Welcome back to The Football Notebook, the weekly compendium of all my thoughts about, well, football. I suppose that was fairly self-explanatory.
This week, “Fire everybody!” seems to be the prevailing sentiment across the football world. Whether you’re an Ohio State fan demanding change or a Manchester United supporter simply hoping for the best, we’ve officially reached that time of year when everybody starts getting a little fed up with the status quo.
Fortunately, not everybody is miserable. Across the Atlantic, Bournemouth have discovered one of the greatest joys sports can offer: happiness. How wonderful that must be.
There are three stories in today’s notebook, covering all three versions of football we follow here at The Football Corner. Despite their differences, all three revolve around two of the simplest emotions in sports: joy and despair.
Without further ado, let’s open the notebook.
Michigan and Ohio State Are Having a Very Bad Time
There aren’t many jobs in American sports that come with more unreasonable expectations than coaching football at Michigan or Ohio State, although I suppose those expectations become somewhat more reasonable when you consider the resources available to both institutions. Each program has won a national championship within the past three years, and both have enjoyed enough success throughout their histories to make a three-loss season feel like an act of institutional sabotage. Their fans expect to compete for championships every year, and anything less generally produces an enormous amount of discussion about whether the current coaching staff understands what it’s doing.
Well, it’s November, and the two programs appear to have discovered a rare point of agreement. Michigan fans are miserable, Ohio State fans are furious, and I suspect both groups would organize recall elections tomorrow if college football coaches were subject to the same rules as certain elected officials.
The circumstances aren’t identical, however, and I think it’s worth distinguishing between a disappointing season caused by an injury and one that appears to have gone wrong at almost every conceivable point. Michigan’s problems began well before the losses started accumulating, while Ohio State had just one loss until Julian Sayin suffered an elbow injury against Indiana. Both situations are unpleasant, but only one has convinced me that the entire coaching arrangement might have been a mistake worthy of Shakespeare.
Let’s begin in Ann Arbor, where I genuinely believed Kyle Whittingham was going to be an excellent hire.
Michigan needed stability after firing Sherrone Moore in December 2025, following the university’s discovery of an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. Sixteen days later, the school introduced Whittingham, who had built an impressive reputation during his two decades at Utah. He brought offensive coordinator Jason Beck with him, inherited former five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood and appeared to have everything necessary to produce a reasonably successful first season.
I liked the decision because Whittingham had consistently demonstrated that he could win football games without enjoying the advantages available to college football’s wealthiest programs. Utah wasn’t recruiting at Michigan’s level, yet Whittingham regularly produced teams that competed for conference championships. Giving him access to Michigan’s resources seemed like a perfectly sensible proposition, one I was happy to get on board with.
