We’re at that time (already) in the college football offseason when an editor has to start kicking around some new ideas for the site. Sometimes, you just have to fall back on an old idea, throw in a twist, and call it a day.
We have only so many stories about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish to tell each week, so these daily links will cover a broader range of stories involving college sports. Monday through Friday, you’ll get those links from myself and the rest of the editorial staff. Each gets their own special day. Mine is today... welcome to the beginning of your week.
Angry Child Gets No Recess
There is no doubt that poor officiating gets a bright light shown on it every week of the football season. Officials screw up all the time. With those mistakes comes the wrath of head coaches. Notre Dame fans are no stranger to witnessing these blow-ups by the coach, but perhaps they are ignorant to the widespread foolishness throughout the country.
CBS Sports writer Jon Solomon sheds some light on the topic and talks about why more college football coaches aren’t ejected, and how that may change in 2017.
Think about it for a minute. College basketball coaches are ejected all the time. Last year, ZERO coaches on the FBS level were thrown out of a game.
One of the gems in the article involves the ACC:
“The ACC has more coaches than anybody else that are a problem,” one official said.
I think we can all figure out why.
Should college football coaches be ejected for throwing temper tantrums on the sidelines- like their basketball counterparts?
— One Foot Down (@OneFootDown) February 20, 2017
Target This
Irish fans are no strangers to the inequities of the targeting rules in college football. Over the last several years, it feels like Notre Dame has been on the wrong end of a targeting call or no-call an inordinate amount of times.
It appears that more changes to the rule may be underway this year.
There should ABSOLUTELY be a targeting rule, but the way its enforced can be so uneven and so extreme that it undermines the game it is supposed to protect.
Two Decades of WTF
There are all sorts of ranking out there, and the Massey Ratings are one of them. Over the course of 20 years, it shows the top 10 programs in the country. SURPRISE... Notre Dame is not one of them.
Best 20-year average Massey Consensus ranking:
— Brian Fremeau (@bcfremeau) February 19, 2017
1.Ohio St
2.FSU
3.Oklahoma
4.Florida
5.LSU
6.Georgia
7.USC
8.Oregon
9.Alabama
10.Va Tech
Notre Dame Football Czar Notes: Improve on this rating for the next 20 years. Please.
How Good Is The Roster?
Despite not being in the top 10 as a program over the past 20 years, Notre Dame is tied for 8th heading into the 2017 season as far as their roster quality is concerned. This ranking is based of of the recruiting rankings for each player.
If you think Notre Dame has underachieved these past few years, fans of the LSU Tigers probably have a bigger bone to pick. (Looking at you Les Miles cravers).
Don’t Pay To Play
The head coaches for the Penn State Nittany Lions, Arkansas Razorbacks, and Eastern Michigan Eagles (James Franklin, Bret Bilema, and Chris Creighton) are pleading to recruits and their parents to not pay recruiting services to help them get recruited. The coaches also suggest that they don’t care about a player’s star rating. I don’t really believe Franklin- but that’s not the point.
The point is that they don’t want these families to fork over money to someone just to get a recruit looked at by a school. They really can do that themselves and with their high school coaches. The college coaches say to “let us pay for that.” Yeah, just ask Chip Kelly and the Oregon Ducks.