I understand! My coach just showed up at the Cotton Bowl with a team that looked like it had graduated from the Wade Phillips School of Game Planning and the Jason Garrett Institute for Workplace Motivation. Happily, college football is one of the few sports where outraged fans can directly affect the course of history. But the way fans rage at their coach has changed.
The Rent-a-Plane Era (1997-2002)
I start in ’97 only because it was my first truly awful season of college football. The Texas Longhorns, who had Ricky Williams in the backfield, lost a home game to UCLA by 63 points. (I challenge even those Texas fans at the Cotton Bowl on Saturday to find a more soul-crushing afternoon than “Rout 66.”) Two weeks later, when we played Rice, an airplane flew overhead.
By Bryan Curtis at
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Is Todd Graham, the new head football coach at Arizona State, the worst person in the universe? Let’s consider the evidence.
In 2006, Graham was the coach at Rice. Mr. Premature Evacuation, as the Houston Chronicle called him, lasted one whole season before he left for Tulsa. After four seasons with Tulsa — during which he treated at least one prominent sportswriter like crap — Graham left for Pitt last January.
Graham did the Pitt job for all of 11 months. Then he sent his Panthers players a text message. The message announced he was leaving for Arizona State and was signed, “God Bless.” A few days later, Graham was knotting a maroon-and-yellow tie for yet another introductory press conference. “No class, he’s a quitter, soft, liar, hypocrite,” tweeted Pitt receiver Devin Street. He added, “I feel like dirt and I was just abused.”
