beorach

Anyone hear an explanation of the smile between Roby and Miles after that first three?

I've watched most the televised games this season but haven't generally so I have no clue as to Miles' career arc. With that said, I don't know how much you can attribute to an off shooting night against the Badgers. As the announcers pointed out, the game changed pretty drastically once Borchardt (sp?) got his 4th and sat down. Before last night, I only though the Iowa and Rutgers games were sad. I guess Iowa went on a good run after blowing us out, though, so that one's appearance improved on paper? Overall, I don't understand how this team is struggling so much considering they seem to: be able to play defense; and have more scorers than some better teams. It just seems like the majority of these "scorers" may be cold in any given game. I don't know how coaching factors in.

As a Chiefs fan, I was upset over three calls. Two of them came on the go-ahead TD drive during regulation. Whether Edelman (sp?) touches the ball or not was one of them. When the call on the field is made, I thought you had to have clear video evidence to overturn it? I didn't think the video clearly showed that he didn't touch it. The roughing the passer call is one I assume all have seen. The Hogan catch is one I just may not understand the rules for. He pulls the ball in with one hand and goes to ground, at which point the ball escapes him. How's that a catch? I was laughing when the preseason games were being shown and the local homers were going on about how great the Chiefs were going to be this season but damn if they didn't overachieve with a rookie QB (following a season in which a former backup won the Super Bowl with the Eagles)! I guess I'll stay on the bandwagon for this team that seems to be perennially half-built.

Damn, Ozigbo took over the #1 spot and it wasn't enough - he has taken over another RB's thread!

I agree. The problem lies between what should be and what is. Alabama gets a pass for what they've done in recent seasons. Alabama gets a a pass for what conference they play in. Never mind what teams they actually played from it in a given season - a CCG makes it all better. Never mind that their out-of-conference slate is a joke - there's no rule against the late season FCS game. Here's next year's Tide schedule: Aug. 31 vs. Duke in Atlanta Sept. 7 vs. New Mexico State Sept. 14 at South Carolina Sept. 21 vs. Southern Miss Sept. 28 vs. Ole Miss Oct. 5: Bye Oct. 12 at Texas A&M Oct. 19 vs. Tennessee Oct. 26 vs. Arkansas Nov. 2: Bye Nov. 9 vs. LSU Nov. 16 at Mississippi State Nov. 23 vs. Western Carolina Nov. 30 at Auburn

I don't think you can really argue about the run considering ND's, under Frank Leahy, was also supported by an abundance of talent that went beyond what TO had.

It obviously depends on what all the other CFP candidates were doing at the same time. If Alabama had lost to someone early in the season with their 2018 schedule, I'm not sure they'd have recovered. Ohio State lost to Purdue and couldn't get back in DESPITE drubbing a highly-ranked team in Michigan so Alabama losing to one of their first five opponents (Florida State, Fresno State, Colorado State, Vanderbilt, or Ole Miss) should have meant beating up an Auburn team wouldn't affect them in terms of getting into the playoff...IF I follow you...

Applying the KISS method, every conference champ should get in. ND would have to adjust, of course, but they're already halfway there. If there's griping about who gets in with such a system, I don't think there'll be much sympathy considering it'd be a conference problem. E.g., remember when the Big Ten's Rose Bowl rep was determined by which candidate hadn't been there in the longest time? If you can't settle things the right way in your conference, it shouldn't become a national issue. If we can't stomach the idea of the G5 champs participating, I suggest we jettison approximately half the teams in the top division (such that there are only the P5 and ND left). If they're good enough to make up the vast majority (over 2/3 w/o even doing the math is safe to say) of most every P5 team's out-of-conference schedule but not good enough to play for a national title, let's cut the BS. If every team had to play a full season against other P5 teams, we'd likely get to see more inter-conference play and really determine a pecking order (in terms of the conferences themselves). The real dream would involve a relegation/promotion system a la the world's version of football but baby steps... p.s. - Isn't this the same topic Roundball Shaman had before? I didn't notice when I first posted but it sure seems like it.

So it's all over and we didn't really see a competitive game this playoff season. The team that played the weakest schedule, ahead of the playoff, walked away looking the best by far... The final AP poll makes it seem like Alabama played the toughest schedule of the playoff field (against #6, #7, and #16 ahead of the playoff), especially if you don't consider how bad Louisville, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Ole Miss were in 2018. I have a difficult time believing Texas A&M beat the nation's sixth-best college football team. I suppose they played #1 pretty tough, too, losing by just two at home. Syracuse lost by twice as many points (away) to the national champs this season.

