DuBose resigns, but will finish season

College football coaches everywhere can thank Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops this week. Actually, 'thank' is not exactly the word they are looking for. Try a nice, juicy four-letter word.

The rush to success just became a speed trap. Stoops has taken the Sooners from the worst period in their history to No. 1 in 19 games. Fresh from a victory over Nebraska, Stoops' salary was doubled Tuesday by the Oklahoma board of regents to $1.4 million per year.

That was a day after Alabama athletic director Mal Moore informed the board of trustees that Mike DuBose would not be retained. Both boards might have overreacted. DuBose won an SEC title last year. Stoops has yet to coach two full seasons.

But that's the whole point these days.

What have you done for me lately has turned into what have you done for me right now? Athletic directors everywhere are searching for the secret of success. It's obvious they're willing to pay for it. Stoops is now among the top five paid coaches in the country after coaching less than two seasons.

Cary McCall shows the level of support Sooners coach Bob Stoops has in Oklahoma right now.(AP)

While they ponder that mystery, they have decided that what used to take years now is expected to take overnight. DuBose's resignation Wednesday is merely a symptom of the trend. DuBose was likely staring at a 'resign or be fired' edict.

Never mind that by winning its final three games, Alabama can return to the SEC championship game that it won last year.

Alabama and its sometimes-wacky inner workings are different than almost every other school.

But Alabama's situation is related to the fates of at least four other coaches are twisting in the wind this week.

Look around.

• Buffalo coach Craig Cirbus was asked to take his program from I-AA to I-A in four years. Cirbus' security didn't last through the Bulls' second full season in I-A. He is being asked to coach the final three games knowing he has been fired.
• There is a termination watch at Missouri where just two years ago Larry Smith had the Tigers in consecutive bowl games.
• At Southern Cal, Paul Hackett is all but gone and might drag athletic director Mike Garrett with him.
• Published reports say that Rutgers coach Terry Shea will be fired after the Knights' next loss. One report said athletic director Bob Mulcahy has been "secretly gathering" information on replacements for weeks.

DuBose is not alone.

"This is such a highly magnified position," said Clemson coach Tommy Bowden who, along with Miami's Butch Davis and Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer, has been mentioned as a possible replacement for DuBose. "Patience runs thin. You hate to see it. It's a fellow coach working in your profession."

With games still to play, though, players are involved more than ever in these plot twists. South Carolina coach Lou Holtz wondered out loud Wednesday about how Alabama players would respond with a lame duck coach.

"It's going to put them in disarray," Holtz said, "or they're going to come together."

Bet on the former.

The hiring/firing season used to be reserved for December and January when the regular season was actually over. The college football world was shocked when Kansas State athletic director Larry Travis fired Jim Dickey at halftime of the third game in 1985.

That day the seal was broken on decorum and tradition and doing the right thing. Now if you dally, you might doom your program to more losing. At least that's the perception of the ADs.

Their world is so harried that most of them probably eat at McDonald's five times a week rather than spend a sit-down dinner with the family. No time, you know.

Budgets are balanced with checks from Nike and Reebok. Game times are shuffled so State U. can get exposure. Never mind that most of the fans are still rubbing the Friday night hangover out of their eyes at kickoff.

"My reaction is the same thing happens to a lot of coaches in college football," Florida coach Steve Spurrier said. "I remember John Mackovic at Texas won the Big 12 championship a few years ago. The next year he had a bad year and he was gone. Nowadays if you want to remain a head coach you have to win consistently. You can't afford bad years."

Or even mediocre ones. As mentioned Alabama is 3-5 with as much chance as any team in the SEC West. But the faith that DuBose speaks so frequently about just isn't there at Alabama.

DuBose's tenure looked from the beginning to be a dysfunctional soap opera that was doomed to be cancelled. Even in the Bible Belt, the man seemed to wear his religion on his sleeve a bit too much. There was the hypocrisy of DuBose's dalliance with his secretary. That led to a pay cut that was used to pay the secretary's legal settlement for sexual harassment.

The program hit rock bottom (we thought) in that 1999 loss to Louisiana Tech. Athletic director Bob Bockrath was fired in the aftermath after standing by DuBose.

That mess was followed by the inexplicable victory over Florida and an SEC title. Months after admitting he lied about his relationship with his secretary, DuBose got a contract extension.

It was all good again. Coming into this season, the Tide were ranked in the preseason top five for only the second time since 1986. Freddie Milons was a Heisman Trophy candidate.

As quickly as Alabama football rose to prominence, it crashed spectacularly this season. Neither quarterback could get the job done. Milons lost his starting job and pouted. DuBose lost the opener to UCLA, got shut out at home by Southern Miss and then, gulp, lost to Central Florida.

DuBose offered to resign after the Southern Miss loss. He actually blamed God after a loss to Tennessee. Fullback Dustin McClintock punched a Central Florida player on the final play of the game Saturday.

Too late. It was obvious DuBose had lost control.

"It's easy to praise God and say all the right things when you're having some success but when you're having failure and being tested can you still do that?" DuBose said this week. "I failed that test miserably."

None of this wipes away Alabama's history of acting, shall we say, quickly?

DuBose is the fourth coach to guide the Tide since Bear Bryant died in 1982. The fifth will be under the same pressure that even a national championship (Gene Stallings) or SEC title (Bill Curry, Stallings, DuBose) sometimes doesn't relieve.

Drift back to a couple of years ago when Stoops flew to Atlanta to meet the Iowa search committee. He was all but committed to taking the job at Oklahoma but wanted to give his alma mater one final at-bat.

The story goes that an elderly female member of the search committee welcomed Stoops by telling him, "We're not really ready to make a decision yet."

Stoops said his thank yous, picked up the nearest pay phone and called Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione. He accepted the job on the spot.

Iowa dallied. Oklahoma got its man. Alabama is still searching. Nowhere in college football has the foot come off the accelerator.