The hardest thing for a coach who has had success working within a particular football paradigm is addressing the need for a major change. Those who are able to break out of their comfort zones and evolve tend to succeed. Those who choose to be stubborn when all the evidence suggests their core philosophy isn't working anymore get stuck having the same debates year after year until fans start demanding something new.

The need for Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio to do something dramatically different with the Spartans’ offense is not something that would have taken a football genius to figure out.

Since ranking 11th nationally in total offense in 2014, the Spartans have finished 73rd, 75th, 91st and 117th in each successive year. Inside the Michigan State football building, that trend should have been handled with the urgency of a five-alarm fire heading into 2019. Instead, Dantonio tried to put it out with a garden hose.

Instead of bringing in new people with fresh ideas, Dantonio just reshuffled the deck, moving quarterbacks coach Brad Salem to offensive coordinator, demoting but keeping Dave Warner and reassigning former co-offensive coordinator Jim Bollman to the offensive line.

When you promise fans something new and different — and it's not really that new or different — they have a right to be upset. After Saturday’s 10-7 loss to Arizona State, which became a rather egregious coaching debacle at the end, it appears Michigan State is going to waste a potentially elite defense yet again with an offense that struggles to make big plays or sustain long drives.

When you lose because of three missed field goals, the last of which would have been good if not for a 12-men-on-the-field penalty that backed you up, it’s a coaching problem. When you could have taken a shot to the end zone before the kick but didn’t, it's a coaching problem. When you lose because you wasted a timeout on Arizona State’s last-gasp fourth-and-13 trying to get your defense organized and still didn’t get a stop, it's a coaching problem. When you lose because you haven’t developed or recruited a quarterback that can win you these kinds of games, that’s a coaching problem, too.

What used to work so well for the Spartans is no longer getting the job done. Fans can see that so clearly now, and yet the coach who will leave as the winningest in school history doesn’t seem terribly interested in addressing it. Until that changes, Michigan State will be a viable candidate for the Misery Index, a weekly measurement of knee-jerk reactions based on what each fan base just watched.

FOUR MORE IN MISERY

UCLA: Circle Oct. 5 on your calendar. That’s the day UCLA hosts Oregon State at the Rose Bowl in a game that could have humongous Misery Index implications. The loser could very well lay claim to the title of worst Power Five team in the country. Has there ever been a coaching hire as celebrated as Chip Kelly that has gone so poorly this far into the second year? UCLA’s 48-14 loss to Oklahoma on Saturday wasn’t at all a surprise, but that’s kind of the problem. Where's the hope? Where’s the progress? UCLA has scored 14 points in each of its three games this season, and quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson just looks way too limited to take the Bruins where they need to go. (In addition to two interceptions, he was sacked four times, and it felt like his entire night was third-and-long.) UCLA has too much invested in Kelly to pull the plug, but the emotional investment of the fans is basically gone already. The Rose Bowl is going to be a ghost town the rest of this season and maybe beyond unless the Bruins show signs of life. With a potential 1-11 or 2-10 season in the offing, it’s hard to blame them.

Georgia Tech: In the big picture, there’s no real surprise about the Yellow Jackets struggling on offense. When you're completely overhauling a program that was built around Paul Johnson’s flexbone option, there is no quick way to fix the personnel issues inherent to such a dramatic system change. Both the Georgia Tech fanbase and first-year coach Geoff Collins knew that going in. But when part of that process is losing to an FCS team — and particularly one like The Citadel, which reminded Tech fans just how effective the option can be — doing something new seems like a whole lot less fun. After Saturday’s 27-24 overtime loss, it’s clear Georgia Tech is going to be very difficult to watch this year. Particularly at quarterback and offensive line, the personnel parts are mismatched for the offense Georgia Tech is trying to run, and that’s going to take a lot of time and recruiting to fix. Tech had the ball for just 18 minutes against The Citadel and ranks 122nd out of 130 FBS teams in total offense. It’s very possible the 1-2 Jackets won't win another game this year.

Kentucky: The recent history of this football program has largely been defined by one particular rival and the numerous, confounding ways in which it has lost to that rival. That, of course, would be Florida, whose mysterious dominance over Kentucky for 31 consecutive years served as an overarching Sisyphean metaphor for the Wildcats’ struggle to make themselves relevant in the SEC. Many of those 31 losses were unlucky close calls or epic choke jobs by Kentucky, so when the Wildcats emphatically broke through in 2018 with an emphatic 27-16 win in Gainesville, their fans might have hoped the karma worm was turning. One year later, though, we’re right back where we were. It’s hard to actually find a real good reason for why Kentucky lost to Florida 29-21, other than it’s Kentucky-Florida. The Wildcats were the better team most of the game, held the ball for 35 minutes, led 21-10 late in the third quarter and were facing a backup quarterback down the stretch after Feleipe Franks suffered a likely season-ending ankle injury. But over the last 15 minutes, Kentucky did everything wrong (including a missed 35-yard field goal with 54 seconds left that would've likely won the game) and Florida did pretty much everything right, which is as big of a tribute to the history of this series as the Wildcats could have authored.

Iowa State: It’s one thing to love football and devote a whole day to watching it. It's another to love it so much that you’ll spend hundreds of dollars and at least five or six hours at a stadium while enduring endless hassles from traffic to bathroom lines to overpriced hot dogs. But there's yet a third level of fandom for those willing to stick it out even in severe weather delays, literally risking life and limb outdoors in aluminum and metal-laden stadiums because they’d rather root for their football team than head home like a rational person. Sorry, but for those Iowa State fans who stayed through hail and lightning delays and a frustrating, mistake-filled game that took six hours to complete, watching it end with an 18-17 Iowa win couldn’t have been worth the effort. Especially when the Cyclones were poised for one last chance with 1:29 remaining, only to see two of their special teams players run into each other trying to field a punt, fumbling it back to Iowa to end the game. As a fan, that's the kind of day that will make you appreciate watching from your living room.

TRENDING TOWARD MISERY

Pittsburgh: There is no explanation for Pat Narduzzi opting for a 19-yard field goal instead of going for a fourth-and-goal from the 1 when trailing Penn State by a touchdown with five minutes left other than being scared of catching heat if it didn’t work. But why? Fans will forgive coaching to win as long as the odds make sense. What they won't tolerate is making a down-and-distance call that makes no sense to anybody, then trying to defend it in his postgame press conference rather than just owning the mistake. Pitt had a real chance to beat the Nittany Lions on Saturday, but Narduzzi refused to grab the chance when it was served up to him on a platter.

USC: There’s an emotional numbness for fans after losing a game that will help their long-term goal of a coaching change. That inevitability only became more apparent with a 30-27 loss at BYU as the Trojans head into their most difficult schedule stretch of the season with Utah, Washington and Notre Dame coming up. In other words, there’s little point in complaining about how USC played or how Clay Helton coached. If the end is coming anyway, why worry about it one way or the other?

Illinois: Very few people outside of athletics director Josh Whitman thought it was a good idea to hire Lovie Smith, not because he’s a bad coach but because it felt like reaching for a big name without the relevant college experience it would require to fix a program as massively broken as Illinois. And so far, it’s going about as expected. Smith is 11-28, and his team in Year 4 is once again on a losing trajectory after stumbling at home against Eastern Michigan 34-31. What do you even do with Illinois football at this point? They haven’t had a winning season since Ron Zook.

Boston College: Maybe one day in the near future, it won't be so bad to lose to Kansas. But as of right now, you really don't want to be the team that loses to Kansas. And the Eagles didn’t just lose Friday, they got absolutely crushed 48-24 at home, taking a lot of the starch out of their promising 2-0 start to the season. The Boston College defense, typically pretty salty, allowed 567 yards (329 rushing) to a Kansas team that scored just seven points against Coastal Carolina one week earlier and had lost 48 in a row on the road to Power Five teams. Just a confusing, weird, disturbing performance all around for the Eagles and one that Steve Addazio hopes his fans will quickly forget.

Minnesota: It’s difficult for a 3-0 team to make an appearance in the Misery Index, but the Gophers might be the shakiest and most fraudulent 3-0 in college football history. In Week 1, they needed a touchdown with 5:39 left to nip South Dakota State. In Week 2, they scored with 46 seconds left at Fresno State to send the game to overtime before winning 38-35. Then Saturday, Minnesota looked all but beaten until it finished a 13-play, 75-yard drive with 13 seconds left to beat Georgia Southern 35-32. That’s three late comeback wins by a total of 13 points, which is certainly better than the alternative but not a sustainable way to live. Is it too much for fans to ask for games that don’t give them heart palpitations?

FIVE TOTALLY REAL AND IRRATIONAL MESSAGE BOARD THREADS

“Coach D, welcome to the hot seat” - Spartan Tailgate

“Win or lose we still booze” - Cyclone Fanatic

“Coach Collins is Butch Jones 2.0” - StingTalk

“One step closer to an Urban renewal” - WeAreSC

“UK fans thinking backup QBs have magical powers is the most UK fan thing ever” - Cats Illustrated