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.