[Postscript added at 10:30 PM, October 15, 2015, with ~12 minutes left in the 4th quarter.]

Can Jim Mora beat Stanford?

This is, apparently, a question that gets asked a lot. Jim Mora is UCLA’s most successful coach in decades, but he is 0-4 against Stanford, and Vegas expects UCLA to lose today by a touchdown.

As a Stanford fan, I’m upset about this. If people view Jim Mora as a choker (and specifically a Stanford choker), then if Stanford beats UCLA, the win will be devalued. If Stanford loses to UCLA… “goodness gracious, they even lost to Jim Mora.” I want Stanford to beat UCLA every year (nothing personal), and I want the Cardinal to get full credit for doing it.

So let’s start by attacking the Jim Mora question more generally, because “he can’t beat Stanford” is just a step away from “he can’t win the big ones.” Is the notion of the “big game coach” a reality? I do think that some coaches are chokers, but it’s hard to imagine that coaches can reliably up their game in the big moments. In the NBA you get reputations for clutch play, but many players “elevate” their game in the playoffs simply because they coast for a lot of the regular season. That’s not really an option in college football, where even in the era of the four-game playoff, every game is critical.

Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom is that some guys can’t win big games. And maybe some coaches do have other coaches’ numbers. The canonical example of a “can’t win the big game” coach is John Cooper at Ohio State, who was fired for losing to Michigan too often.

But it stands to reason that at least one great coach in any period of time is going to have a horrible stretch of luck in big games, and we will feel compelled to draw narratives even when none may actually exist. It happens to the best of them. Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, who made his name by getting John Cooper fired, ended his tenure at Michigan losing six out of his last seven games against Jim Tressel’s Buckeyes. Did Carr suddenly lose his big-game ability? Did Tressel have his number? Or should we be more interested in the fact that Tressel only coached two games against Michigan (2003 and 2006) where both teams were similarly elite, and Tressel and Carr split the two?

If Tressel doesn’t upset Michigan in 2001 and 2004, there’s no thought of Carr not being able to win the big game. Obviously it was Carr’s job to make sure Michigan was as prepared as it could possibly be; Carr should not have lost these games. But as any fan of college football can tell you, teams have good games and they have bad games; two games isn’t nearly a big enough sample to make or break a reputation. And let’s not forget that after a few bad losses in bowl games, even Tressel acquired a “can’t win the big game” reputation of his own. Sports fans are fickle.

You can get the numbers to say almost anything if you arrange them right.

That brings us to Jim Mora.

Mora, if you will recall, has never beaten Stanford, and in fact, his losses to Stanford have all come at exactly the right time to derail UCLA’s season.

So how does Mora actually perform in big games? What happens when there’s a big game – when both teams are similarly ranked and both teams are preparing for each other? When there is not just no excuse but little conceivable reason for either team to come out flat?

Let’s actually sit down and do the research. Inspired by one Georgia fan’s passionate defense of Mark Richt, I’m going to go through the big games of Jim Mora’s career at UCLA. Yes, the designation of big games is somewhat arbitrary. No, it doesn’t make a huge difference.

2012
#16 Nebraska 30 – 36 UCLA
#24 Arizona 10 – 66 #25 UCLA
#21 USC 28 – 38 #17 UCLA
#11 Stanford 35 – 17 #15 UCLA
(To this day I still believe Mora punted this game in order to avoid playing Oregon in the Pac-12 Championship Game. I don’t think he actively threw the game, but I don’t think he particularly wanted to win it either.)
#17 UCLA 24 – 27 #8 Stanford
(Still the best game I’ve ever seen in person.)

2013
#16 UCLA 41 – 21 #23 Nebraska
#9 UCLA 10 – 24 #13 Stanford
(Stanford had just lost to Utah. And this win will never not be funny.)
#12 UCLA 14 – 42 #2 Oregon
#19 ASU 38 – 33 #14 UCLA
#22 UCLA 35 – 14 #23 USC

2014
#11 UCLA 62 – 27 #15 ASU
#12 Oregon 42 – 30 #18 UCLA
#14 Arizona 7 – 17 #25 UCLA
#24 USC 20 – 38 #11 UCLA
Stanford 31 – 10 #9 UCLA
(Put it this way… after three losses to Stanford there is no way that Mora could have overlooked this game. And if we’re counting 2012 Nebraska we’re counting this one too.)
#14 UCLA 40 – 35 #11 Kansas State

2015
#19 BYU 23 – 24 #10 UCLA
#9 UCLA 56 – 30 #16 Arizona

Jim Mora is 11-7 in his 18 big games. And it’s not like he’s getting upset all the time in big games, because he’s only had the higher-ranked team in 10 out of 18 games. Maybe he’s not an elite big game coach. But if I accepted the idea of a “big game coach,” I’d still argue that there aren’t very many of those, and UCLA’s not likely to find one.

When it comes to Jim Mora, we’ve got a serious case of confirmation bias. When Jim Mora beats teams, we expect that he should beat them – we devalue his sparkling record against USC because of NCAA sanctions, even though USC’s talent is stellar.

In Jim Mora’s case, there is no difference between “Jim Mora can’t win the big game” and “Jim Mora can’t beat Stanford.” They amount to the same thing. So Jim Mora has never beaten Stanford. But really, who can fault the man for that? He’s lost four times. He punted one of these games. He took Stanford to the wire in Stanford Stadium the second time. It’s not like David Shaw has been taking his lunch money.

We’re not here to discuss whether Jim Mora underperforms against bad teams. Chronically failing to get up for mediocre teams is actually a fireable offense, and whether or not Jim Mora does that, I don’t care. That doesn’t apply here. We’re just trying to figure out if he “can win the big ones,” because today’s Stanford-UCLA matchup is a big one. And nothing I see signals that Jim Mora is actually bad at winning the big game.

So what I’m saying is… there’s no shame in Jim Mora losing to Stanford.

Right?

 

[Postscript: Okay, plenty of shame in losing to Stanford like…that.]

 

Winston Shi may have effectively demonstrated Jim Mora’s prior ability as a “big game coach,” but prior matches will mean nothing when Jim Mora faces off against David Shaw tonight. Will Mora show himself to be a true big game coach? Share your thoughts with Winston by sending him an email at wshi94 ‘at’ stanford.edu.