More so than any other season of college football, 2020 has proven to be the ultimate test for coaches. The pandemic has produced more unique challenges for every program and the cream has truly risen to the top when it comes to coaching. Now, I wanted take a moment to talk about the coaches who [...]
Yes, I went three for three on song lyric references in the title. No, I'm not going to apologize for it. Not a lot of changes this week as a bunch of the games I would have been looking forward to were canceled or postponed throughout the week leading to no major changes up top. [...]
I can't tell you how many times over the years I've read comments from Notre Dame fans that just casually throw it out there that the Irish could win the National Championship if such and such (usually couched in extremely likely terms) happened soon. Maybe it's a star recruit about to sign, or a player [...]
Any time you're dumb enough to pick against this Notre Dame team it's important to trust what your eyes have seen in 2020 and to believe in Clark Lea. And also, believe in Tommy Rees. And Ian Book. And...well you get the point. Following a scary opening to the game that saw North Carolina's offense [...]
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. A return as a head coach isn't supposed to work out very often. Just ask Randy Edsall whose UConn team is sitting out 2020 through the pandemic after going 6-30 in their coach's second stint at Storrs. That fate hasn't affected Mack Brown to date who returned to Chapel Hill last [...]
Notre Dame picked up another defensive back in its 2021 class today when corner JoJo Johnson announced for the Irish. The 5'11", 180-pound Hoosier picked up his Notre Dame offer two days ago and wasted little time - none, if you believe some of the message board rumors - committing. Irish cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens [...]
Alabama won by 60, Ohio State held off Indiana, Cincinnati skated past UCF, Wisconsin flopped in Evanston, Coastal Carolina won a tough game against App State, USC dropped Utah, and we were an overtime away from seriously ranking Rutgers, you guys. A full recap after our latest Top 20 rankings. 18 Stripes Top 20 Poll [...]
Welcome back to the Playoff Big Board, here in the strangest of college football seasons. Usually our board consists of all ranked undefeated teams and all ranked one-loss Power 5 teams in the committee rankings. I’m going to tweak it a bit this year to reflect all those teams that I believe are seriously on [...]
Cheeseburgers were moderately helpful for Notre Dame this week, as five of the six remaining game win probabilities in SP+ and FPI inched upwards (the sixth stayed level, if you're wondering). The overall picture hasn't appreciably changed from last week; both models have it as roughly a coin flip for the Irish to win out, [...]
Welcome back to the 18S G5 Top 10. Last week I realized in the excitement of releasing the first edition I forgot to mention what the criteria is for the list. After a week of games, I take a look into a combination of a few things; on the field play, opponent quality, ability to [...]
We are approaching a decade since the major conference realignment recast college football and helped to usher in the playoff era of today. The topic of further expansion or contraction of conference ebbs and flows over the years but has mostly remained a dormant discussion outside of a rare treatise on the future of Texas [...]
Not once, not twice, but three times this week Notre Dame football has flipped a prospect from another school. This time it's offensive tackle Caleb Johnson, whose recruitment was well under way when the Irish finally offered back in March. The 6'7", 295-pound Florida resident and Fort Wayne native had some natural interest in Notre [...]
Notre Dame laid another length in its Polynesian pipeline today when linebacker Kahanu Kia announced his commitment. The 6'2", 220-pound Hawaiian hails from Punahou, which is also the alma mater of current Irish linebacker Marist Liufau and former Irish players Manti Te'o and Robby Toma. Perhaps not coincidentally, Toma is currently an assistant at Punahou [...]
Notre Dame worked its second flip of the week on the recruiting trail when former Colorado pledge Josh Bryan announced his commitment to the Irish. Rumors have been floating for a while that the Notre Dame staff had some interest in the 6'0", 190-pound Californian, but in what was originally expected to be a tight [...]
Notre Dame caught a rather important boomerang in its 2021 class when blue-chip cornerback Philip Riley announced his re-commitment on Tuesday. His recruitment was a bit of a roller coaster that might normally raise some red flags, but when you add context to it it's much less worrisome. A brief timeline: Riley, a Florida resident [...]
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