No Bill Murray

It’s March and as is tradition, I attended the Big East Tournament with Vin this year.  I was trying to figure out how many Big East tournaments I’ve been to with him.  I think this was number 8 with him.  The first Big East Tournament I blogged about was 2013.  Vin was supposed to go with me that year, but he got sick and my Dad came instead.  We went every year from 2014-2019 except for 2017.  In 2017, I went to the ACC Tournament at Barclays Center, but I don’t think Vin came for that.  We were supposed to go to the Big East Tournament in 2020, but I had decided not to go and then they canceled the tournament.  After a hiatus of several years because of the pandemic, we were back at it last year.  We went again this year for the seventh time since I started the blog.  I’m fairly confident we went in 2012.  I was also trying to think of how many times I went before I started the blog.  I think I went once when I was at Georgetown and once when I was at Notre Dame.  After that, I don’t think I went again until 2012, probably because I was going to graduate school at night.  So this was at least my eleventh Big East Tournament and at my eighth one going with Vin.

Anyway, I used to go multiple nights, but it was only Thursday night this year.  Tickets are definitely more expensive than they used to be, Notre Dame isn’t in the Big East anymore (as always, my dream is to be independent in football, be in any conference other than the Big 10 for hockey, and to rejoin the Big East for the rest of our sports), and it is tough getting home late and not getting much sleep as I get older.  If I could do it over, I might have gone on Friday night instead of Thursday night.  Friday night was about twice as expensive when I got tickets, but if I had waited until the last minute, prices had come down significantly.  You get better teams on Friday night for the semifinals and I wouldn’t have to go to work the next day.  Going to the championship game on Saturday is fun also, but it’s only one game and there are a lot of automatic bids up for grabs that day so it’s a good day to be home and watch as many games as possible on TV.

We got to see DePaul and Creighton followed by Villanova and UConn.  I was hoping to see Georgetown, but they lost to DePaul the night before.  Surprisingly, DePaul put up a really good fight against Creighton.  They led by 15 at halftime. With 2:12 left to play, DePaul made a layup to go up 62-51.  ESPN says they had a 98.1% win probability at that point.  And then Creighton went on an 11-0 run to tie it with 21 seconds left (3 threes and a layup).  DePaul had a chance for the last shot, but Ryan Kalkbrenner blocked a shot with three seconds left, DePaul missed a three and we were going to overtime.  In the first overtime, Creighton led 72-64 and they had a 94.2% win probability.  But DePaul outscored them 9-1 for the rest of the first overtime (tying it with one second left) to send it to a second overtime.  DePaul had the lead early in the second overtime, but Ryan Kalkbrenner made a shot with 2:12 left to give Creighton the lead and they led for the rest of the game.  DePaul made it a three-point game with 54 seconds left, but Creighton made their free throws late and won 85-81.  Ryan Kalkbrenner had 32 points, 9 rebounds, and 5 blocks for Creighton.  Layden Blocker and Isaiah Rivera combined for 42 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 assists for DePaul.

It was at this moment that winter came to an end.

There are a few things I always hope for at the Big East Tournament.  I want good beer.  I remember last year Sam Adams was a sponsor of the tournament, but there was no Sam Adams that we could find at Madison Square Garden.  This year, we were able to get some Cold Snap on tap (the Sam Adams late winter seasonal, which will soon be followed by their spring/first two-thirds of summer seasonal, Summer Ale).  When I go to a doubleheader, I always root for a quick game in the first game, but it seems like I never get it.  But if the game was going to be long, at least we got a great game.

This was good.  I’m looking forward to my first baseball beer of the year.

The last thing I always want to see at the Big East Tournament is the old Big East teams (St. John’s, Villanova, Seton Hall, Georgetown, Providence, and Connecticut) because they’ll have more fans at Madison Square Garden than the Midwest teams.  Of course, St. John’s would have the most fans, but it seems like I never get to see them.  It seems like they were perpetually playing in the 8/9 game which would mean they would need to get to the semifinals to play at night.  This year, they weren’t in the 8/9 game, but they were the 1 seed so they still didn’t play at night until the semifinals.  I think the best crowd would be St. John’s-Connecticut.  Connecticut rejoined the Big East in 2020 and I didn’t see them last year so it had been at least a decade since I was at a Connecticut game at the Big East Tournament.  But they definitely had more fans than Villanova at the second game.  Because of double overtime in the first game, the second game didn’t start until 10:19.  If the games were reversed, it definitely would have emptied out after Connecticut and Villanova, but with that game being second, it was very full even with the late start.  Villanova led 36-31 at halftime and Vin and I both left.  I would have loved to stay for the whole thing (if we had stayed for the whole thing, maybe we would have run into Connecticut assistant coach Luke Murray’s father Bill Murray on the way out like we did nine years ago when Luke Murray was an assistant at Xavier), but it just wasn’t going to happen since I had to go to work the next day.  As it turns out, I missed a terrible second half.  Connecticut won 73-56 in what turned out to be Kyle Neptune’s last game as Villanova’s coach.  I will root for Villanova against anybody other than Notre Dame because they’re a Catholic school and they won National Championship Games against North Carolina and Michigan this century, but I don’t follow them closely.  Looking back, it’s a little surprising that they hired Kyle Neptune.  Obviously, they did it because he was a long-time Jay Wright assistant, but he only had one year as a head coach.  He went 16-16 at Fordham (8-10 and eighth place in the Atlantic 10).  Kyle Neptune was not ready to be a head coach at a school that should be competing for national championships.  So I hope they bring in somebody who will get them back to that level.

