked to reflect on their Hall of Fame college football careers, coach Jimmy Johnson and quarterback Steve Bartkowski talked about the fun and the camaraderie.

Both men enjoyed long and successful NFL careers. Both have been successful since they left the game -- Bartkowski in the construction business in Atlanta, Johnson as an NFL analyst on the Fox network. Yet both men, speaking Tuesday at a news conference staged by the National Football Foundation to announce the Class of 2012 of the College Football Hall of Fame, look back with great fondness on their days in the college game.

“Football is the ultimate team game,” said Bartkowski, the California quarterback from 1972-74. “I had a great group of guys around me at Cal: Chuck Muncie, Wesley Walker, Howard Strickland. We had some good, good football players. And it was fun. I was there because I wanted to be there, not because somebody was paying me a large amount of money to take the field.”

Bartkowski, the 16^th Golden Bear elected to the Hall of Fame, described it as “an absolute honor. I was humbled by it, especially now that I hear some of the guys to be inducted along with me in this class.”

It may be the passage of time. More likely, it’s an expression of the emotion the men elected to the Hall of Fame carry about their college days. But no matter how many years have passed, nearly all of them react as Colorado guard John Wooten (1956-58) did.

Wooten, who was nominated by the Veterans Committee, became one of the African-American pioneers in the NFL. He has blazed trails throughout his career to this day, when he is chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance Foundation, which promotes diversity in NFL coaching, front office and scouting staffs. Yet when he called his Colorado teammates with news of his election, tears flowed on both sides of the connection.

Johnson, who led Miami to the 1987 national championship, will be joined in this class by two other coaches, Phillip Fulmer of Tennessee (1993-2008) and R.C. Slocum of Texas A&M (1989-2002). Johnson went 81-34-3 in 10 seasons at the U (1984-88) and Oklahoma State (1979-83). He said several times Tuesday that the most fun he had in his life came at Miami, when his Hurricanes lost a total of two regular-season games in four seasons.

But the enjoyment came from more than winning.

“You’re more than a head football coach,” Johnson said. “I was in my office continually with young kids ... being homesick, young kids that had financial problems, young kids that had academic problems. They thought they came there to get ready for pro football but then they realized they had to get ready for life.

“I used to have a meeting on Thursday nights,” Johnson continued. “And I said, ‘Every one of you, I’m going through the room, and I’m going to ask you what are you going to do when you leave the University of Miami?’ And I said, ‘You can’t say you’re gonna play pro football. So you have to tell me what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.’

“So [coaching college football] is a lot more than X’s and O’s.”

Johnson, 68, is 25 years removed from his national championship at Miami, 23 years removed from his resignation to go to the Dallas Cowboys. A few “old alums” called him when his alma mater, Arkansas, fired Bobby Petrino last month. But he said he no longer gets serious inquiries about returning to coaching. His involvement in college football is limited to watching games all day Saturday at the Fox studio in Los Angeles with his “best friend,” fellow Fox analyst Terry Bradshaw.

“We’ll start at 10:00 in the morning, watching college football,” Johnson said. “We won’t turn the TVs off until that night. That’s how we prepare for our pro show the next day… . That’s how we feel about college football.”

Johnson and Bartkowski are members of an exclusive club. Including this class of 14 players and three coaches, who will be inducted in December at a black-tie dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, the Hall of Fame has 914 players and 197 coaches. That’s from a game that has been played for 143 seasons by nearly five million players.

They may have gone into their college experiences looking to get to the NFL. But when they look back, they think of the fun and brotherhood of the college game. It’s a lesson that takes a lifetime to learn.

The Butch Davis era began at North Carolina in November 2007 with high hopes. It ended Monday in the dreadful, funereal ritual of the release of a report of the NCAA Committee on Infractions.

Just coincidence, said committee chair Britton Banowsky, the Conference USA commissioner, that the report came out the day after North Carolina became a No. 1 seed in the NCAA men's basketball tournament for a national-record 14th time. But the timing provided a reminder of what the university hired Davis to achieve and how spectacularly he failed to do so.

