I’m not a believer that simply qualifying for a bowl game is worthy of praise but that wasn’t the case a decade ago.
Notre Dame somehow managed to fail to qualify for bowl games three times from 2000-09 while the ’09 team voted not to accept any invitation after a debacle of a final month that saw them go from 6-2 to a 6-6 finish with losses to Navy and Connecticut in there.
How mediocre were things a decade ago exactly?
Notre Dame went to a bowl game three years in a row just one time from 2000 to 2009, those years coming from 2004-06. It should be noteworthy that even in the first of those three seasons the head coach was fired after going 11-12 over his final two seasons.
Compare that to this past decade where 2016 and 4-8 was still entirely unacceptable but was the only bowl-less season. It’s absurd to think that getting to a bowl game was an accomplishment not all that long ago but for a school that didn’t four times in the previous decade, the bar has clearly been raised.
Hot Starts the new Norm: