It was important Notre Dame won tonight's game for a lot of reasons, but a statement of intent for the program was in order. Play USC, beat USC, and beat USC playing the kind of football they refuse to play. Notre Dame eventually stopped screwing around and beat the Trojans into submission Saturday, 34-24, leaving [...]
Earlier this year, I wrote about USC's attempt to weasel out of the Notre Dame rivalry and their slow self-immolation in the face of conference realignment. In that, I wrote: Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: there is no way this arrangement works out long-term for USC. They are screwing their fans, their players, and [...]
The weather is finally starting to turn in the north and Midwest after an unseasonably warm September and early October. We should get one last gasp this weekend though, as the weather is looking pretty warm in South Bend and beyond. We are treated to four separate ranked vs. ranked matchups this week, a tough [...]
We had a really quality and entertaining week 7 in college football. We'll talk about some MACtion, SEC battles, perhaps the best road win of the season, and Penn State having enough of the James Franklin era. That and more to come! Here's the latest poll from 18 Stripes: 18 Stripes Top 20 Poll [...]
After a sloppy opening two quarters, Notre Dame pitched a shutout in the second half and calmly dispatched visiting NC State to add another ACC win to the school's coffers. With plenty of things to clean up it was a successful dominant win before an important rivalry game coming up against Southern California. Here's our [...]
Is it just me, or was this the first game of the season that had real 2024 vibes? Notre Dame tripped over itself a few times early Saturday, and we had a good old-fashioned ref show late in the first half (I'll leave discussion of that to the comments), but things calmed down after halftime [...]
Notre Dame has picked itself up from 2 opening season losses and climbed back into the good graces of the country with a trio of wins by a combined 140-50 score line. Following a 2-0 start in ACC play--including a now more impressive win over Virginia--we see NC State coming to South Bend wounded after [...]
My plan this week in the intro was to talk about undefeated Maryland and how their game against Nebraska this weekend suddenly had some meaning nationally, or at least for the upper half of the Big Ten pecking order. The Terps led 20-0 over Washington late in the 3rd quarter last week and ended up [...]
Maybe we should've seen it coming. Penn State, coming off an emotional overtime loss at home to Oregon, had to travel across the country to Los Angeles and probably severely overlooked a wounded UCLA squad with a little bit of talent. As 24.5 point road favorites, that's exactly what Penn State did as they served [...]
You could slice up this game a bunch of different ways. Was it an easy win? Was it a win that was far too difficult? Did we watch more of a clinic on poor officiating? The correct answer seems to be all of the above. The final score won't turn heads but on sweltering South [...]
A game neither team can afford to lose if they want to repeat last season's success, but a team one must win and effectively eliminate from the mystical magical imaginary CFP race. I'm guessing neither one of these teams thought this was the game stakes when it was first scheduled and even back in August. [...]
We're in the thick of the college football season as week 6 is upon us. Through September, 116 of the 136 FBS teams have lost at least one game. Oregon State, UMass, Sam Houston, and UCLA are the remaining winless teams in the nation. The 20 undefeated teams thus far include: AAC: Navy, Memphis, North [...]
Week 5 brought the hammer for several teams up high in our 18 Stripes rankings. Worst among the bunch was a shocking loss from Florida State while LSU, Georgia, and Penn State all lost to good competition. That equals first defeats to 4 out of the top 7. Now it's time for a re-rank heading [...]
Notre Dame went down to Arkansas this Saturday with the thought its offense might have to score on every possession to try and win the game. That ended up not being necessary but the Irish offense obliged anyway. It was a tense game for about 20 minutes before this game got ugly quickly in favor [...]
One of these years, perhaps Notre Dame fans will get used to the Irish responding to being pushed to the brink of doom. Year after year it has occurred and year after year ND brings its A game just when fan pessimism is at its height. There was no question of the Irish's A game [...]
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