AbuTheMonkey

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Now that we've rid ourselves of Brian Kelly, and Notre Dame fans will be off our damn backs, I can return to a less clouded appreciation of what this current, Marcus Freeman-led iteration is accomplishing on the field. Imperfect as they are, they're no longer the entirely overvalued enterprise of the past few decades; the talent and coaching has risen to the task of modern college football.

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I think I can go back to having a soft spot for LSU as well.

This team is really good and could beat anyone on the right day. It’s become a trademark of Marcus’ teams that they play their best football at the end of the year.

I think our kicking game and iffy play in short yardage situations will probably prevent us from winning it all, but this is one of the 6 - 8 best teams in the country right now.

No, they didn’t. Carr clearly had the ball on the ground.

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He does. He’s still in the contract they gave him when he first became a head coach

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He signed an extension last year. He is in the Lane Kiffin / Brian Kelly range as it stands right now. He will be at the very top of the comp bands ($11M+ / year) after the current negotiations finish here shortly.

Again, private universities don't have to disclose the total comp package. He is in the top 10 - 15 in all of college football as it stands right now before the extension.

And if you think LSU will want to go toe-to-toe with Notre Dame in financial resources, I invite you to be my guest.

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Or France doesn't give a shite about the NFL.

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It's interesting to assess. American football has a big arse foothold in Germany and the UK. If the NFL were to ever really consider expansion into Europe, London, Berlin, and Munich or Frankfurt would be 1, 2, 3.

And there's a huge gap behind those two countries.

If I were Goodell (and thank goodness I am not), I would launch entire 4 team division in Europe at once instead of piecemeal a Jags London move then X then Y then Z. They all play each other 2X per year then do 2 - 3 week trips to the U.S. for road trips (and vice versa).

1 team in London. 1 team in Berlin. 1 team in Munich or Frankfurt. 1 team in either Madrid, Paris, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Dublin, or Dubai. They would be enormously successful as real deal NFL teams (instead of the BS NFL Europe) in those first 3 locales. The fourth is trickier.

There are some very strange allocations on this and others that make sense.

Dolphins get Latin America and Spain - that makes complete sense, though they really should get South America, not Mexico. No idea why they are tied into the UK - that is dumb.

Saints get France. Makes sense.

Bills, Lions, Vikings, and Seahawks get Canada. Makes sense - all are within a few hours of the border, and the Bills have long had a relationship with Toronto. Cardinals kind of makes sense given the prevalence of Canadians around there. Bengals makes absolutely no sense.

Germany is a big international market, and virtually all the teams there seemed to have been picked at random. What is the tie in with any of those teams?

Mexico is another big market, and most of them make sense. Cowboys, Raiders, Niners, and Steelers all have big fanbases there. Cardinals, Texans, and Rams are all within a few hours of the border. Chiefs, Dolphins, and Broncos make no sense.

They want an LA team in the Pacific region (China, Korea, Japan). OK, that makes sense.

Brazil other than the Dolphins is completely random. Ditto UAE, Switzerland, New Zealand, Greece - those names seem to have been pulled out of a hat.

EDIT: I figured out why the Chargers get Greece which seemed very random. Dean Spanos is a big Greek heritage and cultural guy.

I am assuming no one here is watching ND / Navy but Jeremiyah Love had an absurd touchdown about fifteen minutes ago. I’ll try to take off my ND bias but Jeremiah Smith and Jeremiyah Love are the two best offensive players in the country this year.

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ND offense is better than Georgia. That’s not even a controversial statement. Just because you weren’t impressed doesn’t mean much, when every SEC team would give up their season high rushing total if they played ND.

ND defense was their issue. But how good is Georgia’s defense really?
Their pass defense looks about as bad as ND.

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And our defense has improved a ton over the last 5 games or so. Our pass defense in particular was truly awful through 2 1/2 game (it wasn't just you guys - Miami in the opener and fricking Purdue of all teams in the first half against them absolutely diced us up throwing the ball); that appears to have been mostly fixed since then - there was always too much talent on that side of the ball to be quite that bad, and they are getting to be more than respectable at this point. New DC, really potent passing offense for A&M, etc. just was a bad combination at that point in the season. Craver and Concepcion were wide the F open all goddamn night, and that will be my lasting memory of that game.

We've played two good offenses in Arkansas and NC State and one of the best offenses in college football in SC since then and squashed the first two and held SC in check pretty well. It's been Freeman's hallmark since he has been at the program - the team improves a ton over the course of the year, in particular on the defensive side of the ball. Last year's unit was almost certainly one of the 3 - 4 best defenses in the sport by the end of the year but definitely had some problems early on with some teams that would raise eyebrows like NIU (obviously) and Louisville.

These people are squawking because they know damn well a 9 or 10 seed Notre Dame is a hell of a lot more dangerous than a 9 or 10 seed BYU or Virginia or even Miami or likely Oklahoma or Vanderbilt or whoever the hell else would be in that slot. There are about 6 - 8 teams that can truly win this thing, and you all and we are two of them. Combination of talent, depth, ceiling, coaching capability, and so forth limits all but a handful of teams from reaching the pinnacle; of the 18 teams that surpass the Blue Chip Ratio test, only Alabama (89%), Ohio State (89%), Georgia (84%), A&M (83%), Oregon (78%), Texas (78%), Notre Dame (73%), Oklahoma (70%), and Miami (64%) - kind of - are still in this; LSU (73%), Penn State (68%), Florida (64%), Auburn (64%), Michigan (57%), USC (57%), Clemson (55%), Tennessee (54%), and Florida State (54%) are all out.

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It’s time to go back to some sort of bcs formula and eliminate the committee

With 12 and likely going to 16 the old bcs formula would work just fine and when you get down to 15/16 compared to 17/18 you can live with those arguments

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Right now the BCS rankings would be the exact same twelve at the top with the only difference being that the BCS would have 7. Oregon, 8. BYU, 9. Texas Tech vs. the CFP rankings have 7. BYU, 8. Texas Tech, 9. Oregon. Otherwise, they are identical for the top 12.

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quote:All that matters is payroll and market size. Toronto came up just short of pulling off a massive upset Toronto has the 5th highest payroll in MLB

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And is the 4th largest metropolitan area of any MLB team. And that doesn’t take into account that virtually everyone east of Alberta who follows baseball is a Jays fan.

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I don't know much about Kentucky, but kinda surprising they are low. Guess they don't get high on their supply.

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If you look at it a bit more closely, metro Louisville, Lexington, and northern Kentucky (metro Cincinnati) are all pretty deep blue. Without looking it up, I'd guess more than half the state's population is in those three metropolitan areas. Jefferson County (Louisville) is dark blue, and I can assure you that is a big drinking town.