Hold on to Your Hat

Watch out; there may be over 100 points total in today's game.  ASU is favored by 2.5 in my paper which makes sense as they are at home and ranked just ahead of us.  Our offense is clicking and our defense is populated by a bunch of freshmen.  Those are ingredients for lots of points on both sides.

ASU has been waiting for 20 years for a big game like this at home.  When we tried to get out of it due to schedule constraints, they practically went nuts.  Expect the place to be rocking today and remember we have not really been on the road much besides FSU.  One thing I am hoping is that they are so high they flip out and make a bunch of mistakes.  But don't count on it. 

Of course we have to win out to have a shot at the playoffs but I have a bad feeling that even if we do we are going to end up #5 or #6 and be on the outside looking in.  It is kind of funny that the ultimate tie-breaker might be strength of schedule.  When we started the season our schedule looked brutal, as hard as any out there.  But Michigan stinks, Stanford is average this year, and the SEC, Big12 and Pac12 are getting all the attention.  A little bit of bad luck but on the other hand maybe we don't win against Stanford if they were a powerhouse this year.  We actually would have been better off with the old BCS poll process where we would be sitting #6 about now instead of #10. Oh well.

I picked this game as trouble in my pre-season prediction and it still looks like trouble to me.  Losing Joe Schmidt is going to be a killer and Everett needs to have a perfect day because we have to score every time we have the ball.  I don't think it is going to be enough.  The stars do not seem aligned.  On the other hand, Kelly is a master at getting the team in the right mental state and the first 5 minutes will tell us a lot about both teams.  Should be a great game to watch.  If we do pull it out, we will get help in the playoff poll because a couple teams ahead of us have to lose today.

I am picking ASU in a shootout. 

ND 42, ASU 48

GO IRISH!

The Godfather