default-cbs-image

Oregon is flirting with some miserable history while collapsing from national championship runner-up to a 2-5 record within two years.

Since the Associated Press started a college football poll in 1936, only 16 teams have posted a losing record within two seasons of finishing ranked No. 1 or 2 (10 percent of the possibilities). The Ducks figure to become No. 17. Depending on how their season plays out, there's a chance they'll have one of the worst collapses ever.

Needless to say, Oregon's brand is broken.

The steepest fall in college football history was Auburn's 3-9 record in 2012 just two years after the Tigers went 14-0 and won the national title. Auburn coach Gene Chizik was fired after the 2012 season, largely due to the awful record but also because of off-the-field problems with players.

While it's not a complete apples-to-apples comparison, there are some striking similarities between 2012 Auburn and 2016 Oregon.

1. Talented assistant struggles as head coach: Oregon coach Mark Helfrich was Chip Kelly's offensive coordinator during the Ducks' rise to prominence and a near BCS Championship Game win over Auburn in 2010. Helfrich had never been a head coach before Oregon. Chizik was Tommy Tuberville's defensive coordinator when Auburn went undefeated in 2004 and later returned to replace him as head coach. Chizik had only been a head coach for two years at Iowa State, where he had a 5-19 record. Leading a team requires a much different skill-set than being a coordinator.

2. Warning signs a year earlier: Before its 3-9 season, Auburn went 8-5 in 2011 and lost its five games to Clemson, LSU, Arkansas, Georgia and Alabama by an average of 27 points. That's a shocking margin of defeat for a team coming off a national championship. After losing to Ohio State in the first College Football Playoff National Championship, Oregon went 9-4 in 2015 with some eye-opening losses. The Ducks lost at home 62-20 to Utah and fell at home to Washington State, which was coming off a 3-9 season in 2014. Most famously, Oregon blew a 31-0 halftime lead at the Alamo Bowl to TCU and lost 47-41 in triple overtime.

3. Longstanding defensive woes: Even when Auburn and Oregon won big, they had issues on defense. Auburn's 2010 national championship team ranked 53rd in points allowed, 56th in total yards per play and 108th in passing yards per game. Oregon's 2014 runner-up team ranked 31st in points allowed, 64th in total yards per play and 111th in passing yards per game. The defensive problems existed during the success and got exacerbated once their savior quarterbacks were gone.

4. Heisman Trophy quarterbacks never truly got replaced: Let's be honest: Auburn's Cam Newton and Oregon's Marcus Mariota masked some deficiencies for both schools. They were once-in-a-generation players for those programs, the kind of quarterbacks who could win shootouts and turn busted plays into big plays. "I always used to joke with Marcus that I hoped science figured out cloning before we let him get off campus, but we missed that," Oregon offensive coordinator Scott Frost told me in March 2015. "Marcus saved our tail about six times a game where our concept at what we were trying to do didn't work and he made it work." Auburn and Oregon both struggled to develop quarterbacks to replace their legend.

5. Offensive coordinators escaped before the collapse got worse: Offensive coordinators who rely on tempo and mobile quarterbacks aren't dumb. They can see the writing on the wall if they don't have the right quarterback and the defense continues to struggle. Gus Malzahn's offense struggled at Auburn in 2011 without Newton, and Malzahn missed the 2012 disaster by leaving the Tigers to become Arkansas State's head coach. That allowed him the clean slate needed to return to Auburn and replace Chizik. Now, the same turn of events may not happen at Oregon. (The equivalent of Malzahn's return would be Kelly coming back to Oregon from the San Francisco 49ers, and it's not clear why he would want to do that.) Still, Frost got out of Oregon after 2015 to become head coach at UCF, a school where he's capable of winning to further help his career.

6. Lengthy NCAA scrutiny: Auburn faced questions about its recruitment of Newton given that his father solicited money from Mississippi State. The NCAA found no major violations by Auburn. Oregon was found to have committed NCAA violations by employing Willie Lyles and his recruiting service to sign players. The only significant penalty was a show-cause order against Kelly, who had already left for the NFL. One difference between the schools: Auburn had top-11 recruiting classes as ranked by the 247Sports Composite in each of Chizik's final three years, while Oregon hasn't finished higher than 16th under Helfrich and was ranked 27th in 2016.

7. Large buyout for the coach: The price of watching an unproven head coach take your school to the national championship game is his price goes up. Helfrich's buyout is reportedly about $11 million. Chizik had a $7.5 million buyout when Auburn fired him in 2012. In the modern college football era, Chizik became the quickest national-championship coach to be fired so soon after winning his title.

Oregon still has a chance to avoid a dubious place in history, but time is quickly running out. The Ducks' only wins are against FCS opponent UC-Davis (2-6) and Virginia (2-5). They still play Arizona State (5-3), USC (4-3), Stanford (4-3), Utah (7-1) and Oregon State (2-5).

At this point, it's not hard to see Oregon finishing 3-9 or 4-8. Neither of those are records you want to be saddled with two years after playing for the national championship.

If there's any silver lining for Oregon, it's this: Auburn played for the national title one year after its 3-9 collapse. That's not the norm, nor is it much consolation right now for the Ducks.

Worst records within two years of an AP Top-2 Finish

Team Record Record as Top-2 Team Win Differential Coach during Collapse
2012 Auburn 3-9 14-0 (2010) 11 Gene Chizik
2010 Texas 5-7 13-1 (2009) 8 Mack Brown
1976 Arizona State 4-7 12-0 (1975) 8 Frank Kush
1939 TCU 3-7 11-0 (1938) 8 Dutch Meyer
1940 TCU 3-7 11-0 (1938) 8 Dutch Meyer
1939 California 3-7 10-0-1 (1937) 7 Leonard Allison
1988 Penn State 5-6 12-0 (1986) 7 Joe Paterno
1967 Michigan State* 3-7 10-1 (1965), 9-0-1 (1966) 7, 6 Duff Daugherty
1992 Georgia Tech 5-6 11-0-1 (1990) 6 Bill Lewis
1965 Navy 3-6-1 9-2 (1963) 6 Wayne Hardin
1958 Tennessee 4-6 10-0 (1956) 6 Bowden Wyatt
1954 Michigan State 3-6 9-0 (1952) 6 Duff Daugherty
1951 Army 2-7 8-1 (1950) 6 Earl Blaik
1943 Ohio State 3-6 9-1 (1942) 6 Paul Brown
1959 Ohio State 3-5-1 9-1 (1957) 6 Woody Hayes
1964 Wisconsin 3-6 8-2 (1962) 5 Milt Bruhn