re: Alternate Universe BCS Championship Games

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Colorado had 2 losses. It would have been Miami vs. Oregon

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only team that had a prayer of giving Miami a game in 2001 was Tennessee, but they, fortunately for me, fricked it all up in Atlanta. But that UT team was STACKED.

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What’s so funny? It’s the best defense ever.

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They weren't even the best defense on the field in the BCSNCG.

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but a lot won’t give Auburn a chance and they should.

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Probably because they had just beaten y’all back to back seasons.

Wait LSU fans really thing they had the best defense in 2011. That. Is. Hilarious.

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They weren't even the best defense on the field in the BCSNCG.

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Mulligans don’t count.

They drug a 90’s offense to dominating wins against the best offenses of the day in Oregon, WVU, Arkansas, UGA and put most of the 2-deep in the nfl.

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Mulligans don’t count.

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I was in the Superdome that night. Pretty sure that game counted.

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As I said before, if any team could've challenged Alabama that year, it would've been Oregon.

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A couple of teams were able to challenge Alabama in 2012. They just happened to both play in the SEC. LSU should have beaten Alabama, and UGA came up about 4 yards short. They were a beatable team, just not by Notre Dame (or OSU or Oregon)

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There also isn't a system in the world then or now that would've taken OSU over Notre Dame leading up to that game if looking at objective resume and performance on the field.

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I never said otherwise. This is discussing "what ifs," not arguing other teams should have been there even if that's the case in some years. 2012 Notre Dame is much like 2018 Notre Dame. You knew they were going to be there and couldn't argue they shouldn't be but at the same time knew they stood no chance.

I believe that theory applied to a Michael Bishop fumble and the Stoernover in Knoxville.

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It was the least shocking thing ever to see Alabama beat them like a drum


Barrett Jones has told the story in interviews, but every week when he would meet with Jeff Stoutland (Bama's OL coach in 2011-12, been the Eagles OL coach since 2013) to go over the gameplan they always did it with the office door open. He said when he went to meet him for the BCSCG prep that Stoutland got up and closed the door, which he thought as odd. He asked Barrett for his honest opinion on ND and Barrett said he told him something to the effect of "I don't think they're very good" to which Stoutland replied "Yeah I keep trying to find things, but I don't see anyway we don't win this game by 3-4 touchdowns."

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I give Kelly a lot of shite, but he got about as much out of that roster as he could have possibly squeezed in retrospect. Four things conspired to the result that day:
- We didn't have the breadth or depth in talent to compete at the very highest level. We had about six or seven guys who could do damage (Zack Martin, Stephon Tuitt, Tyler Eifert, TJ Jones, Manti Teo, Keivarae Russell, and maybe one or two more) against elite teams but it was easy enough to just play away from them all night long, and we had little depth behind them.

- Golson was a first-year redshirt freshman QB, and we had played a ball control game all year. That played right into Saban's hands in 2012.

- We just didn't have the skill talent outside of Eifert on offense to present any real threat.

- All of Kelly's assistants were coaching at that level for the very first time, and it showed.

Our 2015 team was the one that could have really done some damage had 1) they stayed healthy and 2) they had anyone else besides Brian van Gorder coaching the defense. Weird to say about a team that finished 10 - 3 and #11 in the polls, but give that roster, especially that offensive line, to Saban or Swinney or Meyer, and it would have won a national title. That team, in retrospect, was loaded.

The 2018 team was a solid, talented, mature football team that had a couple of key injuries down the stretch and also did not have the top-tier play-makers needed to truly win a title.

That's been the story of the last ten or twelve years of our program.