The overarching question of Kalen DeBoer’s tenure is whether Alabama fans can be convinced that a loss like the one he suffered Saturday isn’t just acceptable but relatively normal in the college football universe as it exists in 2025.

The game itself? That wasn’t normal.

Oklahoma went into Tuscaloosa and won 23-21 with just 212 yards of offense. Only three teams in the last 25 years have beaten a top-five opponent while being less productive with the ball. But when you add in three Alabama turnovers, a huge mistake in punt coverage and a blocked 36-yard field goal, you get a wonky result that leaves the Crimson Tide at 8-2.

It’s fair game for Alabama fans to be mad about that stuff, and goodness knows if Alabama fans have any reason to be mad about something, they will be.

But this wasn’t anything like the Tide’s cataclysmic loss to Oklahoma last year when it really felt like their season ended in Norman. With Eastern Illinois and a road trip to Auburn closing out the schedule, Alabama should be securely in the College Football Playoff at 10-2 and could end up playing for an SEC title depending on how tiebreakers shake out. In this weird year of parity, you’d still give Alabama a decent shot on a neutral field against anyone other than Ohio State.

Is that good enough?

Remember, it doesn’t matter whether it should be. What matters is how people in a state spoiled by historic success under Nick Saban process a very different kind of Alabama program where you can lose a game like this and throw in another stinker (as the Tide did in Week 1 against Florida State) and still have a great season.

National championship great? Time will tell. But in this era, every coach is thinking one thing: Just get in the tournament.

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Maybe that’s not exciting enough for some Alabama fans who view the sport through a 2015 lens. Maybe it’s not good enough for Paul Finebaum and other television loudmouths who know that fanning the flames of Alabama fan insecurities will drive viewership and social media engagement.

But it kind of has to be good enough. The way this sport is set up now, there’s really nothing else to do — especially in the SEC — but recruit as talented a team as possible and hope to win a bunch of close games while limiting the damage on inevitable bad days.

Through 10 games, Alabama has done that. But the only people happy about it are probably Auburn fans. That’s why the Crimson Tide reign as America’s most miserable fan base in Week 12.

Conference Champions of Misery

ACC: Contrary to popular belief, not all wins are good wins. Sometimes as a fan, your team can win the game and yet deep down you know it’s time to panic. That’s where a lot of Georgia Tech fans should be after a 36-34 escape at 1-10 Boston College. It’s pretty much where coach Brent Key seemed to be during a curt postgame interview where the ESPN sideline reporter had to remind him that it was OK to smile after a win. But Key, who worked under Nick Saban for three years at Alabama, knows that wasn’t good enough against a program that hadn’t led a ranked team in the fourth quarter for eight years. Giving up 537 yards to BC and needing a 68-yard drive at the end to kick a game-winning field goal isn’t the kind of stuff playoff teams do. And if Georgia Tech limps to the finish line, it’ll be a blown opportunity to win a down ACC after starting 8-0. Now, Tech needs to beat Pittsburgh next Saturday at home, and the Jackets will need to be a lot better to get that done.

Big Ten: Iowa has lost 13 consecutive games to ranked opponents, including four this year by a combined 15 points. That’s pretty frustrating, especially when Iowa has kinda sorta fixed the offensive disaster left behind by Brian Ferentz’s reign of error. No, the Hawkeyes aren’t exactly 2019 LSU on offense, but they were good enough to go all the way out to Los Angeles and put up 320 yards on Southern Cal — and it still wasn’t good enough in a 26-21 loss. That’s the story of Iowa’s season, which now sits at 6-4 and is only a couple snaps away from being playoff-worthy. Adding insult to injury was the way this game concluded. With USC needing a first down to run out the clock, the Trojans were looking to convert a third-and-5 or else they’d give the ball back to Iowa with about a minute on the clock. Instead, an assistant coach was flagged for stepping out of the coaching area — a call you really never see — which effectively ended the game.

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Big 12: It’s truly shocking that among all the programs moving from the American to a power conference, UCF has performed the worst by far. Remember, the entire time UCF was in the Group of Five, the argument for moving up was that its location in Orlando — surrounded by all that I-4 corridor talent — would make the transition relatively easy. Instead, since moving to the Big 12, UCF is 6-19 in the conference while Houston is 10-15, Cincinnati is 9-16 and SMU is 13-1 in the ACC. It’s more than just the record. UCF’s 48-9 loss to Texas Tech was completely uncompetitive, which has been a recurring theme this year in Scott Frost’s homecoming as head coach.

Group of Five: If you have an Oregon State fan in your life, we recommend doing something nice for them today. Maybe that’s just a phone call or a text message, but a bottle of expensive bourbon would probably be more appropriate. Because of all the hopeless programs in college football right now, Oregon State’s problems are the most existential and perhaps unfixable. Before the Pac-12 blew up, this program was 25-14 over three seasons and one of the sport’s feel-good stories under Jonathan Smith. But with Smith now at Michigan State (and struggling) and the Beavers waiting for the Pac-12 to start back up as a lesser version of itself, purgatory is no fun. Oregon State has dropped consecutive games to Sam Houston State and Tulsa under interim coach Robb Akey, and the school is going to need to nail its upcoming hire after firing Trent Bray 19 games into his tenure. Even in Gary Anderson’s 1-11 season in 2017, it didn’t feel this bleak in Corvallis.

