*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.