Re: 1988-1989 Strength of Schedule...

It's not an apt comparison to this year's team. It's simply apples and oranges.

You won't ever see a team (ND or otherwise) succeed against that kind of schedule ever again. There was a time when the top teams truly stood apart (UCLA men's basketball, ND football). All the top talent (which was scarce) rose to the top few teams, to the point where even a "murderer's row" schedule like 1989 was difficult, but manageable for a program like ND (still damned impressive though, and I wouldn't argue with you if you still wanted to call that the "standard-bearer").

The point, though, is that we shouldn't get too hung up in trying to compare the 2018 team to team's past, even if we do win it all.

Today there is too much parity on college sports for something like 1988-89 ND to ever happen again, because there is too great a pool of talent of kids out there. The population and resources are simply higher. More kids playing sports, better coaching, better nutrition and strength programs to close the gap between normal kids and "natural athletes." 2018 Alabama couldn't survive a schedule like '89 ND, and it's not because 2018 Alabama isn't a great team. The game has changed. Make no mistake, 'Bama has been dominant, but they would never get away with a schedule like the ND schedules of old. There is simply too much parity in today's game.

If you want a glimpse into the past, take women's basketball today. That too will change as the women's game gets more developed and more girls are encouraged to play sports.

I appreciate

That you think this, but just because you state it as fact, doesn't make it so

"You won't ever see a team (ND or otherwise) succeed against that kind of schedule ever again"

"Today there is too much parity on college sports for something like 1988-89 ND to ever happen again"

Bama would like a word.

A sampling of Bama's schedule this year (number in parenthesis is final CFP ranking)

(5) UGA - W
(11) LSU - W
(18) MSU - W
(19) A&M - W
(23) Mizzou - W

And if they win it all, you would add (4) and (2/3) to the list

That would be wins over 3 of the top 5 teams in the final CFP regular season rankings

And 7 wins against teams ranked in the final regular season CFP poll.

HEY MAN YOU WON'T SEE IT AGAIN *

I'm waiting

For the post about all of the reasons for Bama's success, and how there is no way for ND to have that sort of success.

One element of the Bama model that ND can't match that

matters a lot is the grey shirting. Bama in effect gets 15-25 extra players every 4 years. It allows them to replace injured or ineffective players much like the NFL has free agency, practice squads and trades.

It works at Alabama because their tuition is so dramatically lower than ND's tuition. In state tuition is below 10k per year. Out of state is in the 30k range -- and they give a lot of academic scholarships to what ND would consider to be bottom half academically within any class -- lowering that to 15 to 20k for out of state.

Someone can carry the cost to grey shirt at Alabama for a year and hope it works out and then accept a scholarship somewhere else if it doesn't. At ND that one year will cost you 75-80k all in, so it is virtually impossible for ND to match that aspect of the Bama machine.

Wow

It was only a matter of time until this one came up.

25 extra players?

Bullshit (check the link) they didn't get any "grey shirts" in the 2016 class.

But let's check out their mid year enrollees from last year:

Alabama Enrollees January 2018

Kindly remind all of us which one of these kids were grey shirts that graduated in May of 2017? That's right, it was just Parks (and there are plenty of articles about how he was the last of a dying breed), which was 1 of 5. Their early enrollees projected for this year, all are graduating now, not last may.

But if we look at the large number of 2017 enrollees in January, still not a ton of grey shirts. In fact there were none. 12 of them graduated in December then enrolled, and 4 used their mini mester to enroll

2017 Enrollee Article

1 grey shirt in 3 years isn't what you wrote, or are you talking about a different practice?

Click here for link at https://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2016/02/nick_sa

It may be a different practice

What I am talking about is walk on players that pay their own way and then eventually get a scholarship - or leave to take a scholarship somewhere else that they could have taken straight out of high school.

EDIT: Your method of uncovering those players is invalid -- because they are not people that are enrolling in the middle of a year. They are already students at the school from day one and are on the team as walk-ons originally.

You may or may not be able to detect them by checking for changes in the names of players that have scholarships by class over time and/or by the number of players that originally were in a class versus the end -- but they still had 85 scholarships. It isn't trivial to unwind -- and it is perfectly legal (so not saying Saban is breaking any rules, just taking advantage of Bama being cheaper than most private grade schools).

Your definition of grey shirting is wrong

Google it.

My method was fine and accurate.

A gray shirt is a player who doesn’t sign in February, graduates in May and doesn’t enroll until the following Spring because they don’t have a scholarship avaialable until the Spring semester.

That is gray shirting defined and few teams really do it anymore.