The Myth That Won't Die, Notre Dame Cannot Reach a BCS Game This Year

It is simple to see how this myth started. After all a combined record of 15 and 21 does not install confidence in anyone. What amuses me is why most people simple refuse to accept the possibility that Notre Dame can reach a BCS game this year. We should look at the various groups of people who communicate their opinions on Notre Dame football.

First off, I will start with the people who just hate Notre Dame. Quite frankly, their opinion is worthless. Notre Dame could schedule 12 NFL teams and beat all of them. They could hold their opponent in the BCS Championship game scoreless. Despite all of that, the people who hate Notre Dame would complain that their schedule was to easy and that Notre Dame should not be allowed the championship. In other words, Notre Dame will never be good enough or achieve enough to please these people. I understand, after all I feel the same way about USC.

The next group of people are those who are just casual observers. These people glance at headlines and have emotional reactions to games. It does not mean these people are foolish. This just means these people do not really care about football. They rarely know about football players, usually they only know the household name players. These people are split into groups about Notre Dame. Some of them love Notre Dame, some hate Notre Dame and others do not care. Again, their uniformed opinions carry little substance.

The next group of people are obsessed with statistics. These people, espesically Jeff Kalka, love to impress people with their reading skills. They can rattle off statistics in the blink of an eye. They can captivate audiences with arguements based on these statistics. True football games, however, are not played on computer simulations or on paper. True football games have passion, determination and execution. Statistics, for example, are usually thrown off by turnovers. A football team can get really lucky or just train themselves to depend on turnovers. This is rare in the first instance and risky in the second instance. Turnovers generally mean poor statistics for a team. A team that gets the ball on the opponents 5 yard line does not have the chance to generate many yards. Also, statisitcs generally are taken over a whole season. In other words, Notre Dame for example, played horrible defense for 2 or 3 games last year. While the defense only really played well in a couple of games, they 2 or 3 games really skewed the defensive numbers into looking as if the defense played horrible in all 12 games. All in all the statistic people generally do not project a good year for Notre Dame. Their opinion is based on facts, I just think not all the pertinant facts.

The last group of fans, just love Notre Dame. Unfortunately, their opinions usually do not carry much weight because they will think Notre Dame will win no matter what. However, there are a few of us who do attempt to think and reason why Notre Dame can reach a BCS game this year. Notre Dame lost the last 4 games of the season last year. Notre Dame did have an opprotunity to win all of the games last year. In fact, if it was not for Rich Rodriguez throwing a temper tantrum last year, Notre Dame would have defeated Michigan. It also took lucky calls and the offensive line taking the day off for Navy to win last year. Now, there were bad coach choices by Charlie Weis and Notre Dame did get some luck last year as well. All in all, I think Notre Dame did better than most people think last year. Our expectaions were high on the offense and non-existent with the defense. Unfortunately both let Notre Dame fans down last year.

What will be different in this season? Well, Brian Kelly is the new coach. He supposedly has corrected both the attitude and conditioning failings of last year's squad. His offense definitely has the speed needed to be successful. The defense is again more tailored to the strengths of the players. This is the main reason for the hope this year. Last year the hope was based on that past errors had been corrected. This year we can only look forward. I also look at the opponents of Notre Dame. None of them are so overpowering, such as USC in the past, where it would be a major upset for Notre Dame to win. Michigan State does worry me and I know little about Utah. Western Michigan will be looking for their biggest upset in their history. However, Notre Dame does truly have the talent to both out score these opponents and to keep them from scoring. It will come down most of all to which team wants to win the most. This year I truly believe Notre Dame has a coach who will nourish that desire. We just need to see if that will be enough.