Editor’s note: The previous week’s results can be found here: week 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7 and 6. The dust has settled on the 2011 season, and the Auburn Tigers came out on top. It was quite the turnaround for head coach Gene Chizik. Auburn finished the 2009 season in relatively pedestrian […]

Notre Dame faces Miami in the Sun Bowl New Year’s Eve. The game marks the first meeting between the two teams since 1990 and is a preview of three future contests—a neutral site game at Chicago’s Soldier Field in 2012 and a home/away series in 2016 and 2017. In many ways the two teams are […]

Editor’s note: Special thanks to ESP and AVR co-creator Vincenzo Siciliano for his effort in the work outlined below. He did the analysis, I just made a few observations and wrote up this summary. Disclaimer #1: The following is not intended for betting purposes. Disclaimer #2: The following analysis does not include the Army—Navy game […]

Editor’s note: Be sure to check back for the final installment of the ESP when the final AV Ranking (AVR) will be used to predict the bowl game outcomes. The previous week’s results can be found here: 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7 and 6. The season ended with three undefeated teams but only […]

There are still four unbeaten teams. Auburn bested Georgia in a slugfest, Boise State handled Idaho, Oregon survived against California, and TCU edged out San Diego State. With the exception of the Broncos, the other four teams looked largely human. The trend of top ranked AVR teams with weak schedules continues. Of the top 10 AVR […]

Each year, prior to the start of the season, every Notre Dame football fan, whether they admit or not, goes through the schedule to evaluate what kind of final record we can expect for the year. We do it by ourselves, we talk about it with our friends, on message boards, and participate in polls. […]

Another week, another series of undefeated and highly ranked teams falling victim to the upset bug. Ohio State, downed by the Badgers in Madison. Nebraska, done in by a swarming Longhorn defense that allowed a long gain of 14 yards on the ground. South Carolina, outscored 21-0 in the second half by Kentucky after going […]

The Brian Kelly Era begins Saturday with the home opener against annual foe Purdue. After an off-season spent parsing coaching comments, grasping at limited practice footage, and discussing the positives/negatives of the Blue-Gold game, Irish fans will finally be able to evaluate their new head coach. If Kelly is to meet fans’ expectations, he needs to get […]

Part 2 of this series of articles will cover the effects of scheduling and the benefit that playing home games have on a program, and how these areas have affected Notre Dame. While Part 1 focused on the player impact on a program, recruiting and development—something the coach and his staff have greater control over—this […]

I originally came up with the idea of creating “five-year profiles” because I wanted to evaluate the entire Charlie Weis period at Notre Dame on a scale relative to the rest of college football. The thought was that if we could create a snapshot of what the last five seasons (2005-2009) looked like at ND […]