Charlie Weis is mystified as to how his Notre Dame team could have been leap-frogged in the polls after this weekend's games, even though they won on Saturday.
"Maybe I'm just stupid. Tell me how that works?"
Let the record show that you brought that up, Chaz. Maybe I can shed some light for you.
First off, you required a miracle finish to beat a mediocre UCLA team on your home field this week. Earlier this season you had to rally from 17 points down in the last few minutes to beat a Michigan State team that somehow found a way to trail Northwestern 38-3 on Saturday before their own miracle comeback netted them their first conference win.
The teams that jumped over your Irish in the polls include Texas, Tennessee and Florida, three one-loss teams that have looked very impressive all season (The Vol's only blemish was a 21-20 loss to Florida, Texas' only loss was to Ohio State). You haven't looked impressive at all since beating Penn State, which by the way is unranked, with three losses.
I'm trying to think of another win you have over a quality opponent, and Georgia Tech is as close as I can come to one. The other wins (MSU, Purdue, Stanford, UCLA) are all against teams with at least three losses, and don't get you too many BCS points. And with three tough games against service academies and another against (1-6) North Carolina coming up, you don't have too many more chances to impress voters.
You are (somehow) currently ranked 11th (9th in the BCS). You have played one Top 10 team this year (Michigan) and you got hammered by four touchdowns on your home field. How you manage to still be ranked even in the Top 20 is beyond the understanding of most people who follow the college game.
The best testament to your program's habitually overrated status is your amazing string of eight straight bowl game losses, a result of being matched up against teams in January against whom you have no business playing, if football merit and not alumni spending habits or TV ratings are taken into consideration.
Does this help at all?
UPDATE 10/26: Page 2 has more help for Weis with an article sympathetically titled "What Planet ya from, Charlie?"
Posted by dan at October 24, 2006 10:21 PM