I looooove talking about how young this team was this year.  Well, I don’t really love it, I love that it’s in the PAST.  But, new data keeps coming up that I find pretty interesting.  So I share.  I’m a sharer.  And a dead-horse-beater.

Take that you freaking dead horse!

Much like my Soap Opera Post, this focuses on some stats that have been published recently about the percentage of production coming from our underclassmen this year.  This time, however, we have cumulative minutes playing data by position, and we have a BAR CHART! Thanks to Blue and Gold for the data…thanks to Bidness School for the ability to make nerdy powerpoint charts.

 Behold the bar chart!!!

To read the ‘youngness’ by position, essentially look for the grey.  It tells a pretty interesting story. 

Overall, underclassmen (Frosh and Sophomores) account for 38% of ND playing time this year.  If we ran this for last year (I am too lazy) and for many years before at ND, you would see a VASTLY different story.  This would be incredibly different for most of the teams out there as well, and for BC it would be pretty much all Red with their 840 5th Year Seniors. 

Again, this is not an excuse, I am just imparting the data.  But I do believe it’s one reason for our on-field struggles this year.

We obviously had a LOT of young players making up the bulk of time in a few key skill positions with the QB, RB, and WR positions each well over 50% grey.  Almost 40% of our OL play was by underclassmen, 86% of our OLB time were Frosh and Sophomores, and just under half of our CB time was by young guys. 

Some of the places where we had significant experience were not those places that one would generally consider the most prominent positions, though they can be in certain teams.  Schwapp gave us experience at the Fullback position, and Carlson at TE.  Our Safeties were experienced as were our Specialists.

The DL, anchored by big Trev and the ILB’s provided some experience on the defensive side as well. 

One aspect I’d love to tackle is the cumulative time by players that had significant playing time and/or starts prior to this season.  But that requires a lot more research, and I just make pretty graphs based on readily-available data, so that’s not gonna happen.  But I bet if you wanted to look at Experienced vs. Inexperienced players in a similar graph, you’d see even more grey.  Which means green players.  Wait, I’m getting confused…

The good news for Irish fans is that this won’t happen again on Charlie’s watch.  In the future we’ll have both talented, and very experienced, depth.  Especially with all of these young guys getting all those reps this year, and often as starters.  

UPDATE:  More Data.

Notre Dame had 30 returning lettermen this year.  That is 117th out of 119 BCS teams.

UPDATE 2:  Even More Data.

ND had 101 starts by freshmen in 2007.  In 2006, we had 26.  And in the 5 previous years we had:  2001 - 19, 2002 - 15, 2003 - 52, 2004 - 57, 2005 - 31.  101 is WAY MORE!  (How about that math?)

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Not that the headline is telling you anything that you, as a rabid ND fan, didn’t already know. But the Pac-10 is backing up the decision to reverse the correct call on the field from Saturday’s Stanford/Notre Dame game which said that this catch was a completion for a touchdown. The correct call, on the field, was made by Big East officials. The Pac-10 supplied the replay official.

Some selected images of The Catch

From the South Bend Tribune

Via Blue-Gray Sky

AP News, via Yahoo

Via Blue-Gray Sky Again!

Now, it’s one thing to fail to get this call right via incompetence. The standard by which a reversal of a call on the field (in this case, the call on the field was that the pass was completed for a touchdown) was not applied. When the re-play official decided to reverse the call, ESPN sought an explanation immediately because even the ESPN talking-heads were incredulous (remember, the re-play officials in college have no angles other than the ones provided by whoever is recording the game for telecast), and the re-play official explained that he (and I’m paraphrasing, but it’s close enough) thought that he could see the ball move up in Grimes’ hand after he landed, and so it must have touched the ground. The biggest thing wrong with that notion is that you don’t get to “think” you saw something and then infer something from what you thought you saw. The replay official, at least when first asked, never said anything about actually seeing the ball touch the ground. He just infered it. But that’s not the standard for reversing a call on the field in college football. In college football, there must be indisputable video evidence that supports a reversal. The Pac-10 re-play official didn’t apply that standard here. There’s no way any rational mind could watch the available video evidence and call any of it indisputable. And given the Pac-10’s recent history with video re-play issues, I’m almost willing to bet that the Pac-10 official didn’t understand what standard should be applied, thus he was incompetent. And I’m not even going to get started on the poor understanding of 6th-grade-leve physics that the official tried to apply in his “rationale.” But here’s a hint for all re-play officials in the future: If you find yourself having to rationalize a reversal, you don’t have enough video evidence to reverse the call!

