Yes. Notre Dame did lose to the three top 10 teams it played. First, I’d love to see a team that didn’t lose to the top 10 teams they played outside of the top 10. I’m sure there are a few, but not many. To say they lost to the only “decent” teams is a bit of a stretch. Remember that Penn St. beat a “vaunted” SEC team in their bowl game. UCLA beat USC. And Georgia Tech was one win away from the ACC championship. I’m not going to put any of those three teams in the “elite” group, but if they’re not “decent,” then I’m not sure exactly what “decent” means.

The other thing that others don’t ever take into account is that conference teams HAVE to play a certain number of bowl teams. IF there are 14 teams in a conference and they all play about 9 conference games, then well..the way that logic works, you’re left with teams in the middle of the coference that have to be around .500. That’s not really to speak of the quality of those teams. If you were to put Florida, LSU, and every team from the MAC, you’d still have 6 or so bowl teams. THe only way to truly know if a conference is good or not, then, is for teams to play outside of conference. And, well, many of the BCS conference teams (aside from USC and most of the PAC ten) don’t play anyone out of conference. Remember that the SEC wasn’t doing so well in its bowl games until LSU and UF won…and it’d be hard to say that they weren’t elite teams. ON the converse, the two great teams in the Big Ten perhaps showed that their greatness was a result of an overrated conference rather than their own greatness. ND doesn’t have that luxury. They play teams from most conferences. And while sometimes, that means they play a lot of teams that finish in the middle or bottom half of their conference. At least they play some major conference teams.

UGA’s second strongest schedule since 2000 was almost as strong as ND’s weakest or second weakest, depending upon the SOS method you use (and in fairness, if you use Colley, UGA’s schedule was stronger). Not to be mean, but what’s your point? Mine is that ND has not historically played “laughable” schedules and that the slate for next year is not soft, as the post author and several others suggest (and in my second post, that UGA typically has had really sad schedules due to terrible OOC games, which as a UGA fan , I hate and hope will change due to the efforts KJ describes).

I only offered UGA since a couple people had asked about it and I was curious myself. To the extent I was comparing them to ND, it was just to show that a fairly typical BCS team’s schedule trails ND’s when looked at over a period of years.

Also, Chuck was discussing last year’s schedule (and even then, he missed one bowl team: Purdue). If you want to talk next year, ND plays 8 bowl teams (GT, @ Penn State, @ Michigan, Purdue, @ UCLA, @ BC, USC, and Navy), as many as anyone in the SEC except UGA, which, again, I am happy to see is finally scheduling decently. The trip to Colorado next fall will be the Dawgs first trip outside the Southeast in something like 50 or 60 years, and I welcome that change.