Time to go Bowling Again

Time for another wild guess season prediction for 2010. With all the unknowns for the Irish this year I am guessing more than I usually do but hey, that is what I do!

On the side of this being a good season I have the following. Relatively easy schedule, the excitement of a new coaching staff, a pretty good stable of talent and blind faith. On the side of this being another tough year I see the following. Lots of changes in offense and defense, not perfect alignment of the talent and the new system, no backup QB and so many recent years of disappointment. No one is picking ND in the top 25 and Sports Illustrated picked us to go 6-6 again!

So throwing that all in the wash I am predicting an 8-4 (maybe 9-3) record with a good but not great bowl game to wrap it up in January.

Here is my logic. We lose to MSU, BC, Pitt and USC. Seems like we have a pattern of losing one of the BIG 10 (or is it twelve?) games and this year it will be MSU. I expect a tough road game at BC as usual and Pitt actually has a very good team favored to win the Big East this year. USC still has more talent than ND and that Thanksgiving weekend game will be their bowl game in 2010. Another similar scenario is we beat BC but lose to Utah.

On the win side it goes like this. We have too much firepower for Purdue and I expect us to win big. Then we drive another nail into the Rich Rodriguez coffin by beating Michigan and get revenge for last year. Stanford comes in and gives us a very tough game but our offense overpowers their plodding style (and of course the alumni band pushes the team over the top again!). October starts bad with two losses which might make us 3-3 before we run off three easy wins agains WMU, Navy and Tulsa. The big maybe on my list is a win over UTAH but I am betting on the "we are playing at ND stadium" stars in the eyes of the Utes knocking them just a bit off of their game and we prevail in another good one. The historic game in Yankee stadium is an easy win over Army then unfortunately we have to go out to the Coliseum to wrap it up at USC.

Like I said, lots of guesses in their so I am hoping we get a better start and get the old Mo' going in early October contrary to my prediction. If we do there is a real decent possibility of a BCS bowl game but that is probably not in the cards this year. If Crist gets hurt we are going to be in real trouble so let's hope the opponents treat him like he has a red shirt on all season.

We will know a lot more about this team a few weeks down the road but that will not stop me from making a more specific Purdue prediction next week. What do you think?

Go Irish!