Don't believe the hype. Don't-don't-don't believe the hype.
But listen to Flav-o-flav.
We here at HLS, and all you ND fans out there, hear it all the time from the haters. "ND is overrated." "TV hypes ND up, they don't deserve to be in the Top 20." "Blah blah blah whine whine whine", etc. etc. ad infinitum. It's freaking exhausting, especially when, if anything, ND is held up to a higher standard and gets penalized in the rankings because of it.
ESPN's Mark Schlabach (well, his interns more likely) did a nice solid analysis comparing pre-season polls to end-of-season results, to see which teams are truly overrated and which are underrated. ND didn't make the Top 10, and in fact there was evidence that shows that ND is often underrated. Can you freaking believe it? And this from ESPN, who perpetually trashes and downlplays the Irish in all ways humanly possible (while raking in ratings/dollars from coverage, interviews, etc. of ND players, games and culture).
The Top 10 Most Overrated Programs of the past decade? Here they are:
- FSU
- Tennessee
- Washington
- Miami
- Ohio State/Nebraska (Tied)
- Nebraska/Ohio State (Tied)
- Florida
- Michigan
- Texas
- Clemson
LOVE seeing Michigan, Florida Miami and FSU on that list, and high up there. While UF and Michigan have been quality recently (e.g. last season), they don't live up to expectations or their own hype on a regular basis. In the near future, NO FAN FROM ANY OF THESE SCHOOLS HAS THE RIGHT TO SAY ND IS OVERRATED. This is a new rule. Punishment? The Ann Arbor Sooth. If you don't know what that is, good for you.
ND didn't make this list obviously, because of 3 years where the Irish went from unranked in the preseason to finishing ranked. As Schlabach mentions:
Notre Dame, which long ago earned the reputation of being overhyped, wasn't among the top 10 overrated teams during the last 10 years. In fact, 2003 co-champion LSU [was] more overrated than the Fighting Irish in that time span. Although Notre Dame has failed to live up to lofty preseason rankings five times in the last 10 years, it also rose from unranked to ranked three times, finishing No. 15 in 2000, No. 17 in 2002 and No. 9 in 2005.
And if the haters start dropping the 'but they don't deserve their bowl games' argument, just walk away. They don't get that bowls have nothing to do with 'deserving' and everything to do with 'making money'. If ND meets the criteria for BCS inclusion, they deserve it as much as anyone else. If they meet bowl qualification standards in general with a 6 win season, they deserve to be there. And they will, because the bowls are profit-making machines, and ND guarantees that profit. Upset about the fact that no one outside of Columbus cares about OSU? NOT OUR PROBLEM.
This kind of analysis is rare, but great - clears things up a bit from a fairly objective standpoint. And I like that.
9/1 can't get here fast enough.
By Bad Kermit August 20, 2007 - 5:55 pm
Great. I finally get around to posting something and you post the same day. Does this mean I have to write something again tomorrow? Thanks a lot, dumbass.
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By The Biscuit August 20, 2007 - 6:34 pm
MQ does that to me about twice a week. I don’ think he really has a job. I apologize, cuz I hate it when that happens. But I figured if it didn’t deal with the Cubbies, it’d be fair game.
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By The Biscuit August 20, 2007 - 6:35 pm
And if you weren’t gonna use Flav-o-Flav in your article, everything turned out for the best.
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By Ryan August 20, 2007 - 7:25 pm
“If ND meets the criteria for BCS inclusion, they deserve it as much as anyone else.”
Solid work Biscuit. My good friends from Wisconsin would do well to read that. Also loving Michigan at #8.
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By The Biscuit August 21, 2007 - 12:55 am
Word. Until they institute a rule saying that preference is based on consensus ranking, the most engaging/interesting/popular matchup will always reign supreme. Meaning, most of the time, ND.
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By Nate (ltdomer98) August 21, 2007 - 2:52 am
Nice job. One thing I’d add–the people who whine the loudest about us being “overhyped” are the same ones who hype us in the first place: ESPN and the rest of the press. They shamelessly do it, because a. talking good about us gets ratings, and b. talking bad about us gets ratings. If they hype us and we fall short, then they get to do both.
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By irishdevil August 21, 2007 - 4:49 am
Not so fast, though. If you look at the data back to 1989, ND becomes not just one of, but the #1 most overrated team in the country.
http://preseason.stassen.com/over-under/teams.html
Our overratedness was a reputation built on the Holtz years that even the Davieham years did not kill. Hopefully, the ESPN article will help a bit, though.
That said, ND pays for this by consistently being underranked versus its loss peers in the final polls. Below is my counter to a UGA blogger who brought up the ‘ND gets a poll boost’ line in a post last week.
“I heard a similar claim from a UM fan just yesterday, so I decided to take a closer look. The best way I could figure was to take poll data I had available via the Internet and determine whether ND (and a couple control teams) got a boost in the polls. Naturally, I chose UGA and UM as the control teams.