Seth Davis explained it all. We should have just been young for all experience was worth. Seriously, though, we didn't make enough hay the few stretches of the game we contained Fernando.

They were in the discussion a couple of those years but Miami and Stanford took them out. FSU beat ND that season. The point was ND has been competitive with playoff teams in three seasons since having been thumped by Alabama in the 2012-13 season's national championship game. I think you understood that before the latest response. You're going back to the past again after telling me I can't while asserting a team you agree "deserved" to be in a game didn't "belong" in it. I am not going to dispute facts, let alone nonsense. I didn't say I had a problem with Clemson being in so I'm not sure what you're arguing about here. Once again, you're allowed to bring up the past despite having objected to my doing it. That's just ridiculous right there. ND played the best ACC teams Clemson played this season (NC State, Pitt, and Syracuse) with the remainder of their schedule having been clearly tougher than Clemson's. Michigan, Northwestern, and Stanford were the top 3 from outside the shared ACC slate for the Irish. You have Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, and Boston College for the Tigers. If you don't want to believe me, just check out the final polls after the title game. I've shared rankings that put Clemson above ND on a weekly basis here so I'm not sure why you think I'd argue. As always, however, schedule strength plays a role. In the case of total offense, for example, you have Clemson 6th and ND 18th after pruning out games played against non-P5 opponents. After applying the same filter for total defense, you have Clemson 13th and ND 18th.

I have to agree. Football already had pass interference to confuse me and now I can't tell what a catch is (according to the officials). At least soccer just has that one thing that annoys everyone (diving Liverpool FC).

It's not fair arguing that recent years don't matter when the post I was responding to (and even your response to my response) referenced other years. The point I was making was that there was no good reason an undefeated Irish squad shouldn't have participated in this year's college football playoff. I thought your "again" was referencing 2012-13 but was mainly arguing based on your use of the word, "belong." If you have no problem with Clemson being in with their schedule, you can't complain about ND's. The Irish beat the best the Tigers faced and then some. Might makes right, of course. We all get that.

ND clearly isn't as good as Clemson but they earned their playoff berth (i.e., belonged in the playoff). Of all the playoff contenders remaining after conference championship games were played, only Georgia had gone up against tougher competition per the relative stats of their opponents. The only asterisk to go along with this point, regarding ND's schedule strength, is that Eric Dungey was out for most the Syracuse game. Here's how the Irish have fared against playoff-bound teams (since we've had one in college football): lost to Florida State by 4 in 2014; lost to Clemson by 2 in 2015; and lost to Georgia by 1 in 2017. Getting back to the 2018 team, they were rolling Michigan for a half before going conservative on "O" and trusting their "D" to save the win. They beat (board darling) Stanford by 21. They defeated two P5 conference division champs in Northwestern and Pittsburgh. A lot of teams are going to look like "they really don't belong" in the company of Alabama and Clemson besides. Oklahoma was played off the field by Alabama in the first half of the OB. ND probably gets to the locker room down 13 without the roughing call (and that's after Clemson benefited from a couple of questionable replay decisions, one of which almost certainly would have meant Irish points - talking about the stripped ball an official said touched out of bounds without conclusive video evidence*). * - I think you can fairly argue that a Clemson player had a finger touching out while in contact with the football to make that play make sense but what the official said, I believe, was that the nose of the football was out.

I think we all understand the obvious things you and Landlord shared with me. His denial of the obvious was what I felt warranted very little in way of response, though. Eddie George having an off game against his team's rival mattered to some Heisman voters in 1995 (just like Lawrence Phillips did). We don't have some kind of Heisman formula that considers what kind of defenses and offenses the nation's best players have had to face, tracking injuries and home field advantage, etc. Players on the watch list are compared every week, despite playing against different defenses and offenses, sometimes even conferences. The bigger the stage is, the more you have to gain or lose as a candidate. Remember how Beano Cook used to say a player had to be from or beat Notre Dame? TV tells me Michigan-Ohio State is some kind of big deal. The Heisman winner is supposed to be the greatest college football player in the nation within a given (regular) season. If the team you play for has comparable talent to the ones on your schedule, you should never get shown up if that's who you are...let alone by a counterpart who's playing hurt for a lesser team. Michigan's 1995 squad had four losses. Ohio State was undefeated going into their showdown with them in Ann Arbor. I thought we were all Husker fans here, such that I wouldn't be getting patronized for alluding to the fact Tommie was never outclassed. I know someone will come along and bring up Marv Seiler now but, even if you're one of those, I doubt you'd argue anyone else despite Touchdown Tommie having faced two Heisman winners in national championship bowl games.

