The Extra Point

Sour Grapes never tasted so good

Troy Smith, Heisman winner. 4/14 passing for 35 yards, 0 tds, 1 int, 10 rushing attempts for -27 yards, 1 fumble lost, 5 sacks.

If you didn't see the game it just looks like there are numbers missing, like there should be more digits in there. If you watched it all, you would know that Smith was in negative yardage for most of the game. You also never got enough of those sour candy worms during childhood.

As a Notre Dame fan, I couldnt have hoped for much better, as I have no love for either team. College Football can be such a bitter world, it seems you can only root for teams that have never slighted yours, and everyone's done something to ND. The only teams I feel like I can pull for aside from the Irish are the likes of Boise State and Rutgers, teams without a history. So if you are a vindictive College Footbal fan, or live anywhere near Ohio and have had to deal with obnoxious OSU fans, you got exactly what you wanted last night. If you have moved past your bitterness or just wanted to see a good game, man, what a debacle.

If you were bitter that Brady didn't win the Heisman, you certainly got your dose of Schadenfreude. So all those media members who voted Brady Quinn 3rd in the Heisman race are now forced to doubt everything they so pompously proclaimed. It seems to happen every year now, doesn't it? 82 yards of offense! Can you imagine the media outcry if this had happened to Notre Dame? We were an upset away from exactly that happening. If USC doesn't lose to UCLA, ND likely would have played Florida in the Sugar Bowl, and we would have lost even more badly to Florida than we did to LSU. At least we made a half of it.

If UCLA doesn't upset USC, Florida never even gets into this game.

As I've said before, back when I used to do video posts, pressure up the middle and bad O-Line play will make any QB look bad. Take ND's O-Line and put them in OSU uniforms. Smith wouldn't have a had a chance to win the Heisman.

The more I watch College Football, the more I feel like I don't know anything at all about any team until I see these teams play each other. In a timely fashion, not two months after the season. Until you see teams play each other, how can you ever decide who is better, and who should be ranked higher?

The entire College Football system is ridiculous. Even a plus-1 system wouldn't be good enough. Who would Florida play in the next game if there was a plus 1 game? USC, Wisconsin, LSU, or Boise State? You can make a case for any team, and we still wouldn't know who the best team was.

Also, it seems that we can't watch a game now or highlight program without hearing about a record breaking performance. Now that we've entered the era of a 12 game regular season, none of these records mean anything. So what if Colt Brennan threw for 55 td's, he had an extra game to do it. I don't want to hear about Charlie's 10 game win total. This team didn't perform any better than last year's team. With their 12th game, ND added Army to their schedule. Without that game, the Irish would be 9-3 again this year, and that banner in the Gug should still be hanging up, because that's still not good enough.

Fuck You, Rule 3-2-5-E

Take that, motherfuckers! Finally, we have a coach that will not take it anymore. Someday a real rain will come down and wash all the trash NCAA regulations off the streets.



It's a good thing they didn't include rule 325e on NCAA 2007, or you know that all you cheating bastards would be doing the exact same thing. It's like the opposite of that time you were down by 14 with 2 minutes left in the Championship game and played the "unlimited timeouts" penant and ended up winning the game. Except it's real.



To think that the rules committee was dumb enough to not forsee this happening furthur exposes their ineptitude. For a committee to purposefully take away a portion of the product that millions of people love, to make me watch more advertising and less football, that's just evil man, E-V-I-L! Which is why Bret Bielema should be considered a hero, a champion of all that is good and right in the world. And considering that College Football is a great American sport, we should consider Coach to be a Great American Hero as well. A peer to Thoreau.



I just love that McGuire is the first to figure out what's really going on. Sometimes the most abnoxious guy in the room really is the smartest. Wooo!

ND-Stanford Pt. 4

In the interests of balance, Charlie throws in a draw. He picks up a safe first down. Weis seems more concerned with chugging ahead and getting first downs than with the clock. As he should be, because up to this point the Irish had only scored 7 points in the half. The run blocking looks pretty good, but the LB's are skittish and freaked out about the pass at this point, and there's only 6 guys in the box. Helps that they don't have a D-Line like Michigan too.

