TruffleShuffle

did this person put their hand on a stove? why is it all red? i'm concerned about this.

i don't know, but his passer rating could not have been anywhere close to 158.3. nobody is going to have a perfect passer rating with an INT and 1 TD pass in 40 something attempts.

like picking and choosing which things i want to argue, or hanging down the end of a basketball court to get easy baskets? speaking of cherry picking, you did a convenient job of cherry picking six players who were among the most highly-regarded players at their positions. of course nobody is going to bump a player up to #1 or #2 overall just because he picked notre dame. the guys who are more likely to get a "notre dame bump", as TT suggested, would be players farther down the lists, right? actually if you are arguing that notre dame is right next to florida, texas, alabama, etc. as far as talent then it's like you actually haven't paid attention to college football for several years now. you would be incorrect. you did not say that in your first post on this topic, or on your second one. your stance has sounded not far from thinking that rivals ratings are gospel. i dunno. maybe? depends on if they think those players would do well in the system that they coach. they've managed to be really good and beat really good teams the last four years, so it probably wouldn't make a huge difference if you give them oklahoma's players. right and that's not what i'm arguing. i'm saying that if a team that hasn't ranked in the top 50 of rivals' rankings maybe ever beats a team that finishes top 5 most years, and consistently beats BCS opponents (oregon twice, oregon st, va tech), then maybe the rivals system has some pretty big holes.

anytime you kick a field goal from the 1 yard line in the first three quarters, you have failed. Not with our O-line and running game. They cannot be trusted to gain 1 yard in a goal line situation with 1 chance (sometimes 3-4 chances). Thats why they passed. it doesn't matter. you still have at worst a slightly less than 50% chance of scoring, and if you don't make it you have a decent shot of stopping them on three plays and getting the ball back with very good field position. or just running a punt back for a touchdown.

anytime you kick a field goal from the 1 yard line in the first three quarters, you have failed.

ND plays a 3-4. Which are the back 7? A handful of ND DBs, including 3 safeties, are on NFL rosters. And Manti will be. And Gary Gray has been incredible this year (admittedly, for the first time in his 4 years, though his leg injury messed him up). I don't know how much is development, how much is different systems, etc. The seniors, for example, have played the 4-3, 3-4, 4-3, 3-4 in their 4 years. And last year was Tenuta's 4-3, which is a different animal and there was a lot of in-fighting between Tenuta and Brown b/c their systems were opposite ends of the spectrum. Some people close to the team are saying how happy the DBs are to just be playing in a system where all the coaches agree. Yes, if you're just looking at the screen, ND's talent hasn't looked great at times. But I don't trust your eye for talent more than Rivals. Rivals says ND has as much talent on its roster as any team not named USC and maybe Florida. So if Kelly is really the great coach he's supposed to be, he'll turn that talent into wins. If not, some other guy will be in SB in 3-5 years. Hopefully Kelly leaves the cupboard as "bare" as Weis did. yeah but if weis wasn't properly developing the talent, you can't say "well kelly is the coach now and this senior was a 4 star guy coming out of high school, so kelly should be able to make him good." he's supposedly had three years of wasted development, so he's probably going to still suck even if vince lombardi rises from the grave to coach him. plus rivals star rankings are only good to a point. here are some rankings from 2002-06: oklahoma: 2002: #7 2003: #4 2004: #8 2005: #3 2006: #9 boise st: 2002: not ranked in top 50 2003: not ranked in top 50 2004: not ranked in top 50 2005: not ranked in top 50 2006: not ranked in top 50 based on those results, boise st did not play in the 2007 fiesta bowl and certainly did not beat oklahoma. plus, look at the guys boise st are getting: naanee, ian johnson, ryan clady, jared zabransky, kyle wilson... all those guys were rated as 2-star players coming into their program. are they that amazing that they're coaching mediocre athletes into very productive college players and (in a couple of cases) first round nfl draft picks? probably not. i mean, they do a great job there, but chances are they're getting guys who fall through the cracks and who should be ranked higher than they are by the scouting services.

maybe i just happened to know all of the rational michigan fans (and i know quite a few - mostly michigan grads attending psu for grad school). they knew michigan was going to suck that year and indeed they did (plus how can you really get your hopes up when steven threet and nick sheridan are taking the snaps?)

baseball history goes back over 100 years and there are many races every year, especially with divisional play and wild card added in. plus those probabilities aren't really THAT unlikely - a team with a 98% chance to make the playoffs will blow it, on average, 1 in 50 times. how many times in baseball history has a team had a 98% chance of making the playoffs? probably happens every year. "Statistically, the 1995 Angels shouldn't have even happened once in MLB history" is a complete misunderstanding of probability theory.

yeah, notre dame has been fairly lousy lately (only 3 BCS bowls in the last 10 years, yuck!) penn state was bad (and legitimately bad, not getting beat in a bcs bowl "bad") from most of 2000 to 2004. alabama sucked for a little while, so did miami, michigan sucked the last two years. these things happen. i don't recall michigan fans being all that upset when their team was awful RichRod's first year - they pretty much expected it. yet a lot of notre dame fans seemed to expect that they'd hit the ground running with a new coach, new starting qb and pretty average talent. there is no mandate that notre dame will be good every year.

brett wallace has been in like half the organizations in baseball already.

threw in some point spreads in case anyone was interested.

orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, it could be that they handily beat notre dame and a their blowout of ucla looks even more impressive after the bruins went to austin and won.

northeast oklahoma it's not monday morning here???????? perhaps you overslept?

northeast oklahoma

you mean when they have a 7 point lead? because two point conversions are successful less than 50% of the time. let's say if you make it (~45%) the game is over. if you don't make it, it's a 7 point game. if the other team scores a TD they tie the game. it's better to make them score and then get the 2 point conversion since there's less than a 50% chance of converting.

11:41 a.m. monday

hmmm maybe the ranking of the dolphins "#1 defense" was aided by playing a terrible buffalo team and then brett favre throwing the ball to the other team all day

jeez, learn how to cover a tight end.

"he's arbitration eligible and not going anywhere" well why the hell not? can't they non-tender him? he's probably going to be overpaid and underperform for a second baseman next year; the smart move would be to let him walk. (note: ned colletti is not smart)

It's also irrelevant. No other team in NFL history has been 6-42 over three seasons. The only thing they are good at it is being terrible. They have less talent than any other team, a rookie quarterback and Steven Jackson played one quarter. They had two guys named Darby and Toston in the backfield and still managed to beat a pretty good Redskins team. so the talent on this year's team, and the talent of the opposition, and the location of the game, all of those things are less relevant than how the team performed in the last three years. got it.

wait, a norv turner-coached team is starting out the season slowly by losing games to inferior teams? YOU DON'T SAY.

best first round draft pick ever

the skins were favored by 3.5 points The Rams have lost 44 of their last 50 games. that's nice. the skins were favored by only 3.5 points.

the skins were favored by 3.5 points

can't believe steven jackson got hurt, that rarely happens