Courtesy ESPN.comWhile I myself am a Buddhist of longstanding, since A) I was born and lived my first 8 years in the Midwest and B) I am descended from Polish Catholics on my father's side of the family, I have loved Notre Dame since they fought Michigan State to a 10-10 tie in 1966, clinching the mythical National Championship. (Sorry, Bama fans, ND played a tougher schedule and this is yet another NC that you claim but you don't deserve, just like 1973 and 1978).
With that having been said, someone needs to do an intervention with ND, its fans and the BCS, because Our Lady 's Institution needs to quit getting BCS bids it clearly does not deserve.
The picture above says it all, as Jamarcus Russell and LSU flat-out ABUSED the Fighting Irish tonight in the Sugar Bowl, 41-14. While the Irish stayed close for almost a half, the Bayou Bengals blew them out in the second half in front of a majority Purple and Gold-clad crowd just 70 miles from campus.
Look, I know the Irish have a devoted national following, most like me, who never attended Notre Dame; this is why they have their own TV contract with NBC. However, even though Charlie Weis has done a decent job in South Bend, the Irish have not won a bowl game since the 1994 Cotton Bowl.
Yes, you read that correctly; tonight they set a record with their NINTH consecutive bowl game loss.
Let me make it even scarier for you: since Notre Dame knocked off Texas A&M in the 1994 Cotton Bowl, your University of Memphis Tigers have appeared in THREE bowls and won TWO of them. Yes, the UM Tigers have two MORE bowl wins than Notre Dame since 1994.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The BCS rules that requires Notre Dame to get a BCS bid if they finish in the top eight in the BCS rankings is not fair to them, or non-BCS schools. It overrates the Irish, as painful as it is to say that, and leads to massacres like tonight.
As the good fathers who run Notre Dame ensure that Fighting Irish recruits meet the same academic standards as every other student, it puts them at a disadvantage against other schools from conferences who are, shall we say, less discriminating about academics. That's part of the charm of ND anyway, but with the increasingly growing professionalism of college athletics, something has to give.
Change the rules so we can have more Boise States, who are more deserving than the Irish. At the rate they're going, in another 10 years they may have to either drop the standards or drop football.
Neither of which is a good sign for intercollegiate athletics.
