Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/542018
son. That's an unneeded distraction. However, at the conclusion of a 7-5 Fighting Irish regular season, Swarbrick raised some eyebrows when he told Notre Dame's student newspaper that despite a fourth sea- son in five years under Kelly where Notre Dame lost at least four games, the Irish head coach was on "a very cold seat." To many long-time followers, that was interpreted as a sign of how much the program has dropped. In the "good-old days," three-loss seasons for 1975-80 head coach Dan Devine were grounds for dismissal — never mind the "disastrous" 7-4 campaign in 1979. Swarbrick said his statement about Kelly's cold seat is based on a host of issues. "The problem with measuring it as narrowly as what your won-loss re- cord is you get false positives and false negatives," said Swarbrick, noting that the 12-0 regular season in 2012 had some blessed bounces that the two more recent seasons didn't. "I'm con- cerned with the state of the program. I'm concerned with its durability. Are all of the elements there? If they are, we're going to be fine. "The notion that someone who has appeared in the national champion- ship game as recently as we have is somehow on the hot seat is crazy. How No 13th Football Game In The Works In the near future, Notre Dame's football team would love to deal with the potential "problem" of hav- ing an 11-1 regular season record and sweating out whether it will make the four-team playoff. Although it is a partial member of the Atlantic Coast Conference in football, Notre Dame does not play a 13th game for a league championship like the Big Ten, SEC, Pac 12 and ACC, among others. The Big XII, with only 10 actual teams, doesn't have a 13th game either. The league's lack of a confer- ence championship game appeared to cost 11-1 TCU a shot at the playoff last year. Ohio State's 59-0 shel- lacking of Wisconsin in the Big 10 title game made it 12-1, trumping TCU's case even though the Horned Frogs were ranked higher the week prior. Fighting Irish vice president and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick has received all kinds of friendly advice on adding a 13th game to avoid such a situation if it were to occur, including facing the Big XII winner the first week of December. For now, Notre Dame will remain status quo with 12 games. The data points from 2014 are too small to draw conclusions. In future years, a conference championship game could actually hurt a playoff con- tender (i.e. unbeaten Kansas State in 1998 losing to Texas A&M in the Big XII title game). "You can't infer anything from a one-year experience with the College Football Playoff," Swarbrick said. "I'm obviously pretty close to that and what's going on there. After several years, we may get a read on the significance of that. "In a year in which we are perceived as comparable to another school, and they play a conference cham- pionship game and we don't, that will be our disadvantage, and we understand that. That is a trade-off we are prepared to make right now. "There is no 13th game solution available — nor will there be. It doesn't work. You can't structure one that works." — Lou Somogyi