See? I told you Alabama wasn’t going to be in the playoff... The board cleared up considerably this week, and with only a handful of true contenders left we can now get a lot more serious about projecting playoff scenarios. Without the Tide. Heh. The "538 conference championship win probability" is taken from the nifty [...]
The Pac 12 is dangerously close to being eliminated after a momentous upset, and the Big 12 is alive thanks to a witches' brew of good fortune and home cooking. It's November, folks. Time to get weird... There were a bunch of stinker match-ups in the last couple of weeks, but with Rivalry Week upon [...]
We're just about at the finish line for the regular season, and man, it's been a weird one. I think the epitaph of this season is going to be one of unrealized potential; we all knew this wasn't going to be a playoff team - not with what it lost on both sides of the [...]
We got one moderate upset (is it really an upset if the winning, lower-ranked team was favored?) and were sooooo close to a big one, but you know what they say about being close - it only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Most of this week went very boringly to chalk and most of [...]
Well... That was fun. Remember that all advanced stats models include adjustments for garbage time, which is defined differently in each model but basically means being up by enough that both teams will change the way they're playing; by any definition, Notre Dame reached garbage time before the half against Navy. What the Irish did [...]
Does LSU's resounding win over Alabama truly signal the end of a dynasty, as ESPN's Ivan Maisel wrote? That feels a little hyperbolic for a Tide team that's still averaging almost a 30 point margin per game this year, but it gives some sense of the impact LSU's win had on the college football landscape. [...]
Credit to the Irish for rebounding with a huge win over a mid-level opponent - the mistakes that plagued them against Virginia Tech were largely eliminated against Duke, and accordingly the Duke game went the way the Virginia Tech game should've. That was the first truly stress-free performance for Notre Dame in five weeks, and [...]
This is the first week for the official College Football Playoff committee rankings. Hey, SMU and Appalachian State have been cruising - let's discuss the probability that a Group of 5 team will finally make it into the playoff! The final two G5 undefeateds fell this weekend, so that was fun while it lasted. Possible [...]
In a huge development for the 2020 depth chart, former Notre Dame target and current Ohio State Buckeye Isaiah Pryor announced his intent to transfer to Notre Dame after this season. The Irish pursued Pryor heavily in high school, first at Georgia's Pace Academy and later at IMG, but lost out to the bright lights [...]
Phew. The narrowest of escapes against Virginia Tech kept a 10-2 regular season on the table, but as you might imagine, it didn't do much to appease the advanced metrics gods. One little oddity that came out of the game - Bill Connelly noted that Notre Dame had a 99% post-game win expectancy. That means [...]
Rough week, but there were in fact other games that happened and, if you're a fan of college football, other things worth tracking going forward. Our board will consist of all ranked undefeated teams and all ranked one-loss Power 5 teams - first from the AP poll, then from the committee rankings when they're available [...]
Womp womp. I don't have much of an appetite for witty comments this week - Notre Dame was beaten, and beaten soundly, in every phase of the game in Ann Arbor. Sure, many saw a loss as likely - like SP+, for example - but nobody had any clue that something like that was waiting, [...]
From Wikipedia: The wolverine, Gulo gulo (gulo is Latin for "glutton") is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae [the weasel family]... Like many other mustelids, it has potent anal scent glands used for marking territory and sexual signaling. The pungent odor has given rise to the nicknames "skunk bear" and "nasty cat”... Wolverines [...]
As we round the turn into the second half of the season, it's time to revive the Playoff Big Board. Our board will consist of all ranked undefeated teams and all ranked one-loss Power 5 teams - first from the AP poll, then from the committee rankings when they're available soon. I define "resume wins" for [...]
Cheezborger cheezborger! For the second time this year Notre Dame benefited considerably from the bye week, both in the rankings (moved up in both polls last time and in the Coaches Poll this time) and in advanced stats metrics. SP+ in particular took a much kinder view of the Irish this week, presumably off the [...]
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