Could ‘Strength’ Become A Weakness?

Depending on your viewpoint, the opening weekend of the college football season was either a great one or a horrible one for idle Notre Dame.

It wasn’t such a great one for Irish opponents. Michigan looked incredibly inept, especially on offense, for most of its deceptively close home loss to Utah. Michigan State dropped a close game at California. Pittsburgh, arguably the toughest-looking team on Notre Dame’s home schedule, blew a 14-0 lead at home against Bowling Green. Washington was crushed at Oregon, and Syracuse got manhandled by Northwestern.

Notre Dame's 2008 opponents were generally unimpressive, going 5-6 on opening weekend.

In less than a week we should have confirmation that San Diego State is every bit as bad as the loss to Division I-AA Cal Poly made it look.

So Irish foes were a wholly unimpressive 5-6 out of the gate (Purdue was off) – and even some of the wins were a bit dicey. North Carolina, another team expected to give the Irish fits, had to rally to hold off I-AA McNeese State.

Aside from USC, which made Thomas Jefferson roll over in his grave with its 52-7 obliteration of Virginia, no one on the 2008 schedule really made you tremble in fear or even raise an eyebrow. In fact, half of them looked downright laugh-out-loud bad – and at least two coaches (Pitt’s Dave Wannstedt and your old friend Tyrone Willingham) probably should have started Xeroxing résumés as soon as their games ended.

But is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Some will argue that Notre Dame’s strength of schedule will take a major hit, and that while it might set the Irish up to win a few more games this fall, the lack of quality opponents could work against them in the minds of both the pundits and the people who serve on bowl selection committees.

Others will simply smile and note that without any world-beaters on the schedule (the Trojans being the obvious exception), the Irish have a chance to really build some confidence and pad their won-loss record, even if it is artificially inflated just a little bit. You could even make the case that Notre Dame could possibly be 11-0 heading out to Los Angeles if everything breaks the right way.

(Never mind...I already did that.)

For the people hung up on the SOS factor, here’s the thing – it’s not weighted into the BCS standings directly anyway. Sure, the pollsters will make judgments on it to varying degrees, but those judgments were going to be subjective anyway and the Irish probably weren’t going to have many voters doing them any favors.

Besides...if you’re a team from a major conference (or Notre Dame), then winning is the most important thing. Sure, a team like Navy or Tulane could get left out in the cold by the BCS if it went 12-0, but do you really think that if the Irish or any major-conference team ran the table they’d get left out? You can point to Auburn in 2004 if you like, but with the longer regular seasons, the odds of more than two teams going unbeaten shrink substantially.

Strength of schedule certainly didn’t kill national-title hopes for Notre Dame in 1973, when the Irish played a pastry-heavy slate that included all three service academies (combined score: 154-25), Rice and Northwestern. The only team Ara’s troops faced in the regular season that finished in the top 25? USC.

Sound familiar?

The bottom line is this – if Notre Dame wins 10 games (and is at least competitive at the Coliseum), they’ll almost assuredly end up in a BCS bowl, regardless of how bad the schedule was. If they run the table, it’ll play for the national title. Simple as that. I don’t recall Texas being left out in 2005 when it played powerhouses like Louisiana-Lafayette, Rice, Baylor and the rest of the Big XII bottom-feeders. The Longhorns had one marquee non-conference game with Ohio State, and the conference was so weak that Colorado wound up in the league’s championship game.

There’s a reason that Kevin White was setting up future schedules the way that he did – because he realized that playing more than one or two top-quality opponents was generally a fruitless endeavor. Everyone has their creampuff games, and loading up with powerhouses like the Irish did in 1989, for example, is suicidal more often than not – especially with the regular season now extended to 12 games.

So if you’re worried about Irish opponents struggling, don’t be. Sure, the Mark Mays of the world will ramble on about how Notre Dame’s record is deceptive...but that’s just talk. Ohio State isn’t exactly taking on world-beaters once you get past the road games with USC and Wisconsin...but you know where the Buckeyes will be if they go 10-2.

They’ll be in a BCS game, just like Notre Dame.