In this segment of the college basketball calendar, underperforming coaches are the frogs in the stewpot. The heat is slowly rising, the water just beginning to simmer.
Only in this case, everyone is writing and posting about the simmer and then showing those perspectives to the frog. Also, the frogs are able to read in this metaphor.
Yet in some cases, they seem relatively sanguine. This is the business they've chosen, after all. All they can do is hope to find some winning formula or administrative mercy to temporarily stay the invisible hand from flipping the dial up that final, fateful notch.