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Notre Lame too good for a bowl

selmaborntidefan said:
Notre Dame being confused why the ACC didn’t promote them over Miami is like the side chick confused why her man spends the holidays with his wife and kids.
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GrayTide said:
SIAP: List of teams who declined bowl invitations:
Notre Dame
Kansas State
Iowa State
Baylor
Rutgers
Florida State
Auburn
Temple
Central Florida
Kansas
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Some are being fined by their conference. Iowa State and Kansas 500,000 each. I don't understand why they wouldn't go if they have enough players. For no other reason than the extra practice time.
 
It seems to not yet have sunk into the cognitive dissonance of the Notre Dame apologists that:
a) "Notre Dame is the biggest brand in college football" AND
b) "we got passed over for Alabama because of THEIR BRAND NAME/THEIR CONFERENCE"

uh.......b kinda disproves a, doesn't it?

I put this on Twitter the other day in retort to some Irish fan:

You haven’t been “the greatest program of all time” since the night the toughest opponent AJ McCarron had was the guy snapping him the ball.

==================


Here's another one I cannot follow with the Notre Dame fans:
"This committee is inconsistent!"


But WE ALL KNOW that if Notre Dame had BEATEN Miami but lost to Boston College, they'd be saying, "Head to head rules" - and they would, in fact, be RIGHT (they'd also be in the playoff).
 
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RTR2u said:
I don't disagree with this at all. I think it's also just a collegiate form of "everybody gets a participation trophy."
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Once upon a time - when it was much more exclusive - a BOWL GAME was a REWARD for a program that, in most cases, had 8-9 wins in a 10 or 11-game season.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention this:

I'm proud of history, it's great, etc, but let's also be honest. We all know Nebraska's 40-year reign of being one of the best programs in the country owed itself to circumstances that do not exist any longer and prevent it from happening ever again. We know Michigan's "they've won the most games" mantra owes itself largely to how heavily the deck was stacked in their favor prior to the 1950s, particularly early when they (yes) LEFT the Western Conference (now the B1G). And the same is true, whether we like it or not, with Alabama's bowl history.

Alabama has played in 77 bowl games and won 45. But let's also be intellectually honest: the inflated totals of the SEC, in general, and Alabama IN PARTICULAR owe themselves to the practice of segregation, both racial and academic, as practiced by other schools prior to about 1974 or so. That doesn't DIMINISH it, it just puts it in context.

Some of you were around, most of us were not, but go take a close look at the Sugar Bowls played between 1957 and 1964: it's all Southern teams (one of them being Alabama vs Ole Miss, in fact).

Why?
1) because in 1957, both Georgia and Louisiana (as states) passed legislation forbidding blacks and whites participating in the same sports
2) in response to such, the Sugar Bowl was limited AND the Northern teams (understandably) refused to play in the game

Combine that with the Big Ten and Pac Ten both limiting their teams to just the Rose Bowl AND the "no repeat" rule and teams who would have more appearances do not.

Now, of course, there's another side to that coin: that same practice cost Alabama a shot at USC in the 1963 Rose Bowl, the first color broadcast of a college football game nationally. Jim Murray and Melvin Durslag ripped Alabama and Coach Bryant in the papers and press - and that was all she wrote for Alabama and the Rose Bowl. In other words, Alabama DOES have more bowl appearances than they would have had segregation not been the law - but they have FEWER Rose Bowl appearances, too.

Anyway, I have to go and pretend to do some work now.
 
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selmaborntidefan said:
Here's another one I cannot follow with the Notre Dame fans:
"This committee is inconsistent!"
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Btw - I don't think the COMMITTEE ITSELF is what's terrible, I honestly don't. Indeed, I think the argument can be made they "got it right" and "in accordance with basically what they've been doing."

But their JUSTIFICATIONS sound like the lousiest bottom of the barrel legalese of a shameless defense attorney who has seen his client commit the crime in HD video.

You know, in 2014, when they chose Ohio State over TCU/Baylor, the committee head DID SAY, "Ohio State suffered a bad early loss BUT THEY OVERCAME IT" and pointed to the 59-0 pasting of Wisconsin in a conference title game. Whether you like it or not, it's not unreasonable. It's not totally illogical, even if we all know they never would have passed over Texas or Oklahoma in the same circumstance.

But things like not dropping TCU at least one spot in 2022 or basically giving Notre Dame false hope - come on, folks. Even their 2023 rankings left a lot to be desired despite them basically getting the correct outcome in the end.
 
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Compare ND with this, from Keith Dunnavant's "The Missing Ring" about a certain team that went undefeated in 1966.

In the glow of an electrifying Sugar Bowl victory, capping a season for the ages, the Crimson Tide was forced to wrestle with a most dubious distinction. The ring the players chased with all their might was not just a high-priced trinket. It was the proof they all sought, the tangible symbol not only that they had achieved something historic, but also that their incredibly consuming and demanding world ultimately made sense.

Several players stopped by to see the boss to petition him to award rings commemorating the Crimson Tide’s SEC championship, but he explained what the players already knew: Alabama stood for the pursuit of the big prize. Rewarding anything less—even considering the unfairness of the situation—would have undermined the whole program. Telling them no was not the act of a gruff father figure denying his players a reward as some sort of punishment. Instead, it was a symbol of his respect for all the sacrifices they had made to produce a perfect season, and he was not about to water down the accomplishment by trying to diminish their feelings of disappointment, which he saw as a critical part of the whole process, for those players and the athletes yet to come.

