As a collective, the SEC seems particularly arrogant and loathsome.  Educationally, they do not teach such big words as those.  In short, there’s not much to like and quite a bit to hate – especially since they will shortly pit two of their hulking, spittle-flecked football gangs against each other in order to determine which wounded creature will have the privilege of fighting the Irish.  Quite sure of themselves, these Southern cult-vehicles believe that either of them will rumble over a hapless Notre Dame.  Please note, 12 other teams have already labored under that same misapprehension this year.

A preliminary blow was struck in this new battle last evening, when the basketball lads soundly defeated a heavily-favored SEC squad on the hardwood.  Much of the ferocity that the Leprechaun Legion ginned-up last night was born of the burgeoning abhorrence for the SEC writ large (though I do not think many in the SEC can write).

This is not appropriate.  We are preparing for Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of hope and light in the world.  We should not be summoning all the dark forces of hatred at this time of joy.  And so I propose that we find a way to love our enemies.  Since I know this is impossible with the Irish race, whose members will forget everything but their grudges, I instead propose something simpler and more concrete: Good Works.

Holy Mother Church has long provided a simple check-off list of Good Works that everyone should do.  As with so many things Holy Mother Church teaches, these don’t exactly work well in the context of college.  Hence I have taken the liberty of presenting a reinterpreted list of Good Works that all Irish students, alumni, and fans can undertake with a special emphasis on helping – not hating – the philistines folks of the SEC.

The Spiritual Works of Mercy, Collegiate Edition

Instruct the Ignorant: No, this is not a slight against SEC education (but really, your team’s score at the end of a game should not be higher than its graduation rate).  This means that we should spread the good news about the Fighting Irish, talented college students who take time out from attending class and studying to defeat teams from Dublin to Los Angeles.  These lads have worked hard and earned every victory; they have not preyed upon a roster of weak opponents or waited for lucky breaks.  Certainly fortune has favored them, just as it smiled upon Wellington at Waterloo.  For SEC fans: Wellington was the general who defeated Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo; Napoleon was the bad guy because…where to begin…  This isn’t the point.  The point is we have an inspiring story to tell about our team; let’s proclaim that instead of defaming the no-books club that we will face in the final game.

Counsel the Doubtful: Who didn’t doubt the Irish this season?  Aside from those of simple, unshakable faith, those with faith enough to make multiple mountainous goal-line stands, it was almost fashionable to have deep doubts about Notre Dame straight up to the latter minutes of the last game.  And that doubt persists, especially within the SEC where they seem to believe they play a longer, harder, more brutal version of American college football.  In the South games last days, touchdowns only count for 4 points and a team must score at least 112 to win while simultaneously preventing the opponent from gaining even one yard, and large blunt weapons are issued to all players.  They play 53 games a season (which would account for their graduation “success” rates).  Of course, this is a canard – as is the notion that all SEC teams are, by their nature, superior to teams in Oklahoma, California, Michigan, and Indiana.  Let there be no doubt that the Irish can meet, match, and supersede any SEC team on the field (and already have in the classroom).

Admonish Sinners: What a gift we have given to Rick Reilly.  No, not the VIP behind-the-scenes tour loyal fans would sacrifice a limb to enjoy; not the free publicity; and not the chance to make new friends and look magnanimous doing so.  We gave Reilly the opportunity to expiate his sins with hard work – frankly, the only hard work or honest job he’s done in decades.  We told him in no uncertain terms that he had unjustly slandered Notre Dame.  Then our lads proved it.  Then we let him lift the burden of his sins from his shoulders with a little elbow grease.  Across the country many who had been sternly advised that their words about the Irish were unfair have now been shown the error of their ways.  Do not fall into the trap, SEC fans, of ridiculing Notre Dame.  Consider yourselves warned.

Bear Wrongs Patiently: We did.  All season.  From everyone.  Patience is 12-0.  Just hold on for one more.

