College football has a failure addiction. And it's ruining the sport | Opinion - USA Today

We just can’t be happy. Once the greatest three-month sport on the planet, college football has dissolved into miserable slog through perceived failure.

Because no matter what plays out week to week in this glorious sport of kings, no matter how good it looks or how unforgettable the moment, we’re always staring down the negative.

Winning is exhaling and complaining, losing is tragedy and fire the coach. Or fire the athletic director who made the awful hire in the first place.

And while you’re at it, bench the damn quarterback, too. A Heisman Trophy candidate? He can’t even complete a simple pass while staring through a wall of 6-5, 330-pound offensive lineman, while dealing with exotic blitz packages and combination coverages. 

Screw him, he’s getting paid millions to make that throw. 

So it should come as no surprise that after his biggest SEC win at Missouri last weekend, Tigers coach Eli Drinkwitz began the postgame news conference by fielding questions about the low-hanging, social media-fueled fruit of failure. 

Sure, you beat Florida in a big game — but how does it feel to finally beat a ranked SEC team?  

“Yeah, I’m done with that,” Drinkwitz said.

What are we doing here? Have we become so jaded in the now college football world of funny money, that we’re ignoring the beauty of you never know what you’re getting week to week? 

Yet here we are, ignoring the signature win for Missouri and focusing on past failures in games against ranked teams. Or worse, the Missouri win was more about the failure of Florida not backing up a rout of Ole Miss from the previous week. 

Texas got a defining win over Ohio State in September, and we’re more locked in on the Buckeyes blowing a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter.

Oklahoma State, in its second game under first-year coach Eric Morris, beat top-5 Oregon and the narrative wasn’t the biggest win in years — it was how in blue blazes did that Oklahoma State team lose to Tulsa a week earlier?

That may cost them down the road in the College Football Playoff race!

Black Monday after every single college football weekend is an absolute cesspool of whining, complaining and second-guessing. Nothing’s good, nothing works — even after a win.

If Ohio State can’t run the ball better, what happens in the CFP? Forget that the Buckeyes rolled into a wild environment against a hot Iowa team, and named the score. 

How does BYU score 17 lousy points against a team that’s getting ready to fire its coach?!

Yeah, some Notre Dame defense. North Carolina scored 26 points, and something named Billy Edwards had three touchdown passes!

The Tennessee defense is an absolute hammer, but for the love of all things Big Orange, Vols coach Josh Heupel made the wrong decision at quarterback. Again!

And will USC ever play a complete game under Lincoln Riley? (OK, that one’s fair.)

As ugly as it looks now, it will only get worse as the season progresses and the fire/hire process begins. If there’s one thing that fuels a fanbase more than winning it all, it’s firing the guy who can’t. 

Just how utterly ridiculous is the sick ecosystem? We’re now comparing coaching records in the binary, win-lose world. 

If you think I'm kidding, let me introduce Mike Elko and Jimbo Fisher. Texas A&M is struggling in Elko’s third season, and high-priced quarterback Marcel Reed is slumping. 

Elko’s team won 11 games in 2025 and earned a CFP first-round home game, losing to Miami in front an electric environment — after scoring all of three points. The Aggies are 2-3 in their past five games against Power opponents, and Elko’s record after 31 games in College Station in 22-9. 

So naturally, the failure brigade has turned to Fisher, who was given an unholy $70 million gift to stop coaching the Aggies prior to Elko's arrival. He was 21-10 after 31 games at Texas A&M. 

“The people who support this program,” Elko said, “They’re going to be behind this team.”

Not without slogging through failure first.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.