Misery Index Week 1: Florida falls even further with listless loss to Utah

The recently released Netflix documentary "Swamp Kings" is an interesting and relevant place to start the Misery Index in 2023. 

Though the series has been panned by critics for leaving out most of the bad off-field stuff that happened at Florida under Urban Meyer, it’s a satisfying piece of nostalgia for Gators fans because it reminds them of what the program is capable of when firing on all cylinders. The culture of the program might have been one of the seamiest and phoniest in the history of college football, but winning two national championships in a span of three years has a lot more resonance in the memory bank than the arrests and other bad behavior that was minimized under the Meyer regime. 

What would Florida fans give to go back to those days? Would they give up their boats? Their houses? Their vacations? Family members they don’t like? Maybe family members they do like.

The limits of that desperation are expanding week by week. 

After an offseason of hype about internal improvement and an uptick in recruiting, the Gators went to No. 14 Utah on Thursday night and showed their fans that they are still a bad football team that isn't even close to waking the echoes of those "Swamp Kings" days.

Florida’s 24-11 loss was alarming in many ways, but especially on offense where the Gators went 1-for-13 on third down and were never close at any point in the game despite holding a Utah team dealing with injuries to 270 yards.

In college football, you generally know what you have in a coach by Year 2. There are exceptions, but the second year is when the culture should start to take hold and the improvement should be noticeable. 

It’s only one game, sure, but the opener of Billy Napier’s second year was so unimpressive that his $31.9 million buyout is now a topic of conversation in Gator land coming off the back of a 6-7 debut season. At some point, though, is it the coach or is it the school? 

Will Muschamp didn’t work. Jim McElwain didn’t work. Dan Mullen didn't work. And now there are questions whether Napier is going to work. 

"Swamp Kings" may have reminded Florida fans what was possible under a very specific set of circumstances and one of the great coaches in college football history, but the list of hires that followed Meyer suggests what’s real: It’s not an easy place to win. 

And that’s why Florida leads the Week 1 Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst about the state of their favorite program. 

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Four more in misery

Boston College

They were a pandemic sensation, somehow navigating the entire 2020 season with just one case of COVID-19. Back then, it seemed almost impossible and worthy of recognition, as strange as it may seem now. But it also might help explain how the Eagles overachieved in Jeff Hafley's first season as head coach by going 6-5, including a strong 5-5 record in the ACC. 

In retrospect, a lot of the sports anomalies from 2020 might well be explained one way or another by looking through the COVID prism. It’s possible Boston College won a few extra games because it had healthy players while most football teams were struggling to put their full teams on the field week in and week out, much less trying to navigate practice. 

Either way, the Eagles have dropped off a cliff since then. They went 4-12 in the ACC in 2021 and 2022, won just three games last season and opened 2023 with a ghastly 27-24 overtime loss to a Northern Illinois team that also went 3-9 last year. 

Hafley, the 44-year-old former Ohio State offensive coordinator with an NFL background, came out of the pandemic looking like a future star. Now he looks like a guy struggling to keep his career afloat in an impossibly difficult job. 

Boise State

Some Broncos fans were ready to give up on Andy Avalos last season after a 2-2 start, which included a really bad loss at Texas-El Paso. But somehow Boise State got its act together in Mountain West play, got to the conference championship game and posted a decent 10-4 season. 

But here’s the problem with Boise State. The days of being college football’s ultimate disruptor are probably over. The sport is so different now than it was even 10 years ago. There’s certainly a path for future Boise State teams to get into the expanded College Football Playoff that will start next season, but the Boise brand was built on transcending its league affiliation and going toe-to-toe with the power conference teams it would play anywhere and any time. 

The Broncos’ 56-19 loss to Washington flies in the face of that tradition. Boise State allowed too many big plays, was minus-2 in the turnover department and gave up 568 total yards because it couldn't defend Washington's passing game. 

That's nothing to be shamed about because Washington is very good and has an elite quarterback in Michael Penix. But when the entire narrative around your program is built on thriving in these kinds of games, losing by 37 points is about as dispiriting a way to start the season as they could have imagined. 

Purdue

The first year for any new coach, much less the first game, shouldn’t mean a whole lot in a sane world. But this is the decidedly insane world of college football, so early impressions of 37-year-old Ryan Walters are going to be overly scrutinized − including the one Purdue left in a 39-35 loss to Fresno State.