PU Preview

All the touchdowns from last weeks Purdue game. A few of these plays look like Charlie plays.

Looks like a Shark in Payne's body

Been very busy lately, making commercials and filming concerts. But back in the blog world, we're taking a glance at last week's Purdue game as a preview for ND tomorrow. I'm only really looking at the td's but had to post this. Does this play look familiar?

ND-MSU One Last Word

One thing that nobody seemed to talk about in the MSU game. The injury to the center. After that injury, MSU never scored another point. In fact they had 2 false starts and a holding call that wasn't accepted, great d-line pressure and I think a sack or two, and general offensive implosion. I wonder how much of a role that injury played.

ND-MSU-let's get some coverage

3 turnovers in 6 minutes

When my buddy asked me how the game was, I told him the Irish spotted MSU 17, then traded scores the rest of the way, until finally MSU decided they didn't want the football anymore, they were going to give it to us. Over and over. He said, "Oh, makes sense. Isn't it a requirement for those games to be decided on the last possession?"

For Extra entertainment, on Lambert's first pick, watch for the great shot of the dejected MSU girl in the foreground and the cheering and clapping mustachioed old dude a few rows behind her.

And what is with Herbstreet? He calls the game like MSU ran over his dog, and he's getting back at them through broadcasting. Kirk and Davie call every MSU miscue (and that's not easy cause there's a lot of em--3 penalties on one drive? Guess that's what happens when the leader and anchor of your O-Line goes down) and repeatedly refer to the sleeping giant that is the Irish O in this game, but Herbstreet seems to be gloating every time they go all Keystone cop and screw it up.

Brady and Arnold

9-3 Is Not Good Enough...

It seems that I made a mistake. I encouraged too much talk about the referees for the Michigan game of last week, instead of focusing more on strategy. But hey, if your team had been robbed of an upset over the #1 team in the country, the supposed "team of the century" because of a bad non-call on the Bush Push, you might be a little sensitive about the refs too. But going back to talk about the players, I found this comment on Mgoblog.

"UM dominating ND? I think Dodd and everybody else needs to go back and watch the first half. Michigan lined up in an illegal formation on nearly every play run in the half including the TD passes. If you watch the highlights you will see that both tackles line up two yards off the line of scrimmage on virtually every play. That strategy effectivily nullified the only thing Notre Dame does well on defense, rush the passer from the end positions. This forces the ends further upfield giving Henne more time and the opportunity to step up into the pocket on every play to buy more time. Just about any QB can pick apart a defense if they have all day to scan the field, especially when you have a couple of stud recievers. Sorry Michigan fans, but your win is tainted. You probably would have won regardless given Notre Dame's lack of effort early on, but it surely would not be a blowout. "

Now, in my video postings about the game, I was focused only on the Notre Dame offense, I never looked at Michigan's offense, because I felt that Notre Dame's poor play on offense was the reason for the loss. I would love to go back and look at that tape and break it down, but there's not enough time before the Michigan State game. This sounds like a good bye week project, although by that point, I may have no desire what I hope will be the most painful week of the season. Dear God, I hope that is true.

But anyway, I'm frankly amazed at one commenter, who said that Notre Dame's fans couldn't be classy about the loss. That's just a goading comment if I ever saw one. Like the Kung Fu guys who stop and pose and put one hand up and wave their fingers to say, "Bring it on." The only thing I will say is that when ND visited Michigan last year, the fans threw bottles on the field when they lost. Notre Dame stadium is widely regarded as one of the most hospitable places for opposing fans to visit, with, dare I say it, classy fans. In fact, one reason that Gary Gray, the highly regarded CB recruit, decided to commit to the Irish after attending the Notre Dame-Michigan game was because of their classy fans, who stayed to the end of that terrible loss and cheered on their team. Which place sounds more classy to you?

I think the real reason Michigan fans have so much bitterness is this: