All this proves is that the pre-season rankings are pure opinion & should be altered to be fair to teams (like Auburn in '04) who begin the season unranked but even though they're one of the top teams in the nation, they end up w/ too much ground to make up & thus never reach the BCS championship game. Some say rankings shouldn't begin anywhere from the 3rd to 6th week of the season. Luckily, for ND, when they are underrated, the pollsters are pretty good about elevating them quickly when they start reeling off unexpected victories (proves that when ND is doing well it bodes well for all of college f'ball). 2005 was a perfect example of that & it probably also lead to overrated expectations going into 2006. We Irish faithful knew deep down that ND's defense would most likely be their Achilles heel & that they weren't quite up to NC caliber. We just didn't expect the O-line to regress as well.
I remember before the '05 season all the talk from the "experts" was that ND would be lucky to go into the USC game w/ one win & most (incl. Mark May & Lee Corso) picked them to be winless going into USC. They went on about the schedule being too tough a gauntlett to run, especially for a new coach w/ an inconsistent QB & questionable skill players. Funny how things changed when they started winning. "Oh, their schedule is cupcake...they haven't beaten anybody". Well you can't have it both ways, so ditch the preseason rankings & let the teams decide on the field where they're ranked. If memory serves (& if it doesn't I'm sure some of you nags will correct me...BTW: try Paxil), ND's victory over some of the teams they played kept that opponent from being bowl eligible (like Tennessee & Stanford). It's still mediocrity, but nontheless, it doesn't keep other teams from bragging how 3/4 of the teams they played went to a bowl in a given year.
Is it ND's fault that Michigan mailed it in w/ virtually the same talent they had the year before ('04) & the year after('06)? Is it ND's fault that Ainge regressed w/o the tutelage of a more talented OC/QB coach than Randy Sanders, even though the defense was stout for most of the season? Purdue had virtually every starter on both sides of the ball return...they were even a sexy pick as a darkhorse for a national championship b/c they didn't have OSU or Michigan on their schedule. Was it ND's fault they underachieved?
My point is that w/ the advance scheduling all you can do is choose quality programs w/ an impressive tradition/track record year in & year out & in most cases ND's schedule will be rated as one of the toughest in the nation. Ask any top caliber team if they want to play Michigan, Penn State & Michigan State back to back to back every year. More times than not, it'll be hard for any team to sweep those games. Living in SEC land, I can tell you that they all love to take credit for beating a team where they were currently ranked vs. end of season ranking. Why? My guess is the press puts a few too many SEC teams in the top 5 or picks the wrong SEC teams that will be deserving of that ranking. There's little doubt that Auburn was continuing to get more love than deserved this past season due to the guilt from the pollsters over their screwing a few yrs back.
