With the message boards and social media feeds understandably humming with vitriol way past midnight, in the early Sunday a.m. hours and fully caffeinated I pondered where No. 5 Notre Dame belonged on my Associated Press ballot for the Top 25 poll to be released Sunday at 2 p.m.
I decided the Irish DID NOT belong. Not this week.
For me only the preseason poll serves a predictive function. The others between last week’s — that had them at No. 5 in the AP and 7 in the coaches rankings — and the ones that come out on Selection Sunday on Dec. 8 are snapshots. But snapshots that take into account the entire season, not just that week’s result and/or strength of opponent.
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Both the collective of voters in the AP poll and the panel of coaches disagreed with me, in that the Irish were ranked in both polls on Sunday — No. 19 by the panel of coaches, No. 18 in the AP media poll.
Georgia, Texas, Ohio State, Alabama and Ole Miss comprise the new AP top 5 in that order. The top 5 in the coaches poll consists of the same five teams, but with Ohio State No. 2 and Texas third.
For me, omitting Notre Dame was not an emotional decision or the result of double-secret probation. It was purely pragmatic, following Saturday’s 16-14 loss to four-touchdown underdog Northern Illinois at Notre Dame Stadium. And the Irish have a chance to earn their way back in.
I believe Notre Dame has a top 25 roster and top 25 potential. But play on the field matters, and so does coaching. I voted the Huskies, 54-15 winners over FCS lightweight Western Illinois in their opener, at No. 23. The coaches didn’t rank them. The AP poll had them at No. 25.
What sealed for me ND’s exclusion was that third-year coach Marcus Freeman, while standing up and owning being blindsided in the postgame press conference, provided little in the way of how and why it happened or solutions to make it stop.
Look, I’m part of the whiplash college football fans are feeling, and I’ll own that. The only amusing part of Saturday night was seeing some media members pretend they didn’t attach big-picture significance to the season-opening Irish takedown of Texas A&M, 23-13, on Aug. 31.
As if they were either on Neptune vacationing last week or doppelgangers had invaded their YouTube space.
The Irish visit a Purdue team (1-0) on Saturday (3:30 p.m. EDT; CBS-TV) that’s coming off a bye week and is the first team in Big Ten history to be picked to finish 18th. Not exactly the stage for expedited redemption, but improvement should be the goal.
Real, sustainable, on-the-field, irrevocable improvement.
“This is as low as it gets, and there's only one option for me," Freeman said, “and that's to get back to work and get it fixed. That's who I am, and that's who this team is going to be. And that's the way I'm going to lead — I'm not going into hiding. I'm going to get it fixed.
“Man, I'm going to be just as confident in what we're going to be able to do as a football program moving forward as I was going into this game. But there's some serious, some schematic things that we have to attack and get corrected.”
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