Andy

Jimmy was overwhelmingly voted a captain as a junior, which rarely happens at ND, and has evolved into the team leader. Like any talented rich kid from California, he probably came in a bit too big for his britches (I sound 80 when I type that), but one can't argue with what he's done this year. A rich white douche wouldn't keep playing on a painful turf toe and moreover, lead three late 4th quarter must-score drives for TDs on it (and almost lead a fourth). He could easily point out that he's playing with the 107th-ranked defense in the country and that with any competent 11 defensive players out there he's probably the Heisman-favorite QB of a 6-0 team that's on the outskirts of the top 5. And that's probably what a rich white douche would do. I have a horrible bias here, though, because I thought Jimmy was getting a raw deal from the media (and to a lesser extent our own fans) when he first got here and I've been a big fan of his right from the start.

Well, Purdue is contracted through 2021, Michigan is through 2031, and MSU is contracted until the 2020s as well. USC and Navy are pretty much going to keep being played in perpetuity. I guess those five games are things we have going for us (as long as Navy continues to be a consistent bowl team). I agree with you, though. I wasn't around for the days of the 1980s and early 1990s when marquee non-conference matchups were the norm. I wish we could get back to that. As much as I hate to give them credit for anything ever, Ohio State has done a good job of trying to play a big game out of conference every year. USC also seems to make an honest effort to play as few patsies as they can.

I know I am probably overreacting. I just love the idea of arranging fun and new matchups with big-conference teams - not necessarily big winners all the time, but just teams who would be interesting to play. Going to road stadiums we haven't been to before. Playing three freaking road games in a season, and having the only 'new' teams on the schedule be from the MAC and C-USA and the MWC is not what I would have in mind if I were going that route.

It's not as much about the quality of the teams (in reality, WMU is usually ok, Tulsa is a consistent 8-10 win team and Utah is currently top 20), but more about interesting matchups. The joy of being an independent is supposed to be that you aren't constrained by conferences and can set up fun matchups with other teams. Instead, ND has locked itself into this ridiculous 7 home-4 road-1 neutral format (which next year is 7-3-2 because Navy and Army are both neutral-site), locked itself into mucking up all of September (when everyone's usually playing OOC) with Big 10 dates rather than trying to negotiate a couple of them to move to October and replace the Delaware States and Eastern Illinoises of the world on those teams' schedules, and scheduled a bunch of one-offs against non-BCS teams. All this and ND rejected Alabama's overtures to get on the schedule, saying 'we can't fit them in'. Ridiculous. ND will go five straight weeks without playing a major-conference team next year right before Southern Cal. How does this make sense? Would it be too much to ask to play an SEC or Big 12 team once in a while (last: Tenn 05 and Nebraska 01 respectively)? I grew up on Lou's most-weeks-are-big-games schedules. By comparison this is really, really weak of ND to do. And as NUN alluded to, the worst part is that with slates like this, we're really no better than all those conference teams which schedule these teams the entire month of September - the only difference is we're doing it in October and November and starting our schedule with challenges like Michigan and MSU, which makes no sense.

Just announced today ND will play Western Michigan Oct. 16, 2010. That means we will play WMU, Utah, Army, Navy and (unconfirmed but likely) Tulsa next year. Unreal. Could be the worst schedule in program history.

Bill Simmons made a good point about Young on his podcast this week (and Brady Quinn to a lesser extent but I think it's more applicable to Young). He rhetorically asked when Young is ever going to play if not now. If teams don't believe in these young quarterbacks enough to toss them out there in a season that's going nowhere anyway, when are they ever going to, and should they even bother holding on to them if they don't think they can cut it?

Good point. Michigan State would beat 2/3 of the SEC and they are the 6th best team in the big ten. Why is Michigan State good now? A month ago everyone said they were crap. You're the one that kept saying they were not good. ND should be ashamed that the game was so close, blah blah. Of course Illinois and Northwestern on back to back weekends sure does help with the overall perception. I didn't say they were horrible, I said ND should beat them soundly, and if they were a really good team they would have, because MSU's talent level is not on our own. But it's been borne out that a) ND isn't really very good, and b) Weis is completely incapable of blowing a team out unless they're a bottom-feeder (Nevada this year, Washington last year). The Big Ten/SEC pissing match is a little odd this year since neither are very good. The Big Ten's good teams - Iowa and Penn State - haven't really played a really good team yet (besides each other) so we don't know how good they are. The SEC probably has the two best teams in the country but beyond that they aren't very good either (I don't buy LSU one bit). But this is probably more because there just aren't that many good teams at all this year than because the conferences themselves are bad.

Mortensen's Twitter says it was Bennett, and it was the Bengals who asked.

