Tag: jeff brohm

Week 3 & 4 matchups for Notre Dame football in 2021 confirmed

With the Big Ten releasing their revised 2021 schedule today, Notre Dame knows for sure who they’ll play in weeks 3 and 4.

This past season was odd to say the least, the Irish joined a conference for the first time ever, en route to an undefeated ACC regular season with an unfortunate loss in the conference’s title game. Notre Dame gets back to their independence for 2021 and today, with the Big Ten announcing their 2021 updated schedule, two matchups have been confirmed for the Irish.

This past season, almost every conference canceled games outside their own conference, as Notre Dame missed out on playing Wisconsin in historic Lambeau Field. That game is back on this coming season, but the location will be in Chicago, at Soldier Field.

Before the Irish face off against the Badgers in week 4, they must contend with another Big Ten team in Purdue. The Boilermakers lose their best player in wide receiver Rondale Moore, but return a player who will garner just as much attention in WR David Bell. This past season Jeff Brohm’s team went 2-4, expect the Irish to be a heavy home favorite in this game.

The Wisconsin game should be a bit different however, as they return some very solid players with quarterback Graham Mertz as the leader. What’s nice for the Irish is that with the transfer of Jack Coan, Notre Dame might have a little advantage due to the former Badgers knowledge of the players in the program. It might make a difference as the neural site will negate any advantage for either team. Paul Chryst’s team went 4-3 last year after dealing with COVID-19 issues early on in the campaign.

Those are the only Big Ten foes the Irish will face this year, in back-to-back weeks fairly early in the season. It’s nice to be back to a normal Notre Dame football schedule in 2021.

Every Big Ten voter in the Amway Coaches Poll put Ohio State at No. 1

Six Big Ten coaches had votes in the Amway Coaches Poll this year. All of them put Ohio State at No. 1.

The Amway Coaches Poll powered by USA TODAY Sports is decided by 65 FBS coaches. These 65 voters are split up relatively evenly between the ten conferences, to avoid potential bias. Not only is there possibly an incentive for coaches to make their opponents look stronger, but familiarity breeds respect, and coaches are generally most familiar with the teams in their own conferences.

Usually, the ballots for the Coaches Poll are kept private. No one knows which coach voted which way. However, in a tradition that came from the BCS, the poll does release the ballot of each coach for the final rankings. USA Today published those ballots, which contain some interesting nuggets.

An important takeaway, though, is that all sseven Big Ten coaches will ballots put Ohio State at No. 1. The Buckeyes received 14 first-place votes in the final poll, and a full half those 14 came from Big Ten coaches. Chris Ash of Rutgers, Jeff Brohm of Purdue, Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio, Ohio State’s own Ryan Day, Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald, Penn State’s James Franklin, and Nebraska’s Scott Frost all put the Buckeyes in the top spot. (Even though Ash was fired partway through the season, his vote isn’t transferred to a different school or coach.)

This is not too unexpected. The trends for years have indicated that teams are slightly overrated (relative to the rest of the poll) by coaches in their own conference–which is why the bias is spread out the way the poll does it. Still, it’s noteworthy that the Big Ten coaches all think that Ohio State is the best in the land, while the vast majority of others had the Buckeyes at No. 2. A few coaches did have Ohio State at No. 3 behind both LSU and Clemson, but no one had the Buckeyes lower. In fact, astonishingly, every single coach (and every single AP voter) had the Oklahoma Sooners at No. 4–not a single voter had them higher or lower.