“I never think this is a good way to compare teams.”

Team recruiting rankings in the aggregate absolutely matter and are an excellent piece of information in comparing teams. This has pretty much been shown over and over and over again…the best, most successful programs don’t just take whoever and develop them, they get better talent. http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2015-college-football-preview-reverse-engineering-a-champion-ohio-state-tcu-ucla/

Are they perfect? Nope. And on that point, it’s fair to mention there are outliers like CJ Prosise who for half a season has performed above his recruiting value. That said, ND does not have some quantifiably better track record at “developing stars” from lesser talent. Ronnie Stanley and Jaylon Smith were both highly touted players. Aggregate team rankings particularly over time, and particularly when doing what Bayou’s done by considering who will actually play is an important piece of information. Temple’s current coaches could be decidedly better player developers than ND’s current coaches and it might not matter with that large a gap to start from.

I must have missed that disclaimer. Your post is titled “Counting the stars” and the only comparison I read was about the count of star ratings for each unit. Overall, though, I dont think this matchup is at all like we were against Bama because at the time that game was played(regardless of the outcome) we had actually earned the right to be in the same talent conversation as they were. Temple has not. Not only are they not in our league THIS year(#21 vs #9) they never HAVE and never will be. You’re critique is correct…they have “Returned” to no sort of glory. They’ve just been ranked again, finally. That’s really nothing to hang your hat on.

Hi Trey and thanks for reading and commenting. I think I laced enough disclaimers about the “star system” that your criticism is not only unfair, but one that I share. I actually said that stars don’t measure performance. Instead of Prosise, I used Williams as an example. My bad, I guess. Further, I ended the piece by looking at the teams Temple has defeated.

The real point is that Temple is running into a buzzsaw. I fully expect the Irish to win by at least three scores, and I’m really inclined to think that at least two will be TDs.

This game, however, has all the feel, to Temple fan, that the NCG had to Notre Dame two years ago. Their program is “back” now. One could argue that if you haven’t been ranked since 1979 and your last ranking wasn’t #1, you’re not really returning to anything, but that would be mean-spirited of me. ND has been dominant, mostly, in its wins. Even the loss to Clemson comes with so many caveats that I believe it to be the “best” loss of any one-loss team out there. I mean, should Stanford really get the pass they are getting for losing to NWU?

I don’t mind much whether the comparison is ND-Bama or ND-Hawaii as long as the point differential is similar on Saturday…

This game is nothing like ND/Bama. In 2012, we had to defeat Stanford at it’s height, USC(albeit in a down year), and OU at a high level of skill, Sparty just starting their rise, and Meatchicken. Temple doesnt even have a SINGLE game of that magnitude this year. No, this game is more comparable to, say, ND/Hawaii in 2008.