Misery Index Week 7: Penn State can't compete with the best teams in the Big Ten

The stench of fraudulence around Penn State had been masked by the sweet, sweet aroma of two Mid-American Conference patsies, by Northwestern’s embrace of incompetence and by catching one of the worst Auburn teams of the past quarter-century.

It even fooled James Franklin, apparently. Always the salesman, Franklin spent this past week claiming that his 5-0 team was "better equipped" this year to handle the Michigan defense and avoid becoming one-dimensional because it can’t run the ball.

Was it wishful thinking, or has Franklin completely lost the plot in his ninth season at Penn State? Because if the product Franklin put on the field Saturday is "better equipped," we shudder to think about what the opposite of that might look like.

The Nittany Lions didn't just lose to Michigan on Saturday, 41-17. They made a statement about what kind of program they are: Physically inferior and notably less equipped to compete with the big boys of the Big Ten.

Penn State will still go on to have a nice season. Franklin will undoubtedly bring in another good recruiting class. And we’ll undoubtedly do this all over again next year, mainly because Franklin signed a contract extension last November that will pay him a guaranteed $7.5 million per year through 2031.

But Penn State fans know their program isn’t truly positioned to compete for championships. That’s obvious. You can beat all the Ohios and Purdues you want, but a real College Football Playoff contender does not give up 418 rushing yards to Michigan. A real contender does not produce a meager 10 first downs or 18:04 in time of possession. A real contender does not get physically manhandled to that extent by anyone, especially coming off an open date that should have allowed Penn State to be prepared and rested.

Penn State’s 5-0 start was hopeful, if only because it looked like it might be real. After going 4-5 in the COVID-19 year and 7-6 last season, winning these early games was necessary for Franklin to regain some credibility with a fan base that had started to see his tenure being defined by underachievement. Sure, Franklin had three top-10 finishes between 2016 and 2019 with a Big Ten championship. But if that’s the high point, it’s not good enough for a program with Penn State’s resources, geography and fan base.

Games like Saturday make fans reevaluate everything. Any good vibes from the 5-0 start are now irrelevant. The conversation has turned to whether Franklin is capable of building a program that can compete with the Ohio States and Michigans, never mind the Alabamas and Georgias.

Based on Saturday, it’s hard to envision that still being possible. That’s why Penn State is No. 1 in this week’s Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst about the state of their favorite program.

Week 7 winners and losers: Tennessee topples Alabama; Michigan rolls

Saturday recap: What you need to know about college football’s Top 25 games for Week 7

Four more in misery

Alabama: Nick Saban is the greatest college coach of all time, but he looked like a rank amateur at the end of a 52-49 loss at Tennessee. Give the Vols a ton of credit for making play after play, even when it looked as if they were beaten in the fourth quarter. But the only reason Tennessee had a chance to kick a game-winning field goal in regulation was Saban botching the final few minutes.

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When Alabama had a first down at Tennessee’s 32-yard line with fewer than 40 seconds remaining, there should have been no chance for the Vols to get the ball back. At minimum, Alabama’s goal should have been to get as close as possible for a field goal while forcing the Vols to exhaust their timeouts. Instead, three straight incompletions by Bryce Young led to a missed 50-yard field goal with 15 seconds left. Two big plays, plus two timeouts, was all Tennessee needed to steal the win on a 40-yard field goal as time expired.

Maybe Alabama will be fine in the long run. But that was coaching malpractice by the 70-year-old Saban, whose team committed a school record 17 penalties for 130 yards. Alabama should have lost to Texas earlier this year. It should have lost to Texas A&M, too. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that Alabama’s lack of discipline combined with Saban’s poor game management finally caught up to the Tide. But it’s one of the biggest cracks in the armor we’ve seen since Saban started this historic run more than a dozen years ago.

Notre Dame: It was easy for Fighting Irish fans to convince themselves that losing Brian Kelly wouldn’t be a big deal. Not only was the program in really good shape when Kelly bolted for LSU, but Marcus Freeman gave Notre Dame a different energy than the Irish had ever experienced. Young, telegenic and charismatic, Freeman immediately got elite prospects interested in Notre Dame. As well as Kelly recruited, Freeman had much bigger upside and delivered on it immediately in recruiting.

But the 36-year-old Freeman is having such a rough time on the field in his first season, it’s fair to wonder whether giving him a job of this magnitude was a big mistake.

That isn’t a criticism of Freeman. Being a head coach is hard. Anyone doing it for the first time is going to have a learning curve, especially at a place like Notre Dame where the spotlight is so bright.

Is Freeman ready for it? The results, including a 16-14 loss at home to Stanford, would suggest he’s not. Stanford’s only other win this year came against Colgate, so there’s no way to tap dance around how disastrous a performance that was by Notre Dame

Everything about it was bad from the offense (301 yards, 3-of-12 on third down) to the turnover margin (minus-2) to a completely fruitless final drive that never advanced past Notre Dame’s own 30-yard line.

