One of the worst losses of all time

PLUS! Bill Belichick got embarrassed again, and the surprisingly chill punishment for bringing your entire football team onto the field during a play.

#7 Penn State lost to 0-4 UCLA Saturday. It’s not just the worst loss of the season, or the worst loss in James Franklin’s Penn State tenure. It’s one of the worst losses of all time.

I don’t say this lightly. The facts back it up!

Penn State was a national championship contender. (Key word: was.) This roster was the culmination of several years of preparation in State College, with experience and depth all over the field. They’d filled in the weak spots from past years.

Meanwhile, UCLA was winless. A winless team had not beaten a top-10 opponent this late in the season since 1985, when 0-6 UTEP beat BYU, the defending national champions. (The Miners would finish the year 1-11 — UCLA might follow them.)

But simply saying UCLA was winless is underselling it. They literally had not led in any of their games all season long. They’d fired their head coach. They’d fired their offensive coordinator. Their substitute DC, Kevin Coyle, was coaching at Syracuse until two weeks ago, a rare mid-season cross-country job switch. They’d fired their defensive coordinator. Their substitute OC was 33-year old, Jerry Neuheisel, the son of UCLA ‘s former head coach, calling plays for the very first time on Saturday. He got a Powerade bath:

Credit obviously goes to UCLA, whose rag-tag band of coaches figured it out on the fly, and whose players didn’t give up in the middle of a lost season. They deserve their flowers. (Probably roses. You know, because of the Rose Bowl.) After accounting for five total touchdowns in UCLA’s first four games, quarterback Nico Iamaleava had five on Saturday alone (two throwing, three running.) Interim coach Tim Skipper now has as many career wins against top-10 Big Ten opponents as James Franklin: One.

But sometimes, an upset is about the winner, and sometimes it’s about the loser. I just don’t think two-loss Penn State has any argument to make the College Football Playoff, even if they win out. I guess I have sort of a rule where any team that loses to a team that just lost to Northwestern shouldn’t be allowed to win a national championship.

Penn State should have been able to score at will against UCLA — you know, like New Mexico did. They should have been able to shut down UCLA’s offense — you know, like Northwestern did. Instead, they fell behind 27-7 at halftime before rallying to lose 42-37.

James Franklin has had trouble with winning The Big One at Penn State, perpetually falling short against the elite programs the Nittany Lions to take down in order to win a national championship. That was the defining storyline after the Nittany Lions lost to Oregon in overtime last week. That was starting to become tiring at Penn State, a school which rightfully wants to win national championships. What made that tolerable is that he handled games like this. Now, he’s lost one of the biggest mismatches in the history of the sport. And that feels inexcusable.

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I’m so glad we’re celebrating UCLA, because it gives us the opportunity to talk about ONE OF THE ABSOLUTE BEST COLLECTIONS IN THE ENTIRE HOMEFIELD APPAREL CATALOG.

UCLA’s powder blue and gold is already one of the best color combos, so it’s hard to miss, but those freaks in Indianapolis went absolutely nuts with the Bruins. The pullovers, the hats, the various items with Rose Bowl roses on them — just wall-to-wall heat.

—The 1973 UCLA shooting shirt, fit for Bill Walton:

—Yoga Bruin (not to be confused with Yogi Bear)

—The UCLA surf shirt with a sexy shirtless Joe Bruin on it.

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I could write about Bill Belichick losing in every single newsletter

Seriously, it’s all I want to talk about. I am annoying my family and friends with non-stop conversations about every subsequent Belichick embarrassment.

Saturday, the Tar Heels were totally humiliated by the worst Clemson team in years. They were non-competitive from the jump, giving up four touchdowns in the first quarter and falling behind 38-3 before a pity touchdown made the final score 38-10. Again, UNC just fired Mack Brown, who never lost a home game by more than 20 points in his six-season tenure. In about a month or so, Belichick has now lost two losses worse than Brown’s worst loss.

I’m repeating myself, but… despite having one of the greatest football coaches of all time, the Tar Heels are a poorly coached football team. They are sloppy, they lack fundamentals, and they are poorly prepared. I’m repeating myself—I already wrote this last month.

I’ve seen people say that perhaps with time, Belichick will figure this out. He’ll learn the intricacies of college football, he’ll get better recruits, he’ll turn this program into a winner. Maybe he’ll turn it around.

But it’s so clear to me that things aren’t going to get better. This entire Belichick situation was DOA.

UNC could have hired a coach with a record of turning bad football programs into good ones. Instead, their boosters overrode their athletic director and hired someone who sounded impressive, hoping the veneer of seriousness provided by the legendary coach would hide the deeply unserious thought process of “hire the most famous guy we can.”

It has backfired completely. The whole point was to impress people; instead they’re getting embarrassed on national TV every week. (We don’t even have to get into the circus provided by Belichick’s personal life.) The type of recruits and transfers who can make UNC into a winning program can see the scores of the games they’re playing. Why would they come to UNC?

It’s poetic, in a way. By hiring Belichick, UNC prioritized perception over process. Now, perception is their worst enemy. They’re the laughingstock of college football, and they’re getting what they deserve.

Anyway, I hope you’re ready for at least 3-4 more of these writeups.

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Rules expert here. This is illegal

Sometimes I just need to drop something in here and say YOU NEED TO SEE THIS. This week’s comes from the Division II rivalry game between Colorado Mesa and Colorado School of Mines.

Mines is one of the most successful Division II teams — they made back-to-back championship games in 2022 and 2023 — but Mesa took the lead with 11 seconds left. Mines ran the hook-and-ladder-and-pitchy-pitchy-woo-woo play with two seconds remaining, and managed to keep the play alive for six or seven laterals when Mesa’s sideline poured onto the field with the play still live. (Part of the reason it worked well: they did the thing I’m always saying things should do, bringing on multiple quarterbacks to throw laterals across the field.)

To be clear: This is not legal. You are not allowed to bring The refs threw a flag for illegal substitution, giving Mines another play and moving the ball forward five yards.

On the one hand… kinda seems like Mesa got off lightly. “Illegal substitution” is really underselling what happened here. There are famously instances of teams being awarded touchdowns for players coming off the sideline and making tackles. (And in the funniest Friday Night Lights scene ever.) How did this only result in Mines getting five yards?

On the other… I feel like Mines’ play should’ve been blown dead at least twice. There was one forward lateral, one guy who looked like he had his knee down. The fairest thing the refs could do was shrug and say “whatever, just do it over.” Mines’ next play fell short and Mesa held on for the win.

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• UNLV and Wyoming played on a field covered in hail:

  Gonna be honest, I feel like playing this game was a bad idea. It probably hurts a lot to get tackled on icy rocks that feel from the sky! How did anybody get traction out there? Maybe Wyoming was hoping for a home-field advantage

• Maryland summarized their entire season (and really, their entire football program) against Washington by taking a 20-0 lead and losing 24-20. We’ll always have September.

• The U is officially back. Miami took a 28-3 lead on Florida State and has a legit case to be the #1 team in the country. This just makes their eventual loss on a bizarre game-management failure even more devastating.

• Western Carolina’s Taron “Tyga” Dickens set an NCAA record by completing his first 46 passes against Wofford… and he apparently needed every one of them, as WCU won 23-21 on a last-minute touchdown. I really need to watch the tape to figure out how the Catamounts completed so many passes and scored so few points.