A post with no real point
Well, not really, but I think this will be open to individual interpretation.
One of the mantras that is often thrown out as fact across all ND message boards is that of "Notre Dame only plays for national championships!" There may be variations of that line but I think you know what I mean.
I have never subscribed to that notion. My view has been that Notre Dame strives to be in the hunt for the national championship. Pre-BCS I took that to mean that, given a certain set of circumstances, Notre Dame was in the discussion. Of course, post-BCS it now means getting to the number two or one post position in the ranking.
As an old timer (I know there are some older than I and I imagine they might agree with me) my recollection was sometime after the half-way point in the schedule we would begin to engage in the gerrymandering of the polls and the various scenarios. Dining hall discussion or local alumni club cocktail chatter (this was before the internets)went something like "If we beat Bama, and Oklahoma loses to Texas, we'll get into the Orange Bowl and ....." You know how it goes.
I tried to parse this in a way to judge how often Notre Dame has been in the hunt for a national championship. Was it as frequent as many assert?
My assumptions were simple: If Notre Dame finished play on the first weekend in November with either a tie, no losses, or one loss then one could begin to assume that ND was, indeed "in the hunt" for the title.
I went back to what I consider the beginning of modern college football, 1950, to see how often Irish fans could legitimately consider the possibility, if the cards fell correctly, of having our asses crowned. I chose 1950 because by then the last effects of the end-of-war veteran boom had just about run its course.
So here's what 59 years of ND in the modern era looks like in terms of "being in the hunt."
ND finished the first weekend of play in November with 0,1 loss, or 1 tie in
1951,53,54,55,57,64,65,66,70,71,72,73,74,77,80,87,88,89,90,91,93,98,02,06.
That's 24 years out of 59. 40%
Leahy 2/4 times
Brennan 3/5
Kuharich 0/4
Devore 0/1
Parseghian 8/11
Devine 2/6
Faust 0/5
Holtz 6/11
Davie 1/5
Willingham 1/3
Weis 1/4
It is interesting that even the glory days of Holtz included 5 years that we were out of the conversation during the home stretch. There may be a bit of revisionism that gets attached to his name inre: playing for championships.
Also, what is considered Weis' better of his two BCS years, 2005, actually had us with two L's by the end of October and 2006 was his "in the hunt" year.
As I said, I have no real point here other than to perhaps suggest that words matter and sometimes how something is defined may not cause the definition to be true.
I will adhere to the notion that Notre Dame plays to be in the NC conversation. A lot of marbles have to fall in order to get to the level of "plays for a title." Plus most of the fun, which the BCS game has minimized, is in the gerrymandering of the "what ifs." I choose this way in order to not go crazy and to manage my expectations. If I know going in that I have a 40% likelihood of "being in the hunt" down the home stretch than I tend to throw fewer objects at the tv.
As always, I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Everyone makes fun of Texas, but they're a good model ...
I don't think it's possible to play for the national title every single season. What I do think is possible is to play for a BCS berth and top-10 finish every season. If you do that, every so often the stars align, the pieces come together, other teams knock each other out, you get that one magical difference-making player, etc. and a typical top-10 performance transforms into a national title chance.
At USC, they go to the Rose Bowl every year, and once in a while they get that extra-special player (Reggie Bush) to push them over the top (no pun intended) and into a national title. At Texas, they were top-10 teams every year for the better part of a decade, always falling just short -- whether because of a loss to Oklahoma, a weak strength of schedule, or other factors -- until they finally got a year in which an extra-special player (Vince Young) and some cascading circumstances got them to a national title. At LSU under Saban and Miles they're always competitive and pushing for a top-10 spot, and every so often (twice in the BCS era) they've either had a special player or a series of chips falling their way (multiple losses from seeming title-game shoo-ins) to get them to the title game and win it.
The model is to target sustained excellence. A national title itself is still a bit of a crap-shoot, but a team can be put in the position to capitalize on whatever the football equivalent of "puck luck" is.
Everything you wrote is accurate
by Kevin 
, Monday, February 23, 2009, 10:05 (6077 days ago) @ Savage
but while reading your post, it hit me that Florida will be favored this season to win its third national title in five years. With Sanchez leaving USC, I like Florida's chances as well as anyone's.
If they do it, and also manage to get next year's starter (Brantley?) as many snaps as possible in the process, who knows what the future holds. For a championship team, they had a lot of young starters/key contributors:
RB: Demps (Fr.), Rainey (Soph.)
WR: Deonte Thompson (Fr.) -- a bit of a stretch, but he did score a couple TDs
TE: Aaron Hernandez (Soph.)
OL: Pouncey twins (Soph.) -- was going to list Carl Johnson here, but I don't think they can count on him returning next season
DL: Dunlap, Trattou, Sanders, Davis, and Lawrence Marsh were all Sophomores
LB: A.J. Jones (Soph)
DB: Almost all underclassmen, just like the DL: Janoris Jenkis, Major Wright, Joe Haden, Will Hill, and Ahmad Black
The above list does not include top recruits who didn't play much or at all in 2008, (such as Omar Hunter and Lorenzo Edwards). The SEC isn't getting any easier, but at the same time, I think the odds of the SEC champ playing for the BCS title are always going to be strong.
And this season will finally provide the answer...
as to whether sustained excellence, which is I agree should be the goal, is possible under Weis. We could begin to see why it made sense for Swarbrick, despite howlings from alumni (myself included), to give Weis one more shot, even though his 2007-08 performance warranted termination. The players and schedule are in place to go at least 10-2 in the regular season, and hopefully we could earn a favorable BCS matchup out of that. Then, unlike 2006, Weis would go into the next season not with a roster bereft of upperclass talent, but perhaps the most stacked roster at ND since the early 1990s. The 2009 season would have translated into a monster recruiting class, which only increases the talent in the pipeline. The program would turn into the self-sustaining cycle that all powerhouses enjoy, of field victories turning into recruiting victories turning into more and bigger field victories.
Of course, I should add that this all assumes that Weis knows what the hell he's doing.
Actually, I don't think we could know the answer to that
by Joe I , Monday, February 23, 2009, 13:11 (6077 days ago) @ BPH
in the affirmative regarding ND until next year at the earliest or more likely 2011. A single, or even 2 excellent(2) year does not equate to sustained excellence. What Charlie can do with the team when there is significant turnover in the starters is what determines sustained excellence, IMO. So far, Charlie has failed miserably at this.
Here's hoping some of these staff changes effect significant differences in our long-term outlook.
I will slightly disagree about Weis...
by scriptcomesfirst , Thursday, February 26, 2009, 05:46 (6074 days ago) @ Joe I
failing miserably at dealing with turnover. I think, because of the talent void in the classes he inherited, the jury is out on that. We'll only have a sense of his long term prospects when he transitions from Clausen to Crist, and so on. That will be a better gauge of his ability to deal with turnover.
If he wins this year, I think he sets himself up for long term success because he'll likely hit the recruiting motherlode. What he does with that talent, remains to be seen, I agree.
However, his record with mature talent, so far, is pretty strong. From this point on, that's what he'll have.