It was a good crowd for the second game.

It was good to see Vin again. Hopefully we’ll get back again next year.  One thing that I forgot to mention was that they announced Rick Pitino as the Big East Coach of the Year during a timeout in the first game and I booed him.  That’s a sports grudge that I’ve been holding onto for this entire century.  And that brings me back to something I haven’t done on the blog in many years, ranking the teams in the tournament by who I want to see win.  Normally, the teams at the top go Notre Dame when we’re in it, old Big East Catholic schools, new Big East Catholic schools, other Catholic schools, Butler, and then everybody else.  Other than Notre Dame, I will root for schools that don’t play football at the FBS level.  Michigan is always last on the list if they’re in the tournament (once again, they will rank 70th out of the 68 teams in the tournament).  This year, it will still be all Catholic schools at the top, but not quite following my normal rules.  Let’s get to it.  I’ll go in reverse order:

70. Michigan

69. Michigan makes the championship game and some catastrophic event prevents the game from being played without anybody dying.

68. Michigan makes the championship game and it’s determined before the game that all of their players are ineligible so the game is never played.

Having a pandemic that killed millions of people and not having a tournament was worse than Michigan winning, but if we could not have a tournament without millions of people dying, that would definitely be better than Michigan winning.

67. North Carolina

66. Connecticut

65. Duke

North Carolina is the school that got away with 18 years of fake classes for athletes and it’s now the school of Bill Belichick.  Danny Hurley is as dislikeable as any coach in college basketball these days.  Jayson Tatum went to Duke so I’ll put them ahead of North Carolina and Connecticut.

64. Arkansas

63. Kansas

John Calipari is at Arkansas now and he’s very high on the list of dislikeable coaches.  Having Calipari just ahead of Duke on the list is also fitting because Duke builds their team on hired mercenaries just like Calipari does and yet somehow people ignore that fact about Duke.  Kansas has definitely been cheating over the years so they’re low on the list.

62. UCLA

61. Oregon

60. Louisville

59. Michigan State

58. Purdue

57. Illinois

56. Maryland

55. Wisconsin

We get to a group of mostly Big 10 teams.  UCLA and Oregon are at the bottom of this for joining in the attempted murder of the Pac 12 instead of fighting against it (the Pac 12 may have survived, but they’ll be permanently disabled).  Louisville gets mixed in with this group because I consider them a Notre Dame rival in basketball.  They would be even lower in the rankings if Rick Pitino was still there.

54. Texas

53. Oklahoma

52. Alabama

51. Auburn

50. Georgia

49. Kentucky

48. Ole Miss

47. Florida

46. Missouri

45. Tennessee

44. Texas A&M

43. Mississippi State

42. Vanderbilt

Now we get to the SEC teams that aren’t coached by John Calipari.  Texas and Oklahoma are at the bottom of this group for being part of the attempted murder of the Big 12 and also because they were tied for 13th in the conference at 6-12.  I know they’re probably better than the Atlantic 10 teams, but if you’re 6-12 and the 13th/14th best teams in the conference, get out of here.  There are way too many SEC teams in this tournament.  Let me see teams from the Atlantic 10 and Missouri Valley get a chance.  Vanderbilt is the highest out of this group because they actually care about academics.

41. Clemson

40. Baylor

39. Arizona

38. Iowa State

37. Texas Tech

36. Houston

35. BYU

Now we’re into the teams in the Power 4 football conferences that aren’t the Big 10 and SEC.

34. Memphis

33. Liberty

32. New Mexico

31. Utah State

30. Colorado State

29. San Diego State

28. Akron

This is the group of teams that play FBS football in non-power conferences.

27. Grand Canyon

26. UNC Wilmington

If Grand Canyon was actually in the Grand Canyon, they would rank higher.  UNC Wilmington is low on the list because I don’t want to root for anything that’s part of the University of North Carolina system.

25. Drake

24. Robert Morris

23. Bryant

22. Troy

Are these colleges or some random dudes?  Troy sneaks up this high on the list as a school that plays FBS football because I’m grateful to them for hiring Gerad Parker as their head coach and allowing Notre Dame to replace him with Mike Denbrock.

21. Lipscomb

20. High Point

19. McNeese

I have no thoughts about these schools.

18. Yale

It’s a school that cares about academics more than they care about sports.  There might be lots of reasons not to like Yale, but that’s admirable.

17. Alabama State

16. Omaha

15. Norfolk State

14. Montana

13. SIUE

12. Wofford

11. American

It’s a group of 15 and 16 seeds.  American is the highest on this list because I’m a proud American (despite the sorry state of politics in this country).

10. VCU

Why does VCU sneak up this high on the list?  Because they have a fun tournament history and they’re in the Atlantic 10.  I would have preferred to see Dayton or one of the other Catholic schools representing the Atlantic 10, but I’m fine with rooting for the only team representing the Atlantic 10 (I wish there were more).  

9. UC San Diego

Why are they the highest ranked non-Catholic school?  Because if they win the National Championship, that would mean that Michigan lost their first game and that would be wonderful.

