Then compare it to today.
I do not even care about the number of games. It's the dates.
A)New Year's has been ruined.
B)The week before New Year's has been ruined. No college game, save the senior bowl, should be played after January 1st. And besides ND-Bama, I am not staying up to midnight to watch a single game.
Link: 1995 Bowl Schedule
Holtz had very little skill talent, I guess Autry Denson was pretty good but not super fast and the same with Derrick Mayers, great hands but not a deep threat. We had Emmit Mosely returning punts and we had a very talented Ohio State team on the ropes at their place with I think a four point lead and we stopped them 3 and out on their first possession of the second half and I remeber the announcers saying their defense was gassed and ready to be dominated when Emmit dropped a punt which led to Ohio State getting a short field aided touchdown and going ahead of us and then taking over. We had to play the perfect game to beat them that year but Holtz clearly had his team prepared and we could have pulled off the upset but that muffed punt changed everything. Against Northwestern earlier in the year we missed an extra point and who knew Northwester was actually good. Our talent was not as it had been that year and we barely beat ARMY on a tackle near the goal line on a huge tight end by Ivory Covington who made the tackle just like you are coached to do. Somehow we really could have beaten Florida State in the bowl game because Holtz outcoached the hell out of Bowden but a bogus call against Mark Edwards stopped us. To me Holtz's coaching ability really shined when his talent was down. The next year we were probably even in talent with Ohio State and I thought real contenders for the national title when the same Mosely dropped a perfect bomb from Powlus and Denson had a punt return nullified by holding that really killed us. A game of inches this year the inches are with us and we have a great defense.
I'm surprised it took them this long to figure out spreading out the marquee games over multiple nights brings in a shitload more money.
There are nine bowl games this year matching ranked teams. There were eight then.
Of the 6 games played on NYD that year there were three good games, the others had scores of
38-6, 43-14, 41-0. This year we had the same number of good games with three more still coming on the schedule.
NIU was a debacle this year and didn't deserve to be there. Other than that it was a great day of football. That, and the Clemson vs. LSU game on NYE was epic.
(no message)
It was a different time though. Notre Dame was still "relevant" and there weren't the upstart programs that became prevalent in the 2000's
(no message)
we had national power type teams every year before Holtz left except for '94.
'88 NC, '89 near miss NC, 90 or 91 near miss NC, '93 robbed of NC, '95 top 10 team, '96 pretty good team that was hosed by refs in Air Force game. Then in '97 Davis took over ('98 would have been another NC run if Holtz had still been coach).