College Football Week 10: Sandy knew not to mess with Nick and Les

Exactly, the eye test. Oregon has spent all year dominating everyone. Save for the Oklahoma game, Notre Dame has relied on the final minutes/seconds/OT - and more than a couple questionable calls from the refs - to preserve its unbeaten record.

 

They also clobbered Miami, Navy, Michigan State, and, if you watched the game, Michigan.

But, yeah, fair to also bring up the squeakers against Purdue, BYU, Stanford, Oklahoma (because that's what it actually was), and Pitt.

Notre Dame seems like a team that can't put together two good games in a row. They look like world-beaters one week, pretenders the next. They've been fortunate to be at their best against their best opponents, and at their worst against bad ones.

 

Stanford is not an elite team because it lost to Washington, not Notre Dame. And I do view Oklahoma as an elite or close-to-elite team, but I don't think Oklahoma is better than LSU or (likely SEC East champion) Georgia.

 

Regarding that Washington game, Cardinal fans are wondering why they didn't change quarterbacks sooner. Yes, Stanford has fans.

 

I'm not an ND fan by any means, but...

ND plays more BCS conference teams this year than any of the three teams in front of them.

ND is the only one of the top four that doesn't play an FCS team.

They'll probably wind up playing more bowl teams and teams that finish above .500 too.

 

Not to mention their two toughest games are road games.

If Notre Dame doesn't get in, it's because of performances like the ones against Purdue, Pitt, and BYU, essentially products of having a redshirt freshman quarterback.

 

This. Oklahoma's only losses are to two of the four in national championship contention, ND and KSU, they CERTAINLY have looked like an elite team in every other game. No way in hell am I buying an argument that two loss LSU qualifies as an "elite" team if Oklahoma does not.

So, even taking Versatile's "elite" team premise, and accepting for argument his claim that USC and Stanford don't qualify, ND's still comes out ahead. They each have one road win over an "elite team" (although the difference being that ND won 30-13, whereas Bama was outplayed but bailed out by the gods in the final second). Meanwhile, ND has beaten more legit BCS teams, and more winning teams, in the remaining games.

 

There seems to be somewhat of a consensus forming that Chef's schedule-assessing skills vary not greatly from his acumen ranking comedians.

 

No one knows what to do with Notre Dame. There are weeks that they could beat Alabama. And there are weeks they would lose to Indiana.

State.

 

Stanford, which also lost to Washington.

 

Or his home self-surgery ability.

 

Indiana State, actually on Kansas State's schedule the year (1998) they last challenged for the national title. Alongside Northern Illinois and Louisiana-Monroe.

Speaking of K-State, did anyone else catch Bill Snyder acting like a d^ck to side reporter Heather Cox after the game Saturday?