8. St. John’s

I’ll begrudgingly root for St. John’s against a non-Catholic school.  I’ve wanted St. John’s to be good for a long time.  They didn’t have to turn to Rick Pitino to do it.  If almost anybody else was coaching St. John’s and they were having this success, they would be number 1 in my rankings this year.

7. St. Francis (Pennsylvania)

I like St. Francis.  There are a lot of Catholic schools that I would rank them ahead of besides St. John’s, but they didn’t make it to the tournament this year.

6. Marquette

5. Xavier

4. Creighton

Now we get to the Big East schools that aren’t St. John’s or Connecticut.  Villanova, Seton Hall, Providence, and Georgetown need to get back to the tournament soon.

3. St. Mary’s

2. Gonzaga

It’s really respectable how these two have dominated the WCC.  I would love to see either one win the national championship.  Gonzaga is going to the new Pac 12 and St. Mary’s has been rumored to be doing the same.  They really should be in the same conference so I hope St. Mary’s does join Gonzaga in the Pac 12.

1. Mount St. Mary’s

I just found out about this, but the Mount St. Mary’s Wikipedia page has a section titled “Connection to Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College in Indiana.”  That’s enough to get them the top spot with Notre Dame not in the tournament this year.  Go Mountaineers!

Chasing Sports Perfection

I did game by game diaries of the Celtics in the NBA Finals and the Dodgers in the World Series.  I have to do one for Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff.  Much like the Celtics and the Dodgers, Notre Dame needs to win four games to win the championship.  The difference is there’s no wiggle room.  The Celtics and the Dodgers both won four out of five.  Notre Dame needs to win four in a row.  Anyway, let’s get to it.

Round 1

Today was my last day of school before Christmas vacation.  In my 20 years of being a Notre Dame football fan, I think I’ve had to work the day after a game a few times (we’ve played on Labor Day and I think there was at least one bowl game that came on my last day of Christmas vacation), but I don’t think I’ve ever had to work the day of a game (there was the BCS Championship Game 12 years ago, but I took that day and the next day off because I went to the game).  Fortunately I had a half day and the game didn’t start until 8:00.  So I had plenty of time to relax before the game.  I felt good going into this game.  I think my dream scenario was getting the 5 seed and Arizona State or Iowa State getting the 12 seed.  We missed out on the cold weather advantage that we would have had against a team from the South or West, but we had a significant talent advantage over Indiana.  Of course, we had a significant talent advantage over Northern Illinois and we lost that game.  So there’s always some uncertainty.

The game got off to a rough start.  After forcing a punt on Indiana’s first possession, we threw an interception on our second offensive play.  It was a batted ball so that’s just something that happens, but it wasn’t good.  Indiana was set up with good field position.  But it didn’t matter because Xavier Watts intercepted a pass at the 2 yard line.  He might work his way up to my favorite Notre Dame football player ever if we win the National Championship.  He’s awesome.  And then on the next play Jeremiyah Love ran 98 yards to give us the early lead.  Indiana moved the ball a little bit on their next possession, but then they punted on 4th and 8 at the Notre Dame 37.  What are you doing?  You’re down seven points as an underdog in a playoff game.  You’re one first down away from field goal range.  You’re one big play away from tying the game.  You have to go for it there.  In a video game, you go for it there without hesitation.  In a real game, you should absolutely go for it in that situation without hesitation as well.  Anyway, after a bad punt, we went 83 yards on 16 plays to make it 14-0.  And really, the game was over.  Later in the first half, Indiana kicked a slightly more defensible field goal.  It was 4th and 4 at the Notre Dame 16.  If it was 7-0, I probably would have kicked the field goal.  Down 14, I think you should go for it in that spot.  But we answered that with a shocking 49 yard field goal from Mitch Jeter.  He’s been bad lately (probably because of injury, but it doesn’t really matter what the reason is), but I was definitely happy to go into halftime up by 14.  He made another kick later in the game so I was hoping that would help restore some confidence, but then he had a kick blocked after that.  So yeah, I’m still not going to feel good any time we have to kick a field goal as the playoff continues.  Indiana had another ridiculous punt down 20-3 in Notre Dame territory in the fourth quarter.  That led to a Riley Leonard touchdown run to make it 27-3 and the game was completely over.  Indiana scored a meaningless touchdown, got a two point conversion, and then recovered an onside kick.  They scored another touchdown and had a two point conversion attempt to make it a one possession game.  There were only 25 seconds left so we still would have been heavily favored to win even if they got it, but it would have made for an uncomfortable onside kick if they had gotten down to 8 points. But we stopped the two point conversion, recovered the second onside kick, and took a knee to win 27-17.

The defense was really good.  Indiana had 63 rushing yards (2.3 yards per carry) and only 215 passing yards (6.3 yards per attempt) when they were behind for pretty much the whole game.     The offense left something to be desired.  We had a 98 yard run, but finished the game with only 5.5 yards per carry.  Jeremiyah Love didn’t get over 100 yards rushing until the fourth quarter (even after the 98 run in the first quarter).  He only had eight carries in the game.  He got hurt against USC and didn’t do much tonight in the seven carries that didn’t go for 98 yards.  So that’s at least a little concerning.  Riley Leonard was decent after the interception, but we didn’t have much success trying to get the ball down the field in the passing game (although he did complete a 44 yard pass to Jordan Faison to set up the touchdown that made it 27-3 in the fourth quarter).  And field goal kicking remains a concern.  We will be playing Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.  Georgia is definitely beatable, but we will not have the significant talent advantage that we had over Indiana.  We will need to be better offensively than we were tonight to beat Georgia.  I think we have a chance, but I don’t expect to win.  If we do win, then we are very real contenders to actually win the championship.  This was our first postseason win against a top 10 opponent since we beat Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl on January 1, 1994.  So it’s definitely a good win.  But beating Georgia would be a much better win.  But for now, I’ll enjoy this one and hope that the road teams win tomorrow.  Merry Christmas to all and to all a Go Irish!

