I have spoken to a number of college football analysts — former players and coaches — leading into the 2010 season. As you might expect, there are few topics any of them agree upon.
The exception is when you bring up University of Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen. On that topic, we have total agreement on two things: He is a wonderful man and a good coach, but — to a man — the analysts agreed that if he didn’t show improvement over last year’s 10-loss season, he would be gone from College Park.
Jesse Palmer is one of the top college football analysts in the business, and we talked about Friedgen and the ACC.
Palmer on Friedgen » There are a handful of major-program coaches on the hot seat as the 2010 season begins, and we know that Ralph is under pressure to win. They really need either Jamarr Robinson or Danny O’Brien to become the team’s leader and take advantage of a weaker Atlantic Division — where the clear favorite is FSU. Of course, it would not hurt to pull a couple great upsets, and beating Navy and West Virginia could be a great step forward to the program and to job security. If Maryland can get to six wins and a bowl, I really think that will be enough for Ralph to keep his job.
Palmer on the ACC » The conference has four really quality teams in Virginia Tech, FSU, Miami and North Carolina — with all of them playing big games on national TV very early in the season on ESPN (or) ABC. Week 1 you have Virginia Tech hosting Boise State at FedEx Field on Labor Day evening. North Carolina is facing LSU in Atlanta on Saturday. Then we have the Week 2 marquee games with Miami at Ohio State and FSU on the road against Oklahoma. It is very important for the conference to not only look competitive in those games but to win a few to gain national credibility. I don’t want it to sound like the ACC is a bad conference — it is far from that. However, respect comes by playing for BCS national championships, and it has been 10 years since FSU lost to Oklahoma in the 2000 title game. That’s a long time.
Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. Check out his blog, Watch this!
