by Patrick Zier | Jan 11, 2025 |
Josh Berry is the odd man out, but he shouldn’t be. Berry, along with Stewart-Haas teammates Noah Gregson, Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece, was left scrambling for a ride after Stewart-Haas, owned by former driver Tony Stewart and businessman Gene Haas, shut down operations following the 2024 season.
Not that it came as a huge surprise. Rumors started circulating about its demise a few years ago when the team’s performance began to fall off despite the fact it had full factory backing from Ford and strong sponsorship from a number of major corporations.
But Stewart, a three-time Cup champion and pretty much the go-to guy on the competition side and Haas, who founded the team originally, began to be more involved in other types of racing and the NASCAR program lacked leadership as a result.
Stewart became interested in drag racing and also bought some short tracks and Haas was concentrating on building a Formula One team, all of which left little time to supervise their NASCAR entry. Additionally, Ford support was ending in 2024.
With a lack of leadership at the top and drivers and everyone in the organization wondering what would happen next, Stewart-Haas started to drift into mediocrity and was unable to keep up, especially when NASCAR came out with the NextGen car in 2022.
The NextGen car was different from anything NASCAR had run before. Instead of being able to build their own cars, the teams were now required to buy virtually everything from single sources suppliers and were not allowed to modify the parts and pieces. Even Ford’s top team, Team Penske, had problems adapting to the change and those problems were compounded at Stewart-Haas.
Using the OldGuySport Competition Index we can measure how Stewart-Haas performed relative to Penske. The OGS Competition Index is a better indicator than the NASCAR point system because the NASCAR point system is still essentially based on order of finish and doesn’t indicate how the teams performed on the track.
Additionally, OGS does not use results from Daytona, Talladega or Atlanta because super speedway racing depends primary on luck. Where you finish depends on two things: avoiding the big wreck, which can happen at any point in the race, and being in the right line on the last lap, which is shear guess work.
Starting with 2022, the year the NextGen car first hit the track, Team Penske’s three drivers, Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Austion Cindric, scored 770 points on the OGS scale. Logano had 434, Blaney 274 and Cindric 62. The four Stewart-Haas drivers had 424. Kevin Harvick had 246, Briscoe 165, Aric Almirola 9 and Cole Custer 4. In other words, by himself, Logano outpointed the entire Stewart-Haas team.
In 2023, the Stewart-Haas foursome of Harvick (124), Briscoe (48), Almirola (42) and Preece (25) managed just 239 points. That compared with Penske’s Blaney (311), Logano (202) and Cindric (1), a total of 514. Again, one Penske driver, Blaney, had more points than the Stewart-Haas foursome combined.
Once it was formally announced that Stewart-Haas was shutting down, the team fell apart. The focus was no longer on preparing and driving race cars, rather everyone was scrambling to find a new job. The performance on track was pitiful. Briscoe scored just 104 points to lead the way, Berry had 74, Preece 20 and Gregson one, a total of just 199.
In all, 12 drivers on the OGS Competition Index had more points than the Stewart-Haas team combined and a 13th, Ross Chastain with 183 points, was close. The three Penske drivers, Blaney (392), Logano (250) and Cindric (101) put up 743.
While Stewart-Haas was still considered a tier one team when it folded, towards the end its performance never demonstrated that. Briscoe was the most experienced and consistent Stewart-Haas driver, and he had won a race in 2022, but all four had bounced around with mediocre teams and from a talent standpoint, were relative unknowns.
The only one who had shown the ability to drive an elite car was Berry, who was in his first full season as a Cup driver.
In 2023 Hendrick Motorsports, arguably the strongest team in NASCAR, need a replacement for Chase Elliott, who had suffered an off-track injury. It is extremely difficult for a driver to move into an elite car and run competitively because the replacement driver has no chemistry with the team, and almost everybody put in that position fails.
Berry didn’t, despite the fact he had almost no experience at the Cup level. Over five races, he scored a 10th place finish at Los Vegas and amazingly was second at Richmond, proving he was ready to run at the highest level. When Hendrick’s Alex Bowman got hurt, Berry came back again and, in four starts, he had a 10th at Dover and won the NASCAR All-Star qualifying race to get into the main event.
