The internets seem quite concerned with the “likelihood” that a team that went 3-9 in 2007 (specifically, Notre Dame) would “rebound” to a “respectable record” in 2008 (say, 8-4). One such discussion is happening here. And in that discussion, a question came up that I actually find more interesting: Sure, it’s rare to “rebound” from such a record, but how common is it to “collapse” from being a 10+ win team to a 3-9 team? Answer: Exceedingly rare.

I figured that had to be the case, but you know me and my unnatural affection for spreadsheets (Yeah, ND Business School!):

As you can see, between the 2004 and 2007 seasons, 34 different teams experienced at least 1 season with a record including 10 or more wins. But only 1 team in that time, Notre Dame, managed to follow such a season with a collapse the next year into “Epic Fail” territory of 3 or fewer wins. The only other comparable collapse would be Tennessee’s own “Epic Fail” of 2005 where they went 5 and 6 after a 10-3 record in 2004.

In fact, the collapse of ND in 2007 was so bad that it was more than 4 games worse than the average “letdown” for a team that just experienced a 10+ win season. On average, any team that had a 10+ win season in our sample experienced an increase of about 1.7 more losses in the following season. ND experienced a 6 game letdown.

I wont get into causation. That’s been hammered on around these parts and everywhere else a football fan can access the internet for long enough, and lord knows we’ll probably do it again ourselves in another post before the 2008 season gets kicked off. But know this: Anytime someone tries to tell you it’s statistically unlikely that ND will have a “good year” this year, you can point out that our disaster of a 2007 season was even more unlikely. Maybe it’s all just dumb luck.

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• Goodbye and Good Luck
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First, let me express my apologies to the millions of HLS readers out there who depend exclusively on HLS to deliver the latest, most timely Notre Dame Football news. There have been some really significant (huge!) verbal commitments by extraordinarily talented football players to the University of Notre Dame, and “we” failed to mention anything about any of those commitments. As Executive Founding Benevolent Lead Managerial Omnipotent Editor of HLS, I take full responsibility for this gaffe, and I swear to you on the souls of the little blue fish that the big, ugly, black fish ate when I was 7, this will never happen again. The buck stops here. I’m going to make this right.

That said, it was all Biscuit’s fault! Oh sure, I suppose I could have done it, but I was exhausted from my Blue and Gold Game tome earlier this week, and then I was very busy with work, and then there was just so much beer to be consumed. How can you expect one man to consume that much beer and blog? What’s Biscuit’s excuse? Let’s hear it, Biscuit. Let’s hear about what on earth made your widdle wife so vewy vewy hawd that you couldn’t step up and do what we pay you to do!

The Roundup:

• Looks like Demetrius Jones makes a habit of not showing up.
• Charlie Weis, since you’re reading this, please take note.
• Kids, Mario Manningham is your brains of drugs.
• Didn’t Bear Bryant once say something about teams having a “few good seasons” thinking they were the Alabamas, Oklahomas, Michigans, Southern Cals, and Notre Dames of the world? Hey, if I were Rutgers, I’d want to sell tickets to our new stadium too, but if I were Rutgers I wouldn’t actually expect my current coach to around in 3 years.
• Making the most highly unanticipated NFL draft in memory even more highly unanticipated.
• One of the few times I think the NCAA shouldn’t spank SoCal.
• Good luck, Trevor.
• They needed some enormous balls to make this happen.

Finally, here’s a picture simply for the sake of having a picture, as we haven’t had many pictures on HLS lately.

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Holy Flaming Batsuits, Robin, I’ve found the dumbest writer in the history of communication. Illiterates probably berate this woman. Her ancestors, thousands of years ago, probably drew cave paintings of buffalo with which everyone else on the planet confused toucans. Her name is “Lisa H,” and she “writes” a blog on FoxSports.com’s community blogs. You know how they say a million monkeys with a million keyboards, given enough time, could write the works of Shakespeare? Well it would take one monkey to write the equivalent of Lisa H. in an afternoon. And I’m not talking one of those fancy zoo monkeys that knows how to signal for food. I’m talking the monkey still in the forest that eats rotten bananas, can’t figure out that whole “use stick to fish ants out of hole” thing, and even Jane Goodall wouldn’t want to save. (Yeah. I know. Moneky /= Gorilla. I don’t care.)