Round 2- Sugar Bowl

The game ended two and a half hours ago and I just remembered I was doing this blog.  It’s been almost two weeks since we played Indiana.  Of course, we were supposed to play a day earlier, but the terrorist attack in New Orleans pushed the game back.  When I heard about it, I figured that they might postpone the game.  There was no news about that until the Peach Bowl was going on and they announced that it would be postponed for 24 hours.  I was hoping they would move up the start of the game.  There was no reason to start at 8:45 if you weren’t going to be playing right after the Rose Bowl.  Fortunately, they eventually announced that the game would be at 4:00.  After what happened in New Orleans, I definitely think it was the correct decision to postpone the game.  But I felt bad for all the people who had travelled to New Orleans.  If I had gone to the game, the plan definitely would have been to come home today.  So the postponement would have meant missing the game or staying for an extra day, extending my hotel stay, and changing my flight.  That probably would have been pretty expensive.  I saw that notable Notre Dame alumna Jessica Smetana was supposed to go to the game, but she did not because she left today as originally planned.  I’m sure a lot of other fans were in the same situation.

Since my time as a Notre Dame student, this is our third time playing postseason football with a chance to win a national championship. In 2012, I thought we would win.  It was a magical regular season and I was overconfident.  We got spanked by Alabama.  In 2018, I was hopeful, but not too optimistic.  We lost to Clemson.  It was actually competitive until we lost Julian Love and then we had no chance.  In 2020, I knew Alabama would beat us pretty easily.  Of course, this year is a totally new format.  I felt confident about beating Indiana.  Now we had to play Georgia.  This was the type of game I would not have had any confidence in winning under Brian Kelly.  I wouldn’t say I expected to win, but I felt like we had a good chance.  Marcus Freeman gets the team ready to play big games.  Brian Kelly did not.

It was clear that our defense was ready to go.  Georgia was threatening late in the first quarter, but we recovered a fumble to put a stop to that.  After a scoreless first quarter, Georgia got on the board first with a field goal.  We responded with a 44 yard field goal by Mitch Jeter.  We took the lead with a 48 yard field goal with 39 seconds left in the half.  Then a sack and a forced fumble gave us the ball at the Georgia 13.  On the next play, Riley Leonard threw a touchdown pass to Beaux Collins with 28 seconds left.  Suddenly, we were in very good shape going into halftime.  In the first half, Jon texted in the group text that the first team to 13 was going to win.  We were at 13.  Jayden Harrison started the second half with a 98 yard kickoff return for a touchdown to make it 20-3.  Besides rarely getting the job done in big games, my least favorite thing about Brian Kelly was always taking the ball when we won the coin toss.  I’ve known since I was 10 years old playing Madden that you would rather have the ball to start the second half than to start the first half.  Why couldn’t he figure that out?  Freeman defers when we win the toss and that definitely paid off in this game.  All year, we’ve dominated the middle eight minutes of the game and we did it again in this game.  Georgia cut it to 20-10 in the third quarter and it felt like it would be competitive the rest of the way.  It really wasn’t.  After we got stopped at a fourth down at midfield, we got a big fourth down stop to get pretty good field position.  A questionable penalty cost us a first down, but Mitch Jeter made a 47 yard field goal early in the fourth quarter to make it 23-10.  He was excellent today and that was good to see.  A fourth down pass interference kept the next Georgia drive alive, but then we forced an incompletion on fourth and five at our nine yard line.  Then we had a fourth and one at our own 18.  After sending out the punt team, we rushed the offense onto the field and got Georgia to jump offsides.  That was a great move by Marcus Freeman.  That let us take a whole lot more time off the clock and the game was pretty much over after that.  Georgia got the ball back, but we got a sack on fourth down with less than a minute left and the game was over.

After the Indiana game, I said that we needed to be better offensively to beat Georgia.  We were not better offensively and we still won.  We had 90 yards passing (3.8 per attempt).  Love and Price combined for 56 yards rushing on 16 carries.  Despite the lack of passing yards, I thought Riley Leonard played well.  He protected the football and ran for 80 yards on 14 carries.  That was the best part of our offense.  Love has been hurt since the USC game and that’s a problem.  We managed to win this game, but it’s hard to keep winning like that.  The defense and special teams came through in this one.  You have to figure that it will take more from the offense to beat Penn State and hopefully win the national championship.

