It’s once again the latest “FootballScoop: They Said What?” installment, with potentially season-defining wins at several major programs leading to candid comments from some of the sport’s major head coaches, including Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy, Florida’s Billy Napier, Washington’s Kalen DeBoer and, of course, Colorado’s Deion Sanders in the aftermath of his team’s all-time-bad, program-worst come-from-ahead loss.
Somehow, college football is universally at or beyond the season’s midpoint, and this week’s FootballScoop “They Said What?!” is moving into and beyond its eighth installment.
Onward …
MIKE GUNDY’S OKLAHOMA STATE MEA CULPA
Uncharacteristically, Oklahoma State had slumped through the back half of its 2022 campaign and closed the first month of this season as a middling, 2-2 football team.
The Cowboys had lost seven of their last 10 games, dating to those ’22 struggles, and then had been blown out at home by Group of Five program South Alabama in September.
But the Cowboys responded in dramatic fashion in their upset-win against nationally-ranked Kansas on Saturday.
Veteran OSU coach Mike Gundy revealed his coaching staff had self-reflected and also apologized.
“In South Alabama, we coached poorly and we played poorly,” said Gundy, one of college football’s longest-tenured head coaches alongside the likes of Utah’s Kyle Whittingham and Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz. “You have to be able to look in the mirror and say, ‘Our coaching was awful in that game,’ which didn’t allow our players to play good because we didn’t give them a chance.
“We couldn’t even get them in the starting gate. We have to identify that and say, ‘OK, we were bad,’ and then tell the players we were bad.”
It wasn’t enough for Gundy & Co. to simply acknowledge their coaching shortcomings to the Cowboys; he also wanted their atonement.
“We apologized,” Gundy said he told the team after its win against Lance Leipold’s Kansas Jayhawks. “Let’s start over. Give us a chance, and then we’ll start to migrate in the direction we need to be in both sides of the ball scheme-wise, and that’s what we’ve done. …
“I think it’s just a matter of not pointing the finger and just saying, ‘Hey, we were awful.’ Didn’t give the players a chance. Let’s figure out a way to give them a chance and move forward.'”
KALEN DEBOER’S WASHINGTON HUSKIES “MADE FOR THIS” MOMENT
Undefeated, top-10 Washington had watched an 11-point, second-half lead at home against rival Oregon evaporate as the edge transformed into a four-point deficit, and time had dwindled near its end for the Huskies to stay perfect.
Then Kalen DeBoer’s Washington squad responded in a most dramatic, emphatic fashion: Heisman Trophy candidate and record-setting quarterback Michael Penix engineered a two-play, 53-yard go-ahead scoring strike that proved the game-winning score in the Huskies’ 36-33 win.
But DeBoer made clear the Huskies had already established their foundation for the stage.
“This moment right now is something that’s really special for our program,” DeBoer said after the win that unfolded before a national TV broadcast and after the program hosted ESPN GameDay for the first time in almost a decade. “I think it embodies everything that we’ve done over the last year and a half, two years.
“We keep saying it: if it’s close, we’re going to find a way to win. We’re built for this. We’re made for this. We’ve been through some things, and we learn from them. We take the lessons that we’ve learned and apply them, and you can see it.”
As DeBoer outlined how this team shaped its identity, he noted the care factor for the Huskies and how much this contest had resembled Washington’s last-minute, comeback-win a year ago at Oregon.
“These guys care so much. Man, there’s nothing more special as a football coach than to see these guys enjoying that moment we just had out there,” he said. “They’re going to remember this forever. These games are huge. They will. These are the ones they’re going to talk about. Reunions – and whatever happens the rest of the season, that’ll add to it – but they’re going to be talking about the 2022 game, the 2023 game.
“A question [was asked] ‘Did it feel like last year? It felt exactly like last year. I was thinking the exact same thing on the field. That’s one of the things that actually kept me feeling like, ‘Keep fighting. Keep fighting.’ Because those are the experiences we’ve been through together. I know how these guys are going to respond and they do and coaches, same thing. It trickles down each and every day and in the big moments like you saw today, our guys just kept fighting.”
