Irish Blogger Gathering: Her Loyal Sons Use A Lot Of Big Words

This weeks IBG is brought to you by those guys over at Her Loyal Sons.

1. What photo of some member of the 2008 Irish squad doing something, anything at all, really, says all 1,000 words that need to be said about this team? OR, which photo of some member of the 2008 Irish squad doing something would tell 1,000 lies about this team if you only saw the photo and didn’t know better? (Double-secret word score bonus for answering both mutations of the same question).

All that needs to be said about this team is this photo:


This Irish team has such a hard time stopping any teams ground game, that it has really been the major cause for all 3 losses thus far.

The picture that tells 1,000 lies? How about a picture showing emotion? Because honestly, I don't think that it is there all the time like it needs to be with a young mistake prone team:

2. Some of you may know that I (domer.mq) am a football stat geek. Which statistic do you think geeks like myself should really be paying attention to this season and why? (Can pertain to ND or CFB in general.)

Colin Cowherd recently stated during his morning/afternoon talkshow on ESPN Radio & ESPNU that he now believes, more than ever, that recruiting services rank Notre Dame recruits higher to sell more subscriptions and magazines.

I overwhelmingly disagree with Cowherd on that statement, but I do believe that recruiting services such as Scout, Rivals, ESPNU (Scouts INC.), Max Preps (Lemming), and many others- are biased for one reason or another towards a few recruits. There are different H.S. All-Star games that are hosted by these different companies and they all like to consider the players in their game as the best. Get it?

The stat that I would like to see and do some comparisons with is this: I want to take the last 5 years and then take the top 10 recruiting classes from those years and see what kind of a percentage of kids became All-Americans in college and what percentage of them were drafted on the first day of the NFL draft. There is more talent floating around the rest of the country than you might think. So go ahead domer.mq and figure that one out.

3. Seeing as how Boston College is nothing but an up-jumped program enjoying the luxury and soft Corinthian leather of an ACC schedule, which team from the current top 25 would you love to see this year’s Irish play this weekend in Fredo’s stead? Why? Do you think the Irish would win? Describe the game. Paint us a picture! I’ll get the popcorn!

We're coming after you- LSU. The Tigers are rated #16 in the country and I still can't find out why. How can you have 2 losses which you were blasted 51-21 and 52-38 and then your biggest win is against a very shaky South Carolina team. Feauxck LSU! The Irish would be able to throw all over this uncharacteristically poor pass defense. Notre Dame might have a bit of a problem stopping Charles Scott in the run game, but i think the Irish would pull this one out 43-31. Try talking about the SEC when that awful and overrated ND team just beat the dog shit out of a "flagship" program.

4. Let’s dispose of the gradient colors and subtle vagaries of college football for a moment and answer this question with one of the supplied, absolute answers and a blurb defending your pick. No waffling! The Question: Why is Notre Dame unable to put away games when leading going into half time? The possible answers: 1) ND Players all have a soft, nougat center 2) The Coaches don’t want to tick off potential future employers 3) God doesn’t think it’s classy to blow a team out 4) The ND Fanbase can’t really stomach blowouts any more than they could stomach a protracted land war in Asia. Remember, you must pick one and you must defend it with great vigor!

3) God doesn’t think it’s classy to blow a team out. What else could explain why Notre Dame has not destroyed an for the full allotted 4 quarters since the Willingham Beatdown of 2003 against his former employer Stanford 57-7. Ty was an outspoken devil worshipper. Charlie is a devout Catholic that would never try to embarrass an already embarrassing team that the Irish were dominating. You stay classy Charlie Weis.

5. Tennessee just began celebrating the career of Phil Fulmer today this week as he announced that he’d been given the opportunity to make it look like resigning was his idea. Certainly, this is a clarion call to ADs across the country to begin worrying over their tea that, should their current HC not work out, they wont get a shot at #s 1-5 on their candidate list. Tell us about an AD who may be looking at this move by Tennessee and acting a bit more aggressively towards a reduction in force of his current football staff now rather than later. And who might that AD be trying to seduce before Tennessee already has a “hand shake agreement” with the guy?

I was thinking about a guy for this answer and then boom- he gets shitcanned. I'm talking about Ron Prince, the soon to be former Kansas St. Wildcat Head Coach. Basically, Prince was not getting the job done inside of the conference despite beating Texas 2 out of the last 3 years.

There are two guys that they need to look at very carefully and then throw caution in front of a speeding semi-truck: Brian Kelly, H.C. of Cincinnati and Will Muschamp, D.C. of Texas. Both of these guys offer an extreme on one side of the ball, and to tell you the truth- I think KSU needs some kind of extreme. But of the two, Kelly seems like the better fit with his penchant of recruiting within his means (KSU is NEVER going to beat out Oklahoma, Texas, or Nebraska for recruits) and for an offensive system that is best suited for a conference like the Big 12.