Whatever happens, the monkey is off our back as far as major bowl games.  We hadn’t won one since January 1, 1994.  We had plenty of bad coaches since then, but Brian Kelly wasn’t a bad coach and he couldn’t win one in 12 years at Notre Dame.  Marcus Freeman got that done.  I hope he has more accomplishments ahead in the next few weeks.  We’ll be taking on Penn State in the Orange Bowl on my birthday.  I despise Penn State.  This is the school of Jerry Sandusky.  Joe Paterno allowed Jerry Sandusky to happen and Penn State fans still worship him.  I think I would despise Michigan for cheating to win a national championship no matter what, but the fact that I’m a Notre Dame fan makes me despise them more.  I root against USC and LSU (Brian Kelly) because I’m a Notre Dame fan.  But I would root against Penn State regardless of what team I rooted for.  Of the 12 teams that made the playoff, Penn State winning the national championship would be the worst possible outcome.  It would be nice to be the team that prevented that from happening.  Go Irish!

We won a trophy that means something.  Yay!

Round 3- Orange Bowl

I was confident about this game.  James Franklin annoyed Marcus Freeman at the press conference the other day.  James Franklin is Penn State’s Brian Kelly.  He beats bad teams and loses to good teams.  Marcus Freeman gets his team ready to play big games.  We were not going to lose this game.

The first college football game I remember watching was Notre Dame and Penn State in 1992.  I wasn’t a Notre Dame fan at the time.  I didn’t remember the result (we won 17-16 on a late two-point conversion), but I remember watching it because of the snow.  When I was a student, we beat them 41-17 in 2006.  I was hoping that tonight would be more like the 2006 game than the 1992 game.  It was much more like the 1992 game (except for the weather).

There were rumors before the game of a bunch of our players having the flu, but supposedly they were mostly backups.  I don’t know how true that was.  We looked pretty bad in the first half.  We couldn’t really stop the run and we couldn’t do anything on offense.  We fell behind 10-0.  Riley Leonard got hurt late in the first half and Steve Angeli came in and gave us a lift.  We got a little lucky to recover a fumble when Angeli got sacked, but he was able to move the ball other than that.  We got a field goal and we went into halftime down 10-3.  It was only a one score game even though we hadn’t played well.  The good news was that we were getting the ball to start the second half (once again, I’m still annoyed by Brian Kelly refusing to defer and one of the reasons that I love Marcus Freeman is because he gets a simple thing like that right).  We came out of halftime and moved the ball very well on our first drive.  Riley Leonard finished off a good drive with a three yard touchdown run and suddenly we were tied.

It was still tied going into the fourth quarter.  We had a nice drive at the end of the third quarter and start of the fourth quarter.  Jeremiyah Love finished it with a man’s touchdown on a tough two yard run.  He’s still hurt, but he battled and had a good game tonight.  It was 17-10 and we had the lead for the first time.  It seemed like all the momentum was on our side.  And then it wasn’t.  Penn State tied it up and then Riley Leonard threw an interception with about 10 minutes left that gave Penn State good field position.  I let out an involuntary noise of disappointment.  Penn State scored to retake the lead 24-17 with 7:55 left to play.  All the momentum was back on Penn State’s side.  But we were not done.  Jaden Greathouse caught a pass, made a beautiful move, and went 54 yards for a touchdown to tie the game with 4:38 left.  It was the best play we’ve had from a wide receiver all season.  He played a great game (7 catches for 105 yards and the game-tying touchdown in the fourth quarter).  It was tied, but Penn State was in a position to go on a long drive and score with very little time remaining.  They didn’t do that.  We got a three and out (aided by a false start on first down).  Now we were in good shape. But we couldn’t take advantage.  We had one first down and then we had to punt.  Penn State had it with 47 seconds left.  They got 13 yards on their first play.  But then the defense made the one huge play that we needed.  Christian Gray intercepted Drew Allar with 33 seconds left.  It was his biggest play since he returned an interception for a touchdown against USC.  We had it on the Penn State 37.  Mitch Jeter ended up kicking a 41 yard field goal to give us the lead with eight seconds left.  Penn State had no timeouts left.  We were in great shape and we probably would have won no matter what Penn State did, but they made a mistake.  They let the kickoff go for a touchback.  You have a better chance of returning a kick for a touchdown than you do to go 75 yards in eight seconds.  They threw an incomplete pass and then one desperation play that didn’t work and we won.

For the first time in 12 years, we will play for the National Championship.  We went 31 years without winning a major postseason game.  And now we’ve won three playoff games (all against top 10 teams), including two major bowl games.  That’s different from getting to the championship game in 2012 when there was no playoff and only two teams played for the championship.  We’ve accomplished a lot this year, but I hope we’re not done.  We’re going to be underdogs against Texas or Ohio State.  I expect it to be Ohio State and we’re going to be bigger underdogs against them than against Texas.  But it’s one game and anything can happen.  We played them last year and we should have beaten them.  Marcus Freeman is going to have the team ready to play.  I don’t necessarily expect to win, but we’ve accomplished enough to believe that it’s possible.

Today was my birthday.  It was a good birthday.  I think this is now my favorite Notre Dame football win that I watched (and that has nothing to do with the fact that it came on my birthday).  Hopefully it will move into second place on that list on January 20.  Tomorrow is Marcus Freeman’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Jim!  Happy Birthday Marcus Freeman!

We’ll be going back to Miami to start next season and hopefully to finish next season in the National Championship Game.

Round 4- National Championship Game

Well, it wasn’t the end that I hoped for.  I was one win away from the year of sports perfection.  The Celtics won the NBA Championship and the Dodgers won the World Series.  If Notre Dame won the National Championship, that was everything I ever wanted in sports all in a span of seven months.  It was not to be.

