Misery Index Week 8: Miami's first season under Mario Cristobal just keeps getting worse

For Miami, luring Mario Cristobal from Oregon wasn't just about the pile of money the university had suddenly found to invest in football. It wasn’t just bringing home an alum who knows what it means to be “All About The U." It wasn’t just the thought of being back in the ballgame with all those South Florida stud recruits who were fleeing to other programs.

No, the reality for Miami is that its administration wanted to make a statement. It wanted to be the story. It wanted to be the center of attention in a sport that has long since moved on from the fantasy that national championships are right around the corner.

Meanwhile, four days after Cristobal inked a reported 10-year, $80 million contract that shook up the sport, Duke made a coaching hire that received far less attention.

Unlike Cristobal, Mike Elko isn’t a sexy name. And Duke is a decidedly unsexy football program that had sunk back to the bottom of the ACC in the final few years under David Cutcliffe. Beyond the hype differential between the two hires, Miami was supposed to be set up for immediate success under Cristobal. Duke seemed like a long-term project that might not ever get off the ground.

And yet when the two teams met Saturday, one looked like it knew what it was doing and the other looked ready to pack it in for the winter. After Miami’s 45-21 loss, it’s a wonder that Hard Rock Stadium was not napalmed by the fury of a fan base watching a poorly-coached, emotionally detached football team that is actually getting worse as Cristobal’s first season goes along.

Miami’s 3-4 record, which also includes a home loss to Middle Tennessee, is not a fluke. And the loss of quarterback Tyler Van Dyke to an upper body injury is no excuse for Miami committing a ridiculous eight turnovers or rushing for just 48 yards on 31 attempts.

"You either fix it or you get people that care and play as hard as you are supposed to as a Miami Hurricane,” Cristobal told reporters after the game. “I don’t think it is magical.”

It's true that coaching transitions are sometimes painful. Changing a culture is hard and sometimes requires a couple years of recruiting to turn over the roster.

But thanks to the transfer portal and the more transient nature of the sport at the moment, we’re seeing lots of coaches make an immediate impact. Heck, Duke didn’t win an ACC game last year (3-9 overall) and now finds itself 5-3 and one game from bowl eligibility.

Miami didn’t live up to expectations last year under Manny Diaz, but it was a 7-5 team that brought back a lot of talent and was ranked 17th in the preseason.

Week 8 winners and losers: Oregon thrives in defeat of UCLA, Texas A&M flops again

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If Miami's administration had been level-headed about this coaching change instead of chasing the shiny object, it would have been far more cautious about Cristobal than its financial commitment indicated. Cristobal went 35-13 at Oregon with a Rose Bowl win in 2019 but there were enough game management issues throughout his tenure and enough losses to inferior teams to suggest it was far from a sure thing.

The idea of Cristobal with his big-time recruiting reputation and desire to play line-of-scrimmage, physically dominant football is great. The results, though, have yet to come close to that standard. Waking up to that reality for Miami is why they’re No. 1 on this week’s Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst about the state of their program.

Four more in misery

Texas: Few teams have found less use for those win probability graphs than the Longhorns. Not that turning them off would change the reality that Texas chokes away a lot of football games. But it might at least make the inevitable a little less painful.

With less than a minute left in the third quarter of Saturday’s 41-34 loss to Oklahoma State, Texas had an 86.8% chance to win according to ESPN Analytics. But what the computers can’t accurately account for is that Texas blows leads the way most teams eat breakfast. The Longhorns did it against Alabama, allowing a 61-yard field goal drive in the final 89 seconds. They did it at Texas Tech in a game they led 31-17 with fewer than 20 minutes left. And they did it in Stillwater against Oklahoma State while going missed field goal, interception, interception over their final three possessions and committing 14 penalties for 199 yards (Oklahoma State was flagged for zero penalties). Even if Texas fans wanted to build a conspiracy theory about referee mistreatment, it doesn’t pass the smell test when quarterback Quinn Ewers completed just 19-of-49 passes.

Texas A&M: Let’s just put this plainly: If the Aggies were not tied to Jimbo Fisher by the most ridiculous contract in the history of college football, this would be his last season in College Station. It’s even possible Saturday’s 30-24 loss at South Carolina could be his last game, as it dropped Texas A&M to 3-4 overall with five losses in its last six SEC games dating back to the 2021 season. And yet, with Fisher’s $95 million contract being fully guaranteed through the 2031 season, there is no context for anything like this.

