We hear that Notre Dame football is “overrated” almost every year. At least from somebody. That somebody may not have a lot of credibility every year, but somebody says it. This week, the overrated claim had a lot of legitimacy. They entered their showdown with #14 Stanford having beaten teams with a combined record of 7-12. Their five opponents had a combined zero wins over teams in the power five conferences.
That changed today. And while this Notre Dame football game was anything but fun or exciting. It was a college football of the March Madness “survive and advance,” while all those teams ahead of ND in the polls fell.
Ole miss shocked #3 Alabama. #4 Oklahoma fell to TCU. #6 Texas A&M lost convincingly to Mississippi State. #2 Oregon were shocked on Thursday night. Notre Dame football entered Saturday #9. Now they’ll move into the top #5.
Wow!
Who saw that coming?
On upset Saturday, the Fighting Irish were probably the big beneficiaries. Yes, polls are subjective and arbitrary. And now we have an actual playoff so the polls are nothing more than a slightly more relevant version of some blogger’s power rankings. (And you know I feel about those) But this win today over Stanford is a statement. It may not have been sexy, but the Cardinal have been to three straight BCS games. They entered the day with the #1 pass defense, #1 run defense and #1 scoring defense.
How much of an “upset Saturday” was this? Well, the biggest upset day we’ve had since 1990. I think this tweet sums it up best:
AP Top 25 (final results) #2-L #3-L #4-L #6-L #8-L #14-L #15-L #16-L #17-L #18-L #19-L
— JB Long (@JB_Long) October 5, 2014
North Carolina will not put up much of a fight. They started the year ranked #23 and boasted a lot of returning players. However, their defense has been abysmal and the ACC is terrible other than Florida State.
Speaking of…..
Things will get REAL for Notre Dame football in two weeks. #1 Florida State looms. We learned a few things today. We’ll learn a lot more that day.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and very often writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2