But when Joe Gibbs needed a replacement for Martin Truex, he chose Briscoe. And when RFK (Roush-Fenway-Keselowski), Ford’s new top tier team, needed a third driver, it went with Preece, who has done absolutely nothing at the Cup level. “Ryan Preece is who we identified from day one when discussing this third entry,” RFK President Steve Newmark commented. Meanwhile Haas started a new one-car team and went with Custer, although that is not a truly competitive ride.
And Berry? Well, he ended up taking a sideways step, signing with the Wood brothers. Years ago, the Wood brothers were one of NASCAR’s big three, along with Petty Enterprises and Holman-Moody. Cale Yarborough drove for the Woods, Richard Petty drove for Petty Enterprises and David Pearson piloted the Holman-Moody entry. But this is simply not a competitive car, despite its alignment with Penske, and in recent years it has only won on super speedways.
And Berry, who is probably the best driver of the four, will have a hard time changing that.
by Patrick Zier | Dec 27, 2024 |
It was College Game Day, it was before Indiana’s first playoff game against Notre Dame, and Curt Cignetti, the Hoosiers’ coach, was on. Boy was he on. “We don’t just beat top 25 programs, we beat the s— out of them,” Cignetti declared. Uhhh…no, you don’t. Actually, top 25 programs beat the s— out of you. Or did you forget that 38-15 shellacking you took from Ohio State, the only top 25 team you played?
However, it seems Cignetti was referring to his personal record as a coach and not specifically his first season at Indiana. Problem with that is that as a coach, Cignetti is a little loose with his top 25 rankings. He has never beaten a team that finished in the top 25, although he has beaten teams that were in the top 25 at the time he played them.
Make of that what you will, but that was part of the reason Cignetti and Indiana were at the center of a controversy as the College Football Playoff began last week. The Hoosiers went into the Notre Dame game with an 11-1 record and were thumped, 27-17, by the Irish in a game that wasn’t that close, Notre Dame leading 27-3 with just a couple minutes left in the fourth.
Given the fact that Indiana did not beat a single team with a winning record this year (Nebraska and Washington were both 6-6) there was a lot of talk from a lot of different places that the Hoosiers should never have been in the playoffs to begin with. And you can certainly make that argument. A lot of people weren’t that happy about 11-2 SMU getting a bid, either. The Mustangs got beat, 38-10, by Penn State after losing their conference championship game to Clemson, 34-31.
Still, the playoffs are doing what they’re supposed to do, generating a lot of excitement about college football, even if most of it seemed to center around two teams that lost. Other than that, one of the main sticking points seems to be the way teams are awarded byes. Under the current setup, the four highest ranked conference champions get first round byes. Georgia (SEC), Oregon (Big Ten) Boise State (Mountain West) and Arizona State (Big 12) were the picks this year. Giving Boise State a bye is ridiculous, and would have been avoided had the four top-ranked teams, Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas, been used instead.
But the central issue remains how teams are chosen and which ones are left out. To a certain degree, going from a four team playoff to 12 teams was supposed to solve this; to hardly anyone’s surprise, it didn’t. That’s because it’s an insolvable problem. No matter how many teams are in, someone’s always going to be left out and they’re going to complain.
This year, the primary aggrieved parties were Ole Miss and Alabama, particularly Alabama which went 9-3 but played four top 25 teams and beat three of them, No.2 Georgia, No. 14 South Carolina and No. 23 Missouri. The Tide lost to No. 7 Tennessee. Proponents of Alabama – and Ole Miss, which also beat No. 2 Georgia and No 14 South Carolina – said they deserved to be in based on the difficulty of their schedules when compared to Indiana and SMU.
On the surface, there’s an argument to be made there. But Ole Miss also lost to Kentucky, which didn’t beat a single Power Four conference team except Ole Miss, and Alabama lost Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, two mediocre teams at best.
“I’m disappointed that we weren’t one of the 12 teams selected,” Alabama Coach Kalen DeBoer said during a press conference on You Tube. “I certainly feel we’re one of those (a playoff caliber team).
Kiffin made fun of Indiana and SMU getting torn up by Notre Dame and Penn State while Ole Miss and Alabama stayed home. “I think this is what you’re going to have to get used to as fans,” he commented via On3.
