EXPOSED

Back when I worked for the Temple Daily Telegram, I got to cover Baylor football on occasion. Grant Teaff, the winningest coach in Baylor history, was head of the program then, and I got to interview him on more than one occasion. One of the classy things he did was, win or lose, after ever game he'd make the long climb up to the press box to talk with sports writers. This wasn't the formal post-game interview, mind you. That was handled down in the locker rooms. This was something extra, usually after most of the initial game stories had already been sent in. Teaff always had time for every reporter there, even a no-name like me.

When the Big 12 formed, Baylor ran him off in order to get "a real winner" who could take them "to the next level." Some Baylor die-hards will argue this point. They'll say it wasn't like that at all. They are wrong. I saw it first hand. Baylor did Teaff wrong. And since then, Baylor has wallowed in ineptitude to the point where mere mediocrity would be a welcome improvement.

Fast forward a decade. Texas A&M fired R.C. Slocum, the winningest coach in A&M history in order to get "a real winner" who could take them "to the next level." Slocum never suffered a losing season in his years at A&M. He had two 6-6 seasons, and followed up the one in 1996 with a Big 12 championship just two years later. At the time, I had grave misgivings about the move, but nobody listened to me because A&M had just hired the greatest coach in football history, Dennis Franchione, away from Alabama.

We reap what we sew sow, apparently.

In five years of Franball, A&M has lost to Baylor, lost to Oklahoma 77-0 (the worst loss in school history, mind you), lost to Cal 45-10 in the Holiday Bowl (the worst bowl loss in school history, mind you), lost to Tennessee 38-7 in the Cotton Bowl (second worst bowl loss in school history, mind you) and tonight went belly-up against a mediocre Miami team 34-17 in a game that was nowhere near as close as the final score might suggest. How bad was it? Here are some of the quotes from ESPN's game crew:

"The Miami fans were chanting 'OVERRATED' and the Aggies look overrated at no. 20. They're certainly not the 20th best team in the country."

"They burned a time out and came up with a quarterback sneak?"

"A&M is tring to run a zone defense, but no one runs it like this anymore. They are using a High School zone defense."

"The defensive line can get no penetration and the wide receivers are running free in the secondary. That's no way to coach defense."


"Wow! How good does Oklahoma look tonight after the statement that Miami has made?"

"This rout is a complete team effort by the Aggies."

For five years, the spectacularly aggressive mediocrity reined over by Coach Fran has been explained away by his supporters as R.C. Slocum's fault. "Slocum left the cupboard bare." "Slocum's players never embraced Fran's system." "Slocum let the air out of the team bus' tires." All summer I heard how great this time would be since all the players now had been recruited by Fran. All of the Slocum malcontents had left the building. Now we'd see some real team football.

Bullcrap, to coin a phrase.

Now the world knows why the option offense is an antiquated offense in 21st century college football, thanks to Miami. Of course, most observers of the game already knew this, but reenforcement never hurts. Conservative play calling when down by three touchdowns doesn't do much to rally the troops either. Nor does lecturing the fans and media how they really don't understand the complexities of football (which I haven't actually seen happen, but my gut tells me it fits the well-established pattern).

Fran has won everywhere he's coached, except for A&M. He's been given every advantage, and come up lacking. This is unacceptable. He must go. As a replacement... well, almost anyone would be an improvement, because it's damn hard to do worse than 77-0. But tapping into Slocum's legacy would be a good start, bringing in someone like Mike Sherman or Bob Davie. Or even Steve Kragthorpe or Tommy Tuberville. Just pull the trigger, the sooner the better, because this water torture has got to stop.

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