Notre Dame's 2010 Schedule

Michigan will finish in the top 25 this year.

Book it.

The only good thing about this schedule is that it sets up ND to get slaughtered by a superior opponent in a BCS bowl again.

Fixed that for you.

To Hell with Notre Dame

Get Lou Holtz on the phone so he can use this info when he projects who will be in the BCS Championship Game!

ND is going to have trouble with Utah.

Not a killer slate. Loses: MSU, Pitt, USC, Utah, Stanford and, hopefully, Michigan

we shall see, though.

Love the talk about these teams, its better than discussing a bleacher report post, thats for sure.

To reprise an MM discussion with Irish from Sunday night, this is a typical ND schedule.  It has two games that would be tough for a truly elite team and a bunch of games that look good on the computer and to fans but should be winnable if they are as good as they were under Lou Holtz. 

I love the current BT setup and have advocated only one tough non-conference game because of the current MNC game qualifications, but ND has even an easier path than the Big Ten champion does. 

Under the usual Big Ten model, PSU, OSU, and UM should be elite, with the Wiscys and Iowas of the world threatening to break through but never really sustaining elite performance over an extended period of time.  So, usually, there should be two tough games in the Big Ten for a team that is good enough to play for the MNC (remember, this means one of the legit top eight or so teams in the country) and one tough non-conference game; that means they have three playoff-level games to get there. 

ND has two games on that level most years: UM and USC.  They occasionally add another tough game, but the "tough" games on their schedule are really the equivalent of playing Wiscy or Iowa in a typical year: teams good enough to give them a good game, but not quite good enough to beat a championship-caliber team. 

So, anyway, this schedule is perfect for ND right now.  If they become an elite team again and beat both UM and USC, they will probably get to the MNC game. They aren't ready yet and should lose quite a few of those games that will become autowins as they get better, but they are positioned nicely if Kelly can do what everyone expects him to do in a year or two. 

Before I get too carried away, though, I am hoping they don't beat Michigan again for a long time.

FYI Navy chooses to play its home games in NJ from time to time, so I don't think that's considered a neutral site game.

Also they've got Utah at home at the end of the year. Utah has been just plain good the last few years. That should be a fun game to watch.

In terms of likliehood to end up in the final top 25 I'd say

USC, Pitt, Utah and maybe Stanford. Honestly no idea where we fit in there.

on air when he picks ND to the title game again in a few months. At least our guy on Gameday is not homer like Herbie and Lou. I would rather have Mark May beat down on my team when they are bad and tell the truth as Dr. Lou is taking too many pills before he goes on the air.

ND is not going to beat Stanford,Pitt, MSU or USC this year. They will win 7-8 games this year tops. I really think we beat them as well by a few scores as they are going to struggle with the spread I think for the first few games not like us but we are in much better shape now.

I'm not willing to concede the USC game as a loss for ND.  I have way more confidence in Brian Kelly's ability to prepare his team over the course of this year than Lane's ability to do so with USC.

Looking at non BCS v. BCS games is too simplistic.  Utah and Navy are tough games. 

Don't we have this same talk about how easy their schedule is every year but they always seem to end up 6-6 anyways.

The only games on the schedule I see as  easy wins are Army, Tulsa, and Western Michigan. 

It's not an extremely difficult schedule, but it's not really that easy, either.  There are a bunch of games that could go either way.  ND will be a prohibitive favorite in only around four of them.

 was just taking a look at ND's schedule for this fall, and it's about as easy as they could ask for.  

I think I may remember saying the exact same thing this time a year ago.

And two years ago, come to think of it.

What seems  to be lost in all this Bryan Kelly hype is the fact that ND has lost a lot personnel-wise, and I thought they looked slow and sloppy in their spring game.  I think they're going to be much worse than people think.  Not 3-8 bad, but not anywhere near a BCS bowl, that's just crazy talk.

Don't most BCS Conference teams schedule at least 3 non-BCS conference opponents?  This will be the first time in the RR era that we don't have 3.  I usually don't have a problem with ND's schedule, facing Blue and USC every year, along with middle level BCS teams like Pitt, MSU, Purdue and then the service acadamies and 1 or 2 patsies.  This year seems exceptionally weak for them (but not anymore so than MSU's schedule this year).

I want to put a thread mocking both this tread and the Michigan schedule thread, say with Western Warhington's schedule, but at least this thread went to discuss something that won't be discussed ad nausem later. Do I care? Not really. Do I want to see the schedule break down for every team that's loosely related to Michigan or good enough that enough people would be interested? Not really.

Not reall.

Tulsa shows up when it comes to the big games, most of the time.  They lost by one to #15 Houston, and lost by one score to #5 Boise State.  And that was a junior heavy team which didn't have a lot of losses, I doubt it will be an easy game when they roll into town.

Stanford could take the pac10 next year, the same for Pitt with the BigEast.  USC definitely has the talent to win a lot of games next season but that is no guarantee.  BC is never an easy game for ND, I don't care what their record is or how they project on paper they will play over their heads especially at home.  Last year a UM fan told me purdue was a cupcake and ND sucked because they didn't destroy them, I warned him he would be in for a surprise when UM played them, though I am happy ND plays them early.

You guys complained about ND's schedule last year as being extremely weak and they ended up playing 9 bowl teams if I remember right, which seems counter intuitive to me.  If you're not taking the schedule order into account you're not weighing the difficulty of NDs schedule correctly to begin with.  Purdue, UM, @MSU, Stanford, BC, and @Pitt give me one big ten team that starts out of the gate like that, maybe PSU?  Now look at the offenses ND will need to defend, a passing spread, a running spread, power run, prostyle run, and 2 prostyle pass teams.  It won't be as much of a cake walk as you think.

in 2005, when ND had one of the harder schedules in recent memory. they played 6 teams in the preseason top 25, including 4 of the top 6. granted that schedule didn't turn out to be as hard as advertised, with only 3 remaining in the top 25 at the end of the year, but nevertheless. you would think that as long as they're remaining independent, they would play a more high-profile schedule. i understand playing a weaker schedule allows them for more wins (which is really all that matters), but those wins don't come with national respect, which they have lost a lot of in recent years. 

They may not have that many true away games, but the first 6 games on their schedule are all teams that they could theoretically lose to: Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, Stanford, Boston College, and Pittsburgh.

They don't play a "should win" game until week 7 against Western Michigan. 

Kelly has got his work cut out for him in year 1.

:cough:

http://blog.philsteele.com/2010/06/07/2010s-toughest-schedules/