Quote:

Jim Jackson said:
OK, pardon me, but I'm going to gloat a little.

Anointed Genius Coach Charlie Weis and his Fighting Irish suffered a humiliating defeat yesterday, at home, in Weis' second season on campus.

Jim Tressel's Buckeyes did not lose a game in Tress's second season in Columbus. And Jim inherited a team that was 6-6 in 1999 and 8-4 in 2000. Furthermore, Tress's first Buckeyes team finished 7-5. And Tress inherited Craig Krenzel, a good guy, a smart guy, but one whom no one would mistake for Brady Quinn. So don't say "Wait, Tress had great players and Weis has shit scrubs to work with."

Admittedly, the current season isn't over yet, but it will take a lot of work for Weis' Irish to rebound into title contention and it will remain true that Tress and the Buckeyes won a national championship in Tress's second year. It's far more likely that Weis won't be able to say the same thing about his second year at South Bend that Tressel can say about his second year in Columbus.



I didn't, nor would I, describe Tressel or Weiss's players like that(although, I've never thought Brady Quinn was terrific; I think he's a system quarterback).

I've already said this several times, but you don't seem to quite get it, so I'll say it once more. I never argued who was the better coach, nor did I argue who had the better chance at a national championship this year. In both cases, I said Tressel. The actual debate was over which looked better on a resume, three Super Bowl rings(yes, Jim, as an assistant), or a national championship and a couple of division II titles.

Now, the season is hardly over for Notre Dame. Even if they lose to USC at the end of the year, a 10-2 record will get them a BCS bowl. If they run the table and beat USC, they'll have a pretty good shot at the national championship game.

The SEC teams tend to beat up on each other, so although they're by far the best conference in college football, it seems unlikely they'll produce an undefeated. The Big 12 is a sad shell of what it used to be, and all of their big teams have lost already(Texas, Texas Tech, Nebraska, OU). The ACC is similarly poor.

Which means, hypothetically, if Ohio State goes undefeated, and Notre Dame wins the rest of the way(meaning USC will have lost), there will only be two teams that would realistically stand in their way. One of the two Big East giants of Louisville and West Virginia, and TCU, who already won their biggest challenge of the year and look to have a fairly clear path towards perfection. Alex Smith's undefeated Utah team kind of proved that nobody's going to give the Mountain West Conference much respect in National Championship consideration, so depending on what happens in the Big East, Notre Dame still has a realistic shot at the big game, despite their implosion against Michigan.

MisterJLA is RACKing awesome.