Instead of lowering Alabama’s standards by recognizing the SEC title in such a way—or simply declaring themselves the national champion, as some Tide fans no doubt wanted—Bryant was communicating to his players and the entire Alabama nation a respect for the goal and the process, which, under the circumstances, was as incredibly mature act. “The fact that he thought we were the best team in the country was beside the point,” said defensive end Wayne Owen. “Losing the national championship in that way, as frustrating as it was, taught us all a lesson: The world is not always just.”

Indeed, the classy way Bryant dealt with the situation struck a powerful chord with his team and Alabama fans everywhere. He was deeply hurt by the whole affair, which he took as a personal assault on everything he stood for, but he did not rant or rave or wage a public relations battle through the media. He took it like a man.

Even though he said he disagreed with the decision, Bryant congratulated both Notre Dame and Michigan State, and then moved on to the business of competing once more for the national championship in 1967, no doubt wondering how he would be able to motivate his next team to chase the big prize under the circumstances, when the national championship suddenly seemed more theoretical than tangible.
 
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TideEngineer08 said:
A great book, Selma. And a great example.

Also, Clark Lea is really impressing me. Vandy has a great one if they can hang on to him.
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I met Keith back in 2014 at the Florida game, doing an autograph session at the Bryant Museum. We talked for about 30 minutes or so about different things, and I appreciate so much of what he says on everything. The one part where I divert from his overall thesis is the notion that George Wallace had anything to do with the vote.


One of the more famous comments in the book is this paragraph, that's both good and bad, it occurs in the chapter "Two Worlds" (my version is on Google books so whether it agrees with a hardback, I doubt it).

The way the Crimson Tide won the 1964 and 1965 titles likely gave some voters pause and drained support away from the 1966 edition, especially considering the historic ramification of a third straight championship. “There was no way they were going to let a southern team win three in a row, if they could help it,” theorized offensive tackle Jerry Duncan, a view shared by many of his teammates. Unlike 1964 and 1965, voters had the chance to crown a non-southern team at the end of the year.

The bold part is unquestionably true, although everything after the comma could be argued up to a point. But Jerry Duncan's comment is just plain conspiratorial thinking, not that he wouldn't have had some reasons to think that back in 1966. Had this kind of "logic" been in vogue - "we're mad at the state of Alabama and George Wallace" - then it would have been very easy to simply vote Michigan State champion in 1965. They had a better record than Alabama (and, in fact, won the UPI title) - and what's more they had beaten the same team that beat them in the Rose Bowl (UCLA) in the season opener and by more points. If there was this whole "we ain't gonna give it to a southern team," that was the perfect chance to do it.

Dunnavant also makes a common error by asserting that one thing that killed Alabama was that the La Tech game was the result of Tulane leaving the SEC (Bryant himself gets this wrong in his autobiography "Bear", so it's understandable why folks get it wrong). SOUTHERN MISS was the game that replaced Tulane on the Alabama schedule, as reported by numerous outlets in May 1964. Again, it's TRUE that La Tech's presence on the Alabama schedule became a point of laughter, but it's not true that Alabama had to scrape for an opponent because of Tulane, they already had that slot filled. Let me say again, I don't blame Dunnavant for that particular faux pas because Bryant himself is the source years after the fact.

George Wallace was the governor of Alabama in 1964, and Alabama won the championship. Granted, the only other unbeaten was Arkansas and their governor was as bad as Wallace (Orval Faubus), but Wallace had been the more egregious one more recently, too.

I highly recommend the book itself as well as Mike Celizic's "The Biggest Game of Them All," as he was a Notre Dame student at the time, so you get HIS perspective of what it was like (including the fact the Michigan State vs Notre Dame game was a complete and total accident stemming from Iowa changing their schedule).


But Dunnavant does an outstanding job putting you into the mindset of 1966 in Tuscaloosa and how different the world was and how it was changing both with Vietnam and integration. My little "don't agree with this point" doesn't detract from an outstanding effort on his part.
 
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I get the teams like KState and ISU who are in the middle of coaching transition. I would argue that they might even have a reason to gripe about being fined, as the quiet part that they aren't saying is that they would quite likely struggle to field a team for a bowl game. You know there will be some off season discussions about whether teams in that situation can be reasonably expected to field a team under those circumstances in the current environment.

But contrast that those teams are taking their lumps with ND's just adding another episode to their long history of being holier than the post-season (when it doesn't serve their interests).
 
Toddrn said:
The Fighting Irish's complete 2026 schedule:
They don't want any part of the SEC.
  • vs. Wisconsin
  • vs. Rice
  • vs. Michigan State
  • at Purdue
  • at UNC
  • vs. Navy
  • vs. Miami
  • vs. Boston College
  • vs. SMU
  • at Syracuse
  • vs. Stanford
  • vs. USC
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Absent coaching malpractice (of which there's no evidence to suggest Marcus Freeman is capable), that's 10-2 and a #12 final CFP ranking at worst...
 
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