This isn’t a piece full of me making excuses for Gus Malzahn. I’ll get that out of the way. This is an examination of the road from the opening press conference in 2012 to Saturday evening, and all the bumps in between.
First, some ground rules. I looked at every football game that involved at least one FBS school since the start of 2013, Malzahn’s first year. My data runs through Saturday evening (11/16). This is about 5,700 games.
I decided to throw out bowl games. No, not because Malzahn has a 2-4 record, but because bowl games don’t matter.