Don, that was a great effort by Ohio State. Battling the #1 team to the final seconds without your top 2 running backs and wideouts and your starting TE was a pretty impressive display of fortitude and pride.
I’ve seen 3 games over the last two days that were absolutely incredible start to finish!! Time for this old man to get some sleep. Happy New Year Everyone!!
You would be hard pressed find two better games than we saw yesterday. Stroud played the game of his life. He really set himself up well for the NFL showing that kind of mobility for the first time.
IMO, the Heisman Trophy went to the wrong guy Not the first time they made the mistake. Won't be the last.
There is no doubt, maybe for the first time that the absolute correct Final Four teams made the playoffs.
Yesterday was one of the best days of college football. I'm wondering about the 12 team playoff format. As we saw yesterday, injuries are a big part of playoff football. The teams getting a bye will have a big advantage and the teams with depth will be in much better position to get to the championship game. As Stu said Ruggles would have been much more comfortable with 5 yds. less. The running play before the FG was not very aggressive. Stroud looked really good under relentless Dawg pressure.
Injuries are always a big part of football. Playoffs or not. Depth is too. I wonder what the format.will be for.the 12 team playoff?
The format that I heard was that the top 4 rated conference champions would receive a bye in the first round. Other conference champions and the top rated non champs will comprise the other 8 teams with the higher rated hosting the first round games.
The best records always get some advantage in any playoff scenario. In the NFL it's the bye week, in MLB it's home park advantage, in the NBA it's getting to play the worst team in the 1st round, in NCAA basketball it's again getting to play the worst teams in the first round. With our upcoming playoff since it's 12 teams there has to be a bye week so somebody has to get the bye week. Like in the NFL where the division winners get the home field advantage no matter how bad their record. Just look at the NFC South it's a group of bad teams but somebody will win it and the Dallas Cowboys who are the better team have to go on the road to play the bad team.
I know many ND fans are upset that we have no chance to get a bye week since we don't play in a conference, doesn't matter if we are undefeated and ranked #1 no bye week. But then when I thought about it we play 12 games and don't have to expose ourselves to a conference championship game and so that's sort of our bye week. Granted it will be odd if we are someday #1 undefeated regular season and have to play one more game in the playoffs. But we got the week off when 10 other teams are playing a 13 game for a conference championship.
Portal should heat up this week with a deadline approaching of Jan 18th after that you are stuck with your current team. I see that Grayson McCall the Coastal Carolina QB who has impressive numbers decided to stay at CCU and has exited the portal.
Young, Gibbs, and Anderson declare for the draft. That pretty much guts our offense and hits our defense hard too. That's just the juniors leaving so far. Also 7 senior starters on defense, And 3 senior starters on offense. So I'll say it now, rebuilding year for us next season.
Trying to learn more about how the Transfer Portal works, I googled it. I learned a couple of things I didn't know: 1) While it's not permissible for transferring players to talk to other teams' coaches, they can speak with student-athletes and alumni at any time to gain a better understanding of the prospective program. 2) The football portal (don't know about other sports) opens the day after the playoff teams are chosen (Dec. 5 this season) and stays open for 45 days. There's a second 15-day portal in the spring starting on May 1. No. 1 above tells me that that to say ND tampered with Hartman, the accusers either did not know the rules or willfully ignored them in order to cast doubt on ND's integrity. Shocking!
What if Notre Dame contacted Hartman before he announced for the portal? I didn't pay close attention to this situation so I could be missing a lot of the points in the accusations.
Kyle, first of all, we don't know if there was contact or, if so, who initiated the contact. The key words in what I read - not the actual rule - were "at any time". If those words mean literally ANY time, then some pre-portal contact with ND players or alumni was permissible, as it would be for anyone in any program. Who knows? One possibility among many is that Hartman knows someone on the team and reached out, which is permissible. I'm confident that there was no tampering in any form by ND coaches or anyone else employed by ND. Fake accusations. Fake news.