6 Thoughts on a Thursday
Notre Dame football weekends are an event. It’s more than just the game. It’s everything else that surrounds the game.
The Pep Rally. Tailgating. The bookstore. The Walk. Even just walking around the campus and people watching is an event.
None of that includes the actual game, but all of them involve crowds of people standing close together. There’s optimism about a season, but not much optimism about those things happening.
The same goes for having the stadium at full capacity, which is something Jack Swarbrick said they won’t be doing this year. It all makes sense that it should happen like that given the safety concerns for everyone. It also makes a ton of sense that if the student-athletes are going to be okay to play on the field, students shouldn’t be denied a chance to watch games in the stands.
That’s also something Swarbrick made a point of emphasizing when talking about fans. Students have to be part of it.
“Yes. We're committed to having fans in the stands and we'll start with the other students. My view throughout has been, if we think it's safe for students to be on the field playing football, it should be safe for the students to be in the stands watching football.
"So, we'll build off that base of the other students, faculty and staff will be a priority for us to give them an opportunity, and then our fans.”
It’s going to be like this all over the country.
They won’t be filling 100,000 into the Big House. Tennessee won’t be doing that either. I don’t care how much Oregon fans want to be in Autzen to see them play Ohio State in September. That’s not going to be a full stadium if that game is played on the date it’s currently scheduled.
I wouldn’t call it the new normal, but it’s the way it will be for games in 2020 (and maybe 2021 as well).
It’s something programs will have to get used to, but it shouldn’t be a huge adjustment for players. In a lot of ways, it’s going to be like high school football for some, just in large, cavernous stadiums. Crowds of mostly students, faculty, and family members are what crowds start out as for athletes. There’s something weirdly nostalgic about it that I like.
It’s not ideal to cut out the revenue of having a full stadium and all of the other things that go with it. It won’t be fun for Notre Dame fans who get denied a chance to see the team in person.But maybe it’s just me, but I think cutting out all of the noise, literally, during a game might make it a cool experience for the players and coaches. It might make it more interesting for those watching it at home too.
I think there may be an opportunity for viewers to hear things they wouldn’t have normally heard. They’ll get a much better feel for all of the communication that goes on that is unnoticed by so many.
Of course, no one wants to live in a world where fans can no longer attend games or concerts or do things like going to a pep rally. But if it has to be like this for a year, it might be better in some ways. It will be unique at the very least and I want to see how it will change how everyone consumes the game and how the players play it.
2. I was hoping that when I put on the film of Nick McCloud going against Clemson that he had a good day despite NC State having a bad one. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
The decision for McCloud to transfer probably had a lot to do with having a better shot at the NFL and a better shot at winning. He’ll have both at Notre Dame compared to NC State. There is no argument against that.
There is an argument as to how much value he’ll bring to the team because very few graduate transfers end up being great players at their new school, even if they have starting experience like McCloud.
I think what he’ll provide at the very least is a bigger option to play the boundary. He can tackle. He can play physical. He can fill a role as a potential Nick Watkins or Donte Vaughn type on the 2020 roster.
The biggest thing he does is provide insurance. We know he is capable of playing at an ACC level and we don’t know that about the majority of the corners on the roster yet. Whether he starts, plays in sub-packages, or is only a situational matchup player, he makes Notre Dame better.
3. If Notre Dame ends up adding Stanford graduate transfer Trevor Speights (Matt reported that the Irish lead for him), the question of whether or not this makes Notre Dame better is more of a debate.
I think it says a lot more about how they feel about the backs on the roster than thinking Speights is going to come in and fill the shoes of Tony Jones.
Speights didn’t run behind the best Stanford offensive line in 2018, but the Cardinal averaged 5.9 yards per carry in 2017. Speights averaged 3.9. I’m not really sure how much of an impact he can make.
He has seven career catches. He didn’t flash any explosiveness as a runner at Stanford other than a 38-yard run versus FCS UC Davis. His career long against an FBS opponent is 13 yards. The two games where he had more than 15 carries, he averaged 1.8 and 3.3 YPC.
He wasn’t an explosive tester in high school either (4.62 40, 102.18 SPARQ score).
I know Lance Taylor has a familiarity with him, but it’s difficult to see how much of an impact he could make for Notre Dame. His high school highlights make him look like a different back than the player he was at Stanford, but that was a long time ago.
Notre Dame trying to add him has to be a sign that they don’t have much confidence about the backs who are returning from last season. Hopefully those guys see it as a challenge and Chris Tyree sees it as an opportunity to do a lot as a freshman.
4. As days go by, the optimism for playing football this fall is growing. Sure, there are plenty of obstacles to work through, but everything we’re hearing publicly from Brian Kelly seems like things are trending in the right direction.
Then there are things leaking about scheduling and teams discussing swapping opponents, which is all a good sign in my opinion. It means that solutions are being worked on to deal with potential issues that could derail having a normal season.
Swapping opponents would normally sound ludicrous under regular circumstances, but I think it’s been established that nothing about what’s going on is regular. This is a unique time in every aspect of life and that’s made everything different. Nothing is going to be an exception to that, especially sports.
But strange times sometimes produce entertaining results. That could be the case if we see some teams swap opponents this season.
The uncertainty with the Pac-12 and certain Mountain West schools is a big driver behind potential team swaps with the talk of Alabama and USC potentially swapping opponents with TCU and Cal. Alabama-TCU is not a more interesting matchup than if USC was involved, but I do think other matchups could become a lot more intriguing.
As Matt suggested (suggested, not reported), Texas A&M hosts Fresno State on the same day Notre Dame is scheduled to play Stanford. How about a little Mike Elko reunion rather than an annual matchup with Stanford for one year? I don’t know about you, but I’d like to watch that game.
There’s hundreds of different scenarios that could play out that cause teams to reorganize the schedule whether it’s starting the season later, teams staying within their own conference, and many more. It would be fruitless to pick out weeks and say, “Notre Dame could play this team this weekend if the opponent isn’t set”.
Fruitless, but kind of fun.
Even if it’s just for one year, wouldn’t it be great to see more non-traditional matchups that don’t happen in a bowl game? That has always been something that has been missing for most of college football. Notre Dame is unique in scheduling Arkansas and Wisconsin. Adding Texas A&M to that, while not being an easy matchup, would be interesting.
If schedules have to be rearranged for multiple programs, which could very well be the case, then there might be some chaos when it comes to finding opponents. Chaos might end up being wonderful for college football fans.
Would anyone want to see Michigan’s game against Washington get cancelled and have them play a MAC school? No. It would be way more fun to see them play Oklahoma State instead (scheduled to play Oregon State that weekend).
I doubt athletic directors are going to be ambitious when they try to tweak the schedule, but I hope at least a couple of them think outside of the box if it happens.
5. The NCAA won’t mandate a uniform start date, which one would think would be bad for Notre Dame if they were to report to campus or start practicing later. But it could actually help them to find out how other teams are handling it and make some adjustments based on what is and isn’t working.
All of this is new territory for everyone involved and being first in this sense isn’t something I would want to be if I was running a college football program. The first to do it is often the first to make mistakes in a case like this.
Of course Brian Kelly wants his guys to get extra time in the weight room or on the practice field, but if I was him, I wouldn’t mind see how things are going with a few other programs first and then taking what they’ve done to learn from it.
6. Brett McMurphy reported today that some conference members are looking at home and home series if some others in the conference are unable to play.
Sign me up for home and home in college football.
It’s not something that we would ever see from Notre Dame as an independent, but I love the idea of teams playing in September and then seeing each other again in November. College football teams can change so much during the course of a season. Notre Dame certainly did last year.
You never get to see redemption or how much a team improved or regressed by playing the same opponent twice. I would say that this is the kind of thing that could only take place during a pandemic, but if college football ever gets to a point where the top dogs from the Power 5 break off and leave the bottom half of the conferences behind, maybe we’ll start to see home and home become a frequent occurrence..
Chaos makes college football more fun. An undefeated team who beat a rival at home in September, but loses on the road in November, would be very chaotic. I want to see that.