The college football offseason is a long, long 7 months of monotonous fights with your rivals and time-wasting message board arguments. But just like baseball umps and long snappers, the less you hear of your team between Signing Day and training camp the better. Unfortunately, some schools can’t stay out of unwanted headlines. These are the poor schools that keep the rest of us entertained until it’s time to play again.
So today, we are going to rank the seven most embarrassing offseasons of 2019:
7. Ohio State
Let’s be honest, as long as Zach Smith still has an active Twitter account, Ohio State is gonna find itself in more than a few embarrassing headlines. Although new head coach Ryan Day has kept the situation at OSU from becoming the complete disaster it could have been, whenever your legendary coach retires in the wake of a scandal it’s never a good thing — especially when the details are so weird and gross it could double as a Penthouse article from the early 1990s. Just like Urbran Meyer, we wish we could pretend this never happened.
6. Clemson
No one can question Clemson’s supremacy on the field and in recruiting, but the past few months have included some moments most Clemson fans would like to forget. It started in February with a very awkward visit to the White House complete with all the lukewarm fast food you could eat. Things didn’t get better when the university refused to release the findings of the performance-enhancing drug investigation that sidelined Dexter Lawrence and others during the Playoff run. But the cherry on top of Clemson’s offseason was Dabo referring to himself as “Osama Bin Dabo.” Clemson fans might try to tell you that quote sounds better in context, but we’re sure to see that quote on more than a few College GameDay signs this year.
5. Missouri
As ridiculous and unfair as the NCAA might be, receiving a bowl ban is never a good look. In fact, it’s almost as embarrassing as the school massively inflating their attendance numbers so no one knows they averaged a paltry 24,377 per game last year, as revealed through public records in March. The good news for Mizzou is there’s still a chance the bowl ban will be overturned and they can go back to being the most annoying game on Florida’s schedule like normal.
4. Central Michigan
Sorry Chippewas, but when it’s revealed that your head football coach is living in a barn, you get a spot on this list. Manny Diaz is showing up to events in an 80-ft yacht on South Beach, Nick Saban is flying his chopper to meet with recruits, Jim McElwain sleeps in a barn. Coach McElwain by all accounts is a good guy, but he is building an Alabama type dynasty for his ability to find himself in embarrassing offseason stories.
3. USC (the one in Los Angeles)
USC somehow found itself right in the middle of everyone’s favorite FBI investigation, the massive college tuition scandal for the super rich and famous. In one instance, a student pretended to be a walk-on placekicker despite the fact that his high school didn’t even have a football team. Another used photoshop to pretend to be a defensive line recruit. No one from USC’s football staff has been implicated in the investigation, but that’s probably because their real scholarship players were much more of a concern last year.
2. Florida State
Never mind missing a bowl game for the first time in 36 years, or having your star QB recruit flip to a conference rival on Signing Day, or even hiring a prominent member of the disgraced Baylor staff. When your social media team can’t even post a MLK Day graphic without it becoming an embarrassing viral story, you know it’s a bad offseason.
FSU football apologizes after fumbling MLK tweet https://t.co/NylqC84ox3 pic.twitter.com/OccxutyVv0
— Orlando Sentinel (@orlandosentinel) January 22, 2019
1. Independence Community College
Fortunately for the rest of college football, former Independence head coach and Last Chance U star Jason Brown did just enough to take the top spot of most embarrassing offseason of 2019. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the things Brown did over just the past few months:
- Impersonated a lawyer in order to serve a fake cease-and-desist notice to a local newspaper
- Used an easily traceable Yahoo! email account to send the fraudulent letter
- Told a German football player on his team “I am your new Hitler”
- Got fired
- Got charged with eight felony counts
- Published a book called “Hate Me Now, Love Me Later”
Tough to compete with that.
Houston lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football for Saturday Down South. You can follow him on twitter @hbarber17 or reach out at hbarber17@gmail.com
