Time for Some Football!

I know you have been thinking "I wonder what Don thinks about the upcoming ND season?". Well here you go.

Seems like forever since the Champs Sports Bowl disappointment (remember that?). Well the first snap occurs somewhere around 8AM Chicago time Saturday. I will be sitting in my jammies with a coffee to watch the 2012 version of the Fighting Irish.

Season Predictions:  

Easy Wins: Navy, Purdue, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest - nuff said!  

Tough Wins:
Stanford - still a very good team but different without Andrew Luck
BYU - look out for these guys
Miami - emotional high in Chicago will carry the day
Boston College - will pester us but we really should beat them handily  

Pick 'em:
Michigan State - well coached, away. I think we will win but this will be a tough one.
Michigan - Can we finally beat these guys again? Blown 3 in a row.  

Likely to Lose:
Oklahoma - very good team that never loses at home.
USC - Look out this year, they look pretty good again. Did not take long for them to bounce back unfortunately.

So that means 8 to 10 wins hopefully. Should be a great season.

As we enter the third season of what we hope will be the Brian Kelly era, the team does seem to be on the right trajectory.  However, as I noted after the bowl game, Kelly is not some kind of magician or savior.  He is modernizing the program so it can get to the top plateau of college football, but some of the stuff just seems goofy.  The rock music, the stupid uniform tweaks, other things of that nature irritate me at times.  Probably just me being grumpy but I hope we do not throw out the baby with the bath water.  Football Saturdays seem to be more and more a spectacle and less a good football game at times.  Just the way of the world unfortunately.  All will be forgiven if we win some more games!

 GO IRISH! BEAT NAVY!