Sean McTenuta to South Bend?

If true, this would seem like good news.

Tenuta was the architect of some wicked good defenses at Georgia Tech. Getting him on our staff would seem a definite win.

However, I am slightly nervous about why he is available for this position. He was not retained by incoming coach, Paul Johnson - no big thing there as he was passed over as a candidate and the new coach may have wanted his own people. However, he has also been rumored in a number of positions as DC and head coach at various openings around the country. For him to now be accepting a defensive back position, an apparent demotion, seems to indicate he is not the sought after guru that his record would indicate. Makes me wonder if there are some unknown negatives or maybe ND just through a big heap of money at him. Hopefully, he is not damaged goods or overrated and can add yet another big coaching name to Charlie's staff.

Oh, and let's hope he knows something about special teams.

Bulls in 2011

So I've already slipped in my new year's resolution of a post a week - what of it? I didn't say I'd post every week, only average a post a week.

Anyway, news today that ND scheduled the University of South Florida as part of the 2011 schedule. I actually watched a fair bit of the Bulls this year and they were one of the more exciting stories with wins against Auburn and West Virginia launching them to #2 in the country before a loss to Rutgers sent them into a 3 game losing streak. They were also handled by Oregon in the Sun Bowl. Jim Leavitt seems to have turned the corner on building a program which is only eleven years old, mining the rich Florida recruiting waters for castoffs which is now garnering its share of heralded recruits. I would expect them to be a dangerous foe in 2011 and have the additional motivation of playing in one of college footballs most storied venues. A patsy they are not.

On the positive side, November is the right time to take on a team in South Bend from the deep South. Also, like Michigan State, the Bulls will have difficulty with quality depth - so playing them late in the year is preferable to the first few weeks of the season. Kudos to Dr. Kevin White for this one. I could definitely see a return 'neutral' site game being announced in Tampa. The purpose of the neutral label would be more for ticket and revenue allotment as it would make sense to play in USF's home stadium.

Bowl Opponent Review

Now that the bowl season is winding down, let's take a look at the performance of our 2007 opponents' bowl records. (When is our bowl game? Oh, yes, that's quite funny! Splendid! Did you come up with that yourself?)

Opponent Result vs. ND Bowl Bowl Opponent (Record) Result
GA Tech(7-5) W 33-3 Humanitarian Fresno State (8-4) L 28-40
Penn State (8-4) W 31-10 Alamo Texas A&M(7-5) W 24-17
Michigan (8-4) W 38-0 Capital One Florida(9-3) W 41-35
MSU(7-5) W 31-14 Champs Sports BC(10-3) L 21-24
Purdue (7-5) W 33-19 Motor City Central Mich (8-5) W 51-48
UCLA(6-6) L 6-20 Las Vegas BYU (10-2) L 16-17
BC (10-3) W 27-14 Champs Sports MSU (7-5) W 24-21
USC (10-2) W 38-0 Rose Illinois (9-3) W 49-17
Navy(8-4) W 46-44 Poinsettia Utah (8-4) L 32-35
Air Force (9-3) W 41-24 Armed Forces Cal(6-6) L 36-42
Duke (1-11) L 7-28 None
Stanford (4-8) L 14-21 None

What can be gleaned from this? (besides the fact that my html skilz do not include table formatting?) Unfortunately, the number one thing is just how badly we were beaten all season long. I had blocked the memory of most of these games, but entering the scores above was simply painful. We lost often and we lost badly.

That said, the combined regular season record of our opponents was a respectable 85-60 (0.586) although the bowl record was a pedestrian 5-5. Three of these losses came from UCLA, Navy, and Air Force - three of our more competitive games. The biggest relative loss was Georgia Tech's dismantling by Fresno State.

I had hoped that there would be some solace in that we played a monster schedule this year against top tier teams. This was anecdotally supported by the showing of some of the marquis teams like USC and Michigan who looked dominant in their postseason berths. The trend did not hold true, it will take a bit longer for the rose color to come back to my glasses.