Are you a 17-year old kid who loves football and is really good at it? Have you worked your butt off since Pop Warner and gotten yourself a flashy four or five star rating, with coaches calling you constantly? Do you want to go to a college where you’re surrounded by similarly talented kids? Do you want to lose games to less talented squads in head scratching fashion over and over again? Then we have a place for you!
Here are the worst Power 4 Schools in Total WET since 2015.
| School | Total WET | # of coaches |
| Kansas | -22.03 | 3 |
| Nebraska | -20.86 | 4 |
| Florida State | -16.64 | 3 |
| UCLA | -16.33 | 3 |
| Rutgers | -16.08 | 4 |
| Arkansas | -15.49 | 4 |
| Maryland | -13.71 | 3 |
| Oregon State | -12.65 | 4 |
| Purdue | -12.12 | 5 |
| North Carolina | -12.08 | 3 |
| Texas | -11.51 | 3 |
| Stanford | -10.98 | 3 |
| Auburn | -10.71 | 3 |
| USC | -10.65 | 4 |
| Vandy | -10.11 | 3 |
Most of this is unsurprising, right? Kansas, Rutgers, Stanford, Vanderbilt (pre-Pavia and let’s be honest post-Pavia too most likely). These are schools that lose a lot. If you include G5 schools, there are some like UMass (-32 WET) and Akron (-24.5 WET) are even worse. “Bad football schools are bad at football” doesn’t make much of a headline. If you’re that talented kid mentioned in the opener, you didn’t need WET to tell you not to go to Kansas. But if you’re that talented kid, you’re not reading this article. I am not popular enough to have a target audience, but it surely isn’t actual five star recruits.
Anyway, besides the loser factories, there’s a few names that stand out. Florida State, Auburn, USC, Nebraska, Texas – these are big name schools that have won a National Championship or three in my lifetime. And yet, they have been a F.A.U.N.T.ain of squandered talent over the last 11 years. (Oh my god, there he goes again with the water puns, and this is the worst one yet.) This article looks at those five schools and mostly makes fun of them for being so lame and allows you to feel superior to their fans.
Year by Year
| FSU | Aub | USC | Neb | Tex | |
| 2015 | -0.43 | -2.15 | -2.70 | -2.10 | -3.50 |
| 2016 | 0.24 | -0.58 | 0.50 | 1.20 | -3.70 |
| 2017 | -3.21 | 1.03 | 0.67 | -3.10 | -1.83 |
| 2018 | -3.98 | -0.32 | -4.13 | -3.21 | 0.56 |
| 2019 | -3.71 | 0.79 | -1.53 | -2.36 | -1.77 |
| 2020 | -2.94 | 0.08 | 0.86 | -1.14 | -0.57 |
| 2021 | -2.20 | -2.12 | -4.85 | -4.02 | -3.99 |
| 2022 | 2.20 | -1.53 | 1.03 | -3.39 | -1.41 |
| 2023 | 4.93 | -1.26 | -1.08 | -2.47 | 1.77 |
| 2024 | -5.72 | -2.34 | -0.63 | -0.84 | 2.54 |
| 2025 | -1.81 | -2.31 | 1.22 | 0.55 | 0.38 |
Gosh that’s ugly. If I knew how to code different colors on WordPress, it’d be a sea of red. No school has more than 3 years of positive WET out of the 11 in the sample. Sure, USC and Texas are currently on their fourth, but I’m just assuming they’ll both find a way to blow it over the last three weeks of this season.
Coaches Fail
Here’s how each coach performed in WET at the school and during the rest of their career (since 2015). I included interim coaches if they coached at least 6 games, just to have more miserable data points.
| Team | WET | WET there | WET elsewhere |
| Auburn | Gus Malzahn | -0.53 | -2.42 |
| Auburn | Bryan Harsin | -4.46 | 12.33 |
| Auburn | Hugh Freeze | -5.91 | 19.06 |
| Florida State | Jimbo Fisher | -3.89 | -0.91 |
| Florida State | Willie Taggart | -6.80 | -1.28 |
| Florida State | Mike Norvell | -5.55 | 8.70 |
| Nebraska | Mike Riley | -4.00 | |
| Nebraska | Scott Frost | -12.58 | 2.97 |
| Nebraska | Mickey Joseph | -1.53 | |
| Nebraska | Matt Rhule | -2.76 | 4.51 |
| Texas | Charlie Strong | -7.20 | -0.96 |
| Texas | Tom Herman | -3.60 | 1.53 |
| Texas | Steve Sarkisian | -0.71 | |
| USC | Steve Sarkisian | -4.30 | |
| USC | Clay Helton | -2.70 | -0.97 |
| USC | Donte Williams | -4.19 | |
| USC | Lincoln Reilly | 0.53 | 8.59 |
Ouch. If you’re a coach and one of these jobs opens up, run away! You know that friend who marries the guy thinking she can fix him? You can’t fix them.
- Hugh Freeze could be the all-time WET leader by now if he had stayed at Liberty.
- Scott Frost won a “National Championship” at UCF. It was a legit top 10 all-time WET season. And then…Kaboom!
- Jimbo Fisher got paid $76m to not coach at A&M. Yet somehow he was worse in his last three years at FSU than at A&M.
- Bryan Harsin left the fertile WET blue fields of Boise for a DRY toilet papered tree.
- Hey Lincoln Reilly, which is WETter, the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma or Sunny Southern Cal? It’s the Dust Bowl you fool!
- And Sark, oh Sark. America is rooting for you Sark. We all love a redemption arc, a flawed hero who triumphs over adversity. But man, is there anything more self-destructive than choosing to coach at USC and Texas? Can we start a GoFundMe for Sark’s buyout so he can go to App State of James Madison? You’ll never win a NC there, but you can get WET and be happy!
Why are these five schools such a train wreck?
Yeah, I have no idea. I told you, this post is really just about laughing at them. They obviously keep pulling in talent year after year, and they hire previously successful coaches who they turn into disasters. If I knew why, I’d be a big money consultant for those schools instead of writing a blog. But if YOU know why, hit me up on X @WETcfb or email [email protected] and let me know. Then I can get hired as a big money consultant for one of these schools, and then you can write this blog!