Stewart Mandel gets a fastball tossed down the middle in today’s Mailbag – How ’bout your Top 5 underachieving schools of all time? – and doesn’t turn on Georgia.
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Quote Of The Day
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“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
Shouldn’t South Carolina be on that list? I guess they’ve achieved so little in their entire history that we don’t even think to put them in the running. But no major university in the Deep South should have gotten as little done as they haven’t.
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Agreed – the Cocks should be exhibit #1 on a last like this. They have so much support from their alums, SEC payouts, etc. they have no excuse for historically being so mediocre. To play football that many years and before winning a bowl game….yikes. And even with a few bowl wins now, and a couple of 10 win seasons, that’s not a lot of accomplishments for an established program.
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At the least, the chickens should replace Ole Miss or North Carolina on the list. They were not even .500 as a program until a few years into Spurrier’s tenure. When we fired Donnan, he had won more bowls than their entire program. It’s not like they were busy being great at another sport either. To top it off, their fans think they are some sort of great football power. That sort of delusion should put them on the list if, for nothing else, to make them face reality.
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“It’s not like they were busy being great at another sport, either.” I seem to remember back-to-back national championships in baseball.
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That’s right. If Georgia wasn’t so busy dominating in tennis and swimming, and maybe gymnastics, equestrian and golf, imagine what a great football program we would have. And didn’t we take home a bass fishing title somewhere back then? That probably cost us a couple of SEC football championships.
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I took the term “all time” to mean more than the past 4 years. There baseball program has been good for about 5 or 6 years, their football program has sucked for over 100.
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“THEIR” baseball program.
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Looking at the rationales for UNC, Ole Miss, and Maryland, it seems impossible to me that Georgia Tech wouldn’t be on this list ahead of any of those three. Tech has beaten Alabama 24 times.
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Under achieving implies expectations. Nobody ever had any for South Carolina. They’re about 20 games over 500 for their entire football history, obviously from the last few years.
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What an idiot.
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Things have deteriorated to the point we’re now underachieving at underachieving. Sigh.
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This is why we have to get rid of Bobo.
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Three basketball schools, a baseball school (Arizona State) and Ole Miss hasn’t done anything since Johnny Vaught left (which was about the time Montana was still Indian territory). That certainly doesn’t sound like it’s go time for Mandel
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I rarely pick a beef with a national sports writer because we all know they have to write sh!t every day for a living and, frankly, have to make up a lot of it because they run out of things to say. But since Stewart Mandel has previously proved that he is an idiot, and also thrown down the gauntlet, with the Montana thing I believe he is fair game. Here goes: (1) UCLA is not only in the same conference it is in the same TOWN as Southern Cal. They are clearly little brother. They don’t belong on this list because they are not elite enough to even be considered as an underachiever. On the rare occasion that UCLA wins even a division championship they have greatly overachieved. (2) North Carolina is a basketball school, the Kentucky of the ACC. Calling the Heels an underachieving football program is just plain stupid. ‘Nuff said. (3) Ole Miss has the smallest state population in the SEC and they have to deal with another SEC program in their own state. Plus you have all that “old south” nonsense. It is amazing to me they get anybody good to go there and win any games at all. That said, Ole Miss was an absolute powerhouse in the ’50s/early 60s when Johnny Vaught was HC. Then integration happened and they got left behind because of reluctance to get with the times. Ole Miss is no longer an elite team–hasn’t been for 50 years. Now are lucky to win 9 games. Calling them an underachiever is also stupid, too.(4)Arizona State. Former champions of the WAC. Barely got into the PAC 12 along with Arizona back when the conference went from 8 to 10 teams. If UCLA can’t cmpete with Southern Cal for the best talent in LA how is Arizona State going to do it being 300 miles away? Again, not even approaching an elite program. How do you underachieve when you never achieved in the first place? (5) Maryland. What can I say? Not elite. Never was. Couldn’t compete in the ACC and can’t compete in the B1G. A basketball school like UNC. Stewart Mandel once again has shown even more ineptness than one would imagine possible of a “sports journalist” with a national job. A worthless drivel of an article.
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My more detailed missive was being written before DIF’s post but posted after. Hence similar thoughts. I endorse what DIF said completely.