With reasoning like that, I think you could be a Heisman voter.

No conversation on Frazier versus George is complete without a mention of a gimpy Biakabutuka having outrushed him. Who outplayed Touchdown Tommie on the field in that regular season? Getting back to EG, there's also the matter of his having had a poor game against Tennessee in the Citrus Bowl (but that was after the voting, of course).

I don't follow how there's any confusion over this because it's a simple matter of the most talented teams, per recruiting and poll rankings alike, being in the East. I was tickled to see how the divisions were set up because I assumed we wouldn't be playing those perennial contenders every year. It felt like we were being given an easier road back to where Nebraska has historically belonged. Scheduling is another matter, though. Look at the series with Michigan for one example. We couldn't simply trade off locations for our games. They get three home games before we get to host a second time.

Ahead of the conference championship games for this season, only three P5 teams had played more P5 teams than ND. Ohio State, Purdue, and Texas played 11 games to Notre Dame's 10. Seven P5 teams only played 8 of their peers while 29 P5 teams played 9. I don't think ND should ever play a non-P5 team weaker than Navy, though.

I considered all games played between ND and P5 conference teams against P5 conference teams and calculated averages and standard deviations for all stats (it made sense to) across the nine categories listed below. I took the averages for all the average category percentile rankings of each conference's teams to come up with the rankings below. The overall best stats, relative to those for all P5 teams plus Notre Dame, are as follows: SEC at #1 with 50.36 as their average team category percentile ranking B1G at #2 with 50.27 PAC-12 at #3 with 49.68 ACC at #4 with 47.35 Big XII at #5 with 47.32 Looking at the individual categories, we have the following rankings: Passing Offense Big XII: 63.02 PAC-12: 55.04 SEC: 47.41 B1G: 42.35 ACC: 41.35 Passing Defense B1G: 58.60 ACC: 54.62 SEC: 53.66 PAC-12: 40.96 Big XII: 29.16 Rushing Offense B1G: 54.20 ACC: 50.93 SEC: 46.29 PAC-12: 42.55 Big XII: 42.47 Rushing Defense PAC-12: 57.39 SEC: 55.56 Big 12: 52.55 B1G: 46.47 ACC: 44.31 Scoring Offense Big 12: 53.10 PAC-12: 48.51 B1G: 48.17 ACC: 47.26 SEC: 42.12 Scoring Defense SEC: 56.56 B1G: 53.87 PAC-12: 51.34 ACC: 45.73 Big XII: 41.23 Total Offense Big XII: 57.01 PAC-12: 50.13 B1G: 48.29 ACC: 47.87 SEC: 44.55 Total Defense SEC: 56.51 B1G: 51.07 PAC-12: 48.74 ACC: 44.57 Big XII: 39.62 Turnover Margin PAC-12: 52.49 SEC: 50.61 ACC: 49.52 B1G: 49.44 Big XII: 47.70

These percentiles were calculated using stats from games between all P5 teams plus Notre Dame and all P5 teams (thanks to cfbstats.com). PASSING OFFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile PASSING DEFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile RUSHING OFFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile RUSHING DEFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile SCORING OFFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile SCORING DEFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile TOTAL OFFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile TOTAL DEFENSE Rk TEAM Avg %-ile TURNOVER MARGIN Rk TEAM Avg %-ile

Thanks for the info. I just don't get why it's so hard to write something with an "if" in the title unless you're more concerned with getting clicks, making sure this can stay on the wrong board, etc. I'm obviously pretty bored if something potentially happening between the school with the big drum and the school in the town nobody can pronounce the name of has me doing anything, let alone playing like I'm the freaking board police. It's not all about this one post, I mean.

That post title was misleading. I thought something happened.

I was never arguing it wouldn't/didn't make a difference. I pointed out it wasn't the only one. You were also minimizing that (one difference you are now trying to exaggerate) in your original post.