Yippeeeeee! Another amazing Bowl for Notre Dame, following up our prestigious turn in the Hyundai Sun Bowl in El Paso last year, this year we head to Orlando for the exciting Champs Sports Bowl. Actually the matchup is interesting, but yet again we have scheduled ourselves out of a chance at the BCS.College football is not the same as when ND was dominant in the 70's through 90's. The "barnstorming" mentality of playing anyone is great in principle, but in reality it will surely kill our chances at a BCS title. I know it may be an unpopular opinion, but Irish fans HAVE GOT TO GET THEIR HEADS OUT OF THE SAND!
I would like to present to you the 2011 BCS Lineup:
TEAM: SOS(rank) / vs TOP 10 / vs TOP 30This is literally a JOKE! There are schools that literally SCHEDULED their spot into the BCS this year. Look at VaTech. How they get an at-large is beyond me. They didn't play one Top 10 team, and didn't have a win against a Top 30 team! And WVU? They played a Top 10 team and lost. But that was it. They didn't even win the Big East. They tied, and got in by their ranking. Michigan an at-large? Come on! I didn't even bother to go through the cupcakes the teams that actually deserved a BCS spot played non-conference.
Rose Bowl
WISC: 70.00(58) / 0-0 / 3-1
OREG: 73.40(29) / 1-1 / 2-2
Fiesta Bowl
STAN: 72.46(36) / 0-1 / 3-1
OKST: 80.28(6) / 2-0 / 6-1
Sugar Bowl
MICH: 71.77(42) / 0-0 / 2-1
VATECH: 70.04(56) / 0-0 / 0-2
Orange Bowl
WVU: 68.90(67) / 0-1 / 0-1
CLEM: 71.44(44) / 0-0 / 3-1
BCS Title
LSU: 76.01(18) / 3-0 / 4-0
ALA: 74.27(23) / 1-1 / 2-1
*****************************
ND: 73.83(26) / 0-1 / 1-3
Did ND have a "murderer's row" this year? No. But we still played a more deserving schedule than most of those teams. The way I see it, we have two choices:
1) Remain independent and water down the schedule.
I'm not saying play D2 schools or C-USA teams. Just avoid lining up OK, USC, UM, Miami, MSU, Stanford in ONE SEASON (see next year)!!! Seriously, if we beat USC and Michigan in a season and then play a couple mid-majors and a few lower tier BCS schools, we would be 12-0 and absolutely in a BCS Championship. Heck, if we win 10 games and lose those 2 to USC and Michigan, we would get an at-large bid anyway! That's what VaTech, WVU and Michigan did!
2) Join a conference and keep our USC and Navy rivalries.
This would be a better option, in my opinion. No excuses about the schedule. We still play an elite non-conf team in USC, and we would have a better shot at the BCS as an at-large with an easier schedule AND a potential automatic bid if we win the conference. Wait, we don't win the conference? Then at least we get a Bowl tie-in, and don't have to scramble for scraps and hope other conferences don't have enough eligible teams to fill their Bowls.
Can you say ACC??? It's working out great for VaTech and Clemson!!!
1 comment:
I'd still like to be independent, but with the way scheduling works, we play all our hardest games in the first 6 weeks, and that ends up killing us and preventing us from competing later on.
I favor joining the ACC, and here's why. Everyone talks about our rivalries that we need to keep, but I ask who our rivals are? USC for and Navy for sure, but I would also throw in names like Miami and BC. Why do we play Stanford? Because they are a small private school with academic traditions, and we needed a warm-climate game late in the season. How 'bout we replace them with Duke? But Michigan and MSU are nearby rivals. So are Pitt and Syracuse, who are also going to the ACC.
Finally, we played most of an ACC schedule this year with BC, Maryland, and Wake Forest (and soon-to-be-ACC Pitt). The ACC spans from Florida to Massachusetts, and while it doesn't go far west, ND doesn't play many schools west of Indiana that aren't in California. So just play in the ACC, scrap the money from NBC, and join the conference.
Listen, football will drive this decision, but for ND it's not entirely about football anymore. Our women's sports are among the best in the country, and every other sport we have would be benefitted by being in the ACC, with schools like North Carolina, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, etc. The Big East is imploding, and I just don't see it as viable for all our non-football sports.
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