FLOYD OUT
What do Michael Floyd, Brian Smith and my internet connection have in common? They all went out in the first quarter. The bad news for Irish fans is that only my web access is coming back today. Floyd and Smith were just wheeled off together with just under five minutes remaining before halftime.
The fabulous freshman wide receiver injured his left knee on the third play of the game, blocking on a rush by James Aldridge. After that he sat on the bench, his knee first wrapped and then later his entire leg immobilized.
Smith seems to have hurt his right leg at some point late in the 1st quarter. With just under five minutes remaining in the second quarter, both were carted off on the same cart. At best, then, this would be a Pyrrhic Victory for the Irish today. You can make the argument that they just lost their best offensive player and their best defensive player.
Other first half notes in this 7-7 game as we approach halftime:
1) Notre Dame, which had not punted once in Charlie Weis's first three games against Navy, has already punted three times in the first half.
2) Navy, which had scored on its first drive of the game in each of its first nine games, went 3-and-out on their first series versus the Irish.
3) Robert Blanton started at cornerback for the Irish today (Terrail Lambert, yet another casualty, was injured during practice on Thursday). That makes him the 6th true freshman to start for the Irish this season.
4) Jimmy Clausen had his first pass of the game intercepted, and then a pass late in the first half intercepted. That's six interceptions and no touchdown passes in the past six quarters. The Irish offense has not scored a point in the past six quarters, and just one in the past eight.
5) Up until the Irish allowed a TD on Navy's drive late in the first half, the defense had completely shut Navy down. The Middies had gotten only two first-half first downs, one via a 4th-and-1 when they went for it and the other via their only completed pass, a 9-yarder.
6) David Bruton has had two fairly easy interception opportunities that he has failed to hold onto.
7) Mike Anello blocked the punt on Navy's 2nd possession. Toryan Smith picked it up on a high bounce and ran it in 14 yards for a TD. Smith, No. 49, made a showboat dive across the goal line and was flagged for it. The ref originally called the penalty on a No. 9. That number seems to get more credit than it deserves. Last week's game notes gave the Irish' only sack to tight end Kyle Rudolph, No. 9.
8) On Notre Dame's last offensive play of the first half, Clausen attempted a fade route in the end zone to Golden Tate that dropped incomplete. It was Clausen's first pass of the half that was not caught by someone, either an Irish wideout or Navy's Ketric Buffin (two picks).
Now, before my internet dies again, I'll file this...
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Another college football season is well underway and, as always, people are talking about how to do a playoff in the division formerly known as I-A.
So I have decided to try to disseminate a system I have thought about for years. I think it could provide a complete, and true, playoff while maintaining the bowls as they are. Additionally, it will allow less-competitive teams to both show how good they really are and to finish their season with wins or at least close games.
The key to my system is that all teams must be in a conference and all conferences have a one-game playoff.
The conference games will come first every season, with playoffs afterward. Every team, contenders for the national championship or not, will play during the time of the playoffs.
· All conferences have to have at least 12 members and 2 divisions. This would likely require a rearrangement of members among several conferences and the Major Independents would have to join a conference.
· Only division games apply toward divisional standings.
· Every team in a division must play all other divisional teams.
· The first 3 games of the season will be inter-divisional. Since these games do not count toward the division championship, teams can treat this as a “preseason” time and realize that they can still win the national championship even if they lose all 3 games. This will allow teams like Oregon State who often start slow to have a time for team development. Inter-conference rivals, such as Oklahoma and Nebraska can schedule a regular game and still meet again in the conference championship. If the conference has 14 teams, they will need to play 6 divisional games, so only 2 inter-divisional games could fit into the schedule.
· After the first 3 games (2 in large conferences) divisional play will last for 5 (or 6) weeks.
· After divisional play all teams will play in a 1-game conference playoff. The top teams in each division will play for the conference championship, while the remaining teams play the matching team from the other division (#2 vs. #2, #3 vs. #3, etc.). Thus even a team blown out in every divisional game will have a chance to win against the worst team in the other division. If teams not in the championship met during the “preseason” a conference could set up rule to allow them to play a different team.
· There will be a bye week for all teams after the conference playoff. This week will be used to schedule the remainder of the season.
· A 16-team single-elimination bracket will be determined for the national championship. Teams selected for this field will play for 3 weeks. After three games of single-elimination, 2 undefeated teams will remain to play in the National Championship Game in early January.
· Teams eliminated from the championship bracket will play each other. This can be set up such that top teams play each other and weaker teams play weaker teams. Even after 3 games in the championship series many top teams will still have not played other top teams. Such matchups then can be set up in holiday bowl games.
· The 16-team field will be chosen from the conference champions. All conference champions get an automatic bid. Assuming that there remains a total of 12 I-A conferences, there would be room for 4 at-large teams. Any system can be used to determine which 4 conference runner-ups or also-rans would be invited. This year, as an example, a second or maybe even third team would be best to choose from the Big 12. The winner of the Big 12 North will likely lose to the winner from the south. However, at least 2 other South Division teams could be argued to be good enough for a national playoff. It also could be argued that some conferences do not provide a sufficient level of competition to warrant an automatic berth. The Sun Belt, Conference USA and Mid-American may be such conferences. If a number of conferences (maybe up to 4) are not given automatic bids, then more teams could be invited from more competitive conferences such as the Big 12 or SEC.
· For teams not in the 16-team playoff the season will end with 3 non-conference games. It might be possible that schools could be allowed to schedule these before the season, but my preference would be to schedule all these during and after the bye week following the conference play-off game. One key to these games is that schools would be required to play only teams that finished at a comparable level in their conference. Thus, lets say Kansas finishes 3rd in the Big 12 North and Texas Tech finished 3rd in the south. They would play in conference playoff for 5th and 6th place in the conference. In non-conference play they would be required to play other teams that finished roughly between 4th and 7th in their conferences. Of course there are a lot of details to cover pertaining to how “comparable level” is defined and to what degree teams will be “required” to match up. The idea here is that very good teams can’t slough off and play some through-away game like Oklahoma playing Middle Tennessee. Similarly, teams that finish nearly undefeated in a weak conference will have to play teams with similar records from other conferences and confirm that they are really as good as they claim. So if Marshall or Utah finish 9-0 or 8-1 (8 conference games and a conference playoff) and are not selected for the Championship Series, they will have to play top teams from other conferences such as Pacific, Big-12, SEC, or ACC. A Utah might still end the season playing Buffalo and Troy, but it will be harder for them to avoid Oregon, Florida, Pitt, or Michigan State. But also, teams that get beat up in a tough conference can end the season playing the worst teams in weaker conferences. So Baylor, a good team with a poor record in a tough conference, can play Middle Tennesse, Idaho, and Central Florida.
· Bowls can still select teams based on conference finishes and match up schools that do not play each other in the post-season. In fact, they will have more competitive games because the post-season non-conference play will show which teams are truly the better teams.
I have tried to avoid a lot of details so as to lay out the ideas more clearly. Still, I think this system will work. It will select a final champion based on head-to-head play and it will force teams to play competition at their own level.
Can you look into your crystal ball and predict if Charlie will keep the job of play calling after this weekend?
Can you look into your crystal ball and predict if Charlie will keep calling plays after this weekend?
John you are going to have calm down, CW is going the be at ND for along time. You are starting to act like mr. Overbite and Ms.Madcow on MSNBC, just relax all you had to say was that Navy was playing against ND's second and third string. You didn't need to be so critical of those kids, i think its great that they get some playing time, and so do they and so do the coaches. Some might agree that you are abit second string at times,LOL.