Bad teams…
Occasionally, I am reminded of the bad old days…the days of Gomer Jones, Schnellenberger, and John Blake. I remember a friend telling me back during Blake days that some teams never recover. He was right…we were that close to becoming permanent members of the outhouse list.
Think of this…the time between Barry and Bob was almost exactly ten years. I believe that if OU had not pulled the plug on Blake when they did and hire Bob Stoops the recovery of the program may not have happened. Coincidently, the time between Mangino at Kansas and today has been almost exactly ten years.
Mangino’s 2007 team was a National Championship contender at 12-1. Today, they are ranked as the 4th worst team in FBS. I believe that if KU does not win more than two games this year, they will become permanent members of the outhouse list.
Ryan McGee who is a college football beat writer at ESPN comes up with a bottom ten list every week during the football season. As you might imagine Kansas is on his list. I am going to borrow his bottom ten list this week and provide some thoughts. By the way, with 130 colleges playing FBS football these days, it is really hard to make the bottom ten list.
The three worst teams in America come from Conference USA. Those teams are UTEP, Rice and Charlotte (NC). That is one lousy football conference.
#4 on the list is our beloved Kansas…three wins in three seasons. I must say that I believe that Kansas has a chance to be better this year. This will be the first time in half a decade that the Jayhawks will have a full roster of scholarship players.
#7 Liberty Flames or as Ryan McGee calls them the Liberty Flameouts. How did this bunch ever beat Baylor in Waco last year? By the way, in order to fill out there schedule, Liberty will be playing a home and home series with New Mexico State this year. That is just too weird.
#8 Oregon State…I mention this one because the in-state OSU team could not wait to get the Beavers on their schedule. The instate Aggies will be playing the Oregon Aggies in a home and home series the next two years…This is Mike Holder’s idea of stepping up the schedule by scheduling a Power Five Conference team. Mike Gundy is a scheduling genius.
Kent State and Coastal Carolina beat out a bunch of MAC Conference losers to round out the rest of the bottom ten. Talking about lousy conferences, the MAC just goes through the motions.
The moral of this story is that the distance from the outhouse to the guest house is not as far as one might think. Many of us have experienced the outhouse days in football and we never want to go back there. As for KU, they have one last shot at avoiding becoming a permanent member of the outhouse list and this year is it.
Bcs.net - sports professor