Notre Dame

I was being a smartass.

 

Most of the downs is a better way to phrase it.

 

They both had one loss. Voters picked Florida State for the title; personally I would have picked Notre Dame based on their domination in the head-to-head matchup.

I'm really not sure what his point is. It reads as if his point is that, like Notre Dame yesterday, Florida State was the clearly superior team but just had a bad day. I would say that conclusion, in both cases, is off the mark.

 

Hooboy ... if that is your argument, then you really are out of your depth here, which surprises me.

 

Essentially, they didn't finish drives. Like I said, I don't know if that is going to be a trait on this team or just a fluke first-game occurrence. I don't know if South Florida is a team that will force a lot of turnovers or if this was a fluke week where that snowballed.

And, yes, I see how phrasing it, "A majority of downs," is like saying that a pitcher "only had two bad innings."

 

I wasn't tossing that at you as much as I was at the college football fandom in general.

 

Bottom line is that it is going to be really interesting to see which direction the two teams take from here on out.

Notre Dame didn't execute when it counted. USF did. That much is pretty much inarguable. What does it mean? We shall see.

 

I've never understood the argument that you should never rate a pitcher by his won-loss record.

Ditto the idea that you should never rate a football team by the final score.

 

You keep talking about domination but FSU was on the 14 when Ward missed a wide open Matt Friar in the end zone at the end of the game which would have tied the game at 31-31. As shitty as you say FSU played, the game wasn't over until the last possession.

 

Yes but Notre Dame led 21-7 at halftime and 31-17 with less than two minutes left, and their ground game ran all over the supposed Best Team Evah.

(Also: Since we're now delving into minutiae from games 18 years ago, Friar was not in the end zone, and that is in fact why Ward didn't throw to him, because he didn't know if Friar could make it in after catching the ball.)

 

I guess it depends on what you mean by "rate."

You should rate a team by their results. But that doesn't mean you can't analyze beyond the wins and losses to predict the future. It's not hard to come away from a football game thinking the team that lost has a better future.

Starting pitchers are difference, because in that case "wins" aren't wins, but a stupid stat given the name "wins." But that's for another thread. Or 100 other threads.

 

How hard is this to figure out? Notre Dame trailed 16-0 at the half and lost the game, and deserved to given the five turnovers.
If you think Notre Dame deserved to win based on overall effort, then let's award Super Bowl III to Baltimore (oh, those pesky turnovers and Morrall failing to see Orr waving his hand while wide open).