Top 25, Top 20?

[Irish Man3]

if we play clean football...we hang in there pretty tight with a lot of those teams. we can beat 2 of the top 5 teams and 17 of the rest. they'd be tight games, but i think we could be competitive.
1 LSU 9-0
2 Oklahoma State 9-0
3 Alabama 8-1
4 Stanford 9-0
5 Boise State 8-0
6 Oklahoma 8-1
7 Oregon 8-1
8 Arkansas 8-1
9 Clemson 8-1
10 Virginia Tech 8-1
11 Houston 9-0
12 Penn State 8-1
13 South Carolina 7-2
14 Kansas State 7-2
15 Georgia 7-2
16 Texas 6-2
17 Michigan State 7-2
18 Wisconsin 7-2
19 Nebraska 7-2
20 Auburn 6-3
21 Georgia Tech 7-2
22 Southern Miss 8-1
23 Cincinnati 7-1
24 Michigan 7-2
25 Baylor 5-3

What?!?

What top 5 teams could the Irish beat?

 

[phork]

What do you consider close? How about Stanford -13? If ND covers I'll gladly take your vBucks.

-13 is not close.

Whoa now, I'm pretty sure he was offering them up to me if ND kept it close. Yes, I will take them if game stays close. By the way, I am making no claim that we will make a BCS game. With 3 losses, we have not put ourselves in a position to do so. Love the direction we're headed however. Go Irish.

Give me a spread then, and as above -13 is not close.

if we play clean football...we hang in there pretty tight with a lot of those teams. we can beat 2 of the top 5 teams and 17 of the rest. they'd be tight games, but i think we could be competitive.

Somehow missed this gem. Are you freaking high?

 

[UmphreakDomer]

What?!?

What top 5 teams could the Irish beat?

number one this is from this past weeks polls, but i believe we can beat stanford and boise st.

 

[UmphreakDomer]

-13 is not close.



Give me a spread then, and as above -13 is not close.



Somehow missed this gem. Are you freaking high?

nope. i think we play as well as we have been. we can be competitive with everyone but a small handful of SEC teams and oregon.

 

[phork]

nope. i think we play as well as we have been. we can be competitive with everyone but a small handful of SEC teams and oregon.

Not sure how you derive this, is it the transitive theory oh so popular in college football? If so, USC fist humped us, Stanford fist humped USC, ergo we get double fisted at Stanford. The reality is that we just don't have some kind of level of athlete, or perhaps the training or God knows what. If the Stanford game is close I'll go ahead and eat my hat.

 

[t3hjc]

Triple overtime loss = fist-humping?

 

[johnnykillz]

Not sure how you derive this, is it the transitive theory oh so popular in college football? If so, USC fist humped us, Stanford fist humped USC, ergo we get double fisted at Stanford. The reality is that we just don't have some kind of level of athlete, or perhaps the training or God knows what. If the Stanford game is close I'll go ahead and eat my hat.

We have the potential to beat good teams.

Playing up to our potential is the key.

If Stanford plays their "A" game, and we play ours, we win.

It has to be our "A" game.

Luck is special.

Maybe Elway special.

 

[phork]

Triple overtime loss = fist-humping?

Wrong choice of words there. We don't have enough gas in the tank to go 4 quarters with Stanford.

We have the potential to beat good teams.

Playing up to our potential is the key.

If Stanford plays their "A" game, and we play ours, we win.

It has to be our "A" game.

Luck is special.

Maybe Elway special.

I don't think Stanford is the greatest, but they are better than us. I am still waiting to see our "A" game, don't think it will be on the road @ Palo Alto with nothing for us to play for. We are just waiting for our Champs Sports opponent now.

 

[BeatSC]

The following teams can either wind up with 3-4 losses when you include the conference championship games they play in:

Florida St
Penn St
Mich
USC
Nebraska
Kansas St.
Wisconsin
South Carolina
Georgia
Mich St.
Virg Tech
Clemson
Ark

This is 13 different teams. Let's just day that 9 fall out of the way. Tat makes it pretty close for us toget to 14. D we leap frog a loss Stanford if we beat them? I don't know if any of these teams will have a more signature win in the next 2 weeks to rank ahead of ND with 3 losses and a win against Stanford. None of our loses were embarrassing and we are clearly better than USF and UM.

Beat BC and then reclaim national respect with a Stanford beat down.

 

[DillonHall]

Here's what I think will happen:

Florida State: I think they'll probably finish ahead of us (they can't play in the ACC Championship game, and they should win out against UVA and Florida)
Penn St: We'll probably finish ahead of them (they'll stumble the rest of the year)
Michigan: Toss up (two big games left vs. Nebraska and Ohio State)
USC: They're ineligible for the BCS and the Pac-12 Championship game
Nebraska: We'll see after this weekend when they play Michigan
Kansas St.: Even if they lose to Texas but beat Iowa St, they'll finish ahead of us. There's no Big 12 championship game.
Wisconsin: Will play Michigan State in Big 10 championship game
South Carolina: Ahead of us as long as they beat the Citadel
Georgia: ahead of us if they beat UK and Georgia tech. Toss up if they lose to Georgia Tech and LSU
Michigan St- ahead of us if they win out in regular season- Indiana and Northwester (so likely)- won't matter if they lose championship game
Virginia Tech and Clemson- ahead of us barring major regular season upsets
Arkansas- ahead of us if they beat Mississippi State

So I don't see too many teams that we could jump- optimistically 4-5

 

[BeatSC]

Top 20?

Top 20?

