The rest of our schedule and the rest of Notre Dame's schedule.

from what I've seen. For instance, Phil Steele had ND as the #14 toughest schedule and UM was #17. By win percentage, ND had the #6 toughest schedule. Both of these were before the start of the season.

While I love to watch our ND friends suffer from losses, I can't say that I share the sentiment that they don't play tough teams this year.

They, along with Nebraska, only tried to join the Big Ten on about five different occasions, only to be turned away each time. I can see where an argument could have been made for the continuous votes against NU due to geographical disparity and their applications came at a time when trains were used as the normal mode of transportation for then "lengthy" trips. This, coupled with NU's admissions standards and university ranking not being on par with the rest of the conference made this decision understandable.

However, ND has always been a first class university and its location makes it the only logical conference to consider joining. The reason against their continued rejections for admission was probably more political in nature, given the fact their admission standards would have been the most stringent in the conference, along with their reputation as an outstanding university.

There was a lot of animosity toward ND due to Rockne basically creating the AP NC system on the heels of a ND undefeated season and having them declared NC the very first year the system was put in place. The continued unfair voting practices displayed by the writers in regard to NC votes, Heisman winners, AAs, etc., did not play well, so the reasoning of conference members is somewhat understandable. They may be able to lay claim to producing the most Heisman winners, but along with that comes the indisputable realization they have also produced the highest number of undeserving winners. To say the writers flagrant display of favortism toward ND caused a lot of dislike toward them by a large number of conference members is a significant understatement.

Conference members somehow failed to realize allowing ND's admission into the conference would have basically eliminated such practice by the writers based on nothing more than ND being forced to win the conference championship before becoming eligible for all the post season honors.

But looking at it through the eyes of ND, this continued rejection did them no favors in terms of travel budget etc., so it was definitely a two-way street.  And their popularity on the national level just continued to increase and the numerous rejections by the Big X actually helped place them in a position to cut their sweet "all ours" Television deal.

Let's face it, we're only going to be rejected by the same girl so many times prior to moving on to those more receptive. So when history of continued rejection is added to the above together with the inarguable increased parity in college football as displayed by the likes of Boise State, UT and many others, ND's s reluctance to forego its lucrative independent status becomes more and more understandable. It's all about the dead presidents' today.

I'm surprised to hear that Nebraska's worried about us. Granted, they had a slow start today against Washington, but nobody slow-plays the 1st half on offense AND defense like we do! Here's hoping their fear is warranted :-).

You work for UnderArmor

themselves if Navy is a gimme

It's a sliding scale. "Mistake free" in 2011 ND terms means 3 turnovers and a minus 1 turnover margin. 

Honestly the B1G has lost its mojo since 2006. 2009 was a great year, with four 10-win teams and all of them winning their bowl games. But otherwise, we've been more often a two-team-league - Ohio and someone else. This year, we look like Wisconsin - and they've yet to play a real game.

It goes both ways, too - remember that SDSU's coach, Rocky Long, was the D coordinator and saw Al Borges' offense every day in practice. 

Amen!

My signature used to say "If Ohio State played Nazi Germany, I would root for Nazi Germany." -my uncle but one guy got mad about it and it created a shit storm.

This is so wrong!  After all, ND may play tsio sometime!

BC is turrible. Did you see them today? Pioneer could beat them.

They also have given up 24 points to a bad Washington State team.

Exactly.

The defense will be better, but they won't be good until a they have a couple years of improved coaching and recruiting.

Heck let's be honest the D couldn't stop anyone for anything last year.  The fact they held EMU to 3 points is encouraging to me.  Recall we couldn't even slow down Massachusetts.  At least this year we stopped someone we should have.

Hoke & Co. want to run a more pro style offense but it's obvious that Denard is not used to running this offense after 2 years of the spread.   At least Borges has kept the main parts of that offense intact, loved seeing the fake Denard / throw to Dileo play today.   I missed that play.  

this was not exactly a pretty 31-3 game. Robinson needs some quick improvement in the passing game. I think our defense is capitalizing on their given opportunities, hopefully this continues. I say 8-4. maybe 9-3. nw is no cupcake.

but going 7-5 means that we beat the teams we should definitely beat (SDSU, Minnesota, Purdue) and go 1-4 the rest of the schedule.  The Big 10 looks horrible this year, as we are now someone in that group is going to get Denarded, someone is going to get RPS'd by Mattison.  8 wins seam much more likely than 7, 9 isn't that unreasonable (add Northwestern, Iowa and one more to get to 9).

edit: More reason for optimism; the D's going to look better once Hagerup comes back and the oponents stop playing on short fields