Forgive Offenses Willingly: Let us look to Lou Holtz as the paradigm of this virtue.  While most of the Irish faithful faced a general skepticism and a vague mockery, Professor Emeritus Holtz was scorned, derided, and taunted by his own co-workers, repeatedly and prominently.  He did not cower, nor carp, nor lash out.  The noble Holtz was given terrible offense, but he stayed true.  He even forgave gave that loutish May knave; and he gave him an opportunity to dress properly for once.

Comfort the Afflicted: Once again, we feel very sorry for the Big 10.  It will be all right.  You’ll pull through somehow.  Chin up and give us a smile – you just picked up two new mediocre-to-poor football teams.  Courage!

Pray for the Living and the Dead:  That’s what Sacred Heart and the Grotto are for, and every chapel in every dorm.  We pray for the lads on the team who are very much living a dream right now.  And we pray for those no longer with us.  Even whichever SEC team is left crumpled in a heap on the field in Miami come January 7.

EFS CSC

The post Good Fridays w/Padre: Mercy appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

The result: a 22-13 Irish victory to cap off an undefeated 2012 regular season and a berth in the BCS title game.

While the game was close, and many Irish fans were understandably nervous considering the stakes, Notre Dame flat out dominated Southern Cal. Just take a look at the below stats:

To add to that, Notre Dame once again finished the first quarter without allowing any TDs just as they have all season, becoming the only team in FBS to accomplish that feat in 2012. Further, Notre Dame came out and dominated the third quarter once again, allowing no points, and giving up only 24 total yards to the Trojans.

Theo Riddick, as he has done all season, led the Irish rushing attack with 146 yards on 20 carries (8.3 yards/carry). As if that wasn’t enough, Riddick also snagged 3 passes for 33 yards, giving him 179 total yards on the day.

Everett Golson had yet another solid performance. He didn’t burn up the stat sheet, going only 15-26 for 217 yards (8.3 yards/pass) and rushed for 47 yards on 9 carries (5.2 yards/carry). He had zero total TDs, but also had zero turnovers. As we’ve seen this season, if Golson does that, the Irish tend to win rather comfortably when all is said and done.

Especially when you have a defense like the Irish do.

In my preview of this matchup, if there was one thing I was worried about, it was Southern Cal’s potential for the big play. However, the Irish held the Trojans to only two gains of 20 yards or more: a 24 yard run by Silas Redd in the second quarter and a 53 yard bomb to Marquise Lee near the end of the game.

Neither of those drives resulted in a TD.

The Irish gave up only a FG after the big Redd run. After the Lee strike, the Irish had a goal line stand that can only be topped by what they did in OT to Stanford.

That stand started on the Irish’s 2 yard line with a false start pushing the Trojans back ot the 7. A Curtis McNeal rush put the Trojans on the 4 were they tried to throw two fade routes to Marquise Lee, each broken up by a defensive PI to save the TD. That put the Trojans on the 1 yard line, and four plays later, they failed to gain that single yard to make this a ball game again.

Included in that goal stand stand was a QB sneak in which USC attempted to “Bush Push” again. However, this time it failed, exorcising yet another demon of the past.

2012 has simply been a season in which we’ve seen just about everything go the Irish’s way. Brent Musburger went as far to call the Irish “destiny’s darlings”. And you might not blame him either, especially considering the goal line stand was capped off by a rushed pass that was dropped by the SC fullback and, in the Trojan drive prior, Lane Kiffin called a timeout right before a play that would have likely resulted in a TD (although Lee did drop that pass anyways).

However, I have a different reasoning than Brent: the Irish have created their own luck and we’ve seen it all season.

The Irish defense causes mistakes to be made, passes dropped, and coaches frantically calling timeouts when they shouldn’t. In previous years, the Irish would be the ones cracking under pressure — this year they are causing it.

Not only that, this defense has all the confidence in the world that they can stop anyone, especially when their opponent is right on the goal line. It’s why they have no problem purposefully committing defensive pass interference and daring the Trojans to run at them. It’s why Diaco can put Manti Te’o on Marquise Lee without blinking an eye.