Over the course of the 1990s, Mack Brown had built the Tar Heels into a national power. He commandeered the resources to build one of the first Taj Mahals in the sport -- a $50 million palace of offices and facilities that announced to recruits and rivals that North Carolina took football seriously.

As much as Brown achieved, he couldn't lift the Tar Heels into the BCS hierarchy where the Florida States played. Though Brown left for Texas after the 1997 season, he had planted the seed. Nine years of mediocrity under Carl Torbush and John Bunting failed to dim the potential that Brown had kindled in the program.

Davis rebuilt a Miami team struck down by NCAA penalties and took them to the precipice of a national championship. When Davis left after the 2000 season for the Cleveland Browns, Larry Coker, his top assistant, took over and won the next 23 games. With the foundation assembled by Davis, Coker coached the Hurricanes within a double overtime of two consecutive crystal footballs.

That builder is who the Tar Heels assumed they hired. And Davis, a coaching lifer who traveled from Oklahoma high schools to the NFL, wanted to create a football empire on Tobacco Road.

For Ivan Maisel's full column, click here.

1. The 14 months that Randy Edsall has spent at Maryland makes Rich Rodriguez’s three years at Michigan look like a storybook career. To recap, Edsall took over a 9-4 team and went 2-10. And when quarterback Danny O'Brien decided he wanted to transfer, Edsall managed to take a stand that made himself look not only mean but anti-education. Rodriguez, as John U. Bacon depicted so well in his book "Three and Out," dug himself into a hole and couldn’t climb out in time. Edsall needs to stop digging.

2. Maybe Miami has so much agony from its NCAA troubles that it won't notice. The ACC schedule released Monday has the Hurricanes on the road to Boston College, Kansas State, Georgia Tech and Notre Dame (at Soldier Field in Chicago) in the first six weeks. As for the league schedule overall, the website trumpets that ACC teams play 10 games against teams in the ESPN.com Way Too Early Top 25. The website doesn’t mention the 14 games against FCS opponents.

3. For 14 years, the powers that be in college football have been telling us that the BCS is the best way to decide a champion. They have dismissed any talk of a playoff. And in the matter of weeks, one after another, the most ardent playoff foes all have executed a complete reversal. Just like that, they are now searching for the best way to install a four-team playoff. What none of them have said is why they changed their minds. Is it falling ratings? Empty bowl seats? Fan unhappiness? Fatigue from defending the BCS?

1. It’s impossible to know whether Gunner Kiel will turn into the Next Great Notre Dame Quarterback or just another guy. But the last-minute decision by Kiel, from Columbus, Ind., to spurn LSU and drive to the South Bend campus only three hours from home is a warming balm for Irish fans frustrated with the pace of head coach Brian Kelly’s progress. A pair of 8-5s is noticeably lacking in face cards. Notre Dame endorsed Kelly a few days ago by adding two years to his contract. Kiel endorsed him by showing up.

2. USF announced the other day that it has scheduled a home-and-home with Nevada, beginning with a trip to Reno on Sept. 8. The Wolf Pack will play in Tampa in 2015. That’s a nice get by the Bulls, but they buried the lead. More important is that in 2012, as it did three years ago, USF will play Florida State and Miami. They also played Florida and Miami in 2010. As the Big East and ACC struggle to create schedules in the wake of their realignment, here’s hoping USF continues to play the state’s bigger names.

3. Speaking of which: here are the five most interesting intersectional games for next season, excluding the traditional non-conference rivalries: Boise State at Michigan State on Fri., Aug. 31; Alabama vs. Michigan in Cowboys Stadium on Sept. 1; West Virginia at Florida State on Sept. 8; Virginia Tech vs. Cincinnati at FedEx Field on Sept. 29; Notre Dame at Oklahoma on Oct. 27.

With 2011 in the rearview mirror, here is an early look at Notre Dame's 2012 opponents, with the game date and site in parantheses.

1. USC (Nov. 24, away): Matt Barkley's return makes the Trojans a trendy preseason national title pick and Barkley a likely preseason Heisman frontrunner. They host the Irish in the regular-season finale, and how sweet it would be for Notre Dame should they knock their rivals off with the highest stakes on the line.

