What does this have to do with anything? Should ND just not make a schedule until a few weeks before the season so they can have all good teams. I don't think you will hear many ND fans saying that ND's schedule was as tough as it looked before the season started. Would you say that their schedule this season is tough? S 02 @ Georgia Tech S 09 PENN STATE S 16 MICHIGAN S 23 @ Michigan St. S 30 PURDUE O 07 STANFORD O 21 UCLA O 28 @ Navy (Baltimore) N 04 NORTH CAROLINA N 11 @ Air Force N 18 ARMY N 25 @ Southern Cal I think it is pretty decent. Probably about as tough as most-but definately not all- conference schedules. Obviously a school has to make it's schedule early and doesn't how how every team is going to fare that year. You can't hold that against Notre Dame. But the fact is, that even though Notre Dame tried to create a tough schedule last year, as the year played out it was obvious that their schedule actually ended up being extremely weak. And herein lies the problem. Nobody in the media bothered to look at how Notre Dame's opponents actually fared on the year and instead just saw the names "Michigan", "USC", "Tennessee", "Michigan State", "Purdue", and remembered that Pittsburgh was ranked in the preseason (but conveniently forgot they lost to the University of Ohio). Nobody in the national media bothered to realize that all of those teams, with the exception of USC, were average at best last year. Notre Dame beat a bunch of below average and average teams and because they are darlings of the media, were ranked higher than they should have been. Because of the caliber, or lack thereof, of Notre Dame's opponents, very few people realized that their defense was actually horrible - something that was exposed in the Fiesta Bowl loss to Ohio State. Notre Dame did not deserve a BCS bowl last year - and no I'm not going to get into another debate over this so nobody try to spark one - but received one solely because they are Notre Dame. I'm not saying other schools haven't been overrated as well solely because of reputation, but Notre Dame is overrated more often than anybody else. I'm also not trying to say Notre Dame is overrated this year, because I don't think they are. But they are given the benefit of the doubt more often than virtually any other school.