Bottom line: it’s why this team is 12-0.

And speaking of Manti, he got his 7th interception and pushed his tackle total over 100. He may not have found the endzone this season, but I firmly believe he put a solid finishing touch on his Heisman campaign. As Brian Kelly put it:

If a guy like Manti Te’o isn’t going to win the Heisman, they should just make it an offensive award. Just give it to the offensive player every year and just cut to the chase. He is the backbone of a 12-0 football team that has proven itself each week. He showed it again tonight with a key interception and a great play in the end zone. If the Heisman Trophy is what it is, I don’t know how Manti Te’o is held out of that conversation.

I couldn’t agree more.

Now, we have over a month to let this sink in as we anxiously await for our shot at the BCS title. For now though enjoy the following moments of glory below and savor each one.

Rick Reilly needs to pay up (and as a former student manager, I must say, have fun with this!):

@ReillyRick ILL SEE YOU IN SOUTH BEND POLISHING OUR HELMETS!!! #EXTRASHINY

— Kapron Lewis-Moore (@KLM_89) November 25, 2012

Hopefully you will hold true to your promise @ReillyRick we will be working on the helmets early next week…see you soon!

— Ryan Grooms (@ryangrooms22) November 25, 2012

Mark May pays up…in a leprechaun suit:

Via

Lou’s troll game is oh so strong:

pic.twitter.com/F4WPpkCZ

— Lou Holtz (@ESPNDrLou) November 25, 2012

And finally, the best ICON ever:

See you in Miami.

The post Irish Defeat Trojans, Punch Ticket to South Beach appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Thanks to the good people at www.sportsmediawatch.com, we know that 2011 was pretty awful, from NBC’s perspective: a 2.1 rating for the USF game, 2.6 for Michigan State, 1.1 for Air Force and a 2.1 rating for USC. A 1.0 ratings point means, essentially, that one percent (1%) of the viewing population, in this case adults ages 18-49, tuned in. To put these numbers in perspective, this week’s Sunday Night Football broadcast on NBC drew a 14.1, which equates to over 22 million viewers. I am sure some of them stopped drooling over Faith Hill’s legs by kickoff. I am talking to you Grantland-X.

http://youtu.be/zNYAJB5Aybs

In any event, 2012 is a different thing altogether. First, though, a word about my research. I cannot find the ratings for the Navy game. If anyone can and they can post them in the comments, that’d be awesome. But here’s what I found: Notre Dame is playing with the boys in 2012. Compare the BYU game’s 2.7 rating (up 125% from last year’s fifth game) to other, “more relevant” schools: 3.3 for Florida versus South Carolina on CBS, 1.7 (a 1.7) (!) for Kansas State versus West Virginia and a 2.6 for Alabama versus Tennessee. What I like about this comparison, is that you’ve got cable (ESPN) and broadcast channels (FOX, CBS, ABC and NBC) in the mix.

http://youtu.be/AnEevNOpzg8

The Stanford game (a 3.3 rating) was second only to South Carolina against LSU on ESPN, which drew a 3.7 rating and a gator’s tooth under six million households. The Miami game drew only a 2.2 and was the second-least watched game in its time-slot. Still, again as the good people at sportsmediawatch.com point out, that’s a one hundred percent increase over last year’s third NBC game.

Michigan State was number one on ABC with a  3.3 rating on ABC and Michigan was numero uno on NBC, drawing a whopping 4.0 share. Please note that those are the only times Sparty and the Skunkbears will appear in the same sentence with “number one” this season. Very interestingly, the Michigan State game outdrew USC versus Stanford on Fox by almost an entire ratings point, 0.8.

http://youtu.be/1ileuNE9cdg

So it seems as though this little prong of Rick Reilly’s argument can be taken away. ND’s ratings aren’t just up this season, they’re doing really well — keep in mind (perspective) that at any given moment on a Saturday that there are 147 games to watch. ND’s ability to either dominate (MSU, Michigan) or show up strong (BYU, Stanford, Navy(????)) is still there, baby. 