Walters got his start as a secondary coach, then the defensive coordinator for Missouri and Purdue. Hiring him was essentially Purdue's way of zagging after the offensive-heavy era led by Jeff Brohm, who bolted to Louisville. But hiring a defensive-minded guy is tricky when the defense isn't good. And Purdue's was really bad Saturday, giving up 371 passing yards and allowing 11 third down conversions on 17 attempts. With the game on the line late, Purdue couldn’t stop Fresno from driving 79 yards and scoring on a 22-yard touchdown pass with just under a minute left. 

Walters is a long-term, upside bet for Purdue. But if the defense isn’t better than this, his first year is going to put him under pressure relatively quickly. 

Baylor

It’s impossible to dislike Bears coach Dave Aranda. He’s highly intelligent, classy, understated and authentic. He’s not an attention seeker. He wants to develop players but also people. If there were a straw poll on college football coaches most likely to quote Kirkegaard, nobody else but Aranda would receive a vote. Having said that, you can't lose to Texas State. And Baylor lost its opener to Texas State 42-31 while kind of getting dominated by an in-state program with a 34-year-old head coach in G.J. Kinne. 

Aranda earned a huge benefit of the doubt with Baylor fans by winning the Big 12 and the Sugar Bowl in 2021, but last year’s 6-7 record was a disappointment given that the Bears were picked to win the conference again. A few of those losses were brutally close, and you can argue that it would have been a pretty good season with a little luck. 

But once you lose to Texas State, all of that flies out the window. Baylor’s underachievement is beginning to look like a trend, and there will be some major questions to answer in the weeks ahead. 

Miserable but not miserable enough

Arizona State

Self-imposing a postseason ban for NCAA violations in this environment was a puzzling move by the Sun Devils administration, particularly when the NCAA doesn't seem interested in handing out that kind of punishment anymore. But maybe Arizona State went overboard in falling on the sword for violations under the Herm Edwards regime because Edwards left first-year coach Kenny Dillingham a program in complete disarray. If the Sun Devils are really as inept as they looked in squeezing out a 24-21 win over Southern Utah, playing in a bowl game this year would be the least of their worries. 

Nebraska

It’s a new era in Lincoln under Matt Rhule, but the horror show of late-game meltdowns lingers like an unbreakable curse. The Huskers did some things well against Minnesota but blew their opener, 13-10, after an Anthony Grant fumble and a Jeff Sims interception on their final two drives. Minnesota took advantage of both, scoring a touchdown to tie with 2:32 remaining and then hitting a 47-yard field goal at the buzzer to win. There should still be plenty of confidence that Rhule is going to turn this around after the disastrous Scott Frost era, but Week 1 was pretty much a repeat of the way Frost lost 22 one-score games in his five seasons.

Michigan

The three-game suspension imposed on Jim Harbaugh for recruiting violations that were committed during the COVID dead period is absolutely meaningless in the big picture. Ranked No. 2, Michigan is going to be just fine against this series of overmatched opponents, and by the end of the month we will all forget this happened. But Michigan’s offensive players came out for the first snap paying tribute by holding up four fingers to represent the number Harbaugh wore as a player. Hey guys, he didn’t die. He broke NCAA rules and is serving a relatively meaningless punishment. It’s going to be fine.

Arkansas State

The proud tradition of a program that won or played for a Sun Belt title in six out of eight seasons between 2011 and 2018 is now a distant memory. And the person getting the blame is Butch Jones, whose record is 5-20 after a 73-0 loss at Oklahoma. Let’s be clear, nobody would have expected the Red Wolves to win that game in any era. But to get beat that badly and score no points while gaining just 208 yards indicates that the program is in terrible shape. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a team that went 1-7 in conference each of the last two seasons. Jones, who landed at Arkansas State after getting fired from Tennessee, might be at the end of the line as a head coach. 

Navy

Since there was no Misery Index for Week 0, we must acknowledge Navy’s 42-3 loss to Notre Dame last week in its opener. The Midshipmen were playing their first game without Ken Niumatalolo as head coach since 2008, and it clearly did not go well. That’s partly because Notre Dame is a very good team, but also because it’s getting more difficult to compete as a service academy the same way it once did. Navy can’t rely on the transfer portal, it doesn’t have the booster base to be a player in name, image and likeness and the relatively new rules on cut blocking make it tougher to run the triple option. Brian Newberry, the first-year coach, clearly has his work cut out for him. 

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