10 Most Hated College Teams

 So Uncoached.com released a list of the 10 most hated teams in sports. The list included three college teams; Ohio State football, Duke men's basketball, and Notre Dame football. It got me thinking about the college programs that people around the country really, really dislike and I ranked them. In addition to the three mentioned above, I added seven more.  

10) UConn women's basketball: The only women's team on this list!!! Nobody likes a team that has dominated for so long. 90 wins in a row? 90 FRIGGIN' wins in a row!!! Amazing, yes. But it just made you feel good to see them lose and cry, and pout, and be like 'We're UConn, what is this feeling of losing?'  And you know, there's just something about Geno Auriemma that rubs people the wrong way. I loved it when Pat Summit was winning titles, but Auriemma? The guy looks angry when his team wins by 30. 

Lane Kiffin. My blood boils. 

9)  Boise State football: I know there are many people who are fans of this perennial BCS crasher. But how many other people out there cry foul? Here's to all the people who ask "How would they do in a power conference? How many games would they lose in the SEC?" To each his own, but Boise State really started the conversation for the importance of strength of schedule in determining the top 2 teams in the BCS national championship game. For the record, I'm a fan of the Broncos. 

8) Southern Cal football: Two words: Lane Kiffin. Every time they lost last year just felt so good, didn't it?

7) Miami, Fla., football: The hatred thrown at the program stems from its renegade days in the 1980's. Some people suggest the program is still living in the past, but if that's the case, then so are all the haters who can't get enough of calling Miami "Thug U." So many people were calling for the Death Penalty liberally following the Shapiro scandal. The sanctions await. 

6) Kentucky men's basketball: John Calipari is the nation's best recruiter, but he hasn't won over many fans with his crop of one-and-done freshman sensations. His reliance on young talent paid off spectacularly with last year's national title, but some basketball purists can't stand the idea of "renting" players for one year, unless of course it's your team cutting down the nets at the end of the year. 

5) Tennessee football: You fire Phil Fulmer who was good at the beginning and bad at the end, kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet. You gave Lane Kiffin a shot. Then he leaves you, your fans go all apocalyptic, but it's OK because you hired Derek Dooley. Plus, you gave Lane Kiffin a shot. 

Lord Voldemort, er, Saban

4) Alabama football: Roll Tide! Alabama was a broken program just six years ago. Enter Lord Saban and college football's craziest, most rabid fans have reason to get all smug again. They also claim a crazy amount of national titles, some of which are totally unjustified, most of which, begrudgingly, are completely legitimate.

3) Notre Dame football: All the history, nostalgia, and legacy from the Four Horsemen to Lou Holtz. No program has more lore than the Fighting Irish, and it's a bit annoying. Sure it's a historic program, but it's no different now than any other major college football program. Plus, there's the resentment of having their own contract with NBC and holding out of a conference. I predict the ACC is in your near future Notre Dame. 

2) Ohio State football: Only 15 years ago Ohio State was a respectable program cheered on by many people outside the state of Michigan. Then came Jim Tressel, who made the program a Big 10 powerhouse, but it came with his horrible sweater vest. Deep down you just knew Tressel was somehow...off. Then came the embarrassing losses to two SEC teams in BCS title games. The Suckeyes, I mean, Buckeyes have yet to live  those losses down. 

Cameron Indoor, home of the Dukies

1) Duke men's basketball: Blue bloods. Players on Duke teams have been called sell-outs, but all they do is keep winning ACC titles on a regular basis and reach Final Fours for Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski. After Duke won the 2010 championship people were literally outraged that they had beaten Butler. You ever seen an indignant Digger Phelps? I have. Their fans do tend to get annoying, but it's the only arena in all of sports where I catch myself paying more attention to the crowd than to the game. Is that a bad thing or a good thing?

College Football Coaches in Their 2nd Year

For the first time ever I bought a preseason magazine for college football, Phil Steele's annual preview. I was impressed by all the work he put into it and all the numbers he crunches to come up with what is ultimately an educated guess.

Jimbo Fisher (left) has rightfully high expectations at FSU.

In that same vein, I decided to crunch a few numbers of my own relating to coaches at BCS conference schools and five additional programs (Boise St., TCU, Notre Dame, Hawaii, and BYU). I took a look at coaches hired from 2000-2010, giving me 11 years of data. Some coaches are still active, some just finished their first year in 2010, and others have been hired more than once. 

The first stat I wanted to look at was how much coaches improved their school's win total from one year to another. I only took a look at the first four years of a coach's tenure, realizing that some coaches did not make it to even their second year at a school, let alone their third and fourth years, and a small number of coaches are at their same school after 10 years or more. Schools typically give a coach four years to work on their program before deciding on whether to keep him or not. 

Out of 113 coaches hired at the schools I studied, 49.5 percent were able to increase their school's win total in their first year, 13 percent stayed the same, and 37.5 percent went down. Remarkably, of the 100 coaches that have made it to their second year, 59 percent increased their win total from the previous year, 13 percent stayed the same, and 28 percent went down in win totals. But things take a downward turn in the third year. 

Of the 82 coaches in their third year at the same school, only 41 percent increased their win totals from the previous year, 12 percent stayed the same, and a whopping 47 percent went down in win totals. I figured that this would be the case if a coach had a strong second season, then it would be difficult to match those win totals in the third year. OK. I can buy that argument. So I went ahead and took a look at the coach's fourth year, a critical year for all coaches in terms of contract extensions and retainability. Of the 60 coaches in their fourth year, 45 percent increased their win totals from the year before, 5 percent stayed the same, and an eye-opening 50 percent went down in win totals.

This speaks to the importance of a coach's second season. This information doesn't speak to any one school looking at insight for what to expect from their coaches, but it does appear that coaches are able to build upon their first year 59 percent of the time, and at no other point in their first four years will they be more likely to increase their school's win total from the previous year than in that second year. This means good things, especially if your coach's first season was a good one, because the likelihood your school will not at least match the previous year's win total is only 28 percent. 

I think the numbers also suggest that being a college head football coach is very difficult, and to be able to sustain a winning program is even harder. In some ways, the longer a coach is at a school, the harder it may become to continue building off of any initial success. It could also suggest that a coach simply isn't very good or isn't a good fit at a school, and it takes about four years to finally figure that out. 

This is by no means a guarantee of anything in any way, but it speaks well of a second-year coach in charge of a talented team. Recent second-year coaches that have won a national title or appeared in the title game since the 2000 season include Bob Stoops, Urban Meyer, Chip Kelly, Jim Tressel, and Gene Chizik. If this trend holds up, Notre Dame's Brian Kelly and Florida State's Jimbo Fisher should very well  be considered legitimate national title contenders.   

Butch Davis Out; High Profile Coaches Reeling

Nobody is fresh as Marvin Austin.

Obviously the timing of the decision to fire Butch Davis was questionable at best, but not many people are surprised that Davis did end up getting fired. Most people thought that if a decision was made to let go of Davis, that it would have come at the end of the season, not eight days before North Carolina was set to open its summer camp. The decision to fire Davis was a judgment call. Although there is absolutely no proof that he knew of any wrongdoing, Davis must take the fall because he was the man in charge. He should have done a better job of monitoring his program. At the end of the day, all of the transgressions proved to be too much for Davis to keep his job.

In another surprising move, UNC athletics director Dick Baddour resigned. Talk about a scandal reaching the heights of an athletic department.

All this goes to show to that as much as winning football games, and recruiting the best players, coaching at the biggest stage of the NCAA now requires a strong ability to self-monitor one's own program and to surround yourself with people you can trust. Davis is now the third really big name to go down because of scandals involving agents and boosters. Pete Carroll saw the writing on the wall and ditched USC before he could suffer the consequences brought about by Reggie Bush and former assistant coach Todd McNair. The scandal also cost former athletics director Mike Garrett his job.

Tressel, who deserved to be fired more than either Carroll or Davis based on circumstantial evidence, placed his bets on Terrelle Pryor, Dan Herron, Mike Adams, Devier Posey, and Solomon Thomas. He ended up on the wrong side of the bet. While Pryor was a tremendous talent for the Buckeyes and continued Ohio State's domination of the Big Ten, would Tressel recruit him again knowing what he knows now?

Then there's the Davis scandal. He was done in by a rogue assistant coach he trusted in John Blake, a guy making $240,000 per year and yet acted as a runner for an agent so that he could turn over a few more bucks. Then there are all the players Davis recruited who seemed to be entitled and selfish. It was found that Greg Little had accumulated 91 parking tickets while a student-athlete at North Carolina, and even then there were people trying to pay those off for him. You had a guy like Marvin Austin tweeting things like, "Jus got to DC an I'm feelin a shopn spee....nobody gon be fresh as ME!!!!" I hope Austin purposely misspelled what he wrote, and how stupid do you have to be to post something like that?

Coaches always talk about recruiting high-character guys and not just four- and five-star guys that act like prima donnas. Coaches also need to make sure that they get good, honest people on their staffs. I doubt that either Carroll, Tressel, or Davis thought they were signing their letters of resignation when they were signing guys like Pryor, Austin, and Bush. If coaches like them can go down, it should serve as a warning to all college football coaches that it can happen to them, starting with the kids they bring in on signing day. In truth, it'll be only about another season before we find out who's next to go.