Which leads me to Purdon’t. The singular blemish on the table is that giant morass of innanity called Purdue. NBC’s home opener, something you would expect could draw a few eye-balls, clearly did not comprehend or anticipate the shit-giving-suck that is Purdue. The Purdue game eeked out a 1.9 rating, or 2.8 million televisions. HLS pulls a 2.3 on a Thursday, brah. Okay, that part’s made up, but the rest of it is not. Purdue kills ratings.

So where do we go from here? Clearly a high 4.0 — Michigan and Alabama drew a 4.8 and it’s GameDay again (killing you, innit, Rick?) and the ESPN media machine’s going to do it’s thing, so I don’t think a 4.6 to 4.9 is out of the question. A 5.0 would make me really, really feel good. So would 8-0.

The post The Idiot Box: In Which We Prove (once again) Rick Reilly’s Idiocy AND That Purdue Is Boringness appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

According to those very numbers, which, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie, Notre Dame is the only program ranked in the Top 26 by AP, USA Today, ESPN.com and by the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate. Pedestal, please, Mr. Reilly. We deserve it. We’ll perch upon it as you watch us on television thanks to our gaudy contract with NBC or perhaps we’ll scoot it up to the BCS table while we plot another cycle of bowls and conference alignment.

You see, the NCAA tracks academic metrics on every school. One of those metrics is the Graduation Success Rate (GSR), a number that “takes first time full-time freshmen in a given cohort and only counts them as academic successes if they graduate from their institutions within a six year period.” The cohort (whatever the hell that means in this context) (again, Arts & Letters, here) as per the NCAA’s tables, comprises the years 2001-2004. With that out of the way, may I please present you Notre Dame’s 2012 schedule as arranged by opponent and their GSR:

Holy shattered academic illusions, Bat Man! Navy only graduates 91% of its football players in six years?!?! Actually, the percentages that surprised me were BYU at 59% (maybe it’s something to do with their mission year?) and Oklahoma at 48%. That’s a joke, right, Coach Stoops? You’re taking a page out of the ol’ Bearcats playbook, aren’t ye boy-o? Attention parents of recruits! YOU HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF GUESSING A COIN TOSS THAN YOU DO OF GRADUATING FROM OKLAHOMA. LSU, by the way, rates a respectable 77% – a percentage only made respectable by Oklahoma, Purdon’t’s 59% and Pitt’s 65%. Michigan’s in at 71%. Tee hee.

I may have been unfair to Oklahoma in comparing it to Cincinnati’s basketball program of old, which graduated 0% of its players at one point. But 48% is pretty poor. And since the 50-50 coin toss analogy above may have been perhaps too facile such that it lost its resonance, here’s one that you history buffs out there can explain to the masses: you stood a better chance of landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day and coming out unscathed (41% casualty rate) than you do of getting a degree from Oklahoma as a football player.

So, ND runs the table against its schedule, as far as GSR. But Ooooooh! Oooooooh! Bayou Irish! So what? Big deal! Open it up! Take it national! Where does ND stand against everyone else? Peep this, Loyal Readers:

Kudos to BC and the Middies for showing up, but, really? Until I started this project, I thought Furman was a muppet and I still don’t know what a “Wofford” is. Possibly where they did the Olympic cycling? Fr. Sorin, I am sure, is tickled (and possibly thereby making bagpipe sounds) at having TWO teams on the list, in a manner of speaking. But our football program is eighth out of 235 and has a higher GSR than Yale and Harvard. Think about that.

So, to return to Messrs. Reilly and Cowherd, ESPN ranks ND at 25. ESPN, for those of you living in compounds protected only by high walls and a complicit national intelligence service, pays Reilly and Cowherd, so there’s a no small amount of irony in that juxtaposition as they pocket their pieces of silver. USA Today ranks ND at 24 and AP has us just outside the top 25 with 83 votes.

SO FIND ME ANOTHER TEAM RANKED IN THE TOP 26 ACROSS ALL THE POLLS! Unless and until everyone goes full North Carolina and just stops making football players go to class at all, let’s not so readily dismiss the “student-” part of “student-athlete.” It’s beyond grotesque to lump ND, or any school for that matter, in with Penn State, as Reilly did, and equate the covering up of child molestation with a mediocre run of football. Sticking to the football part of that effrontery, Biscuit dismantled the idea that a team cannot recover from a run like ours, for starters. So, there’s that.

And there’s also this: what I am going to call the NFL Success Rate (NSR). How many Irish players got drafted last year? Four. That’s right, four. In the middle (or maybe it’s the end?) of all this suck, we produced one more draft pick than U$C and Michigan and the same number as Stanford. And what school has had the most players picked overall? Not Notre Dame. Notre Dame is in second with 471, behind USC, with 480. In third place is Ohio State with 404. Not a bad NSR.

So after all these years of desert wandering, we’re still putting out draft picks with the best of them PLUS we’re graduating 97% of our players. I like that. I’ll like it more if we’re 4-0 after the Michigan game. And I’ll like it most if we’re playing for the MNC soon. What’ll RickCowherd say then?

The post Davidson College Ranks Ahead of The Irish: GSR or a Sick Rick Reilly Fantasy? appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Of course, ESPN gave him a 5 year contract worth $17 million so they will continue to put his work on the front page even though it is a weak shell of its former self. Okay, okay – let’s get all the Notre Dame/NBC to Reilly/ESPN comparisons out of the way here. Done? Great.

My bone to pick with Reilly is mainly that of an amateur writer who can’t stand people who make arguments that are built by wordsmithing while lacking material support, and I usually keep my frustration that he is so revered and prominently published to myself. When he made his attack on Notre Dame yesterday, though, I decided it was time to look a little more deeply into his most recent story.

I’ll start by giving him credit for the good points he made:

1)      He discusses Notre Dame not using any timeouts on USC’s last possession in 2011. I was also bothered by this. The people in front of me in Notre Dame Stadium with children that had to hear the language I was using were bothered even more.

2)      There is no #2.

And now with the rest. I’ll go through section by section:

I once loved Notre Dame football.

My dad went to Notre Dame and flunked out and I still loved Notre Dame football. I loved Lindsey Nelson telling me “neither team advanced the ball so we move to further action in the fourth quarter” while my mom was yelling, “Get ready for mass!”

But I grew up.

Ah yes, the perfect way to set up the straw man argument. “My viewpoint is completely unbiased because I used to be a fan, so if I don’t like them anymore there must be something really wrong.”

By the way, since the only real issues you bring up in the rest of the article are about the team’s performance, we can only assume that you are a fair-weathered fan…a frontrunner who has given up on the Irish for being 24 years removed from a national title. Fine. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Rick.

If I told you about a team that had lost 10 of its last 12 bowl games, had dropped nine of its last 10 to USC, had led the nation only in disappointment, you’d figure that team would be halfway down the Mountain West standings. But Notre Dame still gets perks and love from the NCAA and BCS as though the year is 1946.

I’m declaring an end to all that.

Actually, TCU (who he’ll go on to compare the Irish to in just a bit) would have been halfway down the Mountain West Conference most of the time since Notre Dame last won a national title if they had joined the conference before 2005. In fact, from 1988 through 2000 TCU was 69-77-1. From 1988 through 2011, TCU had a winning percentage of .626. Notre Dame had a winning percentage of .663 over the same period against much tougher competition.

I’m not trying to discredit the Horned Frogs (love watching them play), but to show that you, Rick, may actually want to do some real research instead of just cherry picking statistics.