Fisher is in Year 5. Other than going 9-1 in 2020, which was a one-off for all of college football due to COVID-19, it has been a massive disappointment. Given the expectations, that’s a résumé for a firing. And yet the Texas A&M administration, led by athletics director Ross Bjork, did not see 2020 for the fluke that it was and handed Fisher another 10-year deal last year with no protection for the school. Can they find the money to fix that mistake? If they want to, they probably can. But it’s going to very, very painful.

Given the name, image and likeness landscape, any decent coach could recruit good players to Texas A&M. So what are they paying for? Struggling year after year to find a quarterback? Failing to build a decent offensive line? Committing eight false start penalties at South Carolina? Texas A&M fans deserve far better, but given the financial realities, it may be awhile before they get it.

BYU: The Cougars used to have a problem with their schedule being so front-loaded with good teams that it left them physically spent and beaten up by the time they got to the middle of the season. This year, the window merely shifted a bit later. After a close loss to Notre Dame, there was slippage in a 52-35 loss to Arkansas last week. But on Saturday, the bottom fell out in a 41-14 loss at Liberty in which the Flames had a massive 547-258 edge in offensive yards and scored the game’s final 38 points.

The Cougars always have lofty ambitions. But the reality is they’re not built for this kind of week by week grind at the moment, which seems like a problem given that they're headed for the Big 12 next year. They’ll face a lot of tough games in that league, and there’s going to be a massive learning curve that comes along with it. If BYU fans aren’t happy with 4-4 right now, the Misery Index suggests getting used to it for the next few years because it’s going to take some time to get up to power conference speed.

Iowa: There's not that much more to say about the endemic futility of an offense that has managed a combined 30 points in its past three games other than the obvious. If Kirk Ferentz doesn’t have it in him to give the offensive coordinator position to someone other than his son Brian, he should retire. This is a college football program, not a family business. It does not belong to the Ferentzes. It belongs to the players, to the fans and to the state of Iowa, none of which are being served well by the clown show they manage to put on the field every week.

Iowa is not as good as Ohio State, but a 54-10 loss in which the Hawkeyes scrounged up 158 yards of offense, committed six turnovers and went 1-for-13 on third down is not acceptable. And everyone knows it.

Miserable but not miserable enough

Memphis: Based on football results over the last decade, the Tigers had a good argument to get into the Big 12 along with UCF, Houston and Cincinnati. But the invitation never came, which means Memphis desperately needs to maintain its status as a top Group of Five team if another expansion opportunity comes around in the next few years. In other words, this is very bad timing for a downturn under Ryan Silverfield, who is 18-14 as a head coach and 10-11 in the conference after a 38-28 loss at Tulane. The Tigers made it a little bit more competitive late, but falling behind 35-0 at halftime does not suggest a healthy trajectory for a program that has totally lost its identity as a high-flying offensive juggernaut.

Charlotte: Coach Will Healy’s surprising debut season in 2019 produced viral videos of players turning their locker room into a dance party after wins. It was branded as “Club Lit,” but there seemed to be substance to go along with the youthful exuberance of Healy, who was just 34 at the time. The nascent Charlotte program went to a bowl in his first year and looked like a fun mid-major with staying power. But Club Lit has seemingly gone out of business since then. With Charlotte sinking to 1-7 following a 34-15 loss to Florida International, it might be time for Club Coaching Search.

Boston College: There weren’t many feel-good stories during the makeshift 2020 season, but the Eagles emerged as a model of COVID-19 caution with zero positive tests while also going 6-5 in their first season under Jeff Hafley. But nobody has had much of a reason to think about Boston College since then. Though the Eagles had enough bad teams on their schedule in 2021 to get bowl eligible, 2022 has been highly unkind. The 2-5 Eagles aren’t just losing, they’re getting their doors blown off by the likes of Florida State (44-14), Clemson (31-3) and most recently Wake Forest (43-15).

UCF: It has to be a little weird for Knights fans to watch Josh Heupel, a coach they were not particularly sad to lose, having a magical year at Tennessee while their program loses 34-13 at East Carolina. It isn’t a unforgivable loss because Greenville is a pretty tough place to play historically, and the Pirates are a solid team this year. But committing four turnovers and ultimately getting run off the field does speak to the overall step down UCF has taken from the halcyon days of New Year’s Six bowls and unbeaten seasons.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Miami most miserable in college football Week 8 after bad loss to Duke