Good point. Michigan State would beat 2/3 of the SEC and they are the 6th best team in the big ten. Why is Michigan State good now? A month ago everyone said they were crap.

Kelly Page is done for the year with a thumb injury - the 12-0 to 0-12 transition is really going to happen.

Don't expect the Carolina job to open up unless we really free-fall. The owner likes Fox and doesn't like turnover.

I can't decide on my favorite part of that post, I like so much of it.

3rd straight week Carolina must beat a bad team to make the playoffs even a distant hope. It's already going to be damn near impossible because 2 of the 4 best teams in the NFC are in the South, but getting to .500 would be a small step the right way.

Sample size. We ran the ball better after Justice entered, which he had nothing to do with. Since when is there another MAC-o-phile on the board anyway?

No, probably not. Certainly not if our QB is out for the game - he hurt his hand in the 2nd quarter on Saturday and the backup is garbage.

Are they really worth insulting? BC is a nonentity. Though their punk fan base would never accept that. I attended the BC game in 2004 that we lost by one and their fans were intolerable leaving the stadium. Strong words from a fan of a team that has lost six straight games to them. Five more days until this crap can stop. ETA: Admittedly, those teams they've beaten were dog [expletive]. The only decent team in the six-game stretch was 2002, and that was the beginning of the season-ending swan dive. There'd likely be no such streak if they'd played ND in 2005 or 2006, but they didn't.

17-0 wasn't enough of a laugher for you? I was more embarrassed by that than by USC last year.

Are they really worth insulting? BC is a nonentity. Though their punk fan base would never accept that. I attended the BC game in 2004 that we lost by one and their fans were intolerable leaving the stadium. It's good that you clarify they lost that game by one since it's so hard to differentiate between all the losses without such details. I attended the game in 1993 when all the ND student section cried like a bunch of little girls and it was glorious. I believe that was a 2 point margin. Good memory, buddy. By the way, that win cost ND the national championship. If BC knew anything about being in the title picture in November I'd expect them to cry upon being removed from it too. 1993 was my introduction into how stupid college football is. Wasn't there some committee after the season to determine who should've been #1 between FSU and ND? I was 7 years old then and knew that the system for determining a national champion was freaking dumb. Sadly, it's not gotten much better. I believe that was the first time BC ever beat ND too. I don't remember that. I do know that Bobby Bowden voted us 5th in the final coaches' poll to help his own team's chances, and I believe someone else voted us 24th for absolutely no reason other than to make sure we wouldn't finish #1. And yes, that was the first time BC won in the series. They've been a pain in the ass ever since, hopefully the team is ready to crack some skulls on Saturday. I'm sick of the cardiac-arrest games and would love to see a whipping.

Are they really worth insulting? BC is a nonentity. Though their punk fan base would never accept that. I attended the BC game in 2004 that we lost by one and their fans were intolerable leaving the stadium. It's good that you clarify they lost that game by one since it's so hard to differentiate between all the losses without such details. I attended the game in 1993 when all the ND student section cried like a bunch of little girls and it was glorious. I believe that was a 2 point margin. Good memory, buddy. By the way, that win cost ND the national championship. If BC knew anything about being in the title picture in November I'd expect them to cry upon being removed from it too.

Are they really worth insulting? BC is a nonentity. Though their punk fan base would never accept that. I attended the BC game in 2004 that we lost by one and their fans were intolerable leaving the stadium.

I really, really, really want to beat those punks from Boston College. I really, really, really want to know why 0-7 Ball State is FAVORED on the road against Eastern Michigan, quite possibly with Kelly Page unavailable due to injury.

I'm going to take it as a good sign that my QB was Josh Johnson, my opponent's was Drew Brees and I lost by only 13 points.

Better? Perhaps. Much better? No. All the computers have the two teams split for the most part, both the bcs ones and the non bcs ones. if anything they're pretty much equal this year. then you give the benefit of the doubt to florida since they beat alabama last season. if alabama and florida were to play next week, who do you think wins? i dont think alabama can score on florida's defense and tim tebow would be able to make enough plays to pull it out. Alabama has the best defense in the country. The great Tebow's two turnovers were the only reason the Gators had a close game with Arkansas last week. Florida's offense has underachieved significantly in SEC play. I think Bama would win by a touchdown.

Haha, there are way too many of you Illini fans for me to do that. In any case half the time you'd still be in there since almost every team in the conference has a vocal fan or two on this board.

The latter, but Bama has been better than Florida this year and it's really not that close to this point. Can you really discard the game last season between the two? Is Florida really that much worse? I don't think so.I sure can, because the rankings are ostensibly based on the performance of the two teams during the 2009 season, and Alabama's performance has been much better.