In “Lisa H’s” “20 burning questions going into football season,” Lisa writes:

14- Will Weis finally get Notre Dame on track?

No. The problem with Notre Dame is not the players. It’s their coach. How desperate is Charlie Weis? He turned over the offense to his OC. Considering that Weis is known as an offensive genius, this is concerning. There is nothing good to come out of this- if the offensive output gets better-and when you are ranked dead last in offense, is there anywhere else but to go up?- then it makes him look overrated as an offensive guru. If the offense still remains the same, then Weis made a poor coaching decision.

Either way, Weis is in a giant hole. Their sked is difficult, and there are only two guaranteed wins, with a third possible one against Pitt. Couple that all in with mumblings about some discontent in South Bend during Spring practice, and you can count on Weis updating his resume. Unless he beats USC, of course.

It’s like she takes courses at the Dan Rather School of Journalism and Making Shit Up. The only mumbling that occurred this spring were in her head while she tried to sound out the Dollar Menu at Wendy’s.

And did she actually use “sked” in place of “schedule?” I think I just heard the sound of a 1000 English teachers blow their brains out.

Way to go, Lisa. You just set the world of the written word so far back that they’re considering works by Pat Forde from his probable 3 years in the 5th grade for a Pulitzer. You have to be less intelligent than the beer I just drank. If you’d lived in the 17th century, villagers would have burned you as a witch, knowing full well you weren’t actually a witch, but unable to help themselves since they just couldn’t take all that stupid any longer. If you don’t eventually die by accidentally suffocating yourself with a plastic shopping bag from the grocery store, millions of dollars will be lost in Vegas.

I’m big on the internet, but I have to admit, the internet, and the enabling of people like terrorists, religious zealots, white supremacists, and Lisa H to share their so-called thoughts make me wonder if we should just unplug the entire damn thing. Giving Brian Cook a voice is bad enough, but this? I need another drink.

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Apparently he was able to convince the good people of East Hartford that  it wouldn’t be good for UConn (cuz Christ loooooooves Connecticut, don’t you know that???) to have the originally-proposed 10 game series happen.

So, no thanks to Kevin White, we’ve avoided playing Uconn for a freaking decade.  Instead, it will just be part of a decade.

Thank Christ.

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This article is infinitely more clarifying than a similar article from ESPN on the Rich Rod Racist drama currently unfolding somewhere that the snake oil selling wizard hangs out. 

If it’s true, and I have no idea if it is, Dicky Roddy is much worse than I thought.   He’s just a horrible human being.

Essentially, this WVU fundraiser is saying that Ricky Ricardo concocted stories about him to derail the WVU lawsuit focused on the buy-out clause.  And that in the process he labeled Larry the Fundraiser a racist in public.  Then, the Rod offered to find Lar a job at scUM to keep him quiet.

All very Desperate Housewives, no?

Maybe we can get ABC to start a Soap Opera about it all.  The Ann Arbor Suth…I like it…

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Yeah, I know you already know.  But I had family in town last weekend and MQ was at the B-G Game (read his encyclopedia covering the weekend below), so we didn’t get to post on it.  Lucky for you, now we are!

Cierre committed the morning of the Blue-Gold game, and had good reasons for doing so.  Note:  I recommend reading the linked article. It’s from Cierre’s local paper and is therefore better than everything else you’ve likely read.  And when I say ‘better’ I’m not talking about the quality of the writing or anything like that.  Just that they actually got quotes from our latest star commit.

Cierre picked ND because of the opportunity to compete for playing time early, the family atmosphere, the academics, and the chance to explore something new and different.

“I wanted an honest answer,” he said. “I asked, Should I redshirt?’ “  He was given an assurance that there would be an opportunity for Wood to compete for a starting position in the fall of 2009.  “They aren’t afraid to play young guys,” said Wood. “I will get my chance.”

“Their academic standards are high,” said Wood. “They graduate over 98 percent of their students.”

Going to a university in Los Angeles “would be like staying at home,” said Wood. “When the time comes, it is time to break away and explore the world.”

I like this kid.   He has his head set square on his shoulders.

And he’s freaking fast.

PS:  A way-too-late post on our other stellar commitment will be up way-too-late as well.  But later.

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Dear ESPN,

We’ve been receiving countless reports of your egg-head analysts naming Maurice Crum as a “notable loss” for the 2008 Notre Dame Football Team. We haven’t seen this ourselves, as we don’t watch you, but the reports are now too numerous to ignore.

Maurice Crum is, in fact, still with the team.

We know that your analysts tend to be wrong about everything, but when they actually manage to be consistently wrong about objective fact, we feel compelled to correct your errors for the betterment of society.

Thanks,

HLS Management

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There were some good questions in the comments of my first post about the Blue Gold Game, and they address things I meant to talk about, so I’ll answer those questions and address some other thoughts here.

• Golden Tate was on the field a lot. It was really as though he was sort of a “featured” asset for parts of the game. It’s clear that the coaching staff wants to get Tate on the field a great deal, but I’m not sure that he was on the field so much this Saturday because of his ability or because the coaching staff really wants to get him as many reps as they can since he was out so much this spring for baseball. Aside from the deep go route that he ran, and now everyone knows about, I also spotted him running what I thought were some hitch routes off an 8 step drive, a square in type thing, an out or two, and then a sort of come-back route that’s like a hitch, where he drove the corner off (who was already playing soft), and then would snap back and sprint back toward the LOS, creating more separation. I seem to recall him dropping a pass, but he does have very soft hands, and he has that unique ability to leap in the air and, at least to an observer, seem to float. And he’s just plain fast. The defense knew he was running a go in that last deep pass play, and he did, and Jimmy threw it right as Tate was level with the DB, and Tate not only ran under the ball, but kicked it an extra gear to do so. It’s really impressive to see. ND hasn’t seen that in a while.
• There were no kickoffs in the game. The punt game was used, but all punts were fair-caught. Some of the punts were very nice. One was a real shank. I’m not real concerned with it. Maust was, and I believe still is, a fine punter. No clue on kickoffs, obviously. Field goal kicking was a nice surprise. All kicks looked pretty strong. There was an attempt at a 43 or 46 yard kick that had plenty of leg, but hit the left upright about 1/3rd of the way up the post. Had it been on target, it was enough leg for a 48 yard field goal. Nice to see. Also, though I wasn’t paying much attention, it looked like whoever is doing long-snapping is actually just fine. Some real zip on the snaps.
• Left tackle, despite the sacks, seemed to do alright. I didn’t understand what was going on during one of the sacks because it looked like the tackle, Paul Duncan, just stopped playing, but apparently Weis didn’t want the OL cutting the defense, so they’d yell “cut!” and the defender was supposed to stop pursuit. That didn’t happen, apparently. And really, the entire system just makes it tough to see how much that position has progressed. I will say that Duncan seemed much more comfortable with his initial step. When I watched him, he seemed pretty fluid. So there’s hope. We’ll just have to wait and see.
• Harrison Smith made a nice play to get that pick-6, but if my memory isn’t fooling me, the entire set-up to that play was sort of weird. Before that play, the offense had a very comfortable lead. Also, a little bit before that play, I noticed Weis leave the defense side and go talk to the offensive coaches. Then I think there was a time-out, and the coaches were giving very specific instructions to Clausen. It really all sort of seemed like either the coaches were setting up the game for a chance at a defensive come-back, or they were so obvious in their coaching of Clausen that Smith probably knew what was coming. I have a feeling it was the later. The team seemed to be practicing situations outside of the game itself (more on that in the next item), and Harrison Smith might have know what was coming. Still, and excellent play.
• Brian Polian was standing behind the offense, on the field, during the entire game. And in between each play, he was making signals to both the offense and the defense. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I think he might have been telling the offense and the defense about the situation for each play beyond simply, “3rd and 5, on the Gold 31, 4 minutes remain.” I think they were imagining and working on scenarios separate from the game the people in the stands were watching - sort of a “game withing a game” type thing. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s what was going on.
• As I mentioned before, Weis spent most of his time on the defensive side of the field. He seemed, for the most part, to be having a nice time. I think it was a good idea, too. It further affirms that he’s a “head coach” and not just an OC with head coaching responsibilities.
• I didn’t see Tenuta on the field. I believe he was in the booth. He was always in the booth at Georgia Tech, and if there’s someone you want looking down on the field, looking for openings and weaknesses, it’s him.

Anyway, again, if you’ve got any questions, just ask, and I’ll try to answer them.

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