CanadianCowboysFan said:
Notre Dame is guaranteed at least 3 calls going its way when it plays at home. Hell, they even get the calls on the road.
Their schedule is so "brutal" yet how many of the teams they play will be top 15 at the end of the season? Maybe Michigan, USC and maybe Penn State. No one else.
Then again someone has to play the academies and Stanford.
OK, I'm going to take the bait and try to have a serious discussion about this. Not sure you can do it with the obvious hatred you have towards ND, but I'll give it a try. I don't know who said ND had the toughest schedule in the country last year or this year, but I agree, it's not.
Half of ND's schedule is pretty much the same from year to year. They always play Michigan, Michigan St., Purdue, USC, Navy and Stanford. They don't always play Air Force and Army and in the past few years they've sprinkled in Pittsburgh(who they always used to play), Tennessee, Penn St., Washington, BYU, Syracuse, Florida St, used to play Boston College (and usually get beat)always, they played Maryland, Washington St., West Virginia, even Nebraska. My point being is that these scheules are completed and negotiated on years before they actually play. They have teams already tenatively scheduled out as far as 2016. Who knows if any of those programs will be any good? Who knows if Michigan or Michigan St. are going to be having good years? Who knew Tennessee was not going to be that good the last few years? When ND scheduled them their program was top 5 just about every year, but by the time the games actually rolled around, Tennessee was having a few down years. Back in the late 80's to late 90's USC was not very good and I know ND beat them a ton. USC was a weak link on the schedule back then, eventhough it was a rivalry game. Now USC is good again and that's a very tough game and Davie and Willingham got blown out by USC on more than one occasion. Back when Holtz was there they scheduled Miami and Florida St. in some great games. We do play some bad teams every year, but we don't schedule North Texas or The Citadel and so on. I do agree with you that this years schedule is not that tough. Their first 4 games I think were/are tough games with @ Ga Tech, Penn St., Michigan and @ Michigan St. After that I don't see many close games at all until the last game at USC. Very difficult for any team to run the table and ND would have to get some breaks to accomplish that feat.
