cabiness42

OK, so when ND beats a Top 10 team on the road by 17, it's somehow not indicative of how good ND is. Got it. But Oregon beat the #17 team on the road by 11 and they're much more awesome. Got it.

Notre Dame was ahead 20-13 with 5 minutes left in the game.

I know I've always chosen Saturday games over Sunday and this could convince me to switch.

If his new job pays less than his Marlins job, wouldn't the Marlins still have to pay the difference?

ND's offense is more run-oriented and thus runs more clock, resulting in fewer possessions. The goal of coaches is to win games, and they really care zero about margin of victory.

ND didn't struggle against the best team on their schedule. The Oklahoma game wasn't close. How is that less indicative of how they would fare against KSU than their 3-point win over Purdue? You're cherry-picking results to support your hatred of ND.

Not quite that. Oregon plays a faster pace that produces a lot more possessions. The bigger the gap between them and their opponent, the more it inflates their margin of victory. Oregon is going to beat bad teams by 40 when ND and KSU are going to beat them by 20. Oregon is going to beat decent teams by 20 when ND and KSU are going to beat them by 10. This is going to make Oregon look like they're a lot better than ND and KSU when they really aren't, and that is borne out in the bowl games when they play evenly matched games against teams that they have been made significant favorites against because of their style of play.

If I recall correctly, in their two Rose Bowls, they were ranked higher and significant favorites and lost one and barely won the other. So they were perceived as being significantly better than teams they were pretty even with.

Yes, they lost 2 of 3 bowls against tough teams in low scoring games after running up scores all season long, thus proving that their huge margins of victory didn't mean a whole lot. They weren't any better than Big Ten teams that had been winning a lot of games by smaller margins.

No disputing ND's past, just pointing out that Oregon's style of play tends to leave them overrated by poll voters due to inflated victory margins.

The Big Ten teams are more willing to play the top MAC teams than other conferences, I will give them that. The Big Ten seems to play fewer FCS schools compared to other conferences as well. That Akron game must have been stuck on the schedule 30 years ago by Gerry Faust or something. I have no other explanation as to why we would be playing Akron.

Margin of victory isn't really a test of a team being elite. It's very misleading, especially depending on a team's style. ND is a team built on running and defense. There are fewer possessions in their games so they don't win by as many points. This is how Oregon fools everybody into thinking they are so awesome until they go get crushed by an SEC team or the likes in a bowl game. They play an up-tempo game that produces lots of possessions and points and their margin of victory impresses idiot voters. The skillset required to beat average-to-good teams by a ton of points isn't necessarily the skillset required to beat the other elite teams.

And NIU won, which is why Alabama will never play them again.

Well, last year ND's SOS wasn't very relevant, and the MAC teams winning all those games aren't getting on the schedules of Top 25 teams. If NIU calls up Alabama, Alabama hangs up on them and calls back Akron instead.

Because after next weekend, neither team will have played Texas, and ND's SOS will still be ahead of KSU even if USC loses to UCLA, but not by as much.

Texas is irrelevant to the rankings after next week's games.

ND won't stay ahead of KSU after this week's games, but they will go back ahead after next week's games.

Yes, that's what I'm using.

Navy wins more against the same schedule than those teams. That's what makes them higher-rated. A team that goes 8-4 against a crap schedule is better than a team that goes 4-8 against the same schedule.

After next week's games, ND's SOS will be higher than KSU, and I'm sorry that it's so hard for you to figure out why.

Next week, ND's SOS will be higher than KSU.

And then next week ND plays USC and it will flip back. KSU is also in a conference without divisions so they have to play every good team in their conference. Alabama did not play Florida, South Carolina, or Georgia yet somehow gets to brag about how difficult it is to play in the SEC.

No, you see a lot of teams that Top 25 teams schedule as their non-conference games. So the worst teams on ND's schedule are beating the snot out of the worst teams on everybody else's schedule. That's what makes ND's schedule strength so much higher. Plus factor in that every conference has 1-3 teams like Indiana that they get to play on top of the weak non-conference opponents. Even in a year where Oklahoma, Stanford, Michigan, Michigan State, and USC were all worse than anticipated, ND's schedule is still going to rate as tougher than KSU or Oregon. Navy doesn't drag the schedule strength down nearly as far as all those directional schools.

Not sure about Ball State, but NIU could probably beat 3-4 SEC teams.

Yes, Navy is beating the teams that are on the schedules of other Top 25 teams. Shows exactly how weak those other teams' schedules are.