On top of that, what if I told you about a team that only won 3 out of 9 bowl games, had dropped 11 in a row to Notre Dame, and typically didn’t come close to filling the stands for their its home games? Would you think I was talking about a Mountain West Conference team? Because I’d be talking about 1993 USC.

In Europe, if you play too much bad soccer for too many years, you get “relegated” to a lower division, moved down, demoted. It just happened to the Blackburn Rovers.

It needs to happen to Notre Dame football.

Actually, Rick, in the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A and German Bundisliga if you play too much bad soccer for ONE year you get relegated to a lower division (the bottom 3 teams are relegated). Thanks for the Blackburn Rovers reference, though – I’m sure you’re watching pleeeenty of European soccer while you’re not on the golf course. Although, if you had taken some time to do the slightest bit of research, you might have found that Leeds United – one of the top 10 most popular teams in England – could have been an extremely effective comparison as they went from a Champions League semifinal in 2001 all the way down to the third tier of English soccer and have yet to climb their way back to the top. Just sayin’.

If Notre Dame isn’t a factor this season — and it hasn’t been a factor in almost 20 years — it’s time to take it down a literal peg.

By its historical standards, Notre Dame has clearly not been its strongest over the past 20 years. No one is going to argue that. But not a factor? Do you remember when the Irish went into their final game against USC in 2006 with an outside shot at a national championship birth? Do you remember the 3 BCS bowls?

They have certainly not been as strong as Oklahoma or USC in the 2000’s or as strong as Florida State in the 1990’s, but saying the Irish haven’t been a factor in 20 years is a lazy, wrong, and sad attempt to throw out sweeping statements that will get uneducated fans (that you should be educating, Rick) to agree with you.

We can’t demote Notre Dame from its conference — since it is far too noble to belong to any piddling conference — but we can demote it in stature.

Please find me a cave to run and hide in when Rick Reilly is the new dictator of the sporting world.

In short, until Notre Dame football starts winning again, it’s Rice to me.

That hurts your feelings? Watch “Rudy” ’til you feel better.

At least you can recognize that “Rudy” is a good film. By the way, while ND’s winning percentage the last 20 years has been .630, the Rice Owls have put up a winning percentage of 0.421 playing in the Southwest Conference, the WAC, and Conference USA. Again, this is an incredibly half-assed attempt at diminishing how the Irish have performed by trying to equate them to a small team with a small fan base without any reasonable basis.

Can you explain to me how a team that hasn’t won a national championship since 1988, a Heisman since 1987, or more than eight games its last five seasons still gets treated like the 1967 Green Bay Packers?

I’m really curious how you settled on the 1967 Green Bay Packers as your comparison, Rick. Did you know the Packers lost to the lowly Vikings (3-8-3 record in ’67) and Steelers (4-9-1) that year? Ew! Tulsa!

See, Rick? I can cherry pick stats too.

Notre Dame has won 86 games since the turn of this century. Oregon has won 111 games since then. TCU has won 119. Boise State has won 136. Do they have their own TV deals?

Somebody needs to stick a pin in the still-inflated Golden Dome. Look, the ACC wants Notre Dame. Would die to have it. But word is, Notre Dame won’t go if it has to share TV and gate revenue with the rest of the conference, like everybody else. The Irish people love to share. The Irish athletic department? Not so much.

No, those teams don’t have their own TV deals. Notre Dame has its own TV deal because there are a LOT of Notre Dame fans, and a LOT of other people who will still turn on the game. I’m sorry that you have apparently given up on the Irish after 53 years of fandom because they haven’t won a championship in a while, but there are millions of people who haven’t that still like to turn on NBC on Saturdays.

By the way, since you probably didn’t actually research the economics of the NBC deal, Rick (lazy….again), you can check out what I wrote about them here: NBC Deal Money Not a Differentiator 

If college football won’t put its foot down and force Notre Dame to join a conference — as every other sport at Notre Dame has — then the least it can do is stop paying it a bowl bonus of $1.3 million when it DOESN’T go to a bowl game. That’s right: Notre Dame gets a $1.3 million bowl bonus simply for dressing up the stupid leprechaun.

