Much love to the men's basketball team for playing their hearts out. Great game and I can't wait to see what we look like next year with some big guys in the middle.

Don't forget to cheer on hockey as they take on ND for the CCHA championship!

GO BLUE!

*warning, mild profanity* (won't someone think of the children??)

I'm having flashbacks. I seem to remember just before last year when everyone and their brother was predicting a BCS bowl run for Louisville. And why not??? They had a heisman trophy candidate at QB. Lots of starters returning. Talented recruits were coming in. Oh sure, they lost their coach, but Louisville was a rock of consistency among the mid majors, so there wouldn't be much drop off. RIGHT?

check out CFN's preview for their 2007 season.

http://cfn.scout.com/2/639933.html

The key passage:

"The season will be a
success if
... Louisville goes back to the BCS. 11-1 is also a good goal to shoot
for with an upset to prevent a 9-0 start before dealing with West
Virginia, South Florida and Rutgers. As long as Brohm is healthy and
winging, the offense will be among the best in America. The defense
won’t miss a beat under Kragthorpe and should be among the best in the
Big East. It’s all there for another Big East title, and maybe more."

I mean, they play in the big east, against a bunch of weak teams. They should be favored in most of those games. Right?? How much can losing a coach REALLY matter?

Okay, so most of you know that it mattered a lot. The defense was one of the worst ever, and the team stumbled to 6-6. So why bring this up now? Is it because this year the pundits are making more realistic 7-5ish predictions? Not really. No, this is about West Virginia.

West M'Fing Vahjinya!

So you might have heard that WVU lost its head coach. You might also be aware that it lost 6 other assistant coaches and the entire Strength and Conditioning staff. Now, I'm sure that the people hired to replace them are all fine men and great football coaches, considering I don't know who the fuck any of them are. But I think the mere fact that most of them have never worked together before would make the pundits pause a bit before... are you ready for this... RANKING THEM #6! Which is exactly what the NYtimes did. That's right, the same "rock of journalistic integrity" that said Michigan was #48 this year put WVU a full 2 spots ahead of the rest of the LOLMSM and the coaches who don't bother (for lack of time) to watch film on anyone they're not playing.

The Gray Lady, the self styled 'paper of record' thinks WVU is 42 spots ahead of Michigan this year. And yet I think if the two were to play Michigan would win by about 42 points. Not necessarily because WVU is all that bad, but I've watched John Gruden utterly destroy a far more talented Raiders team because he knew all their weaknesses. But, but, but, . . .

But they play in the big east, against a bunch of weak teams. They should be favored in most of those games. They've got a Heisman candidate at QB. They've got great talent coming in! Losing their head coach shouldn't matter that much? Right?

The parallels are just too many. The one saving grace for WVU is that they had a much better D than UL, and they managed to keep their DC. (oh yeah, and their special teams coach, HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAH). But anyone predicting more than 8 wins for them is stepping out on a long branch, (on a tree that hasn't seen much rain thanks to global warming).

The nytimes says that their worst case scenario is 9-3. I guess that works if you can count losses to colorado, Rutgers, Auburn, Cincinnati, Pitt, and south Florida as 3 losses.

And then there's notre lame

What exactly can we use for a comparison? I mean, how often has a 10-2 team turned into a 3-9 team? How many BCS teams (even if they didn't deserve going to the BCS) turned into un-coalesced shit the next year? The kind of shit you get the next morning when you mix kimchee with tequila. (trust me, don't do it) We're talking about one of the worst offenses in history. IN HISTORY. But at least they've got a lot of starters returning, especially from the WORST OFFENSIVE LINE IN HISTORY. I'm sure they're much better now.

And it's not like they can use Louisville's excuse about a coaching change. This was Charlie Weis in his third year. With 3/5 of the team being his recruits. Now the team is 4/5 his recruits, minus the 20 or so players who transferred in mid season. (LOLMSM: "but michigan had 2 players transfer in the offseason during a coaching change, let's freakout about THAT!")

The NYtimes kind of throws their hands up on this one. They predict anywhere from 3-9 to 10-2. Bold predictions there. Hey, why not just predict 0-12 to 12-0?!? at least then you'd be 100% right. But it's better than CFN which hasn't put up a prediction yet, (4 days before the start of the season). *bunchafuckinggutlessfuckingretardedmoronsdon'tfuckingknowanythingaboutfuckinfootballfgmmngfmfdmm*

The funniest prediction came from cheese slice-I mean charlie weis, (sorry freudian slip) himself. He's predicting at least 9 wins. BWAHAHahahahahahAHAHHAHAHAahahahahAHAHAH!!!!!!

And other racist bastards- I mean notre dame fans, such as Beano 'the hutt' Cook, Lou 'sssthsssthssp' Holtz, and our friendly forum trolls (mostly on mlive, not so bad around here) are making similar, if slightly less insane statements.

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. The best parallel I could find was 1999 penn state went 10-3 and then the next year bombed out at 5-7. There was no coaching change. This was all Joe Pa's work. in 2001 they 'rebounded' to 5-6. They had to replace the 'irreplaceable' kevin thompson with rashard casey. Chafie Fields was replaced by Eddie drummond, yadda yadda, (it's college, you're ALWAYS replacing more than 1/5 of your team.) And eric mccoo was replaced by, oh yeah, eric mccoo. But at least in 2001 they benefited from from all that playing time... oh wait.

The one thing that ND has over that 2001 penn state team is that they're not starting a new QB for the third straight year. Unless Charlie Weis pulls a charlie weis and starts dayne crist causing Casey- I mean Jimmy - I mean Rick, no wait, I do mean Jimmy, JIMMAH! Clausen to transfer to Tennessee after the 2nd game.

But, But, But, The Schedule! It's sooo much easier. Right? Because airforce and navy were such recruiting juggernauts...

But, but, but. They play stanford. That's an autowin right? Stanford, a team that nearly beat them last year, beat USC, and isn't coached by the ugliest narcissist in the world. Someone explain to me the logic behind the idea that ND will improve a lot from year 3 to year 4 of weis, but stanford won't improve much from year 1 to year 2 of harbaugh when stanford has already improved by leaps and bounds from year 0 to year 1 of harbaugh.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, if you guys can find good examples of teams falling off the BCS wagon into a bowl-less season and managed to get back up to snuff the next year without a coaching change...I'd be willing to listen.

But to me, it seems like 'one hit wonders' tend to only go in the positive direction. An 'out of nowhere' bowl run followed by a return to mediocrity is more likely than a winning team tanking it and then getting right back on the horse the next year.

Just to finish that penn state analogy, in 2002 Larry johnson in his third year of active duty and Zack mills in his 2nd led them to a 9-4 record (so some faint hope for ND) but then johnson left and mills couldn't do it by himself as they fell to 3-9 and 4-7 the next two years.

Of course the situations aren't exactly the same, I'm predicting 6 wins for ND, but 3-9 would make me happy. and then I could write a lot of 'told you so' posts like I did this year for predicting an irish 0-8 start last year. (damn you UCLA and your 5th string quarterback)

BUT WHAT ABOUT US?

By now, any racist bastards - i mean ND and WVU fans, reading this are probably saying to themselves, 'so what? your team is going to suck!' to which I reply: No, we won't.

And even if we do, we are being predicted to suck by the LOLMSM. And this post is about unrealistically high predictions. So it doesn't matter.

Yes our O-line is scary, and not in the good way. And I'm confident in saying that if we have any more injuries up front we could easily go 4-8. But rather than write all the arguments again, I'll just point you to my previous post on that subject.

http://mgoblog.com/diaries/prepare-eat-these-words

Thank you and goodnight.

dude, #39

THAT'S A GIRL!

#43 looks like he hasn't hit puberty yet,

and of course there's cheese slice looking pregnant 

Aside from the just plain stupid things they write, and their terrible grammar, and their lack of a spell checker, CFN just makes me shake my head and cross my eyes with most of their material.  

Right now they've got a roundtable discussion going on with such luminaries Dennis Dodd and Teddy Greenstein.  I don't even know who Teddy Greenstein is.  And Dennis Dodd is the stupidest sportswriter to ever pick up a pen.  

Meanwhile they've got matt zemek and dick criminal having a competition on who can be the most worthless writer ever.  At least that Peter fiutak guy is funny once in a while, but since it seems he never passed 3rd grade english, you can't be sure if its intentional.  Seriously, the dude leaves out words in the middle of sentences, uses the exact opposite word of what he means, and has no command over simple words such as "a, the, and, but, to, with, etc., etc. "  I can't count the number of times I've been reading one of his COW's but stopped halfway when I just got sick of the grammar mistakes.  

And then there's the flawed logic.  They've got a ND preview up saying the line should be much improved with an extra year of experience.  Right, sure.  Because 4 years of experience for Sullivan and John Carlson and a year for Sam Young going into last year helped them become soooooo much better. If they're still being coached by the same morons who turned them into the worst offensive line EVAR, then I'm going to guess it won't matter who is playing QB, just like it didn't matter last year.  

They say that Clausen will be better because he's healthy.  So I guess that means that Weis would rather lose games with an unhealthy QB so that he can get experience while at the same time exposing him to possible further injury or complications to the unhealed one because he had an eye towards the future??!?! 

So let me jump on their tails and make a stupid prediction too.  I predict that Charlie Weis will pull a Charlie Weis.  He'll forget to teach the line how to block, Clausen will suck, and Weis will pull him in favor of the hot new recruit.  Clausen will throw a tantrum, transfer in the middle of the season to Tennessee, where he and Mallet can finish out their rivalry in the SEC.  

http://www.blueandgold.com/content/?aid=5560

Weis is predicting 9 to 12 wins. HAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAHHAHHHHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

"Weis proved during his time in the NFL and during his first two years at Notre Dame that he’s not stupid"
HAAHHAHAHHHHahahahhahahHahahhaaAHAHA~!$!

"Last season’s debacle was almost assuredly not borne from complete coaching ineptitude" BWAHAHAHAHAHDASHF!!@%!@#$%!HAHAHAHAHHAHAH!$!!%#$

"The only regular-season game in which Notre Dame figures to be a serious underdog is the finale at USC, so Weis could conceivably have an 11-0 team heading out there if everything comes together."

BWAHAHDHHAHAHAHHH1418357019351 4!#$^^#%^$*&@^#%^&(&%@#@#%^*@%#%@$&*^% AHAHAHAHHhahahah~~!#$!ahahhahahAHAHHAHAHHAHAH!$!1`!!!!T5!!TITS

STOP IT! YOU'RE KILLING ME! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!HAhahah!!!!HAHAhahah !!1lolololololololLOLOLO!!!!!1LOLO!Lololol!!!1

2006 with setup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DBHpUFUg5s

2007 WH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF8z_gb-BxA

2006 WH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKTVXP_nXFM

2003 WH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yLnzdpZI1k

Brady Quinn for heisman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6M9fIincgM

Jimmah! for heisman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLOtDB1SzSA

1991 WH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKiPyC5uXws

1999 WH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42fJeXq1mp4

and apparently I need twenty five words, I guess links don't count as words?  What makes a word?  Is an initial a word?  I think the 25 word minimum is crap.  Can we make it 10 or 15?