Yep, it’s back baby! Okay, so I harped on this just a bit in the past. Maybe a little. But not too too much. Right right? Heh.

I thought we’d be coming into this year a bit older, a bit wiser. Turns out, I am completely wrong (once in a while, it has to happen i guess).

Phil Steele published 2 pretty interesting pieces in the last couple days on his site, based on his always-solid analysis.

Youth

The first brings the Youth Manifesto back. Damn, how can we STILL be young? Seriously, we’ve been young for 2 years in a row, and we’re STILL young? Doesnt anyone ever age on this team? Are we stuck in some weird time warp where everyone remains a freshman or sophomore?

Not really. You know what it is? In 2007, we were ridiculously young. Younger than almost anybody’s ever been. Super duper crazy insane (insane? crazy?) young. In 2008, we were just crazy young. Younger than every team we played, and younger than pretty much any other ND team in history. This coming fall, we’ll just be young. Not insane young, but still younger than almost every other team in the FBS.

According to Phil Steele, ND ranks as the 112th oldest, or 8th from the youngest, team in the country this coming season. 112!!! Lord, it never ends!

As a comparison, here’s how this year’s competition stacks up:

Nevada:  22

Michigan (sucks!):  120 – only team younger than ND! (good luck with that .500 DTK)

Michigan State:   71

Purdue:  74

Washington:  71

Southern Cal:  82

Boston College:  64

Washington St:  17

Navy:  1

Pitt:   10

UCONN:  107  – close!

Stanford:  45

So only 2 ND opponents fall even close to ND in terms of youth.  The Manifesto remains applicable. It’s alive people, yes, it’s alive.

Experience

The second metric that Steele checks out is experience – returning starters, production, etc.  And, not surprisingly, ND comes out pretty highly ranked on that metric at #17.

Nevada:    32

Michigan (sucks!):  93  (again, good luck there DTK, buddy, loving my bet odds)

Michigan State:  92

Purdue:   109

Washington:   13

Southern Cal:  90

Boston College:  63

Washington St:    23

Navy:   116

Pitt:  57

UCONN:  84

Stanford:  7

 

So only the Cardinal (singular, please!) comes out as more experienced than ND.    Out of the 2, I’d rather be experienced than old, but it’s pretty interesting to note our relative youth to the average team (STILL). 

ND will be behind the developmental curve compared to most programs this year.  That means more years in the weight room, more years in the program, more years in the system for our competitors.   BUT,  our guys will have more game experience than most.  More pressure-filled moments.  More exposure, and more time spent on the field cracking skulls.

And really, Michigan (sucks), MSU, Purdue, USC and Navy are teams filled with newbies.  Early in the season, these teams should be relatively vulnerable.  Mistakes should, and will, happen for most of these squads. At least for the first portion of the season, and probably for most of it (see:  ND 2007).   USC has a talent advantage that will help mitigate a lot of those mistakes – dude makes a wrong read, but he’s so freaking fast he can catch the opponent WR anyway, etc – so the impact will be less for them.

The chart below highlights how these 2 metrics come together, along with talent.  As a program, you wanna be in the lower left corner - older, and experienced.   That’s a recipe for relative success.  I say relative, bc talent and coaching, schedule and luck all play a factor as well.  But keeping all those constant, a program is primed for relative success with an older, experienced team.  This is exactly what BC was 2 years ago – they weren’t great talent-wise, but they had like 40 5th year seniors on that squad that had played for a few years, and they found success.  I did my best to sort of bring talent in here, coloring the most talented teams (just a guesstimate, this isn’t some tight analysis on star rankings) red, 2nd tier orange, 3rd tier yellow and bottom of the barrel grey (again, estimates just to get a visual in there).   You can expect the more talented teams to overcome one weakness or the other, obviously.  For ND, we’re in a decent spot.  We’re not the oldest team on the schedule by far, but we’re also pretty experienced, and relatively talented.  

Course, you didn’t need this chart to tell you that, but it’s a pretty cool graphic right?  And heck, this is what MBA’s/consultants do – create charts to tell you what you already knew anyway, so I am fulfilling my role big time.

Pretending like this chart is the only data point we have, we should absolutely WHOMP Michigan (sucks), MSU, UCONN, Purdue and BC.  They are set up to SUCK.    Throw in Washington because of the lack of talent, and Navy and WSU bc of the same. 

USC will be a toss-up bc it’s USC, and we should expect decent games from Stanford, Nevada and Pitt.   A lot of folks are thinking that Nevada should be a blowout win – by this analysis, it will be one of the tougher games of the year, and if we win it should be a sign of good things to come.

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