The state of Notre Dame football.

[DesertCat]

This thread is amazing. Billy Beane is so frustrated with the immense difficulty and inherent inaccuracy of projecting high school baseball players that he refocuses his drafts on college players. Even drafts focused on college players (NFL & NBA) its common to see the post draft "winners" turn out to be losers a year later while a bunch of low rated players you never heard of are now studs.

Yet we are to believe a bunch of amateurs selling draft publications have god like powers to predict the college performance levels of 17 year old football players. The question isn't whether these rankings are accurate, the question is, how innaccurate are they? It seems clear that they can easily be off by 70 plus places when a ND team made up of five classes that average a ranking of around 30th produces a team that isn't close to top 100 in performance. This means that this years top rated ND class will end up somewhere between 1st and 70th in actual results.

Don't fool yourself, scouting is an activity rife with inherent and subconscious bias. These scouting services had to have immense respect for Weis before this year, and if Weis liked a guy, subconsciously they would be biased towards viewing the recruit more positively (confirmation bias). After this season that bias will be reduced, or maybe even reversed. Next years class might even be under estimated.

For those who desire to think more clearly about areas where they have innate bias, I recommend reading/watching the latest interview of Warren Buffett by Fox business news. The worlds greatest investor won't look at a companies stock price before he reads it's annual report. He wants to estimate its value, before being influenced by the markets opinion.

A good book on the subject is "Influence" by Cialdini.

[TomCollins]

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you really can't take away from the 2005 Irish beating USC.


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To borrow from Economics 101, I think the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility can be safely applied to the humor of this joke between its 99th and 100th iterations.

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I dunno, its pretty damn funny still, maybe by 1000 times it will drop off.

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But is it as witty and smart as "Notre Lame?"

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The USC joke is far more funny than Notre Lame.

Probably in order of funniness-

USC joke >>> Charlie = Jabba >>> Notre Lame

[damaniac]

Notre Lame, suckeyes, scUM, etc. Hey, I'm all for insulting your foes, but for the love of all that is holy make it somewhat humorous or creative. Using those terms on a regular basis is like saying, "Hi, I am eight years old. I also have some great fart joke material." It doesn't have to be genius, but this is akin to coming up with parodies of team's fight songs that mostly consist of words that will show up here as [censored]. Wow, you can use teh profanities!

[bernie]

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Ty was an OK gameday coach that fits well with a program like Stanford or Washington. Couldn't coach the offense worth a lick, and couldn't hire competent coordinators. His defenses were good and his special teams were decent.


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So far he's done a better job than Weis. He started with less and got more out of his players.

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If those had been remedied after say his 1st year and he became more of an ND coach, he likely would've been given a 4th year to see what he could do with his first recruiting class. He was not a fit with ND at all, and the 3 blowouts by USC sealed his fate. Everyone but the AD was glad to see him go.


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If Urban Meyer didn't express his desire to coach ND, Willingham would've likely got his extra year.

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His biggest off the field problems were (in order of importance): poor recruiting, no embracing of alumni/traditions, golfed constantly (to the point where it interfered with recruiting), and sounded like he was feeding everyone BS during his press conferences (once asked if he was a coach, he said thought of himself more as a "molder of men").


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And he was black.

Ty goes 8-0 his first year and gets a couple accolades.

Weis doesn't even have a recruiting class under his belt and he gets a 10 year extension(with Ty's guys). Sets records for ineptitude(with mostly his own guys) and there's hardly a grumble.

As far as developing players, no one can say how either of those guys would've been if Ty had stayed. College players can improve dramatically from year to year.

b

[bernie]

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Please find me some examples of "constant Weis fellatio" of ND fans right now...

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You new? It's all over the boards here and other ND fansites.

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smart/hard working coach who is unafraid to self evaluate and fix what isn't working

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Don't see any proof of this yet.

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(-lack of a "signature win" so far, gross offensive/special teams underperformance with a very young team

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It's not a lack of 'signature win' so much as not even being competetive against bad teams.

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I can't help but feel bad for Bernie and other honest Husky fans who will watch a program with a fine football tradition continue to languish in mediocrity

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Apparently you didn't see Husky football the couple years before Ty got there.

