The state of Notre Dame football.

[domer2]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm saying it definitely moves a guy up a spot or two
--this is enough to push ND roughly 5 spots higher than they should be nearly every year (the lines are thin between classes just as they are in season rankings for win/losses)

Weis is still doing a great job and there will be no excuse to not have a top10 team in 3 years

yes, the hype goes onto all schools, however it's more with ND.
Partly because it's ND. Partly because of the close relationship with Tom Lemming and ND.

A recent book, Meat Market by Bruce Feldman, had some good info on this. The book is mainly focused on Ole Miss recruiting for one season. Oftentimes, if LSU got involved on a guy, he would suddenly jump on the recruiting rankings as the recruiting analysts would trust LSU's judgment.

ND gets the same treatment to a higher magnitude. So far, I've seen nothing of the Weis regime to dictate they deserve that respect for their scouting.

[/ QUOTE ]

This crap has been debunked time and time again. I'll grant you the ESPN list bumping ND players (not like anyone pays attention to that anyway), but Scout doesn't do that, and Rivals in fact usually drops them.

Those sites kowtow to the SEC, which are their bread and butter. Saying they elevate kids when they show interest in ND is pure BS and is not at all evident in the recruiting rankings/updates of rankings.

[shemp]

[ QUOTE ]
Next season there will be high expectations for success. And if those aren't met he will be shown the door, and if they are met, they will be extremely high for 2009 as all of the premiere talent will then be upperclassmen.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for your perspective.

It will be interesting to see, because I think from 9-3 to 7-5 gets a big share of likelihood, and all would be such an enormous improvement on this year. There's no huge drumbeat for his head.

This contrasts with why it was important to axe Ty, because you fear he's likely to have a "good enough" year and make things harder for you if you let him hang around. If Charlie goes 7-5 or 8-4 next year, the mumbling may get a bit louder, but I think it will be contained enough.

[shemp]

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


[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

Roughly an hour ago you were reminding me of how the 2005 Irish did against USC.

Think about it. For. Say. 1000. Years.

[shemp]

[ QUOTE ]

USC was great at a lot of things during those years. Sure, creating turnovers is nice. What is bad is if you almost exclusively rely on turnovers and defensive scoring as the centerpiece of your strategy to win at the expense of fielding a productive offense. To my recollection, very few opposing defensive coordinators lost sleep over how to defend the vaunted Bill Diedrick "bubble screen." But seeing as how many on this board see this as sound football strategy, I'll extrapolate and start to rely on my A-7 offsuit sucking out on pocket queens to help me regularly win poker tournaments.


[/ QUOTE ]

Another example of the shifting goalposts. CW went 9-3, therefore he can coach. TW had a good turnover margin, therefore he got lucky. TW did even have enough recruits in his bad classes, yet he had the same as Weis's 2007 class. When you get called on one, you rotate to another.

You bend over backwards to pin a bad recruiting year for 2005 on a guy who got fired in November 2004 in the midst of a horrible atmosphere-- and you give unfavorable comparisons when it certainly appears that CW is operating under different rules/guidelines. But you are one of the reasonable Domers.

But thanks for the poker analogy. It helps.

[TomCollins]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Getting outgained by OSU 617 to 348 is playing close? Man, it would suck if I had such low expectations. Once the 2nd quarter hit, I don't even remember feeling the game was in doubt at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

You were probably too distracted by the nausiating Brady Quinn sister/A.J. Hawk story line ABC kept peddling throughout the game.

I remember being pretty happy with how ND held on for most of the game against a sick, sick Buckeye squad that would be playing in the National Championship game if they had only edged out Texas earlier in the season (and would spend all of 2006 ranked #1 until the BCS Title game).

[/ QUOTE ]

The same team that lost to Penn State as well and could only put up 10 points? Ohio State wouldn't have been #1 if the beat UT, they lost to PSU too. The Buckeyes gained more yards against Notre Lame than even Bowling Green, Cincinnati, and Miami U.

It wasn't a blowout, but calling it a close game is reliving history. Also keep in mind the spread was about 7 points, so it was supposed to be a close game.

And actually, the reason I was distracted was we were playing the Charlie Weis drinking game- take a sip any time he is mentioned, take 2 sips whenever his "6 weeks of planning" was brought up, and finish whenever the term "Offensive Genius" was said. I was pretty wasted by the end of the game.

