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© 2024 SaturdayDownSouth.com
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By Brett Friedlander
Published:
Santa Claus has finished his appointed rounds and is probably recuperating on a warm beach somewhere in the Caribbean with a tropical drink in his hand by now.
I hope he was good to you all.
Now that the big guy in the red suit has delivered the goods for another year, here’s list of some presents or stocking stuffers we hope he left for the ACC’s 17 football coaches.
Including a couple who haven’t been on the job long enough to end up on the naughty list:
It’s not as if O’Brien dresses badly. He actually looks good in that maroon and gold BC swag. It’s just that in the pro sports-dominated Boston media market, his Eagles barely register a blip on the radar. Maybe if he starts calling attention to himself with his attire the way women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey does at LSU, he’ll get more people to notice his program, which is clearly on the upswing after a 7-win season this year and the addition of Alabama transfer Dylan Lonergan for 2024.
They might come in handy now that Wilcox has added noted anti-vaxxer Nick Rolovich to his staff as his new senior offensive assistant. Rolovich is the former Washington State coach who was so opposed to the COVID vaccine that he allowed himself to be fired rather than conform to a university mandate requiring its employees to take it during the height of the pandemic. It’s a good hire from a football sense, even though from a philosophical standpoint it goes against everything the irreverently “woke” Calgorithm holds dear.
Now that Swinney has finally discovered that the transfer portal exists, he’s going to need a game system on which to play it.
No lie, the Portal: Companion Collection – featuring the award-winning games Portal and Portal 2 – is warping onto #NintendoSwitch this year! 🎂 pic.twitter.com/Q1js7i3koN
It would be poetic justice if Diaz and his Blue Devils could knock Ole Miss’ Lane Kiffin down a peg or two on behalf of the ACC by beating his team in the Gator Bowl. But since starting quarterback Maalik Murphy is already at Oregon State and his replacement, 8-million-dollar man Darian Mensah has yet to arrive, Diaz will probably need something a little more tangible to help shut up the Rebels’ obnoxiously verbose coach.
OK, so that’s not really a present for Norvell. But thanks to Saban, he’s already received the best present he could have asked for given his circumstances: An 8-year, $84 million contract extension signed after he was linked to the Alabama job following Saban’s unexpected retirement last January. The deal includes a buyout so massive that it’s made Norvell too expensive to fire after this year’s 2-10 disaster.
No explanation necessary. Let’s just say that Chapter 1 is titled “When you’re 1 play from beating Georgia for the first time in forever, remember to run the damn football.”
Brohm’s Cardinals averaged 6 more points and 40 more yards per game this season than it did last year while posting comparable defensive numbers. But they won 2 fewer games overall and dropped from 7-1 in the ACC to 5-3. Why? This year they had to play conference frontrunners SMU and Miami after being gifted a schedule that avoided all of the league’s top teams the season before.
Hopefully, Santa also brought the Hurricanes’ coach a couple of competent safeties, too, so that he won’t squander the next elite transfer quarterback. The way he did with Cam Ward this season.
No, not one of those Elf on the Shelf figures made to look like the former New England Patriots quarterback. We’re talking about the real things. When Coach Hoodie gets a look at what he has to work with at quarterback in Chapel Hill, he’s going to wish he still had his old Brady in the Backfield.
“I had some good years in the NFL and that was okay, but this is really a dream come true … as a kid all I knew was college football”
-Bill Belichick on becoming UNC’s head coach pic.twitter.com/dUvTBKPq3b
Bringing in a purported offensive genius to run the offense didn’t work. Neither did overhauling the offense with a boatload of transfers. Since Doeren appears to be sticking with coordinator Robert Anae, who hasn’t lived up to his reputation since arriving in Raleigh, it’s time for the Wolfpack coach to give his entire offensive philosophy a complete overhaul. He’ll have the talent on hand to do it with the return of quarterback CJ Bailey, running back Hollywood Smothers and receiver Noah Rogers. He just needs to find a better way to take advantage of those playmakers.
Narduzzi could have used them this season. His Panthers had enough fuel in the tank to win their first 7 games and earn a No. 18 ranking in the first Playoff rankings. But they ran out of gas along the way and have lost 5 straight heading into their GameAbove Sports Bowl matchup with Toledo.
Lashlee was right when he said his Mustangs had become America’s Team in the hours leading up to the College Football Playoff selection show. Except for Greg Sankey, Lane Kiffin, Alabama fans and a handful of others, everyone from coast to coast was pulling for SMU to get the final at-large bid and spare us from having to listen to the talking heads at ESPN with a vested interest in promoting the SEC gush over the less-deserving, 3-loss Crimson Tide. Even though things didn’t go well for the Mustangs once they got to the Playoff, they did us all a favor just by being there.
The Cardinal already got a little before Christmas when they added former star quarterback Andrew Luck to the staff as the program’s general manager. But Taylor can use a lot more luck on the field after back-to-back 3-9 seasons to start his tenure at Stanford.
Brown was so excited about helping Swinney’s team get into the ACC Championship Game – and eventually the Playoff – by beating Miami on the final week of the regular season that he face-timed the Clemson coach to gloat about it afterward. I guess the coaches of teams in Orange have to stick together. I wonder if Brown will still be as big a fan of Swinney after their teams meet in Death Valley next season.
Dabo elaborates: “I can’t really repeat what he (Brown) said. It was colorful and hilarious … I appreciated the call. He was fired up, excited for us … I didn’t even know he’d given me a shout-out on TV — pretty cool” https://t.co/FgNF7PezA8
Beating a then-ranked Pitt team in Week 11 probably saved Elliott’s job for at least another season. But after winning just 11 games in his first 3 seasons combined, he might want to keep that resume updated. Because he’s going to need it if he doesn’t get the Cavaliers over the hump and into a bowl game next year.
He’s been close but no cigar so many times during his 3 seasons with the Hokies – 1-13 in 1-score games, including 0-5 in 2024 – that he could use some incentive to start celebrating close losses. He won’t even need a match to light up. He can just use the heat coming off his coaching seat after this year’s disappointing 6-6 record.
It’s understandable why the new Wake coach left Washington State to join the Deacons. The Cougars were left on an island when the Pac-12 imploded and he was eager to find a soft landing spot with a power conference affiliation. But as he will soon find out, if he hasn’t already, his new program has its own issues around which to work. As the smallest school in the FBS, Wake doesn’t have the financial resources to compete on even terms with virtually everyone else in college football. A major infusion of cash would at least help narrow the current NIL gap and the bigger one to come when revenue sharing kicks in.
That way, they might at least be able to see what a target looks like.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
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