4th and 16. The 2023 season, not to mention a potential firestorm week the likes of which Marcus Freeman has never seen, hung in the balance Saturday night at Duke. And Sam Hartman worked his magic. You have to believe Hartman took it personally when he came up short, literally (in the first quarter) and [...]
When? When will this program, which can't catch a break anywhere under any circumstances, break through against one of the elite? It wasn't Saturday night. Ohio State delivered the latest dagger in what has been a life full of them for the Fighting Irish fan, scoring a touchdown as time ran out to beat ND [...]
So in the end, much of the hemming and hawing in our writers' room during Notre Dame's 41-17 win over Central Michigan didn't amount to much. The Irish won by a large margin, as expected, and moved to 4-0 in advance of the game against Ohio State. And yet, so much today felt like a [...]
Notre Dame fans spent 3 quarters mostly fretting, complaining, maybe even doubting as the Irish slopped to a 7-point lead against NC State. ND won by three touchdowns, 45-24. It's a choose-your-own-adventure type of day in the Irish fan base! Secondary is primary Remember barely a year ago, when ND was entering the Ohio State [...]
You obviously learn nothing of significance out of games like Saturday's 56-3 win over Tennessee State. The opponent is simply not good enough to make major qualitative judgments about your own team in such contests. Knowing that, I was looking for little things. Here are a few that stood out. Sam Hartman again We don't [...]
Sure, we could be measured in discussing today's 42-3 Notre Dame victory in Dublin, the opener of the most-hyped Irish team in some time. But what fun would that be? Why not dream big? All the usual caveats apply about a game against a much less talented opponent. Nevertheless, there was a whole heck of [...]
When I remember to do it, I like to rate the potential trap games on the Notre Dame schedule for our fair site on a scale of 1 to 10 Ackbars in honor of the greatest admiral in the history of the Rebel Alliance/Resistance. I failed to do it last year. Suffice it to say [...]
The College Football Playoff is set to expand to 12 teams in 2024, which will almost certainly result in a lot more regular-season outcomes being rendered pointless by a playoff rematch. To mark the occasion, we're revisiting a few prior times when a regular-season outcome - despite the college football conventional wisdom that "Every Game [...]
Unless you have been in a bomb shelter the last couple of years, you are by now aware that 2023 will be the final season of the 4-team playoff era. College football will move to a new method for determining its champion beginning in the 2024 season with a 12-team playoff - the top 6 [...]
As our fearless leader, Eric, wrote about yesterday, news came down Thursday morning that Jack Swarbrick would step down as athletic director (not surprising given his age and lengthy tenure) and be replaced by NBC Sports Group chair Pete Bevacqua (a fair bit surprising). Like Swarbrick, Bevacqua is a Notre Dame alum. NBC Sports Chairman [...]
We knew a 12-team playoff was coming to college football, but we found out in early December, officially, that it will begin in the 2024 season. College football will have one more year with potential high-stakes regular season games between great teams before those stakes move down the board to more middling squads post-2023. (It's [...]
Some thoughts after Notre Dame ensured a USC Heisman Trophy for the 4th time in the last 20 years: One thing matters the next 8 months All that matters from here to August is getting a QB. Any QB. It has to be done. ND can't win like this, not at the level it needs [...]
At one point during Saturday's 44-0 obliteration of Boston College, the NBC broadcast crew mentioned that Marcus Freeman grew almost angry when discussing ND's tendency to play down to its worst opponents. It seemed pretty clear with this performance, combined with the first half of Navy before everything went to hell, that the Irish are [...]
I guess that was a win. Notre Dame won 35-32. I think. My head exploded at some point during the fourth quarter and I spent the final few minutes of the game picking it up and gluing it back together. The Irish more or less dominated the first half, although it wasn't until the final [...]
My first reaction to tonight's win? "We've got ourselves a (blankity blank) head football coach." Notre Dame didn't just beat #4 Clemson Saturday, 35-14. They pushed the Tigers around. They did the only things they could do to win when Clemson knew exactly what those things were, and they did them spectacularly well. That's special. [...]
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