The game started out beautifully.  We had a drive that lasted almost ten minutes.  We converted third and fourth downs and Riley Leonard scored a touchdown.  My concern was that our offense would be too predictable.  When we needed a yard, Leonard ran and got it.  But was that going to work all game?  As it turned out, that wasn’t the problem.  The problem was we couldn’t stop Ohio State.  They scored to tie it.  The game ended with our running backs getting 16 yards on seven carries.  It would have been nice to get them more involved.  Our second possession was costly.  It will probably get lost in everything that happened, but I think it was the biggest possession of the game.  We started the possession with an incomplete pass, a five yard penalty, and a ten yard penalty.  Not surprisingly, we didn’t get a first down and then we punted.  We couldn’t stop Ohio State and they scored a touchdown to take the lead.  Now we were playing from behind.

We were down 21-7 at halftime.  Ohio State was getting the ball to start the second half because they won the toss and deferred because Ryan Day is a better coach than Brian Kelly.  If we had won the toss, it still might have been a 21-7 game at halftime, but then we would have gotten the ball because Marcus Freeman would have deferred.  If that was the case, maybe we score to start the second half and make it interesting.  But they got the ball first and scored another touchdown to make it 28-7.  Then we had a fake punt on fourth and 2 from our own 33 that didn’t work.  I didn’t mind going for it in that situation, but we should have just gone for it.  We brought Steve Angeli out with the punt team and that pretty much telegraphed the fake punt.  Shocklingly, we held Ohio State to a field goal on the ensuing possession.

We were down 31-7 and then we started playing.  We got a touchdown and two-point conversion to make it 31-15.  Then we recovered a fumble.  We moved down the field and had first and goal at the 8.  I didn’t like the first down play.  I saw the formation and knew it would be a quarterback run.  It went for a loss of 1.  Then we had two incomplete passes.  With fourth and goal at the 9 with 9:27 left, we kicked a field goal that hit the upright.  People did not like that call.  I would have been okay with going for it, but I don’t think it was a bad call (the result was terrible, but I don’t think the call was terrible).  If you go for it, you’re not likely to score.  But if you do, you still need a two point conversion, another touchdown, and another two point conversion to tie.  All of that is very unlikely.  And even if you do all of that, you’re still only tied.  Most likely, you will need two more possessions to take the lead even if you get the touchdown on fourth and 9.  If you kick the field goal and make it (and you should make it from the 9), then two touchdowns and two extra points gives you the lead.  This supports the idea that kicking the field goal was marginally better than going for it:

We had a 22% chance of success if we went for it.  Let’s be generous and assume we have a 50% of getting the two point conversion.   That would mean that going for it has an 11% of resulting in a touchdown and two point conversion and only needing possibly one more possession to tie (we would still need one more possession or overtime to take the lead).  So we would have an 89% chance of not getting the touchdown and two point conversion and still needing two more possessions.  Obviously we didn’t make the field goal, but this gives us an 88% chance of making it. In all likelihood, we were going to need two more possessions after this one.  Making the field goal gives us the opportunity to take the lead with two more possessions without needing any two point conversions.  The result doesn’t make the decision bad.  As Stan Van Gundy has said about basketball, “Write the story when the ball is in the air.”

It seemed like the game was over, but we finally made Ohio State punt.  We scored a touchdown and got a two point conversion with 4:15 left.  We still had all three time outs left so we kicked off.  We had a chance to get the ball back on third and 11, but Will Howard completed a pass to Jeremiah Smith for 56 yards.  We brought a blitz that didn’t get there and Ohio State’s best wide receiver beat one on one coverage.  And then the game was over as long as Ohio State didn’t fumble or miss a field goal.  They ended up kicking a field goal to make it 34-23 and that was the final score.

Ohio State should have won.  They had a pretty good talent advantage even if the teams were at full strength.  I’m sure Ohio State had injuries also, but I doubt that injuries affected them the same way they affected us.  We were missing Anthonie Knapp (he spells his first name incorrectly, but losing our starter at left tackle in the semifinals didn’t help), Ashton Craig, Jordan Botelho, Boubacar Traore, Rylie Mills, and Benjamin Morrison.  These players played, but were probably not at 100% because of injuries:  Jeremiyah Love, Charles Jagusah, Rocco Spindler, Howard Cross, and Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa.  I’m probably missing somebody.  With or without the injuries, Ohio State should have won this game, but we definitely didn’t play our best game.

Hopefully this is the start of something good.  It’s disappointing to get this close and not finish it, but this was a special season.  We won 14 games.  We beat three top 10 teams in the college football playoff (including the SEC Champion).  We won two major bowl games after not winning any since winning the Cotton Bowl on January 1, 1994.  We played a bad game, but still had a chance to win with 2:38 left to play in the fourth quarter.  This was the best team we’ve had since 1993 and that should not get lost in the disappointment of tonight.

Tonight was not the best game Marcus Freeman has coached.  But I hope he stays at Notre Dame for a long time.  Overall, he’s been very good in his first three years and he’s a great representative for the university.  I was surprised that we weren’t more competitive early in the game tonight.  But I do feel like if we had fallen behind the way we did with Brian Kelly as the coach, we would have lost by a lot more than 11.  Like Freeman, Kelly made it to the National Championship game in his third year (he probably wouldn’t have if we had to win three playoff games to get there).  He was at Notre Dame for another nine years.  If Freeman stays at Notre Dame for another nine years, I believe that he will win a National Championship during that time.  Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.

It was a disappointing end to a great season.  I’m not going to work tomorrow because I knew that whatever happened tonight, I would not want to deal with children tomorrow.

We waited 12 years for this chance.  Let’s not wait that long for the next one.  Go Irish.

Fixing College Football’s Postseason

There are a lot of problems with sports these days.  I like coming up with solutions that will never happen for those problems.  I tried to fix college football in general three years ago.  Of course, things have just gotten worse since that blog post.  So I’m not going to try to fix the entire sport, but I am going to try to fix college football’s postseason.

The 12-team playoff is here and I hate what it’s done to college football’s regular season.  Oregon and Ohio State played the biggest game of the regular season and it meant nothing.  Ohio State lost that game and they lost to a bad Michigan team and they still made it to the College Football Playoff.  Notre Dame had one of our worst losses ever, but we still made the College Football Playoff.  Of course, I’m happy with Notre Dame being in the playoff, but I am perfectly fine with the idea of college football being a sport where losing to Northern Illinois ruins your season.  So yeah, I’m opposed to the 12-team playoff, but it’s not going away (if anything, it will expand further) so I’m going to try to make the postseason better.

The easiest problem to fix is the seeding.  Boise State and Arizona State were ranked 9th and 12th, but they got the 3 and 4 seeds because they were conference champions.  With all the stupid conference realignment we’ve seen over the last couple of decades, it was entirely predictable that something like this would happen.  Because of the stupid seeding, the 5 and 6 seeds have easier second round opponents than the 1 and 2 seeds.  It sounds like they’re going to fix that problem.  Guarantee spots for five conference champions, but just seed the 12 teams in the order that they’re ranked.  It would also make sense if they reseeded after each round, but I can live with not reseeding if the seeds make sense.

Another problem is the calendar.  The football calendar and the academic calendar do not line up in a convenient way, especially when it comes to the transfer portal.  Players are leaving their teams to enter the transfer portal before the season is over.  One of the many things I love about college football is having games on Saturdays.  But with the playoff going deep into January, they lose Saturdays to the NFL.  The playoff started with the first round split between a Friday night and Saturday.  That was excellent.  The second round is New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.  Of course this year, that’s a Tuesday and Wednesday, but that’s fine because people will be off and New Year’s Day is college football’s traditional holiday.  But then we have problems.  The semifinals are on a Thursday and Friday.  Friday night is fine, but if Notre Dame wins the Sugar Bowl, we will be playing in the Orange Bowl on Thursday, January 9.  I absolutely hate the idea of having to go to work both the day of and the day after a Notre Dame football game (it was pretty weird working the day we played Indiana, but that was okay because it was a half day and then I was off for two weeks).  And then the Championship Game is on a Monday night.  The Monday night championship game has been a problem for a long time.  This year it’s Martin Luther King Day.  So it’s cool that the championship game is on a holiday, but it’s not cool that the next day is a work day.  But if Notre Dame makes it, I am absolutely taking that Tuesday off.

Anyway, I think we can fix the calendar issue.  First of all, get rid of conference championship games.  Conferences are stupid to begin with and conference championship games have gotten especially stupid now that conferences have ridiculous numbers of teams and they’ve done away with divisions.  Like you can end up with three-way ties and no logical way to break the ties (because so many teams in the same conference don’t play each other).  With divisions, you played everybody in your division and having the best team from each division play in a championship game made some sense.  But look at the Big 10 this year.  The Big 10 had four good teams:  Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State, and Indiana.  Ohio State played the other three.  Penn State and Indiana only played Ohio State.  Anyway, Oregon and Penn State played in the championship game.  If they just didn’t play the game, what would have been different?  Oregon still would have been the 1 seed in the playoff.  Maybe Penn State would have been the 5 seed instead of the 6 seed.  Who cares?   The game meant nothing.  Conference championship games also made a little more sense when only four teams made the playoff, but this year we had Ohio State, Indiana, and Tennessee all make the playoff without playing in their conference championship games.  We don’t need the conference championship games (especially if they’re fixing the seeding so that they’re not determining byes anymore).  Just get rid of them.  Besides conference championship games being stupid, I want to get rid of them so that we can start the College Football Playoff the first weekend in December.  The second round would be the second weekend.  The semifinals would be the third weekend.  And then the championship game would be January 1.  Then you could play all the games on Friday/Saturday in the first three rounds, January 1 would once again be the most important day of the college football postseason, and everything would be done before the spring semester starts which would help with handling players transferring.

One thing that people seemed to like about the first round was having playoff games on campus.  I remember Mike Francesa saying years ago that one reason that there wouldn’t be a playoff is that it would mean a lot of traveling for fans and selling tickets would be an issue.  Like if you’re an Oregon fan, you’re looking at having postseason games in Pasadena, the Dallas area, and Atlanta if Oregon makes it to the championship game.  How many fans can go to more than one of those games?  So the 8 seed gets to play a home game, but the 1 seed only plays neutral site games (of course they do get a bye in the first round).  I would have the first two rounds on campuses.  So what happens to the bowls?  Hold on, I’ll come back to that.