Headset Misery

Steve Sarkisian: There is no space for rent in the Texas coach’s head because Kirby Smart owns all of it. Does Sark have a Georgia problem? You bet he does. Since joining the SEC last year, Texas is now 0-3 against the Bulldogs while scoring a total of 44 points. For someone of Sarkisian’s reputation as a playcaller (and the amount of talent at his disposal), that’s a remarkable failure. At a certain point in the fourth quarter of Georgia’s 35-10 victory, Smart was just toying with Texas, setting up back-to-back touchdowns with an onside kick in between them. Now 7-3, Texas’ CFP fate will be the subject of significant speculation. Could the Longhorns be the first three-loss team to make it in? It’s only a conversation if they beat Texas A&M in two weeks, but even if they get in, they better hope to avoid Georgia.

Shane Beamer: During his first-half sideline interview against Texas A&M, the South Carolina coach wanted to make it very clear the Gamecocks weren’t surprised to be leading the Aggies because “we beat this team by 24 last year.” And while skipping into the locker room in College Station with a 30-3 lead, Beamer flapped his arms and fist-pumped multiple times into the air, provoking the Texas A&M crowd. He also might have invited some bad karma because South Carolina didn’t score another point and Texas A&M pulled off the biggest comeback in school history for a 31-30 win. There’s a reason why great coaches don’t take anything for granted.

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Pat Narduzzi: As a coach, you should never speak a loss into existence. But Pittsburgh was cooked against Notre Dame as soon as Narduzzi opened his mouth at Monday’s press conference when he declared that this week was “absolutely not” a must-win game. “It’s not an ACC game,” he said. “I would gladly get beat 103 or 110-10. They can put 100 on us as long as we win the next two after that.” At that point, “College GameDay” should have known it made a big mistake choosing Pittsburgh for its pregame show this week because if the coach isn’t locked in on the task at hand, how can you expect the team to be? Sure, Pitt is still alive for the conference title, but doesn’t pride count for something? It’ll be hard to erase that stench after a 37-15 beatdown by the Irish.

Mike Locksley: When the athletic director who didn’t hire you tells a media outlet it would “be silly” to make a decision on the Maryland head coach before the end of the regular season, that should set off alarm bells. But that’s exactly where we are after Jim Smith told the Baltimore Sun this week the school would “determine at the end of the year” where his coach stands.  Locksley has been at Maryland for seven seasons, and every Terps fan knows how it goes by now. Win some easy nonconference games in September, build a little excitement, then faceplant in the Big Ten even against the non-elites. After Maryland’s 24-6 loss to Illinois, the 4-6 Terps will be hard-pressed to avoid Locksley’s fourth losing season in College Park. Despite his deep recruiting connections in the DMV, it’s probably time for someone else to give it a try.

Ryan Silverfield: Are you a candidate for other jobs or are you on the hot seat? It’s getting harder and harder to tell. A month ago, Silverfield coached a 6-0 team that looked like it was extremely well-positioned to win the American Conference and make the CFP as the Group of Five representative. Because of that start, various power conference programs started to show interest in Silverfield, who is in Year 6 at Memphis. But after a dispiriting 31-27 loss at ECU, the Tigers have dropped three of their last five and are eliminated from pretty much every major preseason goal. The Memphis fan base will be rightly up in arms because they’ve invested a lot in their roster and facilities over the last several years, and while Silverfield is 29-8 over the last three seasons, there’s no hardware to show for it.

Moments of Misery

A Texas state trooper lost his mind: Unacceptable is the only word for what happened late in the first half after South Carolina’s Nyck Harbor scored on an 80-yard touchdown reception to take a 27-3 lead on Texas A&M. Harbor appeared to have some sort of injury and went through the end zone into the tunnel, where a couple teammates followed him. As they came back toward the field, the officer coming from the field clearly bumps Harbor and sticks out his left elbow into running back Oscar Adaway. Then, he had the audacity to turn around and point at Harbor as if it wasn’t entirely the officer’s fault. The Texas Department of Public Safety released a statement saying the trooper was relieved of his duties, but there should be severe consequences for approaching a player in that manner.

Theo Von became the new Kenny Chesney: Here at the Misery Index, we would struggle to tell you why Von is such a big deal, other than we know he has a podcast and is supposed to be a stand-up comic. But if you grant that he’s famous in the way certain people are famous in 2025, associating with college football is good for his brand. After moving to Nashville five years ago and moving into former Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason’s old house, he adopted the Commodores and became a regular at their practices and games. But once you start trying to rep the entire SEC, you move into Chesney territory. The country music star is a Tennessee fan but became notorious for sharing allegiances with any SEC program whose coach fluffed his ego. Von has crossed that threshold after accompanying Lane Kiffin through the Grove at Ole Miss and firing up the crowd while wearing a Rebels baseball jersey. Sorry Theo, but if you want to remain a respectable SEC fan, you need to pick one team.

Louisville’s kicker had a rough weekend: Cooper Ranvier is very good at his job, especially from long distance where he’s made a couple field goals from 50-plus this year. But with 1:33 left against Clemson, down 20-19, coach Jeff Brohm sent Nick Keller out for a go-ahead field goal from 46. He didn’t come close. Why was Keller in that position? Because after a shanked extra point early in the game and a miss from 50 with a little more than four minutes left, Brohm determined Ranvier had lost his confidence. To be sure, Louisville’s loss was a team effort with 10 penalties, 2-for-11 on third down and all manner of mistakes. But those missed kicks, and the lack of confidence Brohm showed in his main kicker, ultimately doomed Louisville to a spoiler role as the ACC race winds down.