So yeah, incompetence is one thing. But lying is something else entirely. Today the South Bend Tribune published a piece about the idiotic controversial call, and got this quote from Pac-10 head of officiating, Dave Cutaia:

“The replay official felt he had a shot that showed the point of the ball hit the ground,” Cutaia said in an email. “This is basically a judgment call on his part, as an on-field official might judge defensive pass interference.”

So apparently either the re-play official has changed his reasoning completely from inference to statement of what he perceives to be a fact, or the head of Pac-10 officiating has done that for him. Either way, someone, at some point, has lied. Either the original explanation was a fabrication (and really, why go to the trouble of that if you feel so confident in the ultimate explanation?), or the quote up above is an outright lie.

Essentially what the Pac-10 is trying to say is that they just don’t care. Notre Dame still won the game - a game between two bad teams with no bowl implications whatever. But the problem is this is just another big, prominent data-point in a trend-line that has existed long before video review of Pac-10 games. It’s clear that Pac-10 officiating is either as incompetent as long-feared of corrupt as long- suspected.

Further, no matter the result of the game, David Grimes has been cheated out of one of the best catches I’ve ever seen in any sport.  The still-photos don’t do it justice.  A blink of an eye before the catch was made, nobody on the planet, except, perhaps, for Grimes, thought he would even catch up to the ball enough to get a hand on it, let alone actually catch the darn thing.  And to rob him of a piece of Notre Dame/College Football History is an absolute crime.

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Given the fact that Donna Shala is still employed as president of the University of Miami, I suppose I shouldn’t be completely shocked by the news/rumor that Randy Shannon, the head coach of the Miami Football program, who was ostensibly expected to help clean up the program just as much as improve their win-loss record, will be cutting scholarship “student-athletes” from the football program.

Brody just passed along some wonderful news to me. From what Brody calls an extremely reliable source, we have learned that Miami has cut six scholarships of the students named below:

KIRBY
DALY
STEWART
C. JONES
FARR
MABRY

That’s just awesome. The Hurricane’s new slogan should be: “Miami Football: Come Play for Us Until We’ve No Use For You!” At least Michigan (sucks!) has the decency to try to be inconspicuous about it, letting guys just sort of flunk out, in a micro-Darwinism sort of way.

The face of integrity.

Oh, who am I kidding? Those Miami guys probably never went to class anyway. This will be the same as sitting the bench, but without the ban on firearms ownership.

(ht: EDSBS)

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How many ND blogs have used a soap opera as a metaphor for analysis?  None? Just us?  We are the first!  We rule. (or, maybe, we like “Daytime Dramas”. either one)

As has been much discussed, ND was a young team this year.  Some claimed ‘oh, but other teams are young, blah blah blah’.  I can shut down arguments based on blah blah blah anytime.  And in this case, I just respond with the overall young-ness of the team, both in age and inexperience.  Sure, some other teams have a frosh here or there playing a key position.  Generally speaking though, those freshmen are surrounded by more experienced players.

At Notre Dame this year, those freshmen were surrounded by…other freshmen! In very key positions. Or maybe a first-year starting Sophomore.  And once in a while, a first-year starting Jr/Sr/5th or someone with actual playing experience.  Yay for those guys!  But they weren’t the norm this year.   Recently, some great data was posted by some smart number-crunching types over on NDN by the names of “FunkDoctorSpock” and “Revue Party” that helps sum up our Young issue.   Clearly, these guys have their junk together.  Here’s the data:

Points by class:

Fr….118 points
So…..13 points
Jr…..12 points
Sr……6 points
5th….48 points

Yardage by class:

Receiving
FR: 635 yards
SO: 579 yards
JR: 258 yards
SR: 123 yards
5th:371 yards

Rushing
FR: 497 yards (including -165 for Clausen)
SO: 469 yards
JR: -71 yards
SR: 35 yards
5th 50 yards

So, breaking it down into percentages, here’s the % accounted for by Frosh and Frosh/Sophomores this year:

Points

Freshmen:  60%   Freshmen+Sophomores:  66%

Receiving Yards

Freshmen:  32%   Freshmen+Sophomores:  62%

Rushing Yards

Freshmen:  51%   Freshmen+Sophomores:  99%

Good Lord!  The team is young as all hell! Not only that, those young players account for 66% of points, 62% of receiving yards and 99% of rushing yards!  Craziness.  And Charlie knows it:

“All along we knew we were playing with some talented young guys,” Weis told reporters after the Stanford game.

“And that there was going to be a growing process that takes place. There are some growing pains that take place when you’re doing it…”

Young, yes. 

Restless? 

After this year, you better believe it…

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I was stuck at a family event the night of the Stanford game, and missed the entire second half. Given that I’d be away from Sunny California for 4 days at that point, I didn’t have a chance to get the Tivo programmed.  Plus, I just wasn’t going to wait until Sunday to know the result after such a crazy first half.  So, I got the play by play from Bad Kermit.  This is what it’s like to catch the 2nd half of such a crazy game via text messages from BK, while munching on a massive feast of Chinese food in China Town, Philadelphia over Thanksgiving weekend.

BK:  Bulls&*^!!!

BK:  Throw the &*^%ing ball away!

(these were texts I received before asking for the play-by-play updates, as I was attempting to use Yahoo and ESPN box scores through my PDA.  but then that phone died, and I went to BK for help)

Biscuit:  What’s the score?  Pulled away to fam dinner. Could use updates

BK:  14-14.  Twelve min left

Biscuit:  We didn’t score after zibbys return to the 30?

BK:  No, Got a td catch reversed.  Bs —

Biscuit:  %^*&.  Keep me updated? Would appreciate it

BK:  No prob.

Biscuit:  Thx

BK:  Stan driving after nd dumb pick.

BK: (out of nowhere)  Oregon down 16-0

BK:  Stan missed fg

Biscuit:  Nice

BK:  Hughes looks great.  on the nine after big run –

Biscuit:  Hells yea.  Hughes is a pimp

BK:  Td!  Six min left.

Biscuit’s Sister:  What’s the score?  dad wants 2 no

Biscuit to Sis:  21 14 nd is up.  5 min left

Biscuit’s Sister:  Keep us updatd.

Biscuit to BK:  tell me we r holding them

BK:  Fourth and goal.  30 sec left

Biscuit to Sis:  Seconds left. 4th down, stanford ball on ND 6.

BK:  No good!

Biscuit:  &*%^ yeah!

(at this point I stood up and cheered at the table.  my wife’s family was confused, as were all of the asians in the joint.  i think they may have thought of me as a very strange man, playing video games on my cell phone during dinner and all…)

Biscuit’s Sister:  Tell us final

Biscuit to Sis:  Stopped!  ND wins!

Biscuit’s Sister:  Ha ha ha.  finally. yippee! 

Biscuit to BK:  What play did they run?  How’d it happen?

BK:  Dropped pass back of end zone

Biscuit: Fan-freaking-tastic!  We should put this playbyplay up on hls…

BK:  Ha!

Biscuit’s Dad:  yo yo go irish the dad

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With the coaching changes, there are some interesting assistant coaches floating around right now:

• Brian Jean-Mary: Former Linebacker coach for Georgia Tech. Who’s watched a GaTech game recently and didn’t like the play of the LBs?
• Joe D’Alessandris: Former OL coach for Georgia Tech. They managed the 16th ranked rushing attack in the NCAA despite Tashard Choice being injured for a long period of time. Also seem to give up very few sacks.
• UPDATE: Arkansas has just fired Houston Nutt, leaving former Lou Holtz/ND GA and now former Arkansas OL Coach/Run Game Coordinator Mike Markuson up in the air.

As we noted before, there will be a lot of assitants looking for work in the next few weeks. If you know of a good one, pass his name along to us. Charlie Weis reads this site!* And if you have thoughts about those I’ve mentioned (or will mention as I discover them), let us know!

*This is a lie.

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Perhaps it’s just that they got sick of trying to beat Ohio State and Jim Tressel, or that they’ve realized they can’t beat Notre Dame and Charlie Weis at recruiting even when ND goes 3-9, but the recent and rampant rumors about Michigan (sucks!) Head Coaching search seem to indicate they no longer take football seriously.
Meanwhile, if the Ferentz to Michigan (sucks!) rumors turn out to be rumors, maybe Michigan (sucks!) could set their sites on Chan Gailey! Apparently GaTech is starting to take football seriously. Hey GaTech, I know a coach with experience coaching football at a school with “high academic standards.”

With this Monday Bloodbath and the previous bloodbaths of the weekend, you’ve got to start wondering about what assistants now have a lot of free time on their hands. If any of you know of really good, really unemployed assistants, please let us know about them. Yeah, we all know about Tenuta, but we don’t need a DC. Think he’d make a good LB coach?

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Charlie Weis and Notre Dame have won and will win as many games against Pac-10 teams in 2007 as Ty Willingham and Washington (2 wins each).

Bonus Fun Schadenfreude Fact of the Day:  Weis has won just as many games against Pac-10 opponents as Ty Willingham since Weis has been at ND and Willingham has been at Washinton (a total of 6 wins each since 2005).  Sub-bonus fact:  Weis and ND’s winning percentage against Pac-10 teams: 67%.  Willingham and UW’s winning percentage against Pac-10 teams: 23%.

(Hat tip to multiple sources across many ND Fan boards.)

Fun thing to ponder:  What are the chances of a Weis coached ND team beating a Willingham coached Washington team in 2008?

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