Part 3 of this series of articles will cover the effects that performance in close games and game day management, preparation, and execution have on a program, and how these areas have affected Notre Dame. Part 2 focused on scheduling and the benefit that playing home games while Part 1 focused on recruiting and player […]

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 […]

September 4th marks the debut of the Brian Kelly era in South Bend. For the fourth time since 1997 Notre Dame has a new coach, and, once again, Irish fans are wondering if he can lead them back to prominence and succeed where his three predecessors failed. To be certain, Kelly brings with him many […]

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 […]

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a five-part series detailing the blueprint for winning the BCS national championship and measuring the Irish performance against this standard. As Irish fans know all too well, Notre Dame hasn’t been part of the national title picture for over a decade. The last year the lads in […]

It’s been no secret that Notre Dame has had a string of sub-par football coaches. For 14 years, the school has bounced back and forth like a pinball from one coach to the next. The last truly successful coach for the Irish was Lou Holtz. His career at Notre Dame spanned 11 seasons: a pretty respectable […]

The stat gurus at Football Outsiders have released the most recent edition of their off-season annual—Football Outsiders Almanac 2010—complete with an introductory explanation of some new and innovative statistics, 2010 projections for every college football team in the Football Bowl Subdivision, quarterback and recruiting rankings, and a brief history of conference realignment. In conjunction with […]

The latest edition of Here Come the Irish is available and includes a 2010 opponent preview entitled “Know Thy Enemy: Breaking Down Notre Dame’s 2010 Opponents” from Clashmore Mike contributor Anthony Pilcher. For those unfamiliar with the publication, Here Come the Irish is the brainchild of Notre Dame alumnus Jim Walsh over at the Maple […]

The 2010 Notre Dame football season is drawing near. The Irish are a little over two months away from their home opener against Purdue and Wednesday marked the opening of ticket sales to the general public. In conjunction with the latter, and in preparation for the impending season, Clashmore Mike is hosting its annual pre-season […]

The Pythagorean expectation—brought into the sports vernacular by baseball statistician Bill James—in its most simplest form is a tool used to describe how “lucky” a baseball team was in a given season. By comparing runs scored versus runs allowed, James was able to derive a relationship between winning and scoring margin, and thus could show […]