College football’s Week 4 was busy. It didn’t have any colossal upsets, but it had some surprises and a few brushes with chaos. Here’s how the internet responded, seen through the lens of five defeated fan bases whose online scenes I’ve toured.
THIS WEEK IN SCHADENFREUDE, where Oklahoma State fans call for Mike Gundy’s mullet’s job
Also in the weekly roundup of post-Saturday internet angst: a dying man wishes for Arkansas to fire Bret Bielema, and Florida State fans want their .800-winning-percentage coach gone.
Rob Ferguson-USA TODAY Sports
Oklahoma State
Lost to TCU, 44-31, in a home upset. Someone proposed drastic consequences: the cleaving of head coach Mike Gundy’s immaculate mullet, a fixture since last year.
Let’s begin at the OrangePower.com message boards.
Okay. We get it. The Mullet took started as a joke, then took on a life of it’s own.
That’s great marketing --- when you’re undefeated and riding the crest of a popularity wave.
But now you’ve gotten you a** kicked on national tv. You were beotch-slapped by a better game day coach that took you and your team to the woodshed.
The score was closer, but the game was a disaster.
But this isn’t strictly punitive. The poster thinks Gundy could stand to focus more on other things more productive to OSU’s mission if he gets rid of the haircut:
So, it’s time to take a new focus — one on the team not on your current media popular hairstyle.
Trim the mullet. Put the attention on improving the defense instead of your hair and lifestyle. The public loves it when you’re winning, but when you’re losing -- it doesn’t care.
It was fun while it lasted, but now it’s time to cut the damn thing.
This suggestion was met with widespread agreement. One poster couldn’t believe Gundy had lost to “a stupid visor wearing mf’er” like TCU coach Gary Patterson.
Someone sums it up:
Time to be business in the front, and back.
Another Pokes fan thinks Gundy needs to stop hunting turtles.
We’ve known for a while that Gundy hunts rattlesnakes:
But a few weeks back, Gundy said he likes hunting turtles, too.
“They’re really good. When they know you get around them, they jump in the water,” Gundy said. “And so you got to kind of sneak up on them a little bit. At my place, we have quite a few of those off-road vehicles, called Gators. And so they’re accustomed to the sound of the Gator. So if you drive a Gator by, they won’t move. They’ll stay there. But if you walk up on them, you can’t very close to them because they’re too smart. They’ll jump in the water. So we used the Gators as our friend and try to keep as many turtles as we can out of the ponds because they eat your fish.”
and a lot more team preparation.
I wanna circle back to the mullet thing. So many OSU fans are directly reaching out to Gundy to tell him it’s time to get a haircut.
Here’s Gundy getting told off by a couple of fans after tweeting appreciation for a group that brings seriously ill children to sporting events:
“Be a man,” on the 10-year anniversary week of the “I’m a man” rant, no less.
Florida State
Lost 27-21 to NC State, falling to 0-2 and out of the AP Poll while the other team’s best player stopped to drop a loogie on the Noles’ logo.
The loss dropped Jimbo Fisher to a measly 78-19 at FSU, and he still has just one national title in eight-plus seasons, and there might be one, two, or even three coaches in the country slightly better than him.
Let’s see how Noles fans responded!
Here’s a gentleman screaming that Fisher’s overpaid and that his defensive coordinator, Charles Kelly, should be fired:
Let’s scoot on over to the message boards at Noles247.
So soft..not a Bowden bone in him.He’s just becoming noise.When u have more talent just play ball.why does he think he can win games 17-14 with this OL,DC and his play calling??...u just get tired watching this.
Totally inept and we will never be back to Playoffs with him. Only way to retain him is if he does what Dabo does, go get great coordinators, and then get out if their way and just be a cheerleader and recruiter. But, dumbo is to stubborn to do that,
FSU has made one of the three Playoffs that have ever been played. It’ll miss this year’s, which will drop Fisher to a mere .250 all-time Playoff participation rate.
Some people had a more pensive, chill attitude about everything.
So we suck. Who cares? Grow up.
Same:
Love reading all the meltdown threads. My favorite part is when another team has a meltdown and everyone is so quick to point and laugh like it’s beneath them. Who should we fire today fellas??? Maybe even shut program down at this point.
Boise State
Lost at home to Virginia, 42-23. Virginia! 42-23!
How does the commentariat feel about head coach Bryan Harsin, an alum who’s now fallen all the way to 40-16 all time as the Broncos’ head coach?
To Boise’s Scout.com message board we go.
for Boise State football in the 21st century or has it been worse? I am just not accustomed to seeing what I am seeing.
One message board poster, screen name zagco, had a specific demand.
Zagco is going to start a website!
Merely a half-hour after that plea, zagco said zagco was signing off altogether.
Zagco is totally done with Boise State football until Harsin is gone. No more posts.
A short while later, another board poster was offering to buy the domain name firebryanharsin.com (for 25 percent off!) if someone else on the forum agreed to help manage the page. But another poster suggested a simpler solution:
Just create a fire Bryan Harsin Facebook page. It’s free
To which the solicitor replied, “Good call.”
The Fire Harsin Facebook page doesn’t appear to be active yet. But!
That is, if they can keep Les Miles away from the Nebraska AD job.
Kentucky
Lost 28-27 to Florida when its defense literally forgot to cover a receiver. That made 31 consecutive losses to UF, many of them in painful fashion.
But was this crushing to the program?
On the one hand, there’s a thread on UK’s Rivals board that’s titled, “Last Night Not Crushing to the Program.”
On the other, there’s another thread that’s titled, “Hard to overstate how crushing this is to the program.”
Here’s an exceptionally dark metaphor about Kentucky football in general.
The fable of the turtle and the scorpion. The gist of it is the scorpion wanted to ride the turtle across the river and promised he wouldn’t sting the turtle if he gave him a ride. The turtle reluctantly agreed to take the scorpion. Halfway across the river the scorpion stings the turtle. The turtle asks, “why did you do that? Now we will both drown.” The scorpion replies, “it’s just my nature.”
The Kentucky football fans are the turtle. The football team is the scorpion. No matter how much you expect something bad to happen, you reluctantly believe everything will be fine. So you go along for the ride and get your hopes up only to have it sting you and you sink to the bottom. That is how Kentucky football feels to me.
Here’s a Reddit thread I just figured I’d drop in full.
Slightly NSFW:
Arkansas
Lost to Texas A&M in overtime, like it does every year.
One fan says his near-death grandfather wants Bret Bielema fired before he dies.
Arkansas fans are less than stoked about their head coach and athletic director.
Let’s peruse Hogville.net for a few minutes.
Replace AD Jeff Long with Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez, who has worked nowhere other than Wisconsin since 1990. It’s an airtight plan.
Fire Long. Hire Barry Alvarez. Alvarez is making $1.125 million at Wisconsin. BB can be Alvarez’s boy again, do as he is told, and regain his former level of highish mediocrity.
BB please go away. You are the worst coach we have ever had. Our program and state deserves better and Ws matter.
Also, there are multiple people worried that Arkansas will lose next weekend to New Mexico State. Yet another overtime loss to Aggies?
Is there a GoFundMe to pay Bielema’s massive buyout, currently north of $15 million?
Hell yeah there is.
The fundraiser, Austin Johnson, writes:
It’s safe to say that Bret’s time here should be over, however, Jeff Long has made this difficult with the lucrative 15.5 mil buyout, let’s end this misery ourselves
Does the GoFundMe have any actual donations?
No, of course not.
So, any other solutions to make Arkansas competitive in the SEC West?
None better than this:
