COOPER CANNED
It seems the rumors I heard while back in cental Ohio
over the holidays were true.
John Cooper "led" my alma mater to yet another season ending
loss and
has been fired as the coach of the Ohio State football team.
He was 113-43-4 overall in his 13 seasons at OSU, but was
2-10-1 against Michigan and 3-8 in bowl games. You don't
survive forever at OSU by not winning against Michigan and in
bowl games.
He's had as much talent in the 90s as anybody except for maybe
the big three Florida teams, a fact reflected in his 108-25-1 record
if you subtract the 5-18-1 record he had in the last two games of
the season. And although the Michigan and bowl things contributed quite a bit to his dismissal, there are three games that almost surely sealed his fate. The first was his
home loss to 17-point underdog Michigan State in 1998 with
perhaps the most talented OSU team to ever hit the field.
That team was so good it could phone in entire halves of games
and still win, but unfortunately it phoned in well over three quarters
against MSU.
The next nail in his coffin was the Minnesota game this season.
His team had just pounded Wisconsin at their place to avenge an
embarassing home loss the previous year, and headed home for
a homecoming game against a team that hadn't beat them at
Ohio Stadium since 1949. Three quarters worth of phoning this
one in led to a 29-17 loss that dropped them from the undefeated
ranks and out of the top 10. He also lost to Michigan at home and
at Purdue in the regular season, but the team was out of zombie
mode for about two quarters against Michigan and played well the
whole game against Purdue.
The last nail was pounded in yesterday at the Outback Bowl,
where his team never got out of the phone booth in a 24-7
loss to a South Carolina team that had gone 0-11 the previous
year and that had suspended its best running back for the game.
I figured Lou Holtz would outcoach him and maybe even eke out
a win with his less physically talented yet infinitely more motivated
team, but I didn't expect to see OSU sleepwalk through the entire
game, running the plays in the game misplan as if they were involved in some half-speed practice session.
In other words, Cooper couldn't even motivate his team with his job on the line.
I've been following OSU football since the first game I can remember
in 1969, and I can't remember a game in which the team was
more ill-prepared and less motivated than in the Outback Bowl
yesterday. I was so furious after one mechanical three-and-out
series in the second half that I had to take my dog for walkies
to calm down. After the game I sent an email to the OSU athletic
director requesting that they find someone who could motivate
a starving dog to eat a raw steak to replace a man who
apparently can't. I additionally suggested that digging up the bones
of Woody Hayes and propping them up on the sidelines would
be an improvement over the present situation.
Sure, I know (in the words of a classic 70s TV commercial) that
it's only a dart game, but I'll be damned if dart games don't still
manage to piss me off now and then.
posted by Steven Baum
1/2/2001 02:12:27 PM |
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