NAVY UP NEXT:  I don’t want to be accused of looking past the Middies, but this is a game the Irish should absolutely win by no fewer than three touchdowns.  Navy is 0-5, is playing without its starting quarterback Brian Madden, and hasn’t beaten the Irish since 1963, though they have come close in two of the last three years. 

Aside from their 0-5 record, Navy’s other statistics are equally horrendous.  They are putting up a paltry average of 7.8 points per game.  Ironically enough, the only team in Division 1A with worse passing statistics than Notre Dame is Navy, averaging a meager 98.2 yards per game.  Unlike the Irish, Navy is a pure option team and one would expect their rushing statistics to be quite good.  However, one would be wrong in making such an assumption, as the Middies are averaging an astoundingly low 2.8 yards per carry and an atrocious 115.5 yards per game—both terrible numbers for a wishbone team.

The Midshipmen defense isn’t much better than the offense, surrendering 434 total yards per game, 240 of which come through the air and 194 on the ground.  They are giving up 31.2 points per outing, which leaves them at a mind-boggling 23.4 point differential per game.  Some of these statistics can be attributed to the loss of their starting quarterback, but the fact remains that Navy likely fields the least talented football team on the Irish schedule.

For the Irish to win, they shouldn’t have to do much.  The stout Irish defense should thwart any attempts by the Midshipmen to move the ball, and the superior talent of Bob Davie’s squad should be most apparent on kickoff and punt returns.  The question about this year’s Fighting Irish team has been the offense, it will continue to be so.  However, Navy is undermanned, undersized, and not as fast on defense as is the Irish offense.  If Navy coach Charlie Weatherbie elects not to stack the box in anticipation of the Irish rushing attack, expect the Notre Dame offensive line and tailbacks to have a field day and improve their statistics dramatically.  If the Midshipmen do stack the line with the run stoppers, the superior speed of the talented Irish receiving corps should be able to garner big plays in the passing game.

It should take nothing less than a miracle for the Midshipmen to actually win this ballgame.  Stranger things have happened, but I just don’t see it coming.  Notre Dame has typically struggled with the service academies in recent years, most notably against Navy last year and in 1997, Army in 1998, and Air Force in 1996.  However, this year’s Notre Dame team appears to be somewhat better than its recent predecessors while Navy’s squad is clearly struggling.  Navy’s football team is full of fine, intelligent, and well-disciplined young men, but they just don’t have the talent or the depth to knock off the Irish.  Take the Irish and give up the twenty points.  Irish win 41-10.

POLLS ARE FOR POLITICIANS:  The two major polls, the AP and the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll, are, especially in the case of the latter, a joke.  How in the name of all things sacred is Texas still ranked?  The Longhorns don’t have a single quality win to their credit, lost poorly to an average Stanford team, and got romped by the only decent team they have yet to face, Oklahoma.  Despite all this, the Horns are still somehow ranked 25^th in the AP poll and 23^rd in the coaches’ poll.  Notre Dame, ranked 20^th by the AP, is conveniently unranked by the coaches.  The Irish have two quality wins over ranked opponents to their credit (Texas A & M and Purdue) and their losses are respectable.

Purdue is also ranked above the Irish in one poll (the idiots . . . er . . . coaches’ poll).  While the Boilermakers are definitely more deserving of their ranking than are the Longhorns, why is Purdue ranked above the Irish?  Purdue has two quality wins (Minnesota and Michigan), two wins against nobody (Kent and Central Michigan), one quality loss (to us), and one bad loss to the 2-5 Nittany Lions of Penn St.  All things equal, Purdue and Notre Dame have had pretty similar season thus far.  But the Irish beat them head-to-head, and I think that should count for something. 

So how on earth did the coaches decide to rank Texas and Purdue higher than the Irish?  It’s a good question, but its answer isn’t that difficult.  The polls are unfairly biased towards teams that start out with high preseason rankings.  Texas started out in the top ten and Purdue wasn’t far behind.  Teams that start out high won’t lose ground unless they lose and won’t lose much ground when they do lose.  For instance, if Purdue and Notre Dame were to both win out and finish 9-2, the Boilermakers would almost assuredly be ranked ahead of the Irish, despite the fact that Notre Dame won when the teams went head to head.  This is simply because Purdue started out ranked and Notre Dame didn’t.  Because the average ranking in the two polls account for so much of the BCS formula, it is necessary to fix the system somehow.  It isn’t fair to a team that doesn’t get the accolades in August to be slighted by the pollsters in October.  I say throw the preseason polls out the window and start ranking teams in October based upon their performance, not their hype.  Of course this will never happen, as preseason rankings help sell preseason magazines, which keep the powers that be in college football financially satisfied and thus content with the present system, however flawed it may be.

DON’T LOOK NOW, BUT . . . The stage is set for the Irish to have a chance to run the table and have the possibility of earning a coveted BCS bowl bid.  This week’s game against Navy is pretty much a lock.  Possibly the toughest matchup remaining is in Morgantown against West Virginia.  While the Mountaineers are sitting at 4-2, they got walloped earlier at home by Miami and struggled to put away the lowly likes of Temple and Idaho in recent weeks.  They are a good team, but they shouldn’t have nearly the talent of the Irish.  WVU takes on Virginia Tech this Thursday night on ESPN, so we should know more then.  One final note about this game:  Notre Dame has its fall break next week, meaning that the players don’t have any classes.  That should spell extra practice time and more focus for the roadtrip.  After the tussle in West Virginia, the Irish return home for Air Force and Boston College.  Both are decent teams and both have given the Irish headaches in recent years.  However, both are at home, the Irish have more talent than either of them, and we get two weeks to prepare for the Eagles.  After that last home stand, the Irish travel to New Jersey to pick on the poor Rutgers Scarlet Knights and then out to Southern California in what very likely could be Paul Hackett’s farewell game as SC coach.  USC isn’t nearly as good as everyone once thought.  Their 29-5 win over Penn St. in the kickoff classic looked impressive at the time, but we all now know the Nittany Lions to be far less than stellar, if even competitive.  The Trojans then went on to barely beat San Jose St. and Colorado, then lost a close one to Oregon St. (for the first time in twenty-odd years, might I add) and then got taken out behind the woodshed by Arizona.  That team is falling apart mentally, lacks leadership, and isn’t all that talented.  Still, it will be a tough test to travel across the country, but the Irish definitely have the players to accomplish such a task. 

Will the Irish do it and run the table?  I am not saying they will.  But they definitely can and much can still be made of this season.  Here we are, after that grueling five game stretch in which most “experts” gave us no chance, sitting at 3-2 with no ranked opponents remaining on the schedule.   The BCS may be somewhat of a stretch and we will need some help, but the Gator Bowl is a definite possibility.  Either way, we would be playing on New Year’s Day—a vast improvement over last year.  Come on folks, its only October and we are still in this thing, let’s dream a little bit.   

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