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I thought it was an incredible post by you. Rarely in the history of mankind do we see such stunning analysis and agreement on matters of great importance. This is truly a great day for America and a bad day for Hugh Freeze
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Bullshit Fla., Bullshit!
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I follow Stewart on Twitter. I would wager that All of you would love to be sports writers. He just gave you facts that support his comments. Jealously rears its ugly head once again. GTP is as close as any of us will ever come to publishing anything concerning CF. 📰🏈
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I’m sure we can get many of the members here to correct Mandel. After all, we’re told everyday how much we suck.
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Seems like a fair list to me, given each schools resources…
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I’m shocked we’re not on the list. SHOCKED!
What the hell is meant by “all time,” anyway? Is it like Ali talking about his place among the fighters in his or any other era? Or is it an analysis from the very depth of Mr. Mandel’s prodigious knowledge of college football over more than a century of seasons? In either of the above examples, I think Ali is closer to being on the mark.
Still, I remain shocked.
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Went to Vegas 2 weeks ago. Had a white visor with a single red circle around a black G and the TSA agent asked me to take off my Georgia hat. Immediately thought of the Montana Project.
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I’ll admit it. I clicked on the link earlier today to see if he had the dawgs in there.
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everyone in this thread should go read that haters article.
just sayin.
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Saxon is indeed correct. The Cocks deserve to be on the list.
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My post above only discussed the teams Mandel put on the list. If we want to go further and talk about who really should be on the list here are a few. (1) I agree that South Carolina should be on the list of all time underachievers if the criteria include mouth and amount expended, plus lack of championships. Never in the history of college football, before or since, has there ever been a program that has spent so much in human resources as well as dollars with so little to show for it. That, plus the fact that their delusional fan base talks as if they were Bama. If being an all time loser qualifies, South Carolina is right there. (2) However, if underachieving means having once been on top and now cannot win championships, the worst is ND. The Irish have a storied past and anational fan base. They have the press constantly pumping them up with free publicity. They have their own TV contract that pays millions in revenue. Ans they have that storied history, with the most games won, the highest winning percentage and too many MNCs to count. But now they can’t win squat. Sure, they can beat some MAC, B1G and ACC teams, but any time they play somebody really good they not only lose but they get waxed. They are the football equivalent of “all hat and no cattle.” I am convinced that many, if not most, of the MNCs the Irish won back when the press just basically picked the winner in the old beauty pageant format were NOT the best team in the nation. Remember 1966? Now that a team actually has to beat somebody good in a playoff game to win it, they can’t do it. In the 2012 season they managed to get into the BCSNCG and they got exposed. IMHO ND is now right at the pinnacle of underachievers in college football given the resources expended and the “mouth” factor.
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P.S The Irish are an obvious choice but the fact that Mandel won’t name them speaks volumes about Mandel’s integrity as a football writer, or lack of same, IMHO. He’s too chicken to rile up their national fan base to do that.
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Notre Dame played for a national title three seasons ago. If it’s an obvious choice despite that, Mandel’s gonna need a bigger list.
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I would like to see what his methodology was. It seemed to me that he threw darts at a dartboard to pick the five and then made the story fit those. If UCLA is on the list for being in the nation’s 2nd largest city, Illinois should be on the list for having the largest city in the B1G in their footprint. South Carolina should be on the list over UNC for producing HS football talent. Ole Miss because Alabama owns them? That’s like saying Purdue is underachieving because Notre Dame owns them. Arizona State may deserve inclusion on the list, but the fact that we turned Tempe into a neutral site should speak volumes for their fan base. Maryland was good when Virginia Tech wasn’t. If Maryland is on the list for a past tradition and a metro area, the NATS is a much better choice as an underachieving program. Just my $.02.
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Completely agree with ASU. That has seriously never made sense to me. Tempe is awesome, the girls are unreal, Sun Devil stadium is cool. It must truly come down to a total lack of caring about anything but partying there.
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Does anyone remember Coach Frank Kushman…an absolute asshole but a producer of outstanding football teams at Arizona St? Maybe it’s the coaches..plus the competition for athletes…that has diminished AzSt.
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