This Week In Schadenfreude: <i>The 'eers Are Wicked P****d Off!!!</i>

satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

[Origin: 1890–95; < G, equiv. to Schaden harm + Freude joy]

On This Week In Schadenfreude we explore the sputtering rage, gibbering condemnation, and resigned ennui of the college football fan who has recently undergone humiliating defeat. Because even in your darkest hour, someone else is suffering too, and probably worse than you. Unless you are a Michigan fan who has just finished watching the Appalachian State game.

Oh, West Virginia. It's not like anyone expected Bill Stewart to be anything other than the second coming of Larry Coker, but even Larry Coker couldn't screw up the talent he was handed in his first year. WVU is now 7-4 after a loss to Pitt, and this week all you need are the titles of threads posted with whole words in caps with multiple exclamation points on WVU's Scout message board:

FIRE STEWART NOW!!!!!!!!!! SICK OF THIS MORON!!!!!!

THAT WAS HORRIBLE!!!!!!!

No wonder Jim Grobe let JEFFY BOY GO!!!

WES LYONS FINALLY MAKES A MEANINGFUL BIG PLAY!!!!*

FIRE Stewart!!!!!

STEW NEEDS TO GET MEANER!!!!!

WE ARE PRETTY SPOILED!!

Mike Leach COME HOME!!!!

*(not going out of bounds with 15 seconds on the clock.)

Country roads, take the Tears of Unfathomable Sadness to the place they belong.

The week in spleen after the jump.

BIG TEN

The Big Ten has completed its season, so schadenfreude is nowhere to be found, but, hey, one of this column's running jokes is to put Notre Dame here and I think they might have lost 38-3 or something in a game that had total yardage of 353-17 at one point in the third quarter. So it's back to the well.

No one knows who to believe about Charlie Weis' buyout, but more sources than not are saying "it is impossibly preposterously large," which makes the warden of the ND Nation insane asylum apoplectic:

I'm also inclined to find whoever put this extension in front of Weis and toss them into Stonehenge Fountain on a 20-degree day. If you have ever written a tuition or donation check to the University of Notre Dame, things like this should have you boiling the tar and gathering feathers while looking for the appropriate target.

I have done neither of these things and so would like to find whoever put this extension in front of Weis and buy them a bagel.

PAC 10

Oregon State watched its Rose Bowl bid go up in a display of unprecedented defensive ineptness , yielding a shocking 694(!!!) yards in a 65-38 loss. Fear Chip Kelly, people. Fear him.

OSU Beaver Football Blog declared the opening thirty minutes "the worst half of football ever," which means he didn't watch any of Michigan or Auburn this year.

Elsewhere, Building The Dam is pretty sanguine about the whole situation; that'll happen when you're Oregon State and you're one game from the Rose bowl.

SEC

I can already tell this Bayou Bengal guy is going to be a goldmine whenever LSU suffers, and with four straight SEC losses-the latest to last-place Arkansas-the Tigers are definitely suffering. Last week he dropped a big fat grade of F on everyone for doing everything, declaring the effort of LSU's seniors to be "totally disgusting and disgraceful."

This week:

LSU's 2008 football season is a failure, and its effort on Friday was an unmitigated failure.

So don't ask me for grades. Failure is the grade.

Hey, yeah, that's pretty reasonable. Here's something even more reasonable from that post:

The only way to fix the problem is to fire every single coach associated with LSU's defense, and particularly Doug Mallory, Bradley Dale Peveto and Earl Lane - at this point it's impossible to see how any of those guys could possibly have any credibility with the Tiger players going forward - but it's Miles' fault those coaches have to go. Further, there are several players on LSU's defense with eligibility remaining who need to be run out of the program because they're cancers.

(Emphasis mine.) This is what I was saying last week about LSU fans being amongst the worst when it comes to supporting the program in tough times. And here's the crowning irony:

I'm embarrassed to be an LSU fan right now and I'm struggling for reasons to continue to support this program.

You're embarrassed to be an LSU fan? You are the one experiencing embarrassment here? I'm sure everyone on the team and at least 40% of the fans would welcome your departure from the fanbase.

Tigers in the SEC have had it rough lately Auburn's six-game run in the Iron Bowl came to a crashing thud Saturday, leaving fans openly wondering about Tommy Tuberville's future. Even the ones who stridently support Tuberville's return in 2009 don't think it will amount to anything:

Yes, I still support Tubby's return. But I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm past the point of genuinely expecting him to accomplish much with it. It's more a matter of hope. And while hope is always, always a good thing and never, ever regretted, hope didn't do a whole lot for us in 2008

Meanwhile, Track 'Em Tigers has the pithy one-sentence summary of the state of the program:

This engine has passed the 100,000 mile point. How many more does it have left before totally breaking down?

Ugly situation to be in, that, waiting for one more mediocre year before the axe falls. Oh, and with Alabama headed to an SEC championship game that doubles as a de facto national semifinal. Grim.

And, hey, one positive note on Tennessee fans, who were deeply conflicted about Phil Fulmer before he was fired and appreciative afterward. Tributes pictorial and expansively wordy abound; in all of them UT fans realize that it won't be the same without Phil around, and mourn that. This year has greatly improved my opinion of a fanbase that still isn't over Charles Woodson's Heisman, if anyone happens to care.

I wish Tennessee luck with Lane Kiffin, though I agree with Clay Travis-he was a questionable hire at best.

BIG EAST

Syracuse 10, Cincinnati 30. Cue the very last crying child:

Rejoice, Orangemen! The Greg Robinson era is over and, unlike virtually every other team looking for a coach you appear to be interviewing candidates that could plausibly be justified as a good hire.

BIG TWELVE

In the nation's most underrated rivalry, Missouri managed to blow a game against Kansas on a last-minute touchdown. Mizzourah, a Missouri blog with a longstanding feature called "hot chicks with k.u.chebags," thinks said last minute touchdown was pretty stupid:

Blitzing the safety on a 4th and 7 on Meier's game winning touchdown, one where it was basically score or lose, was the dumbest thing I've seen since that one broad picked the donkey behind curtain number two when you could see the bumper of the Cadillac behind curtain number one. ...

The guys from Murderball could have covered Meier better on that play. THE GUY IS AN EX-QB!!! He's not faster than a linebacker, needless to say a safety or corner.

They manage to avoid calling for the DC's head, but the implication is clear after Missouri wasted a near-legendary offense with various defensive implosions. Oh, and: OC Dave Christensen is the new head coach at Wyoming. There was a power vacuum in the Big 12 North that Mizzou stepped into; it's kind of looking like they're going to step out soon.

ACC

Man, Tomahawk Nation is ready for the Bowden era to end. In a long post summarizing the season, TN declares the offense to have massively exceeded expectations and the defense to have massively underperformed. Then the blast is launched:

We're going to be in a ton of shoot-outs next year. Bobby's record against UF now sits at 17-17-1, 2-6 since he forced the Jeff decision down the throats of reasonable objectors. Him and Mickey deserve to have 80 dropped on them in the Swamp to end their careers as a fitting finish to their lazy and selfish actions of this decade.

Dang, man! This is only the guy who built the entire program you're talking about here.

Oh, and, zinger alert:

After yet another tight end was meandering unattended for yet another touchdown against the Seminole defense this season came the comment from Mrs. BFT, "Do we NOT know where the tight end is?" The answer to that question would of course be yes. He's in the endzone. With the ball BTW. Scoring a touchdown. A wide open touchdown. No one near him. Just thought I would make that clear.

Mrs. BFT is now clear on this matter, I assume.