With a spread of 45 1/2, and an over/under of 60, it’s clear that the sports gambling world expects a Bowling Green Massacre to unfold in South Bend when the Falcons visit the #9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday. Ever since this goofy figment of KellyAnne Conway’s imagination/verbal gaffe first came into the public consciousness in 2017, it’s been a popular meme and punchline.
And ever since Dino Babers left for Syracuse in 2015, we’ve seen quite a few Bowling Green massacres (#NeverForget) in college football box score form. Thus, if you’re going to be betting on this game, perhaps with genting promotional code, you’ll see that massive point spread. BGU’s past recent results mandate this.
The Mike Jinks era (7-24 from 2016-18) was extremely rough and the Scott Loeffler regime (1-3, outscored 147-27 by FBS opponents thus far this season) has not started well at all.
Bowling Green Falcons at No. 9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish
#9 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (3-1) Preview:
If there wasn’t such a wide disparity in talent level and depth, this would have all the makings of a classic “trap game” cliche. ND enters on the heels of a come-from-behind win against a top 20 team. That classic “tale of two halves” kind of contest came after the Irish played their toughest and biggest game of the season.
Now comes Bowling Green, with USC, Notre Dame’s biggest annual rivalry game on the slate, looming next. The Irish should make this their 14th win in a row at home, but only if they make sure not to look too far forward at USC.
Last time out, we saw exactly what Brian Kelly had talked about at Media Day in August- the season’s success will be defined by establishing the run and stopping the opponent run: Notre Dame out-rushed UVA 178-4 in yardage last week. Games are won or lost as a whole team, but truly the DL brought their A game and saved the day.
“I’m not standing up here and telling you we have found ourselves offensively, we have not,” said Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly on Saturday.
“We’re far from where we want to be. We have got a lot of things to sort out and figure out offensively, personnel, but what we did is we gave Tony Jones a break. So he ran hard in the second half and in particular the third and fourth quarter. When we got C’Bo in there and we got Jamir in there, it gave him a chance to run the way he can run. And he’s a hard runner.”
“We got off the ball, we were much more physical in the third and fourth quarter, what we want to be able to do is have that as part of our offense and it had been missing.”
“So that has to be part of what we do.”
“On the other hand, from a rushing standpoint, we want to continue to be a team that doesn’t give up big plays in the running game.”
“Four yards rushing, you know, a lot of that is the negative in, obviously, the sacks.”
“But at the end of the day finding a balance within our offense is something that is still a work in progress, but defensively continue to go in the route we’re going with the development of our front seven and finding a really solid front seven that doesn’t give up big runs.
Bowling Green Falcons 1-3 Preview:
The Falcons’ lone win this season was an opening day blowout of FCS foe Morgan State. Things went downhill quickly, and that’s a shame as it was thought their schedule could lend itself to coming out of the gates fast and building momentum and confidence from that.
No one expected to BG to compete in the MAC this season and Lindy’s even rated them 117th out of 130 in the preseason. On paper, this should be Notre Dame’s easiest game of the season. The Falcons only returned three starters on defense from a team that went just 3-9 (2-6 in the league) last season.
Of course, one of the main storylines in this game is BG defensive coordinator Brian Van Gorder. He had a disastrous stint as Notre Dame DC which ended with Kelly sacking him in midseason 2016. After leaving ND, he went to Georgia, Oklahoma State, Louisville, before he made a return to the MAC.
Return to the MAC. It is. Return to the MAC c’mon! You know that I’ll be back (cc Mark Morrison). BVG previously served as DC with Central Michigan in the late 1990s.
Prediction: Notre Dame Fighting Irish 59, Bowling Green 17
As Run-DMC would say “it’s tricky tricky tricky” to play the massive spreads like these. That’s because garbage time comes so early in the contest, and you just don’t know what’s going to happen with the guys who come in during mop-up time.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com on Twitter here and his cat on Instagram at this link.