After what I think was out worst game of the season can we still crack the top 20? Stannford looks beatable (so do we) but they kept a sh-tty Clemson team in the top 10 alongwith a Ark and SC team that are squeaking out wins against Vandy and Navy etc. Here's who should drop beind us and we should have a few more to come next Sunday. This is all about getting into a BCS game and hitting #14 in the standings.

-Teams we sould jum this week:
- Florida St.
- Southern Miss
- Nebraska
- Texas
- Auburn
- Baylor will more than likely jump us.

This should put us around 21-22

Next week the following shoudl occur.....maybe:

UM loses or at least gets beat in a B10 Playoff
Penn State of Wisconin loses
Baylor can lose to TT
Kansas St can lose to Iowa St but a strecth
Clemson or South Carolina will wind up wtih 3 losses or more
Georgia could lose to G-tech and/or SEC title game
Could jump TCU based on a Stanford win and they aren't really playing anybody.

Looks like we could wind up just missing out at around 17. How about that, preseason rank was 17 and there we are. We win our bowl game after that and we could actually sneak into the top 10. I think we got the preseason nod of 17 because the pollsters thought Dayne Crist would be our QB. Would be interesting to look at the stats of Kelly's QBs at Cincy and Central Mich.

 

[Irish2015]

BCS should have us at 23 this week. Not improbably to make a late season surge to 14 but 15 or 16 is much more likely. A lot is going to depend on if the ACC/BIG 10 teams manage to lose.

 

[IrishLax]

Nebraska ahead of us in coaches poll...... how? Two 30+ point losses. WVU same deal.... they have one less win and have been completely unimpressive this year. Their biggest win is over Cinci... with a 26 point loss to SYRACUSE, 26 point loss to LSU, and loss to Louisville. They move up after having a bye week.

Clearly, we needed to beat Boston College by more than we did.

 

[Irish2015]

is that official? if so where are you seeing it?

 

[DillonHall]

is that official? if so where are you seeing it?

I just googled it.

 

[Irish2015]

Coaches Poll has us at 24. LSU is No. 1, Arkansas and Va. Tech enter top five - USATODAY.com

AP has us at 22. Twitter

 

[phork]

I dont get the coaches voting VT ahead of Stanford... Its nice that Stanford is so high though, can't wait until we beat them and slide into BCS#14 and make it to a BCS game.

 

[irishff1014]

I dont get the coaches voting VT ahead of Stanford... Its nice that Stanford is so high though, can't wait until we beat them and slide into BCS#14 and make it to a BCS game.

I don't think alot of people will ever quit dreaming. Even if we do will we won't make it to the 14th ranked team in the nation.

 

[JadeBrecks]

We can beat Stanford but we will need a flawless game. Going to be hard to do!

We play the crap we did yesterday we will be slaughtered!

 

[irishfan]

We play the crap we did yesterday we will be slaughtered!

Agreed. Only positive is that we haven't put together two sloppy performances in a row all year. (USF/Mich were such weird games I'm just not counting them) We came back strong after Pitt, USC, and Wake.

 

[NDinL.A.]

I don't think alot of people will ever quit dreaming. Even if we do will we won't make it to the 14th ranked team in the nation.

He's being sarcastic. Phork thinks we're gonna get smoked by 40 against Stanford and gives us zero chance.

 

[aubeirish]

I don't think alot of people will ever quit dreaming. Even if we do will we won't make it to the 14th ranked team in the nation.

We might not be right after we beat them, but by the end of the season there is a chance... Very slim though.

 

[irishfan]

College Football Rankings - CBSSports.com

CBS has us projected for #22 in the BCS. I don't think its entirely inconceivable for us to jump 8 spots with a win over Stanford who will be at the worst #6 in the BCS. We would most likely jump at least 3-4 teams if not more for beating Stanford, and there are still a lot of tough games for teams ranked ahead of us. 2/3 of PSU/WiskyMSU will lose before the year is over. Clemson/South Carolina are playing soon. Georgia still has to play GT and then the SEC Champ Game.

Of course the most important thing is taking care of business against Stanford, but I don't think we're entirely out BCS consideration yet.

 

[phork]

College Football Rankings - CBSSports.com

CBS has us projected for #22 in the BCS. I don't think its entirely inconceivable for us to jump 8 spots with a win over Stanford who will be at the worst #6 in the BCS. We would most likely jump at least 3-4 teams if not more for beating Stanford, and there are still a lot of tough games for teams ranked ahead of us. 2/3 of PSU/WiskyMSU will lose before the year is over. Clemson/South Carolina are playing soon. Georgia still has to play GT and then the SEC Champ Game.

Of course the most important thing is taking care of business against Stanford, but I don't think we're entirely out BCS consideration yet.

Come on man.

 

[irishfan]

Come on man.

Haha well its not like its inconceivable for us to go from 22 to 14 by the end of the year if we beat a top 5 team. I'm not saying we will, we're going to have to play close to perfect just to hang in there with Stanford, but I wasn't exactly impressed by the them last night.

 

[irishfan]

#23 in the Harris Poll.

2011 NCAA College Football Polls and Rankings for Week 13 - ESPN

 

[bjohnmwc]

Gotta be honest. ND just beat BC by 2 points, and the game was far from flawless from the Irish perspective. Better bring the "A" game vs. Stanford. And even then...

 

[irishfan]

22 in the BCS. Just released.

 

[Irish2015]

Still got a chance!

 

[DillonHall]

Still got a chance!

Like the optimism, let's take care of business against Stanford.