The state of Notre Dame football.

[Thremp]

[ QUOTE ]
It is pretty funny since I said u7.5 should be -300 to you on AIM

EDIT: it does speak to the expectation levels of some fans though

[/ QUOTE ]

I know. Future markets are notoriously inefficient. Like the White Sox as a 89 win team. LOL. They're worse than Tampa now and going forward.

But yes, people are deluded.

ND was closer to a .500 team going into the year in reality and are under performing that mark. They also look like they have a solid dose of just plain terrible in them.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
It is pretty funny since I said u7.5 should be -300 to you on AIM

EDIT: it does speak to the expectation levels of some fans though

[/ QUOTE ]

The expectation levels of Domer nation was way higher than 7 wins.

Blue-Gray Sky got 9 Notre Dame bloggers together and "put their picks down on paper":

http://bluegraysky.blogspot.com/2007...68030567018432



The results are pure hilarity post hoc. More schadenfraude at ND bloggers expense -- remember, these are quotes from less than a month ago:

"Michael - ND will surprise a lot of folks when they beat PSU on the road."

lol

"Pete - I think the Penn State game will be a big surprise, considering it will be on the road in a harsh environment against a team that is generally believed to be elite even when they're not. And I think it'll be a surprise because we'll win fairly handily."

lol

"Dylan - When we beat Georgia Tech and Penn State, it will be because they were overrated. When we beat Michigan, and beat them at their own game, people will realize that ND is better than 39th-best."

LOL




Obviously, revisionist ND fan history requires the standard "we all knew it was going to be a terrible season, Ty's recruits were just that terrible" narrative to be trotted out ad nauseum. But before the season, there were endless "Charlie will have the troops ready, this team is going to surprise everybodyz! 8 wins minimum!" claims spewing forth from ND fans.

7 wins was not at all a consideration for ND fans. Look at the blog post above. The *most sober and conservative* among them predicted EIGHT wins for this team. EIGHT! They'll probably lose eight before they win one.

But of course, you can't find an ND fan *now* who was optimistic about this season before it started; nope, they just knew it was going to be a painful rebuilding year; the combined coaching prowess of Knute Rockne, Ara Parseghian and Lou Holthh couldn't coach Ty's guys to a bowl game this season, and every ND fan knew it.

This has been completely standard throughout Weis's tenure. Find posts on 2p2 or on other board's before ND's big games last year: Before every big game, it was "ND is going to surprise you! Charlie will have the troops ready!" And after every ND big loss? "Charlie just can't win with Ty's troops."

As other's have noted, Charlie's skills literally have nothing to do with Xs and Os, schemes, or anything tangible on the football field. Despite the fact he's literally accomplished nothing (except for taking overrated teams full of some other's guy's recruits to BCS bowls/beating a 7-5 Michigan team/winning the Commander-and-Chief trophy/losing a close game to USC), Charlie's real skill pretty much centers brainwashing ND nation into completely contradicting themselves time and again (sometimes in less than a couple of hour hours) while prompting absolutely no self doubt or reflection about how wrong all of their predictions about Weis's skills proved to be.

That ND fans predict Charlie will go 11-1 on Sept 1st only to completely contradict themselves less than a month later after the team is 0-4 and say with a straight face that "they knew the team would be bad; Ty's recruits are just too crummy" is beyond the pale.

Being consistently wrong predicting the fate of Charlie Weis coached Irish teams will never prompt ND fans to tone down their prognostications for the future: Weis will have the troops ready for that 2009 run at the national title, no doubt. What possible reason could they have to doubt this? Charlie always gets the troops ready.

[FlyWf]

Just for [censored] and giggles I found the OSU/ND Fiesta Bowl thread from back in the day. Some choice quotes:

Pre-game
"Last year at this time I thought the Steeler defense was unbeatable, and look at what Charlie Weis did to it.

The Buckeye D won't know what hit it."

During the game:
"The playcalling for ND has been on.

They players need to get their [censored] together.

Lots of dropped balls and missed opportunities."

After the game:
"OSU played much much better today, hopefully we'll get some defensive recruits who can hit the quarterback in the future."

"Overall I'm THRILLED with the outcome of the season. It was truly a team of overachievers, and what Weis has done with this group was remarkable. "

"Finally, I don't understand the burying of Notre Dame after this game. Everyone knew when they started the year they had minimal talent and a good coach...
I see this as they are a few years from returning to a full talent level and national championship caliber teams, they will still win 7-9 games next year simply because they will outcoach teams. "

[DVaut1]

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...part=2&vc=1
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...rue#Post7308028


Choice quotes *before* the UM/ND game last year (final score Michigan 47, Notre Dame 21):

"I like the Irish vs. UM due to one incontrovertible fact:
Ty Willingham, one of the worst head coaches in the nation, outcoached 3 Loss Llloyd Carr 2 out of 3 times. Despite both teams having about even talent on paper, which most analysts agree is the case, I don't see Carr out-coaching or out-preparing Weis this week."

"Notre Dame is going to stomp Michigan. Sorry, man but it's not going to matter if you're home or there watching. Michigan is outclassed, out gunned, and out coached. They have NO shot at winning this game."

*After?* the game?:

"Some of the people on staff have coached at the highest levels of the game. They know that their team has it's weaknesses. But thank god we're not dealing with a staff that cries to the media about "lack of talent" (Bob Davie "Close the talent gap against Navy"). That coupled with the fact that we were winning made people overlooked our fundamental flaws while figuring that Weis could finesse or out scheme away our deficiencies.

A good coach can do that but their margin for error decreases in porportion to the talent their facing.

In Michigan yesterday we faced an intently focused team, that was more talented, and which received some critical early brakes."

"Short of God himself no coach would have won that game yesterday. It was a classic "whatever could go wrong did" scenario that happens to every coach at some point in their career."


----


So before the game, it's all "It's an incontrovertible fact Super Genius Weis will outcoach you, mere mortals have no hopes against his amazing schemes, that's why we were so smart for giving him the 300 year contract"

After the game: "God himself couldn't have coached ND to victory, the talent disparity is just too great", aka the Ty's fault argument.

Same posters giving the pre-game and post-game quotes, but absolutely no shame about the obvious self-contradictions mere hours apart. The narrative stays the same: Super Genius Weis is the most amazing coach in the history of college football...except when Notre Dame gets blown out (which happens quite frequently in the Weis era) -- in which case, Notre Dame doesn't have the talent to compete, ie., old coach bad & stupid players just can't comprehend Weis's Super Genius.

[MyTurn2Raise]

woohoo...those old threads remind me that occassionally I get things right

ty, I needed the confidence boost

[Thremp]

DVaut,

We prefer to talk about reality not what morans think.

[NozeCandy]

I know the comments are no longer viewable for this post, but it wasn't just hilarious after the fact. Any fan of other teams that read that blog the day completely ripped into them for their hilarious picks.

[FlyWf]

MT2R also picked 33-16 as the final score of the 34-20 Fiesta Bowl. No idea why you thought the game would be so field goal intensive, but pretty close all the same.

[MyTurn2Raise]

[pvn]

POTD. POTMFW. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] DVault1.

[ QUOTE ]
"Pete - I think the Penn State game will be a big surprise, considering it will be on the road in a harsh environment against a team that is generally believed to be elite even when they're not. And I think it'll be a surprise because we'll win fairly handily."

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL IRONYAMENTS