The art of the in-season turnaround
Teams looking to build great success out of tough starts.
Now we as a republic must cope with the fact that a 6-4 team is headed to the Big Ten title game, a different 6-4 team appears headed to the ACC title game and yet another 6-4 team lurks two destiny-controlling wins from the Pacific-12 title game. We will get through this. There are even hidden boons.
From here to next decade and beyond, we’ll be able to use this situation to swat away that argument that turned up the past two Decembers when conference non-champions reached the College Football Playoff. This argument goes that conference championships are paramount, especially in any proposed eight- or 16-team playoff. Does a four- or fiveloss conference champion such as the 2012 Big Ten winner Wisconsin, 8-5 preceding its bowl game, belong in a playoff? As one late, great American used to put it: Horsepucky.
Better yet, we can use these cases to dip into the heartstrings and extol the art of the in-season turnaround, one perfected this autumn by Northwestern (6-4), Pitt (6-4) and Arizona State (6-4). Not everybody can be Clemson even if Clemson does provide similar lessons (see below) but these non-playoff seasons can maintain great value.
When Northwestern’s season stood at 1-3 with a loss to Akron tucked in, who but those with Northwestern football lockers knew the thing could veer all the way to a storybook November catch in Iowa? When Pitt’s season stood at 2-3 with obliterations by Penn State and UCF and the only loss anybody has taken all season to North Carolina, who but the Panthers knew the ride could reach November as a rushing machine destroying the two Virginias? And when Herman Edwards’s Arizona State dipped to 3-4 after opening headily at 2-0, who knew?
“I don’t want it to be remembered as my play. I want it to be remembered as a great team win, because that’s what it was.”
So said the Northwestern receiver Bennett Skowronek, after his brilliant, lunging, left-armed, 32-yard touchdown catch with 9:27 left pushed the Wildcats ahead of Iowa for good by 14-10, which became the very November final score. This seems an opportune time to remember that on Sept. 16, not that long ago, Akron cornerback Alvin Davis returned interceptions 97 and 50 yards for touchdowns while his teammate, a linebacker gloriously named Ulysees (Gilbert III), scored on your basically sad zero-yard fumble “return.” Those things fed Akron’s 36-point second half, more points than it has scored in any entire Football Bowl Subdivision game this season.
Yet Northwestern sustained football operations against the better judgment of many, and on Dec. 1, it will turn up in Indianapolis opposite either Ohio State or Michigan, which Northwestern led 17-0 on Sept. 29 before fading 20-17, its lone Big Ten loss somehow.
“Yeah, that’s just persistence.”
So said Pitt Coach Pat Narduzzi on Saturday, six weeks after Pitt finished getting stomped 45-14 at UCF on Sept. 29, the 17th of UCF’s 22 straight wins.
After four wins plus a narrow loss at No. 3 Notre Dame, a 229-yard rushing game from Darrin Hall on Nov. 2 against Virginia, a 235-yard rushing game from Qadree Ollison last week in the 52-22 romp past Virginia Tech, a 186-yard rushing game from Hall against Virginia Tech and a position needing a win over Wake Forest on Saturday to reach the ACC title game against Clemson, Narduzzi told reporters, “Iron sharpens iron, and I think that’s really where our kids are.”
“Don’t lose sight of this: We’re playing because we’re building something.”
So said Edwards last Saturday, a reminder that nobody knows what iron-sharpening goes on behind the scenes. So Arizona State’s fine three-game rebound through Southern Cal, Utah and UCLA made its way to something considerable: the 15-play, 80-yard, eight-minute, fourth-quarter drive that pretty much clinched the eventual 31-28 win over UCLA.
Last Saturday night, Dabo Swinney, the decorated Clemson coach with a national title, a national runner-up finish and still another playoff berth, went to a corner of Alumni Stadium at Boston College to greet the gathered Clemson travelers in the stands.
Ten years prior, a Clemson team limping along at 3-4 went to that very stadium with an interim coach in his second game. It led 17-0. Then it trailed 21-17. Then with momentum clearly getting spiteful, the future NFL player C.J. Spiller returned the ensuing kickoff 64 yards to the Boston College 15-yard line. Clemson won 27-21, and had it not, might the interim Coach Swinney have met the ax? Instead, here they were 10 years on: 10-0 this year, 50-4 across the last four seasons, 82-11 across the last seven.
So on one side of an interview room there’s Jackson Carman, a prized 6-foot-6 lineman from Ohio, saying, “I really do think we are held to a higher standard in everything we do, whether it’s, like, picking up the trash after we leave the movie theater, or whether it’s finishing through the whistle on drills.”
On the other side, there’s Tanner Muse, a safety from North Carolina, saying, “It’s kind of like when you sign the dotted line, you know you’re coming to a great program, but this has been beyond belief from what you signed up for. And it’s awesome.” Still, 50-4 is “unrealistic, to be honest with you. I mean, it just sounds like a game, a PlayStation game.”