Cursed College Football: A Journey Into Misfortune

Even at their best, they still fail to see solace. A 2007 Kansas team that looked unbeatable ran into misery in Missouri, losing to the Missouri Tigers 36-28 at Arrowhead Stadium. This loss would prevent them from having a shot at a Big 12 Conference Championship and a BCS National Title. The 2007 season is widely regarded as the best season of Jayhawk football ever. This season, however, set in motion the decade and a half of bottom-feeding, as the newfound success of a 12-1, Orange Bowl-winning season wouldn’t be sustained for hardly a single year. The Jayhawks had one more year of a winning record before plummeting to the doldrums of college football. Any time this program seems to find any sort of consistent success and promise, it is stamped out by heartbreak and seemingly endless suffering.

Even in 2023, after finding their way out of the basement for the first time in 15 years, they couldn’t help but embrace inconsistency. Kansas looked excellent, going 5-1 in its first six games. Their one loss came to a College Football Playoff-bound Texas Longhorns in a tighter contest than what the scoreboard portrayed. A heartbreaking loss to the Oklahoma State Cowboys, as well as back-to-back gut-wrenching losses three weeks later against the Texas Tech Red Raiders and Kansas State Wildcats, spelled the end of any Big 12 title hopes.

This curse has existed in varying evidence since their 1968 Big 8 title, their only conference title to date. No more evident was that curse than the following year, 2024. Kansas had its highest preseason ranking since 2009 and was a projected Big 12 title favorite by many. Kansas’s most promising team in years ended up losing five of six to start the season, all in late-game collapses. Though they’d win three in a row against ranked programs and head into their final game with a ton of momentum later that season, they suffered a 45-17 drubbing against the Baylor Bears, knocking them out of bowl eligibility. A season full of promise, only to crumble in almost comical fashion.

In summary, the next time a Kansas fan tells you to “wait until basketball season,” you know they mean it, because believing in football only leads to Sisyphean levels of anguish and futility.

Texas A&M Aggies

Has a program ever done less with more? A plethora of NFL-level talent, marquee coaches that will “give the program the boost it needs,” and a host of wealthy donors, only to have dreams shattered and fans underwhelmed year in and year out. The Texas A&M Aggies have at least won a conference title in a conference that still exists, unlike Kansas. The Aggies have won a single Big 12 title … back in 1998 …27 years ago … a drought that, if it were a person, could rent a car. What exactly does that say about a program that boasts some of the richest donors, best facilities and some of the most marquee players and coaches that college football has ever seen?

Even when the Aggies have found success, it has been all for not. An undefeated season in 1994 (their last undefeated season) bore no fruit, as the Aggies were ineligible for postseason play due to NCAA sanctions. This was one of seven undefeated seasons, yet they have one national championship to show for it. In 1939, back in the leather helmet era and when the forward pass was a new and novel concept. Before 1994, their last undefeated season was in 1956. They finished fifth in the country because, while not being defeated, they still tied, finishing behind two teams with losses somehow.

Remember when the AP Poll decided the national title winner? Good times. By the way, the coach of that 1956 Aggies team? None other than the legendary Bear Bryant, who, one year later, would move on to catalyze the far more successful and less cursed Alabama Crimson Tide. Even when the Aggies manage to find a coach who has already made a name for themselves and has proven to have made programs great, that coach ends up doing nothing of note. Looking at you, Jimbo Fisher.

The Aggies can’t seem to find the mountaintop. While they have found a bit more consistent success than the aforementioned Jayhawks, they have had a much bigger bank, much better players, much better coaches and much less of an excuse to perform poorly and underwhelm than Kansas. They have far too much going for them to be this inadequate and futile.

Though a team like the Oregon Ducks has no national titles and is in a similar situation (at least as of recently with Phil Knight) to the Aggies, they’ve at least been to the title game, won conference titles and have been in the running for a title since FDR was president. Not the case for A&M, which hasn’t even sniffed a conference title in a quarter-century, much less a national title. We shall see what 2025 brings, with the Aggies being 8-0 (5-0 SEC) and showing no signs of slowing down, but don’t hold your breath. The curse still has plenty of time to take hold.

West Virginia Mountaineers

If anyone knows the brutality of futility, it’s the West Virginia Mountaineers. The Mountaineers have had some of the worst breaks in college football history. Some of the most memorable teams ever, yet no national titles to show for it. Being the top dog in their conference, only to see that conference crumble and die. Some of the best players to grace a college football field, yet no Heisman Trophy winners and a fairly thin list of notable NFL players.

The Mountaineers have seen more recent and, to a degree, more relevant success than the two aforementioned teams, with multiple conference titles in the 21st century as well as multiple recent New Year’s Six Bowl wins. They’ve always been one of the more underrated programs in the country, historically speaking. This being said, few teams, if any, have had more painful moments at the most inopportune times.

Their most painful memory is likely the 1988 season, when they were one win away from their first national title. Quarterback Major Harris was a stud, finishing third in Heisman voting and, to date, being the closest a Mountaineer has been to the coveted trophy. If Harris and the Mountaineers were to pull this game off, he likely would have been voted the winner. Harris, however, dislocated his throwing shoulder on the first play from scrimmage. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish dashed the Mountaineers’ hopes from there, beating them 34-21.

Another stinger came in 2012. Geno Smith, Stedman Bailey and the legendary Tavon Austin led a West Virginia offense that looked unstoppable. Smith and Austin were vaunted as Heisman contenders, Dana Holgerson was regarded as one of the best coaches in the FBS and they had a home matchup against an unassuming Kansas State team that seemingly didn’t match up well to the Mountaineers’ immense speed and tricky play calling. The Mountaineers could only muster up 243 total yards of offense and 14 points, while the Wildcats exploded for 479 yards and 55 points. West Virginia went into that game 5-2 and finished 7-6.

Any time a West Virginia squad has looked like it would make a name for itself, they faltered. Many of its greatest players fizzled out into obscurity, its greatest teams forgotten and even its conferences it once dominated, ended up buried and dead. The Big East Conference was becoming West Virginia’s to lose year in and year out, with titles in 2010 and 2011 being won in dominant fashion. The conference was strong, too, with many members seeing solid seasons and being competitive against teams outside the conference. Then, they upped and left for the Big 12 and left the Big East to die one year after. They’ve seen little success in their new conference, not making a single conference title game and being mediocre at best since that fateful 2011 season. West Virginia football has seemingly died with the Big East, and with no prospect of revival on the horizon, the Mountaineers remain as cursed as the Appalachian woods.

Cursed College Football Futility

“Futility” is not a synonym for “cursed,” but for these programs, they seem to mean one in the same. Any time success is even sniffed, it is quickly and abruptly snuffed out. It doesn’t matter how much money you put in, what coach you have, the players you have or even how successful you’re beginning to look, the futility seems to always claw its way back in.

Supernatural causes are surely the one explanation that fans of these snake-bitten programs can look to, right? What will it take to see their futility broken? Curses have been broken before, and these are far from the only three teams that have suffered a streak of futility, but what sets these three programs apart? Is it the work of something otherworldly, or simply a coincidence? That’s for you to decide.