Tag: Pac 12

Notre Dame-Stanford: Fighting Irish Wire staff predictions

What happens Saturday night in South Bend?

Notre Dame is starting to heat up right when the temperatures in the midwest begin to really cool down.  Fