[NU Sports] Football Talk

[chuck herron]

With another Womens Lacrosse championship settled, it would seem to be time to turn our attention more completely to football, the greatest game.

I was checking out LakethePosts (www.laketheposts.com), and they pointed me to PreSnapRead's college football countdown, currently at #92 (Eastern Michigan), and I happened upon the Orlando Sentinel's excellent College Football blog, which is currently at #75 (Florida International).  Both of these are offering encouraging tidbits.

It looks like our schedule breaks down into two parts - the first seven games, plus the last game versus Illinois, against lesser teams, and a middle core of four games (vs Nebraska, vs Iowa, at Michigan, at Michigan State), against some of the stronger teams in the league.  

Currently, against the 'weaker 8', the Sentinel has Syracuse at #92, Boston College at #94, Indiana at #111 and Minnesota at #93.  Of course, South Dakota is in FCS, and they have endured five straight seasons of 6-5, 6-5, 5-5, 4-7 and 6-5.  We are also looking at games in that phase against Vanderbilt and Illinois in Evanston and Penn State at their place.

Assuming we go 0-4 against 'the tough opponents', we need to go 6-2 against 'the weaker opponents'.  Based on the 2 countdowns, I am currently estimating five 'weak' wins - Syracuse, Boston College, South Dakota, Indiana and Minnesota.  We would then need one more win for bowl eligibility, and anything better than that would help to improve our bowl position.

Right now, I would like to embrace 7-5, which should put us in position for a nice Bowl (Ticket City ?).  Anybody else have any thoughts ?


Chuck Herron   Tech '85