But SMU’s Rhett Lashlee and Indiana’s Cignetti were quick to jump to the defense of their teams. “We earned the right to be in (the playoffs),” Lashlee said according to On3. “It’s unfortunate that, you know, a bad game is going to maybe make it feel like maybe that’s not the case.”
Asked if his team deserved to be in following the loss to Notre Dame, the usually firey and bombastic Cignetti was more subdued. “Is that a serious question? I’m not even gonna answer that,” he said. But then, after a moment’s pause, he shook his head “yes.”
And by the way, Tennessee, ranked No. 7 in the country, was man handled by Ohio State, 42-17. Guess they shouldn’t have been in, either.
by Patrick Zier | Dec 13, 2024 |
There were excited whispers, a sense of anticipation. A positive buzz filled the room. Things would change now. Scott Frost was coming home and he would right the ship, bring this program back to respectability. Applause and cheers as Frost was formally introduced as the new coach – at Nebraska.
Substitute Central Florida for Nebraska and essentially, you have what took place in Orlando as Frost, the man who pulled UCF out of the dumpster just a few short years ago, was brought back to do it again. Frost is a still youthful looking 49, although perhaps hardened a bit by his recent experience in Lincoln.
When Frost first came to UCF in 2016, he was regarded as one of the nation’s brightest young offensive coordinators and as he built UCF back up, it became very clear that Central Florida was just going to be a stepping stone to bigger and better things. And after Frost guided the Knights to a 13-0 record and a self declared national championship in 2017, he was gone.
To Nebraska, where he had grown up and played quarterback for the Huskers under the legendary Tom Osborne. Nebraska had been up and down since then and had lost its national relevance and Frost was thought to be just the man to restore it. But it never worked.
Sometimes, he seemed close to turning the corner but a 5-22 record in one score games and a 10-26 record in the Big Ten knocked him down and when he lost to Georgia Southern, 45-42, three games into the 2022 season Athletic Director Trev Alberts, who hadn’t hired Frost, let him go.
And that’s where the story really starts. In his first stint at UCF, Frost was known as a players’ coach. He created a much more relaxed atmosphere around the program after taking over from Danny Barrett, who replaced old school George O’Leary when he left before the 2015 season ended. Frost tried to do the same thing at Nebraska, but close observers said that approach, which hadn’t worked for Mike Riley, Frost’s predecessor in Lincoln, was the exact opposite of the discipline the team needed. And when Alberts finally fired Frost, stories began to crop up about a disorganized operation that left Frost in an entirely new light.
Frost, it was said, was often late for practice. He didn’t make recruiting calls. He drank. He threw his players and assistant coaches under the bus and things got so bad at one time that some of his assistants actually went to Alberts and pleaded with him to do something.
How much of this is true is unknowable. It seems totally out of character for Frost, who was dealing with his dad’s terminal illness at the time and could have been affected by that.
But there are things that indicated the program was in disarray. First, Alberts reducing Frost’s buyout, which was hardly a vote of confidence. Then, he fired Frost three weeks before the buyout was to take effect, choosing to pay the full amount rather then wait.
And finally there’s the Dylan Raiola saga. Raiola, the quarterback who Frost’s replacement, Matt Rhule, is building his team around, was one of the top prospects in the country coming out of high school and had strong ties to Nebraska. His father, Dominic, won the Rimington Trophy as the best center in the country while playing for Nebraska. His uncle, Donovan, was Nebraska’s line coach.
Reportedly, Dominic invited Frost to a family function and Frost, at the last minute, backed out despite efforts by Dominic to try and persuade him otherwise.
After that, in May of 2022, Raiola committed to Ohio State, then, in December of 2023, he switched to Georgia. But with Frost now gone, he wound up at Nebraska.
“Coaching is a funny thing,” Frost said after accepting the UCF job for a second time. “You put yourself out there and do the best you can and sometimes it works great and sometimes it doesn’t. It worked great at UCF. You get a lot of praise when things are going well and you take a lot of criticism when they aren’t. You have to take the arrows and the slings as well as the cheers.
“You have good times and bad times everywhere in this game and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We did the right things here and pushed the right buttons and got it done.” And UCF is betting he can get it done again.
