Sometimes, those guys at "College football news" piss me off

They do so again this week with their rankings. Well, not the actual ranking, but their little snippet next to it. "With a joke of a schedule ahead, a win at Michigan State will mean a 10-1 record going into the showdown with USC."

I'm used to the standard crap about "Is ND going to win the CIC trophy this year?" But let's look at this rationally: ND's schedule is the three academies (an oddity to play all three, though many would have you believe it's an annual occurrence), 1 middle of the pack and 1 bad ACC team(GT/UNC), 4 Big Ten(sic) teams spanning from the perennial top to the perennial just above IU(UM, PSU, MSU, PU), and 2 mid-PAC-10 teams, followed by the semi-annual post-thanksgiving USC game. So, that's the academies (who are actually decent this year), 6 mid-level BCS teams, 1 bottom feeding BCS team, and two teams which have a combined 50 Rose Bowel appearances, including at least one in each of the last three. Now, is this a schedule that's the equivalent of 1989, where ND played something like 4 of the final top 10 and 8 of the final top 20? No.. but this isn't by any stretch a "joke". The only thing that makes it seem that way is that the two teams that seem most likely to be conference champions happen to come at the beginning and the end of the schedule.

(and, I might add, with the apparent suckage of the ACC, I wouldn't doubt GT could take that crown, leaving ND with the potential to have gone 11-1(bear with me in my little fantasy for a few minutes, this team is more likely 8-4 to 10-2, and a key injury or two from an absolute disaster) against a schedule including 3 BCS representatives. Of course, if this were to come to pass, many would still bitch that ND got a bowl slot it didn't deserve, and ND needs to join a conference. But conferences are downright un-american, as I shall prove without a doubt in a post in the next few days.)