2. Oklahoma (Oct. 27, away): Like the Trojans, the Sooners return their prized quarterback (Landry Jones) and will, at the very least, enter 2012 as the Big 12 favorite.

3. Michigan State (Sept. 15, away): Kirk Cousins and Keshawn Martin are gone, but the Spartans return four offensive linemen and plenty of production on the defensive side of the ball as they go for a third-straight 11-win season.

4. Michigan (Sept. 22, home): Denard Robinson and several key skill players likely return, but the Wolverines lose a lot on each line and will rely on several young players to fill the void.

5. Stanford (Oct. 13, home): Perhaps the biggest mystery entering 2012. We just don't know how much this team will drop off following the likely loss of Andrew Luck. Time will tell.

6. BYU (Oct. 20, home): Another wild card. Much will depend on the growth of dual-threat QB Riley Nelson and the Cougars' offense.

7. Purdue (Sept. 8, home): The Boilermakers finished 2011 with back-to-back wins for the first time this season and have a bit of momentum under Danny Hope. Some see them as a darkhorse Leaders Division contender in 2012.

8. Miami (Oct. 6, Chicago): The Hurricanes will likely be led by a defense that returns eight starters for Al Golden's second year.

9. Wake Forest (Nov. 17, home): Quarterback Tanner Price is back, but the Demon Deacons must eliminate the mistakes that cost them five of their final six games and two assistants their jobs.

10. Boston College (Nov. 10, away): The Eagles got better as the season went on and hope new offensive coordinator Doug Martin can bring the unit up to speed with the defense, which loses Luke Kuechly.

11. Navy (Sept. 1, Dublin): Can Trey Miller build off 2011, when he was forced in midseason for the injured Kriss Proctor?

12. Pitt (Nov. 3, home): New coach Paul Chryst will have his work cut out for him on a team with quarterback, protection and, at least in the past calendar year, coaching issues.

Kez McCorvey still shows his players the catch 18 years later. In the film room of Bethel (Tenn.) University, the Wildcats' wide receivers coach focuses on the details of the play, "560 vertical," and not so much on the circumstances surrounding it, which NBC play-by-play man Charlie Jones summed up thusly:

"So the perfect season for the Seminoles, Bobby Bowden's shot at the national championship, coming down to this play. It is fourth down and goal to go. Twenty-yard line. 2:31 left."

Eventual Heisman Trophy winner and NBA point guard Charlie Ward took the shotgun snap from the 20, dropped three steps and fired a bullet over the middle that looked destined for the hands of Notre Dame safety Brian McGee. Instead, the ball dropped into McCorvey's hands for the touchdown, cutting the Irish's lead in half and granting Florida State new life in what was then the Game of the Century -- Nov. 13, 1993.

"My guys here, they'll get plays they think we just invented or something," said the 39-year-old McCorvey, who still gets on the practice field to demonstrate routes for his NAIA pupils. "And I'll tell them we've been running that play forever. 'Look here on YouTube. I'm old as dirt, we're not even doing a good job of doing it and I'm slow and old and I can score, so here.' "

The improbability of the play had McCorvey and his teammates thinking fate had intervened -- "I don't wanna make it sound like Florida State is all that and a bag of chips, but we'd just never been in a situation where we'd been out of a game, so we just never quit."

The celebration, however, was short-lived, one of many twists and turns of a season that saw No. 2 Notre Dame upset No. 1 Florida State, 31-24, only to watch the Seminoles be declared national champions less than two months later despite having the same number of losses.

The schools will renew their rivalry in Thursday's Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla., a smaller stage later in the year that will lack the 800-plus media members, dozens of fake credentials, coach's dinner party and rapid trash-talking that surrounded South Bend, Ind., that fall week in 1993.

The messages that week, at least from up top, could not have been any more different.

"Leading up to it, obviously Coach Holtz's thing was at the beginning that we may get beat by 50, and that was just Lou Holtz, that's just how he handled things," said former Irish safety Jeff Burris, who scored the Irish's last two touchdowns of the game as a running back. "And by Monday or Tuesday, 'We'll be happy to be in the game by halftime.'

"Just his mentality was that way, but he was always focused on, 'If we do this the right way it might be a game.' And by Thursday or Friday it was, 'We'll win this game, and this is how we'll win this game.' "

For Florida State, meanwhile, it was business as usual.

"I would love to tell you we did it bigger than the Miami game, but we didn't," said McCorvey, citing a win over the No. 3 Hurricanes a month earlier. "Nothing against Notre Dame, but we felt like since we beat Miami we could win the national championship, so we'd been accustomed to that type of pressure. Coach Bowden, too. It wasn't as big a deal going into games -- the pressure, game situations. So we didn't do a whole lot of things that we hadn't done before."

Yet McCorvey couldn't help himself during the week leading up to the game, making references to "Rock Knutne" and being quoted as saying: "I appreciate what Notre Dame has accomplished, but those old guys don't play anymore. You can't win with mojo or magic. Joe Montana isn't going to put on the pads and win for them."

"I think it was a little bit of ignorance with the Knutne comment," McCorvey laughed. "That was me being young."

Still, the scene was unlike any all parties involved had ever been a part of.

Tickets were going for $1,000. ESPN's "College GameDay" was making its first on-campus appearance, albeit in front of just a few dozen loyal fans stationed on the concourse of the Joyce Center, where Notre Dame's basketball team plays.

"You can tell this is not just a football game; this is a happening," host Chris Fowler said on the air. "Paul Azinger, Roger Clemens, Spike Lee — lots of folks are gonna be here. Al Gore. Andre Agassi. Some others got turned down. As further proof this is transcendent-game status."

Signs in the parking lot offered assets such as an Orlando vacation or a Mercedes-Benz for entrance into Notre Dame Stadium that day.

"When they said it was the Game of the Century," former Irish quarterback Kevin McDougal said, "it really was."

Two days before the game, Holtz and his wife, Beth, invited 50-60 media members stationed in South Bend over to their Woodland Hills home, 10 minutes from campus.

"My then fiancée and I arrived in South Bend on Thursday," Michael Messaglia, Holtz's son-in-law, said. "Expecting a quiet night at her parents’ house, we arrived to a house full of reporters."

After Beth Holtz sent reporters out with cookies in napkins as they left, and after Holtz handed out small boxes of golf balls, the Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy wrote in his day-of-game column:

"That settled it. It doesn't matter if Florida State wins today by four touchdowns; I will write only good things about Notre Dame. I have broken bread with Lou. After today's game of the century, I will have only one question.

"What time is dinner before the BC game?"

Of course, the high of Shawn Wooden knocking down Ward's final pass of the Game of the Century was met the following week with a hangover against Boston College, as the Eagles engineered a 41-39 shocker that played a pivotal role in deciding the national championship.

Notre Dame beat Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 1. Florida State won its last two regular-season games before topping undefeated Nebraska in the Orange Bowl the same day.

The Seminoles finished atop both The Associated Press and coaches' polls, giving Bowden his first national championship, though the regret wasn't limited to the Irish's side.

"You look back and you think you won the national championship, but you wanted to go 13-0," McCorvey said. "You wanted to not lose a game that whole year and leave your legacy as one of the best teams that ever played. The Notre Dame loss was something that kind of tarnished that a little bit."

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Aaron Lynch and Louis Nix will end their first seasons of playing college football in Florida — just not the way each once thought he would.

The Sunshine State natives both committed to schools in Florida before switching their allegiances to Notre Dame. Lynch, from Cape Coral, was a Florida State commit; Nix, a Jacksonville native, had committed to Miami.

As the Irish prepare to face the Seminoles in Dec. 29's Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla., Brian Kelly has noticed the extra pep in the step of the pair of first-year players, along with the eight other Florida natives on Notre Dame's roster.

"They're so excited about the game, especially the Florida kids," Kelly said. "Listen, just wait until [Dec. 29], and wait for the game to speak. Don't go outside the realm here. So that's been really the only conversation that I've had."

Lynch and Nix, who were not available to the media in the lead-up to the bowl game, have burst onto the scene this season. Lynch, a true freshman, has started five games at end, recording 4 sacks, 5.5 tackles for loss and 13 quarterback hurries, by far the most on the team.

Nix is in his first season playing after sitting out his freshman season in 2010, losing more than 40 pounds along the way. Ten starts, 42 tackles and 4 tackles for loss have marked his sophomore campaign, which was much more eventful than anticipated as fellow nose guard Sean Cwynar battled a broken right hand in the first half of the season.

"I would say that all of them have stepped into a role that increasingly grew as the season went on based on injuries and based on the need for them to play," defensive line coach Mike Elston said. "I think that they've managed it very well and I think that they've handled the expectations that people have put on them — not necessarily the coaches, but that people have put on them. They've handled themselves really well and I think they're going to be very good players. They're not there yet, they have a lot of work to do. They know that and I'm excited about the progress right now."

Senior end Ethan Johnson, back at full strength following a right-ankle sprain that limited him for much of the season, can understand why the season finale might mean a little more for the younger linemen.

Throw in fellow freshman end Stephon Tuitt, a Monroe, Ga., native who has impressed this season, and the defensive line is in for quite the homecoming next week.

"Of course it's exciting for them to go home," said Johnson, a native of Portland, Ore. "If I was going to Oregon I'd be really excited. But I don't think it will affect the game at all. I'm sure they're gonna play just like they would if it was any other game, which is well. They're gonna play well.

"And they're gonna get after it and you always wanna leave the field, especially the last game, feeling like it was your best game, and I feel like that they're gonna do that — they're gonna have their best game of the year. There's no reason why they shouldn't in front of all their family, and it'll be a great experience for them."

Breathe, USC fans, breathe.

In fact, I'd suggest you ignore what happened Tuesday with Ohio State and its slap on the wrist from the NCAA for a massive systemic breakdown and a coverup by head coach, Jim Tressel.

Yes, when you hold up the Ohio State case and the USC case, it's impossible not to conclude the Ohio State case was far more severe. It was, of course, without question. No informed, objective person believes differently.

But here's the thing: Being outraged will accomplish nothing. You will be unhappy and your team will still be docked 30 scholarships over the next three years for what one player secretly did while Ohio State will be down just nine scholarships over the same time period for the rule-breaking of five with full knowledge of their head coach. And your unhappiness will provide great joy to folks who don't like your team.

Adopting a placid pose — at least as best as you can — will be good practice for handling potentially more infuriation ahead. The NCAA also likely will give even worst upcoming cases — North Carolina and the University of Miami at Paul Dee — less severe penalties than it gave USC.

Why? Because the NCAA treated USC unfairly — everybody in college sports knows this — and it likely won't revisit such irrational harshness. In the end, the justification for such severe penalties, meted out in contrast to past precedent, was little more than "just because."

But the NCAA, an organization not endowed with a sense of self-awareness, failed to foresee when it curb-stomped USC that among the lawbreakers in college football, the Trojans were jaywalkers amid a mob of bank robbers. Ohio State's sanctions, in fact, represent a return to NCAA normalcy: Mostly toothless penalties that will have little effect on the program's prospects, other than a single-season bowl ban.

There we go again: Fretting the particulars and the injustice of it all.

The point is USC fans have been quite reasonably been shaking their fists at the heavens or, more accurately, the NCAA home office in Indianapolis for two years. That anger has accomplished nothing, other than emboldening taunts from opposing fans.

You know: Fans whose teams didn't finish 10-2 and ranked No. 5 in the nation.

And therein lies the ultimate revenge: Winning.

It's hard to imagine the next five years won't see a USC downturn. Losing 30 scholarships is a tough burden. Things could be particularly difficult in 2014 and 2015, when the true cumulative impact arrives. And it could be even more galling if Ohio State is back in the national title hunt those years. Maybe playing Miami in a Fiesta Bowl rematch!

But if the Trojans can somehow remain in the picture, perhaps playing in a Rose Bowl -- or two -- along the way that would be a heck of a panacea, wouldn't it?

It's a longshot, sure. But other than that, we've got nothing for you USC. Sorry.

Easy, now. Breathe, breathe. Happy place. Happy place.

Oh, no. That's exactly what we were trying to avoid.

Jim L. Mora, a two-time NFL head coach with almost no college experience, is UCLA's new football coach, according to ESPNLosAngeles.com.

And UCLA made the official announcement a short time later.

Mora, 50, is currently an analyst for the NFL Network. He was fired from his last coaching job -- a single season with the Seattle Seahawks in 2009 -- after going 5-11. His only college coaching experience? He was a graduate assistant in 1984 at Washington, where he played from 1980-83.

Are Bruins fans going to immediately embrace this hire with buzzing enthusiasm? Probably not, particularly after Arizona and Washington State made splashier hires with Rich Rodriguez and Mike Leach.

I like how ESPN LA's Peter Yoon describes things here:

True, Mora isn’t exactly the splashy, big-name hire many UCLA fans were hoping to land, but there are reasons to believe his hire makes a lot of sense.

First, he has no UCLA ties in his past. Second, he is a defensive-minded coach. Third, he has no noteworthy experience as a college coach.

That bucks the trend of the past three UCLA coaches who are seen as the holy triumvirate of mediocrity. Bob Toledo, Karl Dorrell and Neuheisel were all Bruins assistants at some point before they became head coach; Dorrell and Neuheisel were UCLA players.

Before joining Seattle, Mora served as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 2004-2006. In his first season with Atlanta, the Falcons went 11-5 and made it to the NFC championship game. His teams went 8-8 and 7-9 the next two seasons and he was fired. But keep in mind, he was dealing with QB Michael Vick -- a stellar talent with a terrible work ethic and attitude at that time, something Vick has owned up to after he got out of jail.

A former Washington Husky reserve who played for Don James, Mora is a defensive guy with a strong resume working with secondaries.

That last part should be encouraging for Bruins fans. His area of specialization is stopping the pass. There, you might have heard, is a lot of throwing in these parts.

Mora also has the potential to be a charismatic recruiter. The parallel UCLA folks are surely thinking of -- whether they want to or not -- is USC's hire of Pete Carroll in 2001. Carroll had little college experience and was generally thought of as a mediocre-to-bad NFL head coach. Just about everyone panned his hire and mocked then-athletic director Mike Garrett's bumbling coaching search (which was a true comedy of errors and sloppiness).

Trojans fans eventually changed their feelings. There's a possibility that Mora will do the same.

"As someone who has been around the game of football my entire life, I have always held the UCLA job in the highest esteem," Mora said in a statement. "Given its location and its tradition, UCLA is truly a sleeping giant and I realize that an opportunity of this magnitude doesn't present itself more than once in a career, so I jumped at the chance to be a Bruin."

It's fair to say Mora was the Bruins' third choice. Boise State's Chris Petersen and Miami coach Al Golden both rejected previous entreaties.

I know UCLA fans don't always appreciate using USC as a measuring stick, but, again, Carroll was the Trojans fourth choice after an 18-day search. He was widely seen as a lightweight.

So this is an outside-of-the-box hire. At the very least, skeptical Bruins fans can grab hold of that.

Further, it's worth noting that a massively negative reaction would serve no useful purpose for the program. In fact, 11 other Pac-12 programs are likely poised to print out such reactions and use them against the Bruins in recruiting.

Meanwhile, the Bruins will play Illinois in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl on Dec. 31 with interim coach Mike Johnson, who took over after Rick Neuheisel was fired two weeks ago.

Here's the LA Times on the Mora hiring.

The LA Daily News.

And the Orange County Register.

While the bowl games were big news over the weekend, UCLA and Arizona State continue to look for new head coaches.

Here's some skinny.

At UCLA, ESPN LA's Peter Yoon reported that interim head coach Mike Johnson would like to be considered for the job. Here's his update on other candidates:

UCLA has been turned down by Boise State coach Chris Petersen, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions, and eliminated Houston coach Kevin Sumlin as a candidate after meeting with him on Saturday, according to a source. Al Golden of Miami is considered the next top target, though Golden recently signed a four-year contract extension at Miami.

There's some chatter out there about former Atlanta Falcons and Seattle Seahawks coach Jim Mora, Jr. My take: That would be a good hire. While things went badly for Mora in Seattle, let's recall that he was the first choice to replace Tyrone Willingham at Washington. He's a charismatic guy with an NFL sensibility that would translate well at UCLA. Recall that the last time a team in LA hired a charismatic guy with an NFL sensibility who had folks scratching their heads turned out OK.

Here's Jon Gold's take in the LA Daily News.

Sources have said that UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, who met with Sumlin in Houston on Saturday, is essentially rebooting the search and at this point, there are no clear-cut favorites. Miami head coach Al Golden, whom Guerrero interviewed for the job during the post-Karl Dorrell vacancy, is among the candidates, along with SMU head coach June Jones. Sources indicated on Saturday that there was minimal interest in former Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti.

UCLA has been the sort of job that more than a few folks thought might lure Bellotti back into coaching. But it doesn't seem, at least at this point, that he's high on the Bruins' list.

Meanwhile, at Arizona State, it appears that Sumlin might not be completely out of the picture, but that SMU coach June Jones' name is front-and-center at present. Still, there are plenty of other names in the rumor swirl. Writes Doug Haller:

Arizona State officials on Saturday met with SMU coach June Jones for more than three hours in Texas.

A report surfaced Sunday that ASU was in position to announce Jones' hire shortly after the university learned of its bowl destination. That wasn't true. According to a source, the Jones push slowed Sunday night. That doesn't mean it's over, but it could be an indication that ASU is having second thoughts.

Sources confirmed Sunday that Southern Miss coach Larry Fedora is still in the mix. Baylor coach Art Briles has emerged as a candidate.

I continue to hear ASU likes Oregon offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich.

Also, despite reports that ASU has backed off Sumlin, he still could be in play, especially if Texas A&M goes another direction in its quest to replace fired coach Mike Sherman.

In other words, neither coach search has moved -- at least according to reports -- decisively in one direction.

So stay tuned.

The 2011 season was much like Dennis Erickson's tenure at Arizona State: fast start, then mediocrity and disappointment.

Erickson went 10-3 in his first season, but even that was a mirage of sorts, a product of a forgiving schedule. Some forget that the Sun Devils lost three of their final five games by an average of 16.7 points.

The Sun Devils started this season 6-2, posting quality wins over Missouri and USC. They were nationally ranked and 10 wins seemed likely with a forgiving schedule ahead. They seemed certain to win the Pac-12 South Division title.

But then the wheels came off. They lost their last four games, and now Erickson is out of a job.

Erickson's final record at Arizona State, which is 31-30 at present, will be determined after the Sun Devils' bowl game. Erickson, 64, opted to bow out gracefully, coaching the team he put together one last time.

"I will always cherish my memories here," he said in statement.

There was some conjecture that this would become a retirement instead of a termination for Erickson. Reached by phone Monday, Erickson said he has no plans to retire.

"Yeah, I'd like to coach again," he said. "I'm not done coaching. You know that. I'd certainly like to. It's just a matter of opportunity, of course."

Erickson also said there were no hard feelings between him and Arizona State administrators. He said he had "great respect" for athletic director Lisa Love and school president Michael Crow.

"We talked about it and they made the decision," Erickson said. "That's kind of how it is. The last part of the season didn't help us."

Of course, he doesn't walk away empty-handed. Under contract for another year, he will receive half of his $1.5 million annual salary.

What went wrong this year? The easy answer is defense. During the four-game losing streak, the Sun Devils yielded 37 points per game. During the 6-2 start, they gave up 21.5 ppg.

But it has to be more than that. Arizona State started the season riddled with injuries, but it won despite them. The team that started losing was healthier than the team that started fast. Of the final four losses, only California comes close to having the athletic talent the Sun Devils have. Something went wrong in the team's collective head. Something yielded. The chemistry and unity that were cited as hallmarks of the Sun Devils' senior-heavy locker room during the successful early going somehow cracked.

