Notre Dame Football's 2008 Schedule Will Make a Major Difference

First, I agree with you.  A tough schedule is no excuse for last year's debacle.

However, when you have so many things working against you, as the Irish did last year, it magnifies the problems you do have, creates new ones, and makes them exponentially harder to fix.

How much difference does a schedule make?  The following was posted by wsund on Cartier Field.

Most of you probably know that Notre Dame faced 10 bowl teams on its schedule last year, more than any other BCS team in the country.  What you may not know is just how much more difficult this made their schedule.

When you have a non-bowl team on your schedule, the game is generally a "gimme."  Notre Dame, as bad as they were, went 2-0 in their "gimme" games last year.

How did the rest of the BCS teams do?  They combined to go 285-70 in these games, a winning percentage of .803.

Here's how many of these games each BCS team played (with the percentage of these teams who made a bowl in parentheses):

Teams with 8 non-bowl games: 1 (100%)

Teams with 7 non-bowl games: 6 (100%)

Teams with 6 non-bowl games: 25 (84%)

Teams with 5 non-bowl games: 19 (58%)

Teams with 4 non-bowl games: 12 (42%)

Teams with 3 non-bowl games: 2 (0%)

Teams with 2 non-bowl games: 1 (0%)

The average BCS team played almost 5 "gimme" games, and 64 of the other 66 teams played at least twice as many of these games as Notre Dame.  ND's schedule was by far tougher than most other teams last year on this basis alone.  This stat can also be linked to the odds that a team will make a bowl game.

Here's another statistic from last year.  Here are the average number of wins teams in each category achieved:

Teams with 8 non-bowl games: 12 wins

Teams with 7 non-bowl games: 9 wins

Teams with 6 non-bowl games: 7.97 wins

Teams with 5 non-bowl games: 7.47 wins

Teams with 4 non-bowl games: 5.66 wins

Teams with 3 non-bowl games: 4 wins

Teams with 2 non-bowl games: 3 wins

Again, the number of these games appears to have a direct correlation to a team's success.  It also shows that teams won, on average, about two games against bowl opponents (ND won one).

So how does this affect ND in 2008?  Well, the fact that the schedule should be much easier should guarantee ND a few more wins, and that's not taking into account their improvement on the field.

Phil Steele projects seven of ND's opponents to play in bowls, compared to the 10 they faced in 2007.  Of these seven, only USC does he project to play in an elite bowl.  Pitt, Navy, MSU, and BC are projected to be in lower tier bowls.

ESPN projects eight of ND's opponents to be in bowls.  But again, they have Purdue in the Insight Bowl, Navy in the Congressional Bowl, Pitt facing UNC in the Car Care Bowl, BC in the Emerald Bowl, and Michigan in the Champs Sports Bowl (all slots lower than where ND is projected).

Let's face it—Notre Dame was a bad football team last year.  We hope they will improve on the field this year.

However, the schedule offered them no favors last year, and it alone should guarantee the Irish a few more wins in 2008.