I went back and looked at every post-bowl AP and coaches’ poll from last season through the 1985 season. I then identified how many teams with the same or more losses were ranked ahead of each team in any given poll (winning percentage would be slightly more accurate, but I really did not want to take the time to deal with all the ties in older polls).
For instance, in 1989 Michigan finished the season 10-2 and ranked 7th and 8th in the AP and coaches polls, respectively. Alabama (coaches only), Auburn, and FSU finished ahead in one or both polls, also at 10-2. This gave UM a value of 3 and 2 for the polls that year, divided by two entries, for an average of 2.5 teams ahead of them.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, ties cause some problems. Also, UGA and ND often were not ranked–thank Messrs. Goff, Davie, and Willingham for that–in which case I simply had to ignore them (if I found someone in the ‘also receiving votes’, I counted that as their rank). Finally, I recognized that ND’s bowl losing streak since the mid-90s could inflate the number of same-or-more-loss teams ahead of them (on the theory that teams finishing on a down note would be ranked below those finishing with a win), so I also used the final pre-bowl poll when available (back to 2002 on ESPN.com).
The results are as follows, with the numbers representing the average number of teams with as many or more losses ahead of each team:
UGA: 1.74 avg. teams ahead
UM: 1.57
ND: 3.15
As you can see, if anything, ND is consistently underrated by the polls, (twice as much as compared to UM). I think the reputation for getting favourable votes comes from the Holtz years, when ND was admittedly often one of the two top-ranked teams for its number of losses (12 of 17 polls available, although 2 of those are the national championship season when no one was in ND’s loss classification, as they were the sole undefeated team). Take out those years and ND is behind almost 5 teams of the same number of losses in the average poll (4.94)–but that comes with the bowl loss caveat. Even so, bowl losses barely change the number of same-loss teams ahead of any of the teams, and in fact they reduce the number as often as they inflate it (to prove this I’d have to send the whole spreadsheet, which I would be happy to email)…[M]aybe ND is more highly ranked in preseason polls than it sometimes deserves, but that really does not matter as it is clearly corrected in the final polls (unless you are an ND fan who thinks the end-of-season underrating is an overcorrection, the result of backlash for ND starting highly ranked and then losing).
Remember, fans only talk about final polls when it all is said and done.
-irishdevil”
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By irishdevil August 21, 2007 - 4:57 am
By the way, Michigan is among both the most overrated (preseason polls) and overranked (final polls) teams in the country over the past 25-30 years. They are 2nd in the Stassen data I link above (and apparently 8th in the last 10 years). They are also the most overranked of the three teams I looked at, and if you look at the data, their entries are a sea of 0s and 1s, by which I mean they are, more often than not, either the highest or second highest-ranked team for their number of losses (32 of 54 polls I looked at). I would be surprised if any team has a lower average of loss peers ahead of them. UM gets the benefit of the doubt both coming and going, yet no one ever talks about that.
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By Wertzy August 21, 2007 - 9:35 am
They only talk about Michigan having a down year if ND beats them ala 2005. They were ranked #3 and got beat at home by ND who was ranked #20.
Nope. Not a big game win for the Irish at all. UM finished 7-5 and was having an off year.
I hate em all.
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By bgr August 21, 2007 - 10:13 am
Wertzy,
Yeah, the thing about ’05 was that both Pitt and UM looked good but then spun out of control after we beat them. Michigan State did as well, though they beat us. It never seems to occur to people that teams are not uniform throughout the season and maybe losing at home to Notre Dame had a psychological effect on the team. Just because Michigan finished 7-5 doesn’t mean that they were a “7-5 team” at every point in the season. The classic example, I think, is MSU who has always been much tougher in September than in November.
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By Irish Glory August 21, 2007 - 10:50 am
Interesting article. Thank you for posting.
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By The Biscuit August 21, 2007 - 11:51 am
irishdevil, awesome analysis. truly appreciated by those of us that cant handle ‘math’
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By Alces August 22, 2007 - 2:00 pm
When people complain about ND getting a bowl bid over some other “more deserving” team, I have long tried to argue logically why it’s not – nor ever has been – about the team itself. It’s about money.
However, since that usually doesn’t fly with people, especially all those conference-loving fans who somehow think that winning a conference is more legit than actually performing well against the entire schedule.
As a result, I’ve found that it’s best to respond to stupid statements with equally stupid statements – so when someone says “ND doesn’t deserve a BCS bid,” you can say, “Yeah, it’s not fair that Wisconsin didn’t get to go the Cotton Bowl. And really, shouldn’t Oregon have been able to go to the Peach Bowl?”
This sort of response often underscores the point better than trying to argue about ND. Make the conversation about bowls in general, not about ND’s bid.
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