Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com OCT. 17, 2020 5 FAN FORUM Entering last Saturday's contest with Florida State, Notre Dame's 26-game winning streak against unranked foes was second to Alabama's 92 (dating back to 2007) and the second-longest in school history. This month the Irish were on track to eclipse the school-record 29 from 1990-94. The response to that potential achievement was both lauded but also tepid among our BlueandGold.com subscribers. Here's a small sample: Kwsusmc: The 26-game win streak is greatly underappreciated. The amount of Power 5 teams Notre Dame plays each year, which has been nine to 10 per year and zero FCS teams, wears a team down. Not to mention the extensive traveling the Irish do per year. Every year the Irish play on both coasts. Not many teams do this. UndIrish3: The traveling part is a terrible excuse that gets brought up by posters when we lose. Sitting on a plane wears a team out? That's a bunch of bologna. I do agree that playing 12 FBS teams is just as good as Bama playing 13 games with one or two FCS opponents, if not better. I just hope we join the ACC full time. Vonteego: As someone who has traveled in pro sports for decades, I say you are completely underestimating travel as a road team. These are young men trying to attend a top-20 university, which actually has real academic standards. To think that flying around for half a schedule and then arriving back at 3 a.m. on most Sundays while some of the "top 10" teams rarely travel or mostly take short bus rides, and not thinking there is a difference, is a completely clueless take. Crable43: Bowling Green, New Mexico are head knockers? BC, Duke, Lou- isville and VT are tough? Do those teams have more talent than ND? Outside 2017, when ND played 5-6 teams that finished in the top 25, Kelly's schedule is the easiest of any other Notre Dame coach. Notre Dame has played four teams that finished in the top 10 in the last 4 years. Lou Holtz beat four teams that finished in the top 10 in one year. That team also finished with a 100 percent graduation rate. Kelly is a good coach and has done some good things, but his schedules are not close to what Dan Devine, Gerry Faust or Lou Holtz had. Even Ty Willingham and Bob Davie had harder schedules. Those guys also had to play with real student-athletes. Tommy 1380: And during Brian Kelly's time, our two biggest rivals have had seven head coaches. Don't get me wrong, the schedule is solid, but he's been quite fortunate that they've been down. IrishImpact: Embarrassing that we're proud enough to actually start a thread on this. BGIUser2232: It takes a certain level of mental toughness to sustain a streak like that because no team, however talented, is going to come into each game emotionally loaded for bear. Meanwhile, when you're Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State or ND, you are The Game for many opponents. Ask Urban Meyer how easy it is to win every game when you're a big favorite against weaker opponents. UDPride: ND's biggest problem over the years was consistently playing down to the level of inferior competition. The number of losses piled up against teams that had no business beating Notre Dame: Syracuse, Tulsa, Navy, South Florida, UConn, Northwestern, BC, Purdue, USAFA. The last 25 years had so many dogs, it was hard to keep count. You've got to get your program to a point where you stop gifting results away to teams with far less talent. Only then can you start honestly looking to head-hunt the big dogs of college football. Remains to be seen if we can take another step and do the latter. FALL, FOOTBALL, AND FIGHTING IRISH FROM THE WEBSITE JOIN THE CONVERSATION AT BLUEANDGOLD.COM! GET A 60-DAY FREE TRIAL WITH CODE IRISH60 .com .com