Say it with me now, everyone: lazy. Rick, did you bother to research the fact that the BCS conferences other than the Big 12 split their BCS bowl money evenly among the conference members? In fact, in years where Notre Dame doesn’t go to a bowl game, the school would typically be better off financially if it was in a conference getting a bigger piece of the BCS pie.

I hear what the Domers are saying. They’re saying, “Notre Dame doesn’t have to be in a conference. Notre Dame is unlike any other football power. Notre Dame is a national brand.

Sure, and girls are still wearing leg warmers.

Straw man into leg warmers. Ah, leg warmers – a classic Reilly comparison. I’m sure you stayed up all night thinking of that one. Let’s throw in tie dye shirts and bell-bottoms too.

Notre Dame is not a national brand any more than USC, Alabama or Stanford. A national brand? What would its slogan be, “Dominating Navy just about every year”? What kind of national brand loses to freaking Tulsa (2010)?

Stanford is a national brand? They kind of (actually finishing #2 in the AP poll before defeating Nebraska) won a national championship for the last time in 1940, and won their sole Heisman in 1970. Considering they weren’t even selling out their home games with Andrew Luck at the helm, I would hardly use them as an example of a national brand.

Also, Tulsa was 10-3 in 2010 – since you ignored strength of schedule entirely anyway, I’m going to blindly throw out that USC was only 8-5 in 2010. Boom.

Oh, and Alabama lost to Louisiana-Monroe in Nick Saban’s first year. What kind of national brand loses to freaking Louisiana-Monroe (2007), Rick?

Please, NCAA and BCS, stop leaping to attention every time caller ID says it’s Notre Dame. The Irish haven’t finished in the top 20 in any poll in five years. They can leave a message.

Hey – you might have done some research to figure that one out…yay.

When did I quit on Notre Dame? When it quit on itself.

You are not royalty anymore, Notre Dame. Turn in your tiara.

Yawn. He is really getting into these one-liners against ND. Don’t worry, he’ll have one more to finish off in style.

When your NBC contract expires in 2015, do the right thing and don’t renew. Lower some expectations until you can turn this thing around. And you’re a Mars Rover trip from turning it around.

Your ESPN contract expires in 2013. Please do the right thing and don’t renew. By the way, since I’m guessing you didn’t look it up, the recent Mars Curiosity trip from Earth to Mars took a little bit less than 8.5 months. If that’s how far Notre Dame is from turning it around, you should probably hop back on the bandwagon.

And with Kelly throwing the QB job up for grabs again, instead of just handing it to Tommy Rees once his one-game suspension is up, this season looks like 6-5 to me, with Ls to Michigan State, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh and you don’t even want to know what USC will do to the Irish in the Coliseum. Cue the DentDoctor.com Bowl.

Now things are just getting out of hand. My brain is starting to hurt. But now it’s clear: Rick hasn’t actually paid attention to college football since 2005, the year before the NCAA allowed a 12 game season. The season looks like 6-5? The Irish play 12 games!! Also, who at ESPN is letting this mistake slip through the cracks? [Update: ESPN edited the article to say 7-5 about 24 hours after it was published]

Somebody needs to make Notre Dame play by the same rules as everybody else. If there’s anything we’ve learned from the Penn State mess, it’s that nobody gets to live on a pedestal anymore.

You’re really taking it to a new level here, Rick. I couldn’t think of a classier way to finish off your pathetic argument than to compare Notre Dame’s on the field performance over the past 20 years to the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Bravo.

You flunked, Notre Dame. Go back a grade.

You are apparently desperate to get hits on your articles, Rick. Please go back to writing real stories with real substance and real research – the ones that made me such a big fan of yours before I grew up.

The post Rick Reilly is Lazy and Wrong appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.