When the last decade of college football officially ended on Jan. 13, 2020, Dabo Swinney was still relatively upbeat. His Clemson team had just been beaten soundly by LSU in the College Football Playoff championship game, but the mood wasn’t morose. Not only had Clemson run up against a historically great team that night, but Swinney’s program felt so established and sound that it would have been impossible to imagine anything going wrong. 

“It wasn’t our night, but man, what an unbelievable year,” he said. “What an unbelievable decade, to be honest with you. Just an unbelievable decade. Excited about starting this new one.” 

Clemson wasn’t the program of the 2010s – that would, of course, be Alabama – but it was clearly next in line. Two national titles, two more runner-up finishes and a record of 101-12 over an eight-year stretch had stamped Clemson as a dominant force and made Swinney one of the more compelling figures in the sport. 

Had he retired from coaching that night or gone to the NFL, the statue would have already been built. But with Swinney having just turned 50 at that time, why wouldn’t he be excited about the next decade of Clemson football? He had a hot program, a fully devoted fan base and all the resources he could have asked for right there in his own little upstate South Carolina kingdom.

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So what has changed? As we now sit here in 2023, Clemson is an ugly 4-4 after losing 24-17 at North Carolina State. Swinney has resorted to lashing out at angry fans about jumping off the bandwagon and lecturing them about how hard it is to win. And he doesn’t seem to have many answers for why his program has fallen apart so dramatically. 

“I don’t understand why some of the things have happened the way they’ve happened,” Swinney told reporters on Saturday. “It’s been bizarre. It’s probably the best word I can say.”

Is it really that bizarre, though? 

From where the Misery Index sits, Clemson’s issues are pretty simple: They aren’t that talented.

Swinney may be referring to the fact that three of Clemson’s losses have been very close, including two in overtime. But even if you could flip the result of those three games, does anyone look at Clemson and see a team that could contend nationally or compete in the playoff the way it did consistently for six consecutive seasons? 

Where are the game-breaking receivers like Mike Williams, Tee Higgins and Hunter Renfrow? Where are the multi-talented running backs who could stress your defense like Travis Etienne and Wayne Gallman? After maximizing generational quarterbacks in Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence, why has Clemson seemingly missed on their successors? 

The big-time playmakers just aren’t there. 

Is that a result of NIL making it easier for non-traditional schools to compete for talent? Is it Swinney’s reluctance to fill roster holes by using the transfer portal? Did Clemson’s knack for finding hidden gems in recruiting just dry up overnight? 

It’s probably all of that, along with some arrogance and a failure to recognize how quickly the sport was changing around them. 

But there’s no mistaking it now: After a couple seasons where they were still good but clearly trending in the wrong direction, the Clemson program Swinney built is really broken. It wasn’t a fluke when Clemson became a national title contender, and this isn’t a fluke, either. It’s the result of mistakes and neglect that have added up over years, and it should be obvious now that Swinney needs a hard reset. 

As proud and stubborn as he has always been, is Swinney even capable of a full overhaul at this stage of his career? He better be because right now Clemson is just another mediocre ACC program, which is why it ranks No. 1 in this week’s Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst. 

Four more in Misery

Maryland

The archive of great Maryland football seasons is so short and the list of indignities so long that it’s pretty difficult to affect the sensibilities of this fan base. Even if there’s rarely overwhelming joy, Maryland fans are fully capable of enjoying a good year where you win the games you’re supposed to win and go to a nice bowl game. 

But Mike Locksley’s program is struggling to even deliver that because of its penchant for starting seasons fast before falling apart. In 2021, Maryland was 4-0 before losing six of its next seven. Last year, Maryland was 6-2 before dumping three in a row. And this season, the Terps weren’t just 5-0, they were crushing people in a way that suggested this might be the best Maryland team in 20 years. 

Now? It looks like the same old story. Maryland’s October nightmare has included a 20-point loss to Ohio State (OK, no big deal), a three-point home loss to Illinois (not good) and now a 33-27 road loss to a Northwestern team that was 1-11 last year and has an interim coach (five-alarm fire time).

With Penn State and Michigan still to play, plus road trips to Nebraska and Rutgers, Maryland is probably going to be an underdog every game the rest of the way. That’s not something fans could have or should have envisioned when they were undefeated just a month ago. 

Pittsburgh

The Panthers are one of the worst teams in the Power Five, which is a big surprise considering considering their 20-7 record over the last two years and Pat Narduzzi’s proven ability to at least put a decent product on the field. But the bottom really does feel like it’s falling out after a 58-7 loss to Notre Dame that dropped Pitt to 2-6. 

In his postgame news conference, Narduzzi offered what is likely the correct diagnosis about why his team is this bad: “I’ll go back, as a football coach you lose a lot of good players from a year ago and you think as a coach you’re going to replace them. And obviously we haven’t. Again, it starts with me.”

While you can give Narudzzi credit on one hand for speaking plainly and taking blame, it’s also a very bad quote because it suggests that the players he brought to Pittsburgh aren’t good enough to win. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter in terms of locker room dynamics. That sentiment isn’t going to sit well with the players, which became immediately clear by how many of them hopped on social media to amplify that quote with emojis, disappointment and sarcasm. We can all see Pitt’s players aren’t good enough to win in the ACC. The head coach saying it out loud made a bad situation that much worse. 

Houston

Despite the one-off results you often see in bowls or non-conference games, there’s a huge gulf between teams competing week-in, week-out in a power conference and those in the Group of Five. We’re seeing it now especially in the Big 12, where the four new teams are a combined 2-16 against the league’s legacy programs. As much as those schools thought they were ready for Power Five football, the results this year have provided a reality check. 

At Houston, though, reality is rarely a factor. The expectations are so high that super booster Tilman Fertitta once famously bragged that, “We did get rid of a coach (Tony Levine) that won eight games a few years ago. Don’t ever forget that.”

And when it came time to spend big on a football coach to get Houston into the Big 12, Fertitta delivered his longtime buddy Dana Holgorsen, who was undoubtedly expected to be better than 30-25 as he heads into the home stretch of his fifth season. 

But Houston’s 41-0 loss at Kansas State is the kind of result that makes you wonder if the Holgorsen era is salvageable given what Houston expects from its program and the heavy lift ahead in the Big 12. Even when Houston was in the American, Holgorsen was underperforming. Now that the Cougars are playing more good teams, they’re getting exposed and embarrassed on a regular basis. Is that normal? Yes. Is Houston’s most important fan going to be patient with that reality? Unlikely. 

Baylor

Dave Aranda is probably the most cerebral and emotionally balanced coach in college football. He says a lot of smart, thoughtful things while avoiding the typical cliches. He quotes philosophers and cares deeply about doing things the right way. His “person over player” mantra is an ideal everyone should aspire to – especially at a place like Baylor where there are deep scars from an era where character didn’t matter as much in the coaching calculus.

But being a different kind of coach and generally admirable person doesn’t resonate when you’re losing 30-18 at home to Iowa State and are in danger of missing the postseason at 3-5. When Aranda got the Baylor job, the big question mark was whether his understated personality and intellectual aura would play well as the leader of a football team. After winning the Big 12 in his second season, those fears went away. Now, though, it’s natural for fans to wonder whether a guy whose voice will peel paint off the walls is better-suited to motivate when things aren’t going well.

Is that fair? Not really. There are a lot of ways to coach football, and Aranda’s way isn’t inherently better or worse than anyone else’s way. It was certainly good enough in 2021 to be one of the best teams in the country. And nobody questions his ability to coach and scheme a defense, which has been proven at the national championship level in 2019 with LSU. 

But sports is entertainment and coaching, in many ways, is performance. The head guy is the voice and personality of an organization. And when things are going poorly, being the stereotypical ranting, raving maniac on the sideline can be more reassuring to fans than the guy who never shows any emotion. You can’t ask Aranda to be someone he’s not, but a little passion coming from the top wouldn’t hurt right now. 

Miserable but not miserable enough

Washington

The Huskies are still undefeated, but they feel like a team on borrowed time. After the remarkable win over Oregon on Oct. 14, which stamped this team as a legitimate playoff contender, Washington has backed it up by barely holding on to beat Arizona State and Stanford. When you combine that with a seven-point win over Arizona on Sept. 30, three of Washington’s last four games have been pretty unimpressive if you’re measuring whether this team is capable of winning it all. National title contenders may have one scare against a lesser opponent, but it doesn’t happen week after week. If Washington was really the dominant team its fans believed in, it would have shaken off the bad performance last week against the Sun Devils and stomped a 2-6 Stanford team. Instead, Stanford had the ball with a few minutes to go and a chance to take the lead. Had Stanford not dropped a wide-open fourth-down pass, everything might have turned out different. Instead, Washington escaped with a 42-33 win but it feels like a loss is coming around the bend. 

Oklahoma

The dream of recreating the 2000 season, when the Sooners came out of nowhere in Bob Stoops’ second year to go unbeaten and win the national championship, is now pretty much dead. Oklahoma’s 38-33 loss at Kansas, while not a catastrophe, is a dose of reality for Sooners fans who started to get excited about what this team might be capable of. In reality, though, Oklahoma’s 7-0 start was a bit of a mirage. The Sooners had pulled out a miraculous last-second win over Texas and had barely held on last week to beat Central Florida. If you believe in regression to the mean, Oklahoma had overperformed its talent level for the first two months of the season and was due for a game like this where three turnovers, 11 penalties and some bad defense in the clutch was going to spell big trouble against a good team. Oklahoma still has a chance to win the Big 12 and make the playoff, but the shine has come off a bit. This Sooners team doesn’t look like a real national title threat anymore. 

Army

After a long run of success, 2-6 Army is likely headed toward its worst season since 2015. That much seems clear after a 21-14 loss to Massachusetts. But the moment feels even more existential than that. Earlier this week, Army accepted an invitation to join the American Athletic, which is pretty much a concession from West Point’s administration that independence was not going to be a viable path in the future. And that’s a huge risk for the program. 

For a variety of reasons related mostly to recruiting, Army is the most difficult of the three service academy jobs. But playing an independent schedule gave the Black Knights some ability to balance some really difficult opponents with opponents they should beat. It’s been a good formula, especially with a terrific coach in Jeff Monken who has made Army a regular in postseason play. You don’t rock that boat unless you have to. But as tough as life has been for Army in the modern era, it’s about to get a whole lot harder starting next year. Can a team that loses to UMass possibly be ready for it? 

Tulsa

There was a very obvious coaching hire for Tulsa last December. Though he had only been a head coach for one year, former Golden Hurricane quarterback G.J. Kinne had led Incarnate Word to the FCS semifinals and was ready to make the jump to an FBS program. But Tulsa – an athletic program with a shaky administration and financial limitations – let Texas State beat them to the punch. That was probably a blessing for the 34-year old Kinne, who is 5-3 with a win over Baylor. His career seems headed for big things. It hasn’t been so great for Tulsa, which settled on 62-year old retread Kevin Wilson after a stint as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator. Wilson is a top-notch play-caller when he has talent, but he was 26-47 in his only head coaching gig at Indiana. Tulsa is an even tougher job, and it has shown in his first year. The last two weeks, Tulsa has been outscored by a combined 111-20 — not by Alabama and Georgia but by Rice and SMU.