Cincy is one of the 5 straight opponents who faced us after their bye week - that's every one of our biggest games: Wisconsin, Cincy, Va Tech, USC, UNC.

Again, it doesn't excuse the loss to Cincy. But if both teams had 2-3 weeks off to prepare, I'd like our chances in a rematch.

I also think we'd get more style-point victories if we didn't have this problem. Still a price worth paying for independence, in my opinion, but not something to entirely ignore when evaluating how good ND was against certain teams in hindsight.