Defensive tackle Bo Moos told the Arizona Republic's Doug Haller this after the Arizona loss. "We have a group of 30 seniors. You should expect it to be there, but something within the chemistry hasn't been right for the past month and I really cannot put my finger on what it is."

While Arizona State will play in its first bowl game since 2007, the Sun Devils need to win to eclipse .500 for the first time since that season. That's not what folks expected when Erickson was hired. Say what you want about his nomadic ways, he was a guy with a proven track record of winning at the college level. While Erickson's NFL coaching career was a wash, he was successful at every college stop. This is the first time he's been fired from a college job.

Erickson won a national title with Miami in 1989, a Fiesta Bowl at Oregon State in 2000 and was 148-65-1 (.695) in 18 seasons before arriving in Tempe. He posted nine-win seasons at five different schools. He is one of only three people (USC's Pete Carroll and Washington's Don James) to win Pac-10 coach of the year three times.

Erickson's legacy is on solid ground no matter what he does next. While he has a roguish reputation with some folks, he's been an open, accessible guy who almost always went for optimism and rarely dumped on his players, even when they probably deserved it.

As for what's next for Arizona State, it's definitely going to be a competitive market to find a new coach, with firings across the country dotting the blotter. It's unlikely the Sun Devils will secure a sexy prospect for what Erickson was making, and the school is notorious for paying assistant coaches poorly. Further, Sun Devils fans will at least want to match the positive buzz generated by hated rival Arizona, which hired Rich Rodriguez to replace Mike Stoops.

The first name everyone is saying: Houston's Kevin Sumlin. Two problems with that: 1. get in line; 2. the Cougars are likely going to a BCS bowl game, which means Sumlin won't be available until after Jan. 1. That could put a strong recruiting haul assembled by Erickson at risk.

The Pac-12 blog will throw out a name that's also been buzzing a lot of places: former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach. His pass-happy, spread offense is nearly identical to what the Sun Devils have been running the past two years under offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone.

Leach comes with baggage, but Arizona State is a big-city program that must compete with pro sports for attention. So Leach's attention-grabbing ways probably would be more of a positive than a headache.

Whoever gets the job will inherit a solid core of talent, including a promising quarterback in Brock Osweiler. The next coach also might give serious consideration to retaining Mazzone, who's done a fantastic job transforming an anemic offense in two years.

It's been a schizophrenic season in Tempe. Erickson started the year on the hot seat, but with a team that looked like the South Division favorites. Through eight games, they played like it.

Then things went splat.

Talk to 10 people and you'll get 10 different explanations on why things never worked out under Erickson, this season or the three after the promising debut in 2007.

But as far as divorces go, this certainly isn't the worst. Erickson doesn't walk away significantly diminished. And the next Sun Devils coach has a chance to win immediately.

Of course, Arizona State has been called a sleeping giant for years. Will the next guy finally wake Sparky up?

1. While the speed horses have worn each other at the front of the race, Virginia Tech has hugged the rail and bided its time. Now, as the track announcer yells, “Down the stretch they come,” there are the No. 5 Hokies, 10-1. Of the four teams ahead, three must play highly ranked teams. Only two weeks ago, Frank Beamer became the FBS coach with the most victories (250). He is much closer to his first national championship than anyone would have guessed last Friday.

2. Miami’s decision not to go to a bowl game is prudent if you’re an administrator. It means the Hurricanes can get a head start on whatever penalties they receive at the conclusion of the ongoing NCAA investigation. That comes as little solace to the Miami players. The decision also hurts the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, which has a deal for the ninth pick in the ACC. Thanks to Miami’s decision, the ACC will have no more than eight bowl teams.

3. No one wants to see a game decided on a blown call, especially a game with bowl ramifications for Tennessee and Vanderbilt. SEC coordinator of officials Steve Shaw confirmed Saturday night that his crew blew the call that gave Tennessee a 27-21 victory over Vanderbilt in overtime. That ruling could be karmic payback for Derek Dooley and the Vols, whose last-play bowl loss to North Carolina last season resulted in an off-season rule change. All well and good but karma still owes Vandy a debt.