Devil's Advocate: Why Miami and Texas should be ranked over the Irish
Purely to keep the ESPN gods happy:
Miami: Miami and Notre Dame had four common opponents, and with the exception of Syracuse (who honestly didn't realistically have a D1 QB against ND), the results of the other three games were virtually identical. And of course, Miami beat ND. Both have two losses.
Texas: Two wins against current Top 10 playoff teams (ND has none), and another win against the 14th-ranked team. Texas and ND have two common opponents, Texas A&M and Arkansas. Both beat Arkansas handily and Texas beat A&M, a team ND lost to.
Now, do I think these teams are better than Notre Dame? Of course not. Yes, each had worse losses than ND did which from what I understand the committee is counting, not to mention Texas's close calls with Kentucky and Mississippi State. But an argument can be made, especially in Miami's case, to be ranked ahead of Notre Dame.
Replies to: Devil's Advocate: Why Miami and Texas should be ranked over the Irish
Jesus H Christ - would you stop already?!
Your chicken little act has gotten very old, very quickly.
Amen, brother.
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Eye test man, eye test. Remember how everyone used to talk about that? I think we are one of the
few teams that could survive and advance to the end.
There is "game control" data which the committee reportedly
puts a lot of stake in. It's basically the analytics that confirm the eye test. It's why the Sagarin computer and FPI rate is so high. The point is there is data that confirms the eye test, and it heavily favors us. For instance, the data would credit us for leading 35-3 at half even if the final score is "only" 49-20
Yeah, they took a NC from us in 93 on eye test...in '89 it was H2H, 4 short years later not so much
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Re: Devil's Advocate: Why Miami and Texas should be ranked over the Irish
Valid argument. This board would crash if we were eliminated by a head to head opponent we beat. Is there a more accurate barometer out there?
But, there’s a reason Notre Dame was the biggest Bowl draw before playoffs existed.
TV revenue is still the driver …. which is the best reason why Notre Dame makes the cut.
announcers said it very well last night. ND is a top 12 team but the rules of the playoffs might
keep them out. ND cannot lose 2 games in a year and feel safe.
Playoff rules aren't the problem. Losing to Miami and A&M is. No one else to blame.
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Stop! No one else in the country had a more difficult first two games...
There are maybe, MAYBE, 3 teams who wouldn't have lost both of those and I don't know if there's anyone (maybe Tosu) who would have won both
If you wanna blame something blame scheduling those 2 to start the season and maybe even keeping @Miami on the schedule after they dropped the game vs us last year
You stop. Either or both of those games were more than winnable. Especially A&M.
Win just one of those games and you are in.
Both lost on the last play of the game + A&M got away with
An obvious OLine holding penalty
Doesn't change the validity of what I said. There are 12 CFP teams, but only about 3
who would have won either of those games, so that doesn't make us not one of the best 12
The reality is, as Nick Saban has been saying all season, we are more like one of the best 5 teams than one of the best 12
yep, i’ve been asking for months, what the hell went on in fall camp for ND to look so
bad collectively against Miami and the defense to look, and I’m putting in kindly, lost through the first 10 quarters.
Part of it has to do with expectations
People talked themselves into actually believing that if we were any good at all we should destroy Miami
Completely ignoring the fact that we haven't beat them in Miami since 1977...in all of existence they've only beaten us outside of Miami once, but "in Miami" the 1989 team (arguably the best team of my lifetime which includes 3 NC teams +1 that was robbed) got blown out
People were being so delusional about it that they used Notre Dame (a Northern team) beating PSU (a Northern team) in the Orange Bowl in Miami in JANUARY, as justification that playing in Miami in August against Miami would no longer be an issue
Many had already decided anything less than a blowout win meant we sucked...when you come back to reality and look at losing our DC, losing X and B Mo and our interior DL, our OL injuries and a first time starter at QB, it's more realistic to be glad we didn't get done like the '89 or '17 teams
I'm more concerned about the loss to A&M. The defense looked horrendous. MF is a a DC by trait. I
f he didn't see the defense was lost in Fall Camp or that scripted plays give a false of security, then that's on him. Slow starts to the season are not new for him. No one is really allowed to watch practice, but I do have to wonder if the Fall Camps are a bit, for lack of a better term, soft.
I agree the D looked like trash, but I thought they looked lost not soft
There was a ton of confusion and missed assignments earlier in the year.
I'm not trying to be all Marcus can do no wrong, but he's the HC not DC anymore. I think the true fault lies here. We got a new DC, the choice drew a lot of questions, they played the 'hes not changing anything' card publicly WAY WAY too much...................he OBVIOUSLY changed the way they were doing things, it was plain as day and it took them a bit to get up to speed (also interior DL is not a strength for us, yet)
I get why MF would publicly say we're not changing things to ease concerns, but I also get why he'd let Ash run his defense his way...if you recall, Golden didn't have the masses convinced early on, but then he did. So long term, letting Ash run it his way may have been the right move, despite the early bumps in the road
I disagree. One reason why Holtz was successful was because he would take control of a position or
either side of the ball when required. It's Freeman's program. I'm willing to bet he doesn't again just hand over a coordinator position without more detailed instructions on what he wants.
Holtz already had 17 years of College HC experience before he came to ND...
he wasn't learning to be a HC, he already knew that part which gave him the flexibility to do that
Marcus Freeman was hired with zero experience and is in year 4 of learning to be a HC...and he's doing a great job at that, but these two situations are still not the same
Who knows how bad it might have looked if Holtz's first 4 years ever coaching were on the Big stage at ND, meanwhile in Freeman's first 4 full seasons he has almost an .800 win percentage
Things should be judged in context
The announcers are paid by espn. Who hates ND.
And they want to drag this drama out as long as possible.
They want to create animosity for ND moving forward to suit their agenda.
On to the CFP.
Stop it. Everybody hates ND.
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Half the country does. The other half loves them.
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ND is like Trump. Half love ND. Half hate ND. Fandom is divided along geographic and religious
lines.
Their job is to generate interest. It was a boring game. ESPN (Disney) probably does hate ND
but this whole CFP structure is designed to create clicks. It's amateur hour and ultimately will harm the brand.
As to ND. Things shouldn't change this weekend. If Bama and BYU win, we're toast. Just that simple and we have only ourselves to blame for scheduling and for not winning at least one of the two up-front games.