Orange you glad you're not Syracuse?

Yes, very light posting this week. My Mom taught me that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I figured that rule applied after the Navy game.

The Irish actually did some nice things against Navy, especially on defense. But for me, all the good was washed out by the way in the Coach Weis and the team nearly gave the game away at the end. Let's just hope that Charlie learned a valuable lesson from that experience. It's a 60-minute game. I'm, sure he and the rest of the coaching staff constantly preach to the team about playing hard for a full 60 minutes. Maybe now Coach Weis will realize that as head coach he needs to coach hard for the full game, and not take his foot off the gas with a 20-point lead. A 20 point lead, as we learned last Saturday, can be erased in just 3 fluke plays. I know Coach Weis wants to respect the service academies when we play them and not run up the score. But 20 points is not running it up. 30 points is not running it up. Over 40 may be running it up. Those midshipmen and cadets are not going to quit! They are serious about playing a full 60 minutes and trying to beat you. Respect them Charlie, but leave NO DOUBT about the fact that Notre Dame is (or should be) in an entirely different class of football programs. Those games should not be close either in reality or in perception.

Syracuse comes to town today. This just in: They're not very good at 2-8 and are 20-point underdogs to the Irish, and their coach Greg Robinson is a terminated lame duck. But Notre Dame better not look past them. The Orange has played the 28th toughest schedule in the country (compared to #40 for ND), and one of their two wins came over Louisville (28-21). They haven't won many games, but they haven't been blown out much either. Be sure that they will come into South Bend looking to prove something on national T.V. And the brisk weather in Michiana won't bother the team from upstate New York much - they're used to worse.

But it's Senior Day at Notre Dame Stadium for the newly Bowl Eligible Fighting Irish, and I expect all the players to play hard in front of the home crowd for the departing upperclassmen. It will be cold (forecast high is 31 degrees) so I don't expect anything fancy from either team. Should be a smash-mouth, ball control game - which favors the Irish. What we should see is a relatively vanilla display of dominance by the Irish, and hopefully no on-side kicks by the Orange.