The Misery Index Week 2: Agony in Austin

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY Sports

The misery for Texas fans essentially began on Monday, during the second half of quarterback Jameis Winston's spectacular debut for Florida State. Some old quotes from Winston began circulating on Twitter in which he had once said he wanted to play for Texas but that the Longhorns didn't recruit him.

Fair or not – and we'll address that in a second – those were dangerous words for Texas coach Mack Brown because they seemed to fortify the easy narrative around the program's recent slide. Texas didn't want in-state kids Robert Griffin III, Andrew Luck or Johnny Manziel when they were in high school, and now here was more evidence of ineptitude, arrogance or flat-out incompetence.

Makes sense, right?

Of course, recruiting is ridiculously nuanced. It is an industry built on misinformation and agendas. And it's also difficult. If it was so easy to identify what kind of quarterback Griffin was going to be, why did he end up committing to Houston, then following Art Briles to Baylor and what was the worst program in the Big 12 at the time? Until Chip Kelly identified Manziel as a guy who could run his unique system at Oregon, he was viewed regionally as more of a Conference USA prospect than a guy who could win in the Big 12 or SEC.

You could name 20 major schools who recruit the state of Texas and missed on those guys, but with as many arrows as Brown is taking, he made the somewhat surprising choice this week to address the Winston issue head-on. He said he knew of Winston's interest in the Longhorns, then referenced a "source" who told him they shouldn't waste their time because Winston was really down to Florida State and Alabama.

Maybe Brown should have just avoided the conversation altogether.

The truth is, Texas declines to recruit players all the time – not always because they're not viewed as good enough for the Longhorns but because gauging legitimate interest is tricky. A lot of players want to be recruited by Texas, but the key for Brown and his staff is figuring out which ones actually want to come or just want to be wooed and take a visit to Austin.

It may sound silly, but for a recruit, having Texas on your "offer list" is like landing on Park Place in Monopoly. Even if you don't really want it, it's worth a lot.

Is it reasonable to believe that Brown investigated the Winston situation and decided that Texas, at the end of the day, wasn't going to land a highly-ranked quarterback from Hueytown, Ala.? Absolutely. The Longhorns don't engage in a ton of recruiting battles with the SEC, and this was going to be a vicious one between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher. If Brown invested time in recruiting Winston and he ended up going to Florida State or Alabama anyway, it would be a huge waste. Those kinds of decisions happen all the time.

It is possible, of course, that Brown's intel was wrong and Texas had a legitimate chance to get Winston. Maybe he was right. We'll never know.

But watching the Longhorns lose 40-21 at BYU on Saturday, it's pretty clear the quarterback recruiting issue is a red herring.

This was a total program failure, and Texas' turmoil is far more prevalent on the defensive side. The Longhorns surrendered 550 rushing yards to BYU. Five hundred and fifty. That's impossible for anyone, much less a team with nine returning starters on defense, pretty much all of whom were blue-chip recruits. Heck, that's almost a month of offense sometimes for BYU, a team that hasn't been able to throw the ball at all the last couple years.

In other words, the Misery Index was made for days like today, when Texas fans are ready to fire everyone and start over.

(Disclaimer: This isn't a ranking of worst teams, worst losses or coaches whose jobs are in the most jeopardy. This is simply a measurement of a fan base's knee-jerk reaction to what they last saw. The way in which a team won or lost, expectations vis-à-vis program trajectory and traditional inferiority complex of fan base all factor into this ranking.)

1. Texas: As noted above, this isn't just a quarterback issue. This is unacceptable stuff all around. Brown spent the entire spring and summer touting the Longhorns being on a trajectory back to the nation's elite, and now it's all come crashing down in Week 2. Yeah, in theory, this can be fixed. But a culture of negativity around Texas has been closing in for awhile now, and fans are not going to forgive another bad season. The way that defense played against BYU is frightening, and now they have to face Hugh Freeze and Ole Miss, who will try to run 100 plays and make Longhorns defenders tackle in space. If Texas loses this one – and that's a very real possibility – watch out.

2. USC: A couple years ago, whenever Lane Kiffin's obvious shortcomings as a head coach were brought up, Trojans fans pointed to the five-star recruits he was reeling in and said, "Wait and see." A lot of the media bought in, too. One poll even had USC ranked No. 1 in the preseason last year. But whenever Kiffin's miserable tenure ends, hopefully we can retire the idea that someone needs only to be a good recruiter to be a head coach. It doesn't work that way. It's never worked that way and never will. Competence matters. Despite whatever scholarship limitations or NCAA sanctions Kiffin inherited, none of it was worse than the mess Mike Leach took over at Washington State. And all it took was the second game of his second season for Leach's program to beat Kiffin's. According to multiple reports, chants of "Fire Kiffin!" echoed through Los Angeles Coliseum as the Trojans lost 10-7 to Washington State. USC fans now realize that while recruiting matters, competence matters more

3. Florida: It's not so much that Will Muschamp is now 19-9 as the head coach, it's that the Gators look bad even when they win. At no point last season did the eye test tell you Florida should be an 11-1 team, and yet somehow at the end of the year that's exactly what their record was and you could have made an argument that the Gators overall collection of wins was better than Alabama's. But the weird mojo that allowed them to overcome the fact that they are pretty mediocre at quarterback and receiver was bound to run out at some point, and it did Saturday. In fact, the Gators got reverse mojo'd in Miami. They had the ball for 38 minutes, out-gained the Hurricanes 413-212 and held Miami to 1-of-11 on third down. But penalties and turnovers – five of the latter – pretty much ruined all that. Florida fans barely get enthused for anything less than a national championship, so this is shaping up to be a pretty dreary fall in Gainesville.

4. UConn: The Huskies didn't play this week, which may actually be good for the team coming off a 33-18 loss to Towson in the opener. But for fans, that's two weeks to stew over UConn's lot in life and dread what's coming next Saturday when their old coach, Randy Edsall, brings Maryland into East Hartford. That's a whole lot of negative rolled into the first week of September.

5. Michigan State: Upon further review, omitting the Spartans from the top-10 last week was a major oversight. Sparty fan, we have heard you loud and clear. Moreover, after watching Saturday's 21-6 win over South Florida, we commiserate with your predicament. Not only do you have a humorless coach void of any semblance of personality, but your team's offense is a dumpster fire. Three quarterbacks played against South Florida and they combined for 94 passing yards – a not-so-robust 3.9 yards per attempt against a team that just got blown out by McNeese State. Michigan State is 2-0, but you get the feeling if they can't find a way to fix the offense, this season is going to go the wrong way.

6. Georgia: Tumbling from No. 1 last week, it will take a lot more than a 41-30 victory against South Carolina to cure all the misery in Georgia. To that point, after getting in the car late Saturday night after filing our dispatch on the game, one needed only to turn on sports talk radio for 30 seconds to find a fan ranting about how defensive coordinator Todd Grantham should be fired. Yes, that really happened.

7. Notre Dame: Reasonable Irish fans will understand that a game like this was bound to happen, that the lucky breaks and bad calls were bound to go against them at some point, that Michigan is a pretty good team, that … wait a second. There are no reasonable Irish fans. So, by all means, let's roll with it. The defensive line is overrated! The secondary hasn't progressed! Tommy Rees isn't the guy! Brian Kelly has anger management issues! Feel better now?

8. Purdue: The Boilermakers were life-or-death to hold off Indiana State on Saturday, 20-14, which is bad enough on its own. But this was the same Indiana State team that lost 73-35 to Indiana in Week 1, and Indiana followed that up with a 41-35 loss to Navy. Transitive property is a dangerous thing, but a pattern is emerging here. Purdue isn't very good, and here are its next six games: Notre Dame, at Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, Nebraska, at Michigan State, Ohio State. Good luck, Darrell Hazell. Good luck.

9. Oklahoma State:Reports started circulating Saturday that Sports Illustrated is poised to publish an investigative piece on the Cowboys' program. How bad is it? Nobody knows for sure, but Oklahoma State preemptively issued a statement trying to mitigate the damage. So did other schools who now employ assistant coaches from the era in question (mostly 2001-07). It's pretty unusual for multiple schools to react to something they have not yet read, but administrators talk to each other and Oklahoma State probably has a general idea at this point what's in the story. It's ominous, that's for sure. And especially at an Oklahoma State program that is 51-16 the past six seasons under Mike Gundy. Hold on tight, Cowboys fans!

10. Alabama: Tide fans have had a week to digest the 35-10 victory over Virginia Tech, and it still doesn't look any better. You think Alabama fans are spoiled? The concern over this team is real. It's ridiculous, but real. Expect a lot of teeth-gnashing this week leading up to the "Game Of The Year."

Also receiving votes but not quite miserable enough: Iowa, SMU, Missouri, Southern Miss, South Florida, Nebraska, West Virginia.

Dan Wolken, a national college football reporter for USA TODAY Sports, is on Twitter @DanWolken.