This whole conference football thing has been pretty easy! This Saturday afternoon the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame--in their lone season of conference football in school history--will compete for the Atlantic Coast Conference title. Meeting them on the other side of the field is a familiar modern foe, the Clemson Tigers. This will be the [...]
Last week we wondered where all the drama was for this season and finally we got some good stuff on our television screens. Florida was upset in hilarious fashion, Miami was absolutely stomped, while we couldn't be so lucky as to witness UCLA upset USC. Still, it was a good bye week for Notre Dame [...]
It's that time of year where the college football season is winding down and we have data points on the coaches who are Doing Good Things. It's been a weird year where a large group of coaches don't have many data points to begin with so there's a lot of questions about just how good [...]
The thing about winning a big game is it usually leads to more big games. So that fate awaits Notre Dame coming off an undefeated regular season as a rematch with Clemson looms large in the ACC Championship Game next weekend. The national spotlight is always on the Irish but now the heat is going [...]
It seems like the top 7 in our poll has been in place since September and that's really not that different than reality. Another week has passed and the same teams remain entrenched at the top. Someone is knocking on the door though and they are from Myrtle Beach! 18 Stripes Top 20 Poll [...]
It's been a pretty standard drumbeat ever since the announcement came down in July that for one season, Notre Dame football would play a conference schedule, in the ACC. It might get a little louder over the next week-plus, as we lead up to the ACC title game between the Irish and Clemson. "Will they [...]
Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Last week in this space I thought Coastal would blow the doors off of Liberty if they met on the field. Turns out, through a COVID outbreak at Liberty, BYU was easily slid in as an opponent. It was a crazy 48 hours to get to a historic matchup, [...]
Notre Dame didn't quite move into upset watch in the first half against Syracuse but things were tense for far too long. Thanks to a late 2nd quarter flurry, the Irish built up a nice halftime lead and spent the rest of the game keeping the Orange at arm's length to clinch a comfortable, if [...]
Rex Culpepper’s play went viral this past Saturday for his mistake of spiking the ball on 4th and Goal with the game on the line against NC State. I won’t dive much into that because a) there really isn’t too much to dive into and b) I tend to give Culpepper a pass on these [...]
No Saban, no problem for the Tide in the Iron Bowl, Trevor Lawrence returned with authority for Clemson, Northwestern falls on their face, Iowa State moves closer to a Big 12 regular season title, and the Ducks lose to their in-state rivals. All that, plus more in the recap after our latest 18 Stripes Top [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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