Well let's kick this one off. I'll have more to say on this game later but we'll get the obvious out of the way first........ If there is one game on the schedule that ND CANNOT afford to lose this season it has to be this one!!! More than ever now, ND does not want this to be the first game in nine tries that UW wins!!! Oh yeah, I hear all the talk....ND should beat them by 40.......UW is the worst team in the country(actually I'm pretty sure WSU is)..whatever. We know from very recent history that no one can take ANYBODY lightly in this game anymore!!!! Just ask USC, MIch etc, etc, etc, etc......... ND is sitting on a very pivital point right now and a loss to a winless Tyrone W. team would set them back.....WAAAAAAAAAAY back!!! The boys should win but I would treat this UW team like it's the #1 team in the country until the final whistle blows!!! Believe me, UW would give anything for a win right now and this would be a sweet one for them to save their season and Ty's career. ND needs to jump out to a lead and never let go if they are gonna win this one. 8)
I agree, the UW team is poorly coached and has a lot of injuries and probably more than a little down emotionally given all the speculation about Willingham. But I take what you are saying seriously. Last year decent Texas team was taken out in Frans last game as an Aggie. I do hope we put a pretty good but not mean beat down on Willingham. They are a team with a poor pass defense and we are a team with a great passing offense. So we should score. I would like to see our defense toss a shutout. But most likely they won't. Actually from the little I watched the UW/OSU game last weekend the UW QB can throw pretty well and he has a WR who is pretty good. To their credit they didn't look like they quit, this week might be their last hurrah so they might come out pretty fired up and we'll just have to weather that and then put them out of their misery!!
This is the game where Charlie has to rid himslef of the " a point is as good as a hundred" win philosophy becuase this is COLLEGE football and that logic does not apply here. Plus to crush Ty would go a long way toward exorcising any guilty feelings some may have about his expulsion from ND. Bury this clown in his own backyard. It is the merciful thing to do.
I just want to win. Wins are wins are wins. Bottom line. That being said, if the heavens were to shine upon us and the good Lord grants us in His infinite wisdom the ability to overpower and destroy them, then I hope we beat that mother****** by 70. IMHO, we can't beat them by enough if afforded the chance.
Oh brother, just what we need to do, give those aholes in the media one more arrow to shoot at ND. Here's poor Ty with his all-world QB injured and there's ND who wrongly fired the great guy, now trying to ruin his stint at UW. Haven't they caused this poor wonderful coach enough suffering? I say win by 17, give some kids who normally don't get much time, some action and come home (that assumes that as an 11 pt. favorite we can actually do that.)
OK so here's a link to Dave Softy a Seattle Sports Radio Jock. Once you get to this page click on Listen to Softy Rant about Ty's Future 10-20. The key is "Everything Notre Dame (fans) told us about him is true"..... Softy Rant on Ty
ND/WASH <r>Gipper,<br/> <br/> You are probably right in that this is a no win situation for ND again as far as the media is concerned. Win by a lot and we are just piling on a wonderful coach who wasn't given a chance at ND. Win by a small margin or God forbid, lose to them and it would prove their point that Ty is still a better coach than CW.<br/> <br/> Having said that, I'm with Corey. I hope we beat the dogshi* out of the dawgs and Ty is left standing there with that stupid look on his face as he looks at a scoreboard showing his team losing by 40 or so with 1:00 to go on the clock!!!<br/> <br/> He screwed up one of the true passions I have in life, ND football, and he deserves to be out of coaching permanently.<br/> <br/> I'm sure there are plenty of Washington fans who would share my sentiments.<br/> <br/> <B><s></s>"THE HELL WITH WASHINGTON"<e></e></B><br/> <br/> and "THE HELL WITH TYRONE WILLINGHAM" <E</E></r>
A win is NOT a win. Beat this team 20-17 and listen to the collective yawns of the media interspersed with "it's plain to see that the Irish have a long way to go". The polls make all the difference, especially if you are an independent. Have mercy on Ty, Like Pete Carroll had on WSU.
