Sat Aug 22, 2009 4:44 pm EDT
Out on a limb, even for Dr. Lou: Irish in the title game?
You have to really work at it to listen to Lou Holtz in midseason form, when weeks of shouting at games have taken their toll and his voice devolves into a kind of gruesome, gravelly Daffy Duck simulacrum. In August, though, his tones are dulcet and his articulation smooth, which is why we're absolutely certain we just heard him predict a Florida-Notre Dame title game.
What apart from his usual blatant homerism would possess Dr. Lou to make such a risky pick? Pragmatism, believe it or not. He doesn't think Notre Dame will be the No. 2 team in the country. He does, however, estimate it'll be "the best team in the stadium" for most of the year thanks to, yes, an extremely favorable schedule.
No denying the Irish will have an easier path to tread to January than in recent years, but it's where Holtz starts insinuating the Irish may give USC a game when they meet on October 17 that we start to roll our eyes. Yes, USC's roster losses this offseason are sizeable. Whether that creates enough of a swing for Notre Dame to overcome last year's 35-point curb-stomping remains to be seen. And for all the talk of hordes of returning Irish starters ... those are the same starters that lost to Syracuse at home last year, no? Improvement is to be expected, of course, but it would be foolish to expect USC to do nothing more than tread water in the meantime.
At least part of Holtz's brain is still connected to reality: The other half of his championship pairing was selected No. 1 in the just-released AP poll by the largest margin in history:
Florida received 58 of the 60 first-place votes, or 96.7 percent. Texas got the other first-place votes.
The previous highest percentage of first-place votes for the AP preseason poll, which started in 1950, was 95.4 percent for USC in 2007.
The full poll is available here for your perusal. Notre Dame hovers at No. 23, for now. Will it run the table with the ease Dr. Lou expects? Florida fans can always hope.
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1356 Comments
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Holly - ND's team last year is NOT the team they have this season and that includes the horrible line coaching they dumped in the off season, getting Weis back to calling the O etc. etc.
ND will win at least 10 and a decent shot at the NC game. They will dump USC by 17 or more points come October. Few remember than ND beat USC 7 straight going back and yet USC turned things around.
CHarlie's make or break season in college ball and I think he finally got his act lined up. Proclamations give way to reality in two weeks - let's see where things go. A dominant game against Nevada will bode well for the Irish and if it is a close game - Charlie might show up on Monday at Home Depot to buy moving boxes.
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If we want to win an easy BCSNC game, then yes. If we want people to respect the fact that we won the BCSNC game, then no. I'm still hoping we get an undefeated Trojan team out there, prove once and for all that just because the other team is playing a 'home' game doesn't mean they can't be beat.
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Past performance is not an indicator of future results... ND has as good a chance as any to be in the hunt at the end of the season. If they beat USC and run the table, then there is no reason they can't be in the national title discussion.
As 'brocklin000' mentioned, the ND/USC series has run in streaks... there was a stretch between 1983 - 1995 where ND did not lose to USC. That coin may very well flip this year.
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I will let you pick any 25 teams that won 8 or more last year for me, and give you your choice of 25 that won 4 or less.
I will bet any amount of money you desire that my 25 will have more wins at the end of 2009 than your's.
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ideally, you'd wanna run a regression including starts returning by position, snaps returning by position, previous year's yardage diff, previous year's injuries, recent recruiting rankings, etc etc etc. And I'm guessing a team with a +25 yard diff (much bigger if you discount the usc game, although that's sort of cheating) and ~15 returning starters and a 3rd year QB and a boatload of talent all over the roster would be predicted to do pretty well.
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From his coaching stops, ND is clearly his favorte with South Carolina #2 and it comes across in favortism and bias
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1 - 25 of 1356