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What is beyond dispute for me is the mediocrity that Willingham brings to a program and how he'll never be more than a .500 level coach

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Ty's still accomplished more than Weis. So until Weis really does anything, I'll find it funny that ND champions him the way they do. Right now, he's below mediocre.

b

[smk67]

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This thread is amazing. Billy Beane is so frustrated with the immense difficulty and inherent inaccuracy of projecting high school baseball players that he refocuses his drafts on college players. Even drafts focused on college players (NFL & NBA) its common to see the post draft "winners" turn out to be losers a year later while a bunch of low rated players you never heard of are now studs.

Yet we are to believe a bunch of amateurs selling draft publications have god like powers to predict the college performance levels of 17 year old football players. The question isn't whether these rankings are accurate, the question is, how innaccurate are they? It seems clear that they can easily be off by 70 plus places when a ND team made up of five classes that average a ranking of around 30th produces a team that isn't close to top 100 in performance. This means that this years top rated ND class will end up somewhere between 1st and 70th in actual results.

Don't fool yourself, scouting is an activity rife with inherent and subconscious bias. These scouting services had to have immense respect for Weis before this year, and if Weis liked a guy, subconsciously they would be biased towards viewing the recruit more positively (confirmation bias). After this season that bias will be reduced, or maybe even reversed. Next years class might even be under estimated.

For those who desire to think more clearly about areas where they have innate bias, I recommend reading/watching the latest interview of Warren Buffett by Fox business news. The worlds greatest investor won't look at a companies stock price before he reads it's annual report. He wants to estimate its value, before being influenced by the markets opinion.

A good book on the subject is "Influence" by Cialdini.

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I disagree that the problem is ineptness at rating players, although you are right that top 10 classes don't equate to top 10 finishes (just ask Bob Stoops last year). The problems with any recruit are due to injuries, academic issues, off the field issues, and development. Last year, oklahoma had players in trouble with the law with their starting qb who ended up kicked off the team. I think they even lost their second stringer, AP was hurt as well. End result of injuries and off the field problems - they were not a good football team. Experts do not predict academic and violence problems, although maybe they should?

Secondly, some coaches are better than others at player development. I like to bring up Jim Tressel here for turning AJ Hawk and Nick Mangold (3 star/ 1 star per Scout) into first round NFL draft picks (and starters now). Lloyd Carr has issues turning 5 starts into first day picks...

So scouting services I think separate atheletes well based on speed, strength, and other tangibles. But it will always be up to coaches to look for the intangibles in their recruits and develop them for the college game. I think domers fears CW is not a good developer of talent, because he should have enough talent to field a good team this year. Are domers now citing failures in the recruiting services for their bad results this year?? Does TW own scout.com or something??

[UATrewqaz]

The day ND starts improving is the day they quit talking about or obsessing over Ty Willingham.

[Bigdaddydvo]

A couple questions for you b,

1) How would you rate Ty's performance at ND?

2) You keep saying Ty has accomplished more at Washington than CW has at ND. Explain how.

[TomCollins]

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Secondly, some coaches are better than others at player development. I like to bring up Jim Tressel here for turning AJ Hawk and Nick Mangold (3 star/ 1 star per Scout) into first round NFL draft picks (and starters now). Lloyd Carr has issues turning 5 starts into first day picks...

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Did Tressel really turn crap into diamonds or did the scouting websites do a worse job at evaluating these players compared to Tressel and his staff? It is probably a mixture of both.

[smk67]

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Secondly, some coaches are better than others at player development. I like to bring up Jim Tressel here for turning AJ Hawk and Nick Mangold (3 star/ 1 star per Scout) into first round NFL draft picks (and starters now). Lloyd Carr has issues turning 5 starts into first day picks...

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Did Tressel really turn crap into diamonds or did the scouting websites do a worse job at evaluating these players compared to Tressel and his staff? It is probably a mixture of both.

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It has to be both up to both coaches and scouting services to look for talent. Keep in mind too that most teams do their own scouting too, so who knows exactly the impact of scout and rivals on actually recruiting other than giving the public a behind the scenes glimpse into their teams recruiting.

I don't think its a question of whether or not these guys were diamonds in the rough, its more that a coach noticed and developed them. How many other teams would have had these guys riding the pine for 4 years? I think this is what separates the great teams from the average ones. Its this player development that Weis needs to do before most people will think CW is a good coach.

As another aside, Hawk and Mangold did not measure up on the speed and strength numbers according the the scouting services, which are the only things a scouting service can really equate. There was a press conference where Tressel was questioned for his recruiting of a slow linebacker and a weak center. His response was "well that's because we aren't a track or the weight lifting team, we're a football team and they are good football players".