648 yards. A Fiesta Bowl Record. Do you not understand how badly Notre Dame played in that game? This is why people look at Domers as the biggest fools out there. You could have played that game 100 times, and I doubt Notre Dame wins more than 5 of them.

[TomCollins]

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


[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[domer2]

[ QUOTE ]
This contrasts with why it was important to axe Ty, because you fear he's likely to have a "good enough" year and make things harder for you if you let him hang around. If Charlie goes 7-5 or 8-4 next year, the mumbling may get a bit louder, but I think it will be contained enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

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").

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.

By the way, for those of you who say that Brady Quinn was recruited by Ty Willingham, that was not the case at all. Chinedum Ndukwe was on a visit to ND -- Ndukwe and Quinn were classmates in high school -- and Ndukwe's father basically handed Ty the tape of Quinn and said recruit this kid. Then and only then was Quinn offered a scholarship which he subsequently accepted. If not for that, he would've been playing for Ohio State.

Another Ty recruiting story. Jeff Samardzija came in and talked with Ty before one of the seasons and Ty basically told him "I don't see a future for you in football, you should concentrate on baseball." Lo and behold, next season when Weis steps in, he moves to third on the depth chart and becomes a starter when Rhema goes down. From there, he went on to set ND WR records.

So if you think Weis' grasp on talent is poor, you have not yet been introduced to Ty Willingham, golfer, molder of men, microphone flipper extraordinaire.

[domer2]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Getting outgained by OSU 617 to 348 is playing close? Man, it would suck if I had such low expectations. Once the 2nd quarter hit, I don't even remember feeling the game was in doubt at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

You were probably too distracted by the nausiating Brady Quinn sister/A.J. Hawk story line ABC kept peddling throughout the game.

I remember being pretty happy with how ND held on for most of the game against a sick, sick Buckeye squad that would be playing in the National Championship game if they had only edged out Texas earlier in the season (and would spend all of 2006 ranked #1 until the BCS Title game).

[/ QUOTE ]

The same team that lost to Penn State as well and could only put up 10 points? Ohio State wouldn't have been #1 if the beat UT, they lost to PSU too. The Buckeyes gained more yards against Notre Lame than even Bowling Green, Cincinnati, and Miami U.

It wasn't a blowout, but calling it a close game is reliving history. Also keep in mind the spread was about 7 points, so it was supposed to be a close game.

And actually, the reason I was distracted was we were playing the Charlie Weis drinking game- take a sip any time he is mentioned, take 2 sips whenever his "6 weeks of planning" was brought up, and finish whenever the term "Offensive Genius" was said. I was pretty wasted by the end of the game.

648 yards. A Fiesta Bowl Record. Do you not understand how badly Notre Dame played in that game? This is why people look at Domers as the biggest fools out there. You could have played that game 100 times, and I doubt Notre Dame wins more than 5 of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the reason that it was close was because there was a controversial play I believe in the 3rd quarter. Ohio State coughed the ball up, ND returned it for a TD. Ruled not a fumble on replay (I think I remember watching it later on TV that it was indeed a fumble). So with that, ND would've been within 7 with plenty of time left to go. I don't remember exactly as I was at the game and a bit out of it, but it was something along those lines.

Also you can thank Rick "Nuclear Winter" Minter for his defenses, or lack thereof. Jesus, that was a bad hire. Corwin Brown, our new DC, has been OK so far, but he is bringing in top recruits by the bucketload, so my hopes are extremely high on that side of the football.

[FlyWf]

Since we've previously established that turnovers are luckboxing, I imagine it surprises absolutely no one to know that ND won the turnover battle in the 2006 Fiesta Bowl 2-0, that being a decent reason the score ended up as close as it was(as OSU was only forced to punt once by the ND defense).

I'm not sure you want to play the "It was the DC's fault!" card so early, you probably want to keep that blame around for when you need to fire Corwin Brown.

Finally, that fumble return that was ruled an incompletion would not have resulted in a touchdown as ND had gotten flagged for an illegal block on the runback. Amusing how well Weis gets his talking points out, because the AP recap of the Fiesta Bowl quotes him as blaming the loss on that play.

[Franchise 60]

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


[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

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