Krebs has it right. This isn't the NFL. In College football you go a lot further. In the Texas/Missouri game Longhorns were up 35-3 at halftime, they kept the 1st unit in through most of the game, they continued to run the offense. It's ok to do some limited substitutions to give some more guys playing time, but the wholesale stuff needs to be saved till about 7 or 8 minutes to go.
And let me add that every team we have played to date this year lost on Saturday so if we're serious about playing post season we better lay the wood to a couple our opponents.
I was trying to be nice George. I am hoping we jam a c4 football up his arse, and set that thing off on the 50 yardline before the opening kickoff. But still, wins are wins.
52 to 7, that's the number Missouri hung on Neb, nobody gave Pinkel a hard time. 45-7 Ohio State vs MSU no problems for Tressel. So I don't think we need 70-0 but hey if it happens, it happens!!
I worry about the bad mojo being generated by the adversarial attitudes toward TW and the "We WILL win" arrogance I see here and elsewhere throughout the ND world. Regardless of what anyone thinks or says, I like TW. He is a class individual who simply has not been a good head coach since he left Stanford. He does it his way, which certainly was not the right way for ND and has not been the right way for Washington. I know that several folks here will disagree with me, but I believe the bitterness and the negativity toward him among ND people is completely unjustified. I just want to get this game over with and move on.
I disagree Sid and we normally do find common ground, but not on the issue of Ty. I firmly believe Ty is a race baiting P.O.S. This is not second hand info, he has partaken in it on national TV in front of our own eyes. I was driving the Ty bandwagon when he was hired, and I stuck with him right up till the end... but adversity, as you know, reveals character.. it doesn't build it. When times were toughest, he's thrown players under the bus. He's acted solely in his best interest...not the school, not the players, not the boosters. It was only after he was let go at ND and I watched as he sat smugly, silently while the race flag was run up and down the pole..that I began to see this guy for the fraud that he is.. I re-examined his efforts at Stanford and watched carefully his progress at Washington to see if this new light I was shining on the subject was off-base. It was not. He is a cancer. He is in it only for himself. This man couldn't hold Gerry Faust's jock strap. I can live with a bad coach who is a good person. It is painful, but time heals those wounds... Even the deeply flawed Bob Davie was really just kind of a 'boob' with some security issues.. all in all, just an average joe who wasn't qualified for the job. That's not Ty... He is a money grabbing weasel. If he strategically approached his game planning and staff hirings as efficiently as he does using his race card... he might not be on the hottest of hot seats right now. I sincerely wish him ill. I believe deeply, he is a bad person...I'd just as soon he squat on a live chainsaw then ever visit Notre Dame again.
First of all, I agree with Sid that we should not be overconfident going into this game although what we fans think and how the team prepares is hopefully two different things. I hope that this will be a biggest road win to date this year As to Ty, I don't consider him a "class" individual. A class individual doesn't sit by while others are blaming his losing his job on racism, unless of course he believed that ND who hired him was racist. He could have said he was honored to have coached there and he regretted that the team hadn't been as successful as he and the school had hoped. He could have put his hand up and waved off the racism claims but he stood there with his arm folded expressionless letting the school that had and would be paying him millions took some nasty hits. I've felt that the Washington administration really deserves to be blasted for the destruction that's been brought upon their football program. Ty is still Ty. By hiring him they gave some legitimacy to his work history. They must have bought the media pap that Ty was actually a top coach and had gotten a raw deal from ND. If he'd only been give 2 more years he would have proved how wrong their evaluation of him was. Well he's in year 4 now and it probably can't get much worse. All the things that ND saw about how he was failing to give the effort needed to successfully recruit are now plainly clear even to the most rabid Husky fans. Now at a time when talent levels are criticaly low, he is almost inert insofar as putting together even an average class by UW standards. Of course the big problem is that top recruits can see the handwriting on the wall and realize he's a fired coach still working. He's damaged 2 programs, collected millions and produced nothing near what was hoped for when he was hired. I can think of a lot of different ways to describe his coaching career the past 7 years but the word "class" just never seems appropriate.