Notre Dame Football: USC Game Proves Irish Are Not BCS-Ready

Notre Dame fans, is the air deflated in your balloon? Did the USC loss at home, on prime time television, with a lot of potential recruits in the house, just deflate any momentum that you had? 

Coming into that game against USC, your Irish team had an impressive four game winning streak. Yes, at the time Notre Dame was one of the top 25 teams in the country. They should have been ranked among the teams in the first BCS Standings. 

However, let’s take a step back and look at those four wins. 

In those four wins, only one of the wins were against a ranked team. Only one of those wins were against a team that was in a BCS conference, that wasn’t the Big Ten. And, only one of those wins had the Irish score more than 40 points. 

In those three of those four wins, the defense only allowed 10-to-13 points. However, in their last win, before the USC game, the defense started to show cracks, as they gave up over 500 yards in offense and 33 points to Air Force. 

So shouldn’t you have seen this loss to USC coming?

In Notre Dame’s only other prime time game, a loss to Michigan, Notre Dame quit playing defense in the fourth quarter, letting Michigan score not once, but twice, in the final minuets of the game. 

Now at 4-3, the Irish are all but gone from the BCS bowl consideration. They had an outside shot even before this USC game, as at two losses the Irish had to leap over a lot of teams to make it into consideration. 

Maybe, the loss to USC just saved a lot of embarrassment for the Irish and their fans if they happened to make the Sugar Bowl against a one loss Oregon, or the Fiesta Bowl against an undefeated Boise State. 

Irish Fans, is it a good thing that after what you saw against Michigan and USC, that you don’t have to watch your team get crushed on a national stage against a team like Boise State? 

Because, from what it looks like after that loss to USC, the Irish are a good team, but when put against a good team outside of the Big Ten conference, they crumble. Just wait until the Irish travel to take on Andrew Luck and Stanford. 

Against Stanford, fans who still think that the Irish should be considered for a BCS bowl, will have those thoughts finally put to bed. 

Notre Dame is a good team, but they are still a long ways away from being a serious BCS bowl game and title contender. 

You can follow me on Twitter: @tjmcaloon