Given the remaining schedule, 6-6 now seems like the most likely outcome for Freeman in his first season. Notre Dame isn’t a 6-6 program, especially after five straight seasons of double-digit wins under Kelly. This kind of nosedive shouldn’t be happening, but it’s the current reality for Notre Dame. And when you have a coach this inexperienced, the problem isn’t hard to diagnose.

NC State: No fan base expects the worst quite like the Wolfpack's. There's even a phrase for it — “NC State (expletive)” — connoting a simple but eternal truth: Any time things look good for NC State, disaster is right around the corner.

True to form, an NC State season that started with visions of contending for an ACC title has become a nightmare. Quarterback Devin Leary's injury last week in a narrow win over Florida State was confirmed Saturday to be a torn pectoral muscle that requires season-ending surgery. Unsurprisingly, the Wolfpack lost 24-9 to Syracuse.

With so much returning talent and one of the top quarterbacks in the country, this looked like an “if not now, when?” type of season for NC State. Coach Dave Doeren did not shy away from the expectations, either. After going 8-4 in 2020 and 9-3 last season, this was the best opportunity NC State might ever have at a breakthrough into the top echelon of college football.

That’s gone now. NC State can still go 8-4 or maybe 9-3, which is very good by historical standards. But after decades of frustration and unfulfilled potential, this could have been a truly different type of season. Instead, it was too good to be true.

Iowa State: Matt Campbell’s No. 1 priority this week should be figuring out what kind of curse has been put on his program and what rituals should be performed to reverse it. Burning sage? Animal sacrifices? Maybe washing the dirty hat he wears on the sideline? (We’d recommend doing that anyway, but perhaps it might help.) Whatever’s going on, Iowa State’s run of rotten luck in close games would be comical if it wasn't so sad and predictable. When the Cyclones are in position to win a big game these days, it’s not a matter of if something bad is going to happen but rather how crushing the fallout is going to be.

In the case of their 24-21 loss at Texas, the answer is borderline apocalyptic. Iowa State is now 0-4 in the Big 12 (3-4 overall), dropping those games by a combined 14 points. But none of them, including a 14-11 loss to Kansas that ended on a missed 37-yard field goal, was as painful as this one because of how improbably this opportunity was lost.

With about 2½ minutes left, quarterback Hunter Dekkers had Xavier Hutchinson wide open at the 10-yard line and threw a very good ball that would have been caught 99 out of 100 times by one of the best receivers in the country. But this was the one. Then, even after Hutchinson redeemed himself with a catch to put Iowa State at the 32-yard line, Dekkers coughed up the ball on a helmet-to-shoulder-pad hit that jarred the ball loose a half-second before his knee hit the ground. If either of those plays goes the other way, Iowa State likely gets to overtime at minimum. Instead, it's another chapter in Campbell’s hefty book of how to lose close games.

Miserable but not miserable enough

Baylor: It’s unfair to expect the Bears to be really good every year, but 3-3 was not what fans envisioned at the halfway mark. Coming off a Big 12 championship, the Bears seemed more like a stealth College Football Playoff contender than a team that would be lucky to make the Cheez-It Bowl. But after a 43-40 loss at West Virginia — the one team you really have to beat in the Big 12 this year to avoid embarrassment — bar snacks start to look pretty appealing.

Marshall: For all the love this team and second-year coach Charles Huff got after upsetting Notre Dame in Week 2, it hasn’t amounted to much in the long run. A 23-13 home loss to Louisiana has left Marshall 1-3 since South Bend, with the lone win coming against Gardner-Webb. If you’re Marshall, it’s hard to beat Notre Dame and be a disappointment in the same season. But that’s seemingly where we’re headed with Huff, who is 10-9 overall as a head coach. His predecessor, Doc Holliday, was fired despite going 8-5, 9-4, 8-5 and 7-3 in his final four seasons.

California: Justin Wilcox has always been a wonderful defensive coach. Truly elite in that department, both as a coordinator and in his six years leading the Bears. But a 20-13 overtime loss to Colorado is the moment that will put him on the hot seat — and deservedly so. You cannot have 35 rushing yards and go 5-for-17 on third down against the worst team in the Power Five and expect to be forgiven by your fan base. Cal is a very difficult job, encompassing everything from budget issues to lack of affordable housing for assistant coaches to a general culture in Berkeley that does not make football a priority. Still, if you want to be taken seriously, you can’t lose to a Colorado team that seemed headed for 0-12 and fired its coach a couple weeks ago.

Wisconsin: After the surprise firing of Paul Chryst, most observers viewed the second half of the season as a tryout of sorts for defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard. A former Badgers star and hot coaching prospect, Leonard is the favorite to get the head coaching job if Wisconsin shows some improvement down the stretch. But a 34-28 double-overtime loss to woeful Michigan State is not the kind statement Leonhard wanted to make. With just 283 total yards, including a completely anemic passing game with quarterback Graham Mertz at the controls, the next Wisconsin coach has a ton of work to do offensively just to get the program stabilized.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Penn State stomped by Michigan; Nick Saban lets Alabama down