Another idea that I’ve seen that I’m on board with is creating a football version of the NIT.  Why not?  It’s no crazier than having all these bowl games that mean absolutely nothing.  They would be more interesting to watch if they had another tournament where they were playing for something.  So I would have a 12-team tournament for teams not in the college football playoff.  Any conference that didn’t have a team in the college football playoff would be guaranteed a spot.  So here’s what it could have looked like this year:

Byes:

1 Alabama

2 Miami

3 Ole Miss

4 South Carolina

First Round

5 BYU vs. 12 Jacksonville State (Conference USA)

6 Iowa State vs. 11 Marshall (Sun Belt)

7 Missouri vs. 10 Ohio (MAC)

8 Illinois vs. 9 Army (American)

So the NIT would have the same format as the playoff (and you could expand both tournaments up to 16 teams and the format and scheduling still works fine).  The first two rounds are on campuses.  The final game of the NIT would be on either December 31 or January 1 also as the undercard for the National Championship Game.

So what do we do with the bowls?  Well, if the College World Series can always be in Omaha, the National Championship Game in college football can always be in Pasadena.  The Rose Bowl is the National Championship Game on January 1 every year (or January 2 if January 1 is a Sunday).  The Rose Bowl has the most history and tradition.  And if we’re not going to play the championship game in cold weather, give me outdoors and on grass in a beautiful setting any day over an NFL stadium, indoors, and/or on artificial turf.  What happens to the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl?  I would have them in a rotation.  Each year one of them would be the championship game for the NIT on December 31 or January 1 before the Rose Bowl, two of them would be the College Football Playoff semifinals, and two would be the NIT semifinals.  As for the lower level bowls, I would still have as many as possible, but some would probably have to die.  Looking at the system I just came up with, the only teams ranked in the playoff committee rankings who wouldn’t make the College Football Playoff or NIT would be Syracuse, Colorado, UNLV, and Memphis.  So the lower level bowls are not going to be all that interesting, but they’re already mostly not very interesting.  If we lose some, that’s fine.  Like how many bowl games do we need in the state of Alabama?  How many bowl games need to be played at Camping World Stadium in Orlando?  Right now there are three bowl games played in Alabama and three played at Camping World Stadium.  Do we really need that many in those places?  There are a few bowl games that I would not want to lose:  the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve, the Holiday Bowl in San Diego, the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium, (I like football in Yankee Stadium), Pop-Tarts Bowl for their creative marketing, etc.  I would want some others as well just to have football on TV during the week in late December.  But if we don’t have the 68 Ventures Bowl (that was an actual bowl game this year, not something I made up) anymore, that’s fine.  The games that really matter would be played on Fridays, Saturdays, and January 1.  The bowls that are left over would be used to fill in the weekdays between the semifinals and the championship games.

I think this would make college football’s postseason better and more interesting than what we have right now.  And the schedule would make a lot more sense.  The schedule we have now is better than it once was.  One of the things I always thought was silly was the ridiculously long gap between the end of the regular season and the big bowl games.  Before the Big 10 had a championship game, the 2006 Ohio State team finished the regular season by beating Michigan on November 18 and then they didn’t play again until they played in the National Championship Game on January 8.  My idea would take us right from the end of the regular season to the playoff and we’d end the season on January 1.

How would all of this affect Notre Dame?  I think there would be some good and some bad.  Notre Dame had 40 players take a final the day before we played Indiana (I’m sure most of the SEC would laugh at that idea).  Moving up the playoff calendar would mean that Notre Dame’s players would be dealing with academics and football for the first three rounds of the playoff instead of just the first round.  But it might help with transfers coming to Notre Dame.  Let’s just say Texas makes it to the National Championship Game on January 20.  Their players have five days after that to enter the transfer portal.  But Notre Dame’s spring semester starts on January 13.  Is the football team able to get somebody into school for the spring semester who goes into the transfer portal like 10 days after the spring semester started?  I would think the answer is that they would probably have to wait until the summer to get him into Notre Dame.

Of course, this is another one of my ideas that won’t happen.  The biggest thing for me is keeping Saturday and January 1 as the biggest days in college football.  If they could figure out a way to get the championship game on a Saturday, I’d be good with that, but that seems unlikely with NFL playoff games.  Maybe a more realistic option would be moving the championship game to a Friday night.  That would be a million times better than playing it on a Monday night.  Having the championship game on a Monday night is probably my least favorite thing about college football other than Michigan.

Anyway, the second round starts today.  And if Notre Dame wins, that means we’ll be playing in the Orange Bowl on my birthday.  That would make this birthday either my best birthday ever or my worst birthday since I had to go back to work after losing to Alabama in the championship game 12 years ago.  Many weeks ago, I was talking with my college friends about how we had such a wide range of possibilities.  I thought that we could lose in the first round if we got a bad matchup.  Fortunately that didn’t happen.  I also thought we had a chance to make a very deep run.  I wouldn’t say that I expect to beat Georgia, but I think we have a much better chance to win this game than we had to beat Clemson in the playoff in 2018 or Alabama in the playoff in 2020.  If you want to get to where you want to go, you have to win a game like this.  Clemson’s win over us in 2015 and Georgia’s win over us in 2017 helped get those programs to another level. This game is an opportunity for us to do that.

Go Irish!  Beat Bulldogs!