Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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T land in the middle of national cham- pionship chatter, the annual injustice that is the Bowl Championship Series is finally hitting close to home. Many "experts" suggest even if As our beloved Irish unexpectedly Notre Dame wins out and finishes the regular season 12-0, its BCS profile won't be strong enough to earn a place in the title game without myriad help from other contenders. And in the event the Irish stumble Since head coach Brian Kelly and strength and conditioning director Paul Longo (above) teamed up at Central Michigan in 2004, their teams are 45-5 when taking a lead into the fourth quarter. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA to one regular-season loss, is there any hope of a place in the championship game if the other unbeatens also fall? Since 2006, four Southeastern Con- such as margin of victory, voting al- legiances and style points. Because of schedule strength, Notre ference teams got a mulligan and a title shot, including Alabama last sea- son. SEC stalwart LSU lost to both Kentucky and Arkansas in 2007, then parlayed its mulligan and a foot-wedge into a national title — with two losses. For quick background, three com- ponents are weighted equally and blended to compile rankings for BCS worthiness. The three are the USA To- day coaches poll, the Harris interactive college football poll, and the average ranking from six different computer calculations. The computer rankings add criteria such as schedule strength and wins over top-25 teams to the win-loss re- cord, setting aside subjective factors o borrow an old Irish quip, "This deal is fouled up like Hogan's goat." A Longo Way To Recovery UPON FURTHER REVIEW TODD D. BURLAGE Dame has been at or near the top of each of these impartial computer rank- ings — and typically ranked higher than Alabama — since the first BCS poll was released Oct. 14. Heading into the Pittsburgh weekend, Notre Dame rated first in four of the six com- puter polls. man polls emphasize blowouts and the "eye test" when rating teams, devaluing Notre Dame's gutsy wins against Purdue, Stanford, Michigan and BYU — all of which somehow became "overrated" opponents after Irish victories. The best evidence of a flawed BCS And that's the point of the story. Perhaps unintentionally, the two hu- comes almost every year from the Southeastern Conference. The perpet-