Blue & Gold Illustrated: 2012 Notre Dame Football Preview
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BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2018 FOOTBALL PREVIEW ✦ 33 for the most part a national title contender this decade. • The Nov. 17 trip to Yankee Sta- dium now comes the week before returning to the West Coast at USC — after already traveling to Cali- fornia four weeks earlier. The bright spots were the game in New York would not be at night, avoiding another early morning re- turn home to campus, and at least the game would not be played indoors against Syracuse's high- tempo offense (which upset No. 2 Clemson last year in the Carrier Dome). • Count on the USC Trojans (Nov. 24) to seek some vengeance in the Los Angeles Coliseum after last year's 49-14 destruction by the Irish. The venue has traditionally been a House of Horrors for Notre Dame. It's not necessarily about the opposition, but also the frequent flier miles that ultimately might lead to the team wearing down. November And The Cumulative Effect Lately, the Notre Dame football schedules have not been so much about the opposition being flat out better. Even in 2017, despite the 4-8 record from 2016, Notre Dame was favored in every regular-season game. When the preseason No. 10-ranked Irish of 2016 finished 4-8, the schedule was ranked only 80th by the NCAA — and included setbacks at home to 3-9 Michigan State, 4-8 Duke and a Stanford team that had lost the two previous weeks by 44-6 and 42-16 mar- gins. The Irish also fell to a Texas team that finished under .500 (and was starting a fresh- man quarterback in the first game), versus Navy and to a six-loss NC State team. The fascinating dynamic that occurs with football schedules is they are generally re- ferred to as "tough" by apologists to jus- tify when the team does not do well, or can be ridiculed as "playing nobody" by critics when a squad thrives against its opposition. Or as former Notre Dame head coach Lou Holtz (1986-96) com- mented prior to the 1988 national title campaign, "the schedule wouldn't look so difficult if we were better." Over the past five years (2013-17), Notre Dame is 29-10 (.744 winning percentage) entering the month of November — and 9-12 (.429) in No- vember. When teams need to make their College Football Playoff push in the final month, the Fighting Irish have floundered, including hard-fought wins over 3-9 Wake Forest and Boston College teams in 2015 that dropped them from No. 4 to No. 6 in the CFP rankings. What has led to this problem? One theory blames the cumulative or residual effect of a season, including sacrificing a home game to play the Shamrock Series. Another is not playing enough "gimmes" in between. For example, Alabama this year barely has to travel out of its own provin- cial Southeast Conference area, and has Ar- kansas State (Sept. 8), Louisiana-Lafayette (Sept. 29) and The Citadel (Nov. 17) strategi- cally interspersed. Notre Dame in recent years has done well at mapping out its bye week right in NCAA Strength Of Schedule Rankings Under Brian Kelly Year NCAA Ranking Opp. Record* ND Record 2017 No. 3 97-63 (.647) 10-3 2016 No. 80 66-65 (.504) 4-8 2015 No. 26 85-62 (.578) 10-3 2014 No. 34 80-63 (.559) 8-5 2013 No. 23 86-63 (.577) 9-4 2012 No. 4 89-56 (.630) 12-1 2011 No. 32 78-63 (.553) 8-5 2010 No. 4 90-52 (.634) 8-5 * Wins by opponents against FCS opponents are not included To balance the schedule some, Notre Dame is facing opponents from the Mid-American Conference more regularly. The Irish defeated Miami (Ohio) 52-17 last year, and faces Ball State this year, Bowling Green in 2019, Western Michigan in 2020 and Toledo in 2021. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA