I know. Being the second-ranked football team this week would make us all feel a lot more comfortable about our chances of making the inaugural edition of the College Football Playoffs. We are one silly offensive pass interference away from "hosting" a first round playoff matchup. Now that we're all done throwing our remotes, replacing our flat screens, and replenishing our liquor cabinets, it's time to look at the playoff picture. The whole picture. We don't know what exactly the 12-person ...
SEC
Friday Roundup: The “Something I’ve Never Had” Edition
In the fall of 1993, at just eight years old, my football obsession started in earnest. However, the college game remained off the radar. Like most kids in the DFW area, I lived and breathed Cowboys football. My grandfather, father, and uncle worked as ball boys on the Texas Stadium sidelines for years. Sundays were for football. That isn't to say the occasional college game would come on the family TV on Saturdays, but it certainly wasn't a priority and I most certainly never understood the ...
Notre Dame’s Playoff Chances Better Than You Think
The top four or five teams seem fairly set for now. In the only poll that matters, The TCB Poll, Oregon, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Florida State (and throw in Texas A&M as the surefire next-team-in) have solidified their positions, but seemingly by default. For the first time in recent seasons, there seems to be a complete lack of dominance at the top of the rankings. In years past, there have always been one or two teams that went out and completely demolished their opponents week after ...
Notre Dame’s Strength of Schedule Visualized
Strength of schedule is by far one of our favorite topics to discuss here at HLS. With conference's becoming more insular in their scheduling, the need to trumpet the gauntlet of a schedule that Notre Dame plays in becomes incredibly important to break the conference narrative. Enter Brian Freamau, member of the advanced statistics site, Football Outsiders, who came up with the efficiency rating, FEI, that is an essential competent of the F/+ rating, which is another favorite of ours to use ...
Bad Boys, Bad Boys: Looking at Crime by College and Conference in the NFL
http://youtu.be/MFuH6XaKCD8 The Aaron Hernandez horror show got a lot of people talking about crime in the NFL. Again. Here, here, or here, they're talking about a "culture of crime." Even EA Sports has weighed in on the topic, in its own fashion, by removing Hernandez from its Madden NFL 25 and NCAA Football 14 video games. In this week's post, I wanted to look at the colleges and conferences contributing the most to the crime problem. Here's how I went about it: 1.) I mined the singular ...
Friday Roundup: The “Dark and Stormy Night” Edition
Happy summer, loyal reader. Here in the Crescent City, the twenty-first day of June is not celebrated, or even noticed much. We don't pay the passing of spring into summer too much mind, to be honest. Instead, we mark the other seasons: crab, shrimp, oyster, crawfish, Mardi Gras, and hurricane. We're in hurricane season now. The crabs are running, there's plenty of shrimp, and the oysters are just fine, thanks, but while sucking them down, we're watching for whatever invest or low or trough they ...
Friday Roundup: The “It’s All Gravy” Edition
Ah, the jumbotron -- that offseason topic that fires up the Notre Dame fanbase like no other. The outrage and hot takes ranks somewhere right above Shamrock Series uniforms and right below re-gilding the Dome with platinum*. Bayou gave his thoughts earlier this week and I've made my thoughts on tradition and change well known in the past. This Roundup will not re-hash those thoughts. Instead, I wanted to pass along some sage advice my pastor gave to myself and my future bride last weekend: ...
Martin, Irish Chocolate and Lagniappe
In New Orleans, a little something extra is called lagniappe. As you've no doubt heard by now, the Fighting Irish got quite a good deal of lagniappe (about 630 pounds of it) on Monday when Coach Kelly announced that Zack Martin (OL) and Louis Nix III (NG) would be staying with the program next season. That these two young men would decide to forego NFL millions speaks volumes to the program's trajectory and to their personal goals. And while it's too easy to harken back to Tyler Eifert's or Mati ...
It’s Official: Notre Dame and Alabama in BCS Title Game
In perhaps EPSN's most anti-climatic BCS reveal show ever, Notre Dame and Alabama received their official invites to the BCS National Title game. At HLS, this now means we start the process of breaking down as much Alabama information as possible for the next month as well as bracing for some newfound SEC visitors that happen to stumble upon us. For now though, less enjoy some reactions from Brian Kelly and the players in celebration of this great moment. ...
The Myth of the SEC
The SEC is home to the last six BCS National Titles and they will have a shot to make it seven in January. They are home to some of the best teams that college football has to offer. Their style of play is the standard to which the rest of college football is measured in this era. Make no mistake, the SEC is good; however, like some good things, their actual excellence is oversold, over-hyped, and grown into a myth of epic proportions. ...