JAMES FRANKLIN’S ALL CLIMATE WINNERS
Penn State has crested the halfway point of its season undefeated, and the Nittany Lions centered themselves for the biggest game in college football this weekend at undefeated, top-five Ohio State when PSU trounced UMass, 63-0.
Franklin, who just might have constructed his most complete Penn State team, saluted his team’s growth and resiliency.
“There's no team in the country, there's no team in the NFL that there's not areas that you get critiqued about,” Franklin said. “Constructive criticism that you're trying to get better in certain areas. But overall, I like where we're at. We have found ways to win. We've won different ways. We've won on the road, we've won at home, we've won at 11 a.m., we've won in the rain, we've won one in the heat, conference opponents, non-conference opponents. And I just think we're getting better.”
How much better? This week has emerged as one of the two biggest litmus tests this season for the Nittany Lions; Franklin has led Penn State to a Big Ten title but overall struggled against the Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines, two programs that have largely reigned atop the league and won a combined 14 of 18 meetings against Franklin’s Penn State teams.
“Even from a practice perspective, I challenged them last week,” Franklin said. “And we're just practicing on a more consistent level, at a high level. And I don't care whether it's college football or any other industry, you're ultimately judged on consistency.
“How consistent can you be in the things that you're trying to achieve? And I really like this team from that perspective.”
DEION SANDERS ASKS WHERE IS THE LOVE
There is much still left in this Colorado season and great hype and intrigue under first-year coach Deion Sanders and with one of college football’s most radically transformed rosters, but there’s no denying the Buffaloes’ hopes for a postseason berth are fading after blowing a 29-0 lead at home to scuffling Stanford on a night in which Shedeur Sanders’ social media account was plugging the quarterback’s exclusive merchandise line.
And Deion Sanders, aka Coach Prime, is asking a pointed question of his Buffaloes.
“What I just said in the locker room to the team (after the loss) is they got to make up in their mind, ‘Are they in love with this game or are they in like with it?,’" said Coach Prime. "Because when you love something, you give to it unconditionally. You give everything you got to, but when you like it that's just a button you push and it lights up. That’s what they do on social media. So they got to figure out, do they love it or do they like it? And it's hard for me, because I love this. I love it.
"Without a shadow of a doubt I am truly 100 percent in love with this thing. And I just want people to match me. Just match my passion, match my heart, match my love, match my consistency, just match my mannerisms, just match every darn thing I give to this game. I love this. Sadly, I love it so much but the game don't even occupy the ability to love you back. That's strange love, isn’t it?”
BILLY NAPIER TALKS GRAHAM MERTZ’S FLORIDA MISSION
As Florida rallied from down 10 points at South Carolina Saturday to record a crucial win for second-year Gators head coach Billy Napier – a game that compounded South Carolina coach Shane Beamer’s own struggles, which have seen Beamer’s Gamecocks win just 10 games against Power 5 opponents since Beamer took over the program before the 2021 season, Napier pointed specifically to Gators transfer-quarterback Graham Mertz.
The Wisconsin transfer has posted the SEC’s top completion percentage, notched 12 touchdown passes for third-most in the league and posted the fourth-most passing yards.
Mertz has, Napier explained, been a man on a mission.
“Graham Mertz, in particular, you can’t help but respect the competitive spirit of the kid, the toughness, the decision-making,” Napier said after his Florida team’s second-straight win against Beamer, who has gone just 2-7 against key SEC East foes Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. “I just thought he was fantastic. Never flinched. Look, I get to be around the guy every day. I know how much the guy’s worked all the way going back to the beginning of the process.
“This is a young man who came here on a mission and had a plan and he’s worked. He’s a product of his work. For him to operate in our system in the first year the way he does, the level of comprehension, the high-level decision-making that’s happening out there, I couldn’t be more impressed with the kid.”