A Decided Schematic Advantage

It’s been a while since I ranted a bit about Fat Charlie and his Pathetic Irish, but after reading Senator Blutarsky's take on this, I figured it was time to pull one together. The one sentence that should incent any college football fan is this:

If Notre Dame beats Navy and Syracuse and loses, as expected, to USC on the road, the Irish will finish 7-5. That should be good enough for them to earn an invitation to the Cotton Bowl, Gator Bowl or Sun Bowl…

First of all, no way the Cotton Bowl selects a 7-5 Notre Dame team over LSU or Ole Miss or any other SEC team. The point is most likely moot as the Gator Bowl would surely jump at the chance to bring Fat Charlie to Jacksonville.

Secondly, I just don't get why people are still obsessed with Notre Dame. They haven’t won a bowl game since 1993. They haven’t been competitive in a bowl game since 1998. They're a whopping 5-4 this season playing almost exclusively with the players Weis has brought in, though I'm sure it's somehow still Tyrone Willingham's fault the Irish suck again this season. Despite all that, the Irish are on TV every weekend, and actually have special exceptions written into some bowl contracts, including the BCS games.

In his tenure at Notre Dame, he has exactly one win that you can look back and point at and say, “Nice win there coach” and that’s the 41-17 beatdown of Penn State in 2006 when the Nittany Lions finished 9-4. Other than a win over a 7-5 Michigan in 2005, there’s hardly a win worth mentioning. To put a little more perspective on it, Pat Forde has this to say in his latest Forde Yard Dash:

After once again playing piñata for mighty Boston College, Weis is now 1-16 in his past 17 games against teams that finished the season .500 or better -- or, in the case of 2008 opponents, currently are .500 or better. That lone point of pride in those 17 games: a seven-point win last month over Stanford, which presently is 5-5 but easily could end up 5-7 and wipe that victory off the books.

Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times references that same PSU victory in 2006 as Weis' only accomplishment at Notre Dame and also offers these gems:

...the most-hyped coach in college football history has been one big failure. Never has so much hope and hype been built from hot air. But when you sell yourself on spec, as Weis did, sooner or later, the finished product comes in.

Under Weis, Notre Dame has never beaten a good team.

In the Sagarin computer national rankings, Notre Dame is ranked behind James Madison.

Let’s take a closer look at Notre Dame’s offensive numbers from last year, the 3rd year that the Fighting Irish had their Decided Schematic Advantage over everyone they played:

2007 Notre Dame:
Scoring Offense: 16.4 ppg
Total Offense: 242.3 ypg
Passing Offense: 167.0 ypg
Rushing Yards: 75.25 ypg

For those of you struggling to grasp how pathetic those numbers, here’s how they compare to the 2008 Tennessee team:

2008 Tennessee:
Scoring Offense: 16.0 ppg
Total Offense: 267.1 ypg
Passing Offense: 162.8 ypg
Rushing Yards: 104.3 ypg

So, the offensive genius designed an offense that managed 25 less yards per game than the Vols are averaging this year. The Irish aerial attack last year did manage to put up nearly 5 more passing yards per game than the current Jonathan Crompton/Nick Stephens debacle in Knoxville this season. And the Vols are doing this against (mostly) SEC defenses, while the Irish played the Service Academies and mid-tier Big 10 teams.

***Update: Another stellar column from Jason Whitlock***

For those of you who are interested in joining the millions of "Huge Notre Dame Fans" out there, please refer to the following flow chart:

20 Most Valuable College Football Programs

In case you need yet another reason that the SEC is the greatest conference in all the land, check out this article in Forbes which ranks the 20 Most Valuable College Football Teams in the country. Their rankings are based what the football programs contribute to four important beneficiaries:

* Their university (the value of contributions from football to the institution for academic purposes, including scholarship payments for football players)
* Their athletic department (the net profit generated by the football program ultimately retained by the department)
* Their conference (the distribution of bowl game revenue)
* Their local communities with a vested interest in the team (incremental spending in the county during home-game weekends)

Not surprisingly, the SEC has 8 of the top 20 teams, including:
#3 Georgia ($90M)
#5 Florida ($85M)
#6 LSU ($76M)
#7 Tennessee ($74M)
#8 Auburn ($73M)
#9 Alabama ($72M)
#12 South Carolina ($69M)
#15 Arkansas ($53M)

Somehow, Fat Charlie the Fraud and his pathetic Irish top this list. The Big 10+1 is 2nd behind the SEC with 5, the Big 12 has 4, and the Pac-10 places 2.

Jimmy Clausen for Heisman

I know it's not SEC-related, but Notre Dame is now officially half way to their 0-8 start to the season, which to me is the feel good story of the year. I wanted to share the following video with you, as it proves two very important points.

A) Charlie Weis is not the offensive genius that everyone wants to think he is. The Irish have been brutally unprepared in all four of their games this year, and that's a reflection of Fat Charlie.
B) Anything - and I mean anything - is funny when set to that music from Benny Hill...

Poll Results

59 people voted in the poll asking about the two biggest conference games today - Tennessee @ Florida and Arkansas @ Alabama. Florida and Arkansas were landslide winners in the poll, with the Gators getting 85% of the vote and the Hogs taking in 69% themselves. Both should be great games today and have major impacts on the final standings.

On a side note, it really is a shame that Michigan is going to pick up its first victory of the season today. After listening to Lloyd Carr (and other pundits) assert that the Wolverines should have played for a national title last year, despite not even winning their own conference, I'm really enjoying the squirming in Ann Arbor.

The only silver lining to the whole thing is that Fat Charlie and Notre Dame will drop to 0-3, and still be 6 weeks away from their first victory. With a rotund belly trumped only by the size of his ego, the $30-$40M man Notre Dame bet the farm on has no significant victories in his 2+ years at the helm in South Bend, unless you count a 5-loss Michigan team two seasons ago. The offensive "genius" has masterminded 2 games in which they have yet to score an offensive touchdown. They really have become Stanford with a TV contract.



Meanwhile, out west, Tyrone Willingham is smiling...