Dear Mr. Football: Who is responsible for Colorado’s bid to become the second Pac-12 team in history to go 0-12?
A: CU athletic director Rick George not only hired Karl Dorrell, who had been fired after five middling seasons as UCLA’s head coach in 2007, but gave him the Pac-12’s most difficult schedule this season.
What was George thinking? He piled up CU’s non-conference schedule to include TCU, Minnesota and Air Force, who are a combined 10-1. He did not schedule rival Colorado State, 0-4, who might be the worst team in the entire FBS this season and has already lost to Middle Tennessee State and Sacramento State.
It’s the old know-who-you-are factor.
No other mid-level Pac-12 school scheduled two Power Five non-conference opponents. Stanford played Colgate. Washington State played Idaho and Colorado State. Washington loaded up on creampuffs Kent State and Portland State. Even USC played Rice.
Why does the underperforming Chip Kelly still have a job at UCLA? Because his AD gave him a non-conference schedule that included South Alabama, Bowling Green and Alabama State.
Dear Mr. Football: What are the chances Dorrell is coaching his last game at Colorado this week?
A: This is the panic-button era of college football. In the last 10 seasons, Pac-12 schools have fired 11 coaches before the season was complete.
How times change: In the 1900s, only one Pac-12 school fired a head coach in mid-season, and that was when ASU legend Frank Kush was fired after five games in 1979 — not for losing too much, but for allegedly slapping a Sun Devils punter in the face.
That was once in 100 years. Now it’s an average of more than once per year.
No multi-million dollar payoff has stopped Pac-12 ADs from the early removals Jimmy Lake, Nick Rolovich, Steve Sarkisian (twice), Gary Anderson, Clay Helton, Lane Kiffin, Herm Edwards, Mike McIntyre, Dan Hawkins, Mike Stoops or John Mackovic in the last 20 seasons.
It was just 14 years ago that Tyrone Willingham coached Washington to the league’s only 0-12 season. AD Scott Woodward waited until after an Apple Cup loss to Washington State to fire Willingham.
Maybe that’s because Woodward overscheduled the ’08 Huskies the way George has done to the ’22 Buffaloes. The ’08 Huskies played non-conference games against No. 3 Oklahoma, No, 14 BYU and Notre Dame.
Dear Mr. Football: Isn’t Arizona overscheduled, too?
A: After the CU game, the Wildcats play Oregon, Washington, USC, Utah, UCLA and WSU. Combined record: 21-3. (Those three losses were against Georgie, Florida and Oregon.)
That’s why Jedd Fisch’s club can’t possibly be overlooking Colorado. When you’ve won three times in the last 27 games, as Arizona has, you hold dear and appreciate every chance you get to play a team as hapless as the Buffaloes. If you don’t deliver your best shot, you are doomed.
Dear Mr. Football: Who benefitted from Dorrell’s firing at UCLA?
A: Arizona cornerbacks coach DeWayne Walker was UCLA’s defensive coordinator when Dorrell was fired in ’07. Walker agreed to be the Bruins’ interim head coach for the Silicon Valley Bowl, a loss to BYU.
Once Walker got attention at UCLA, he was hired to be New Mexico State’s head coach in 2009. Gulp. It proved one thing: Walker is fearless. NMSU is surely the worst FBS team in college football the last 30 years. He went 10-40 and was fired.
The man who has coached for the Patriots, Giants, Redskins, USC, BYU and Cal showed that fearlessness by agreeing to join Fisch to help Arizona from its historic collapse.
Today, he’s in a better spot than his old boss, Karl Dorrell. (Well, except for Dorrell’s guaranteed contract through 2024).
Dear Mr. Football: What’s this stuff about Colorado being in college football’s “Big Five?”
A: The Buffaloes are one of five schools to have (a) won a football national championship (1990); (b) won a Heisman Trophy (Rashaan Salaam, 1994); © has a football letterman who became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (Whizzer White) and (d) a football letterman who traveled to the moon (Jack Swigert).
The only other schools with the same credentials: Cal, Stanford, Navy and Wisconsin.
Arizona? It has Gronk, who caught a football dropped from a helicopter.
Dear Mr. Football: Who is the best player Arizona has engaged this season?
A: I’ll go with Cal’s true freshman running back Jaydn Ott, who leads the Pac-12 with 116 rushing yards per game.
Ott was so good against Arizona, with 274 rushing yards, that he resembled ex-Arizona QB Khalil Tate, who rushed for 327 yards at Colorado in a similar breakout performance in 2017.
Ott, who was recruited strongly out of Chino Hills, California, by Fisch and Arizona running backs coach Scottie Graham last year, is so good that he has a chance to be just the second Pac-12 running back to be a first-team all-conference pick as a freshman. He would join Oregon State’s Jacquizz Rodgers in 2008.
But even Rodgers struggled as a freshman, rushing four times for 20 yards against Arizona in ’08. Not even USC’s Reggie Bush, 2004, was an all-conference running back as a freshman.
Dear Mr. Football: Is Arizona receiver Jacob Cowing the real thing?
A: Put it this way: through four games, Cowing is on a pace to catch 84 passes for 1,158 yards and 18 touchdowns.
No Arizona receiver has caught more than 11 touchdown passes in a season. Cowing’s opening pace would shatter that record before November.
Cowing also appears destined to become the seventh UA receiver ever to catch 80 passes in a season, joining Bobby Wade (93), Dennis Northcutt (88), Stanley Berryhill III (83), Mike Thomas (83), Juron Criner (82) and Austin Hill (81).
The key: staying healthy.
Dear Mr. Football: How did Dorrell and his Buffaloes, get in this predicament?
A: He was hired at UCLA by “Mr. Mistake,” former UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, a Tucson native.
Guerrero’s tenure at UCLA was full of bad hires. He chose Dorrell over WSU two-time Rose Bowl coach Mike Price and Oregon State’s game-changing coach Mike Riley. Guerrero then went on to hire (and fire) basketball/football coaches Rick Neuheisel, Jim Mora, Steve Alford and Ben Howland in a 15-year period.
Dorrell’s tenure at UCLA was so sensitive that editors of the Los Angeles Times allowed a sports columnist to regularly refer to Dorrell in print as “Karl Dullard.”
Now in his third year at Colorado, Dorrell is starting a true freshman quarterback, Owen McCown, whose other scholarship offers were from Charlotte, Lamar, UNLV, UTSA and Virginia Tech. How’s it working out?
CU ranks 12th in the Pac-12 in total offense, total defense, scoring offense and scoring defense. To this point, it’s a historically bad team with seemingly little chance for correction.
If Arizona doesn’t beat the Buffaloes convincingly, the six games leading to the Territorial Cup against ASU on Nov. 25 would look to be unwinnable.
Arizona 43, Colorado 17.
