Stop Saying That: Notre Dame in the BCS

…especially after today, thanks to a home loss to Navy. It reminds me of the last time Navy came to South Bend. And they won. Greg and I were watching that day as Navy ran the option about 435 times that day (would have been a good day to play QB1), and Notre Dame just couldn’t stop them. And we loved it. I remember how we were the biggest Navy fans that day, because we HATE Notre Dame.

I’m sick of the way that, as soon as Notre Dame gets any sort of decent record going, that the media begins the ritualistic fellation of the “the most storied program in college football.” And the pollsters, and somehow the computers, eat it up, and of course the talk begins about how Notre Dame could qualify for a prestigious BCS bowl. No school, with maybe the exception of USC, gets the preferential treatment that Notre Dame does. Exclusive network contract? Check. Every major college football analyst, plus Mel Kiper, pimping them every chance they get? Check. Special provisions in the BCS (automatic bid if they finish top eight)? Check. BCS Bowl committees lining up to pick the Fighting Irish if there’s even a sniff that they could meet the minimum qualification of a Top 14 BCS ranking and 9 wins? Check.

I could go on about the BCS, but I’ll save that one for when the real controversy heats up at the end of the regular season, which is about the safest bet you can make outside of the flip of a two-headed coin. No, this is about Notre Dame, the most overrated college football team in the history of the universe. They are living largely off the successes of teams that came decades before them. Yes, they claim 11 consensus national championships and shares of 8 others. 13 of those 19 titles came between 1919 and 1967. The other 6 came in ‘70, ‘73, ‘77, ‘88, ‘89, and ‘93. Wow, do we really have to count dominance in an era that didn’t include the forward pass and involved leather helmets?

Notre Dame loves it status as an independent. Well, in football anyways, because in every other sport except for Hockey and Fencing, they see fit to play in the Big East conference (the Big East doesn’t sponsor Hockey and Fencing). Why won’t they join a conference? Afraid of earning their way into the BCS? Won’t be able to play the military academies, who stopped being relevant about the time that they moved the goalposts to the back of the endzone? Won’t be able to schedule mostly 2nd tier Big 10, Pac 10, and Big East teams and call it a “killer schedule”? Of course, the real answer is “Why should they, when they have a sweetheart deal from the crooks who created the BCS?”

The best part is that these idiots in the BCS haven’t learned. Before this awesome loss to Navy, there was talk about Notre Dame getting selected for a BCS bowl if they could win out and go 10-2. Let Us Take You Back to January 3rd, 2007, and LSU, led by JAMARCUS RUSSELL, destroyed Notre Dame 41-14 in the Sugar Bowl, which followed a loss to THE Ohio State University in the Fiesta Bowl the year before, which gave them nine straight bowl game losses, an NCAA record. But, of course, like the abused wife, the BCS bowl committees were ready to take them back, because they travel well and have a big following, again, based off stuff that happened mostly before we landed on the moon.

Hopefully this latest loss will put to bed any BCS talk for this year as they will surely (hopefully) be out of the top 25 in both the polls and the BCS standings with this loss. They could still get 9 wins if they win their last three, but without that top 14 BCS finish, they won’t be considered. Of course, a win against #13 Pittsburgh next week could get the pollsters slobbering all over their ballots again, UConn won the International Bowl last year, and Stanford just beat #8 Oregon, so you know there’ll be some selective memory going on, and, with a little help from Touchdown Jesus and The Four Horsemen, they could get into the BCS. It’s a longshot to be sure, but we must hope that it doesn’t happen for the love of all that is fair in college football….

Yeah, ok, that last line pretty much killed it for me too. At the very worst, it’ll give me fodder for another piece on why Notre Dame sucks, so at least that’s something.