Listen up, College Football World, because you all need some context.
This post is not about excusing ND’s recent record, and it’s not about distracting you all from questionable calls like terrible Maryland-esque, Oregon-knock-off uniforms. This post is about giving everybody a little dose of reality.
Reality for Notre Dame in the post-Holtz era is overall mediocrity, with some true lows (3-9 anyone?) and some really strong BCS seasons with 9 and 10 win results. Contrary to popular opinion right now, there have actually been some really good years post-Holtz. The fact is that everybody ignores those and points to the average and bad years – mostly because it had been a long time since ND had last had those kind of years strung together. But, again, time to set some context, ND has been good to really good a number of times since Lou’s last home game in 1996. But yeah, I can’t disagree, it’s not been the best time in our history. We have been just okay, for a while now.
It’s been quiet in Notre Dame Stadium of late.
So anyway, back to setting this historical context: here are some strings of Win-Loss (ignoring ties) records for you:
String 1: 8-4 3-8 6-5 8-5 8-3 9-2 6-6 6-5 8-5 8-3 9-2 6-6 6-5 8-5 6-6 5-7 6-6 for a 58% winning percentage
String 2: 4-7 7-5 10-3 3-8 7-5 10-3 4-9 6-6 for a 53% winning percentage
String 3: 4-7 5-6 5-6 2-9 5-6 4-7 7-4 10-2 9-3 4-7 3-8 8-4 for a 49% winning percentage
String 4: 7-4 8-3 9-3 5-4 9-3 6-6 5-5 3-8 4-8 5-6 7-5 for a 55% winning percentage
Pretty ugly right? But here’s the thing…These aren’t ND records.
From 1 to 4, that’s your top 4 from this season’s first AP Poll: Current #1 USC went 58% from from 1990 to 2001, #2 Alabama won 53% of its game from 1997 to 2004, LSU won less than half of their games from 1989 to 2000, and Oklahoma won just 55% from 1989 to 1999.
This is what everyone forgets. Teams go through cycles. Programs go through cycles. Those cycles can be 5 years, or 15, but this is just how things tend to work, even for the top programs in the country. And these strings aren’t from 1947 – they’re from the modern age of college football. These are real results for top programs in the recent past.
A number of pundits and ‘experts’ are or have written Notre Dame off recently. They say that ND is dead in the water, and will never ‘return to glory’. Well guess what, in 2001, the CFB world had pretty much written off USC. In 2004, many writers and fans probably wondered if ‘Bama would ever be ‘back’. In 2000, LSU was a football punchline. In 1999, Oklahoma was teetering on the ‘edge of irrelevance’.
And that’s your #1 to #4 this season. What goes around, comes around, folks. ND has been in a stretch that’s included average, solid, and bad years. The winning percentage hasn’t been amazing, it’s very true. But it’s also true that other elite programs have gone through similar stretches. The only difference is that they’re no longer in those stretches, while ND is. It’s just the recency effect, and it is no more permanent for ND than it is for those other programs.
So that’s the big point. One other little point, that might be worth noting, is that during this time, NOTRE DAME HAS ACTUALLY LIKE, YOU KNOW, EDUCATED THEIR PLAYERS. Kids have graduated, taking real classes, doing real work. To some that doesn’t matter, to Notre Dame and its fans, it matters much. And, also, while other programs have DUMBED DOWN THEIR SCHEDULES in order to try to game their way to a big bowl, ND has doubled-freaking-down in SOS. We graduate players and we play REAL schedules. We haven’t gotten back to winning at the levels to which we aspire, but no one can say we’ve taken the easy road either.
So yeah, we’re not at the top of our game right now. But not so long ago, the ‘best’ weren’t either.
We’ll be back.
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