Two years ago, Northwest Ohio had college coaches named Tom Amstutz, Stan Joplin, Dan Dakich and Gregg Brandon. Also, Miley Cyrus was not a teen sensation and a gallon of gas cost … well, about the same as today. Ah, those were simpler times. Since then, Dakich, Joplin and Amstutz were kicked out of their respective offices, and with each dismissal, I was skeptical of the need to fire them.

When Gregg Brandon was fired as BGSU head coach the day after that deliciously magical 38-10 win against Toledo, it was jaw-dropping. More shocking than the Amstutz and Joplin firings combined and multiplied by pi. A 6-6 record? A bowl game last year? A three-year extension, which Brandon signed this year, completely bought out?

It was unfair that he lost his job like this. Having said that, it’s time to argue something it looks like I should have argued long ago:  Brandon deserved to be fired. His 44-30 record, while impressive on the surface, is cantilevered by those two amazing seasons from 2002 to 2003, when Brandon won two bowl games using the players recruited by his predecessor, Urban Meyer.

In the next four years, leading up to this season, his record was a perfectly average 24-24. The one bowl Brandon’s team made, you might remember, was last year when they lost to Tulsa in a closely fought 63-7 thriller.

It was the worst loss by any bowl team in any bowl game in college football history, which is rather astounding because every year there are more horrible bowl games than there are horrible reality TV shows.

This year’s 6-6 mark looks like a year that’d cause OSU or Oklahoma to can their coaches, but quite honestly BGSU should have been 9-3 or 10-2 without any leaps of faith.

Losses to Miami and Eastern Michigan absolutely should have been wins. EMU only beat two other teams, whereas Miami won one, and between the two schools only one (EMU) beat another bowl subdivision opponent (Central Michigan on Nov. 28). A game against Northern Illinois, like the EMU and Miami games, was lost after having a fourth-quarter lead. Then, of course, there was that painful double-overtime loss to Buffalo, which never should have gotten to extra time because BGSU was up 20 points in the fourth quarter.

Notice a trend? The fourth quarter was the team’s downfall. In those four games, BGSU had a combined 68 points through the first three quarters, with their opponents scoring 51. But in the fourth quarter of those games, the Falcons were outscored 64-20. And since it was discovered that the Detroit Tigers bullpen was not the cause of the collapses, this pretty much falls on the shoulders of Brandon for not preparing his team to play 60 minutes of football.

His team seemed pretty good for 48 minutes, though, which means Brandon will make some Division I  high school football team extremely happy, especially if he knows anything about Miley Cyrus.

Matt Sussman blogs at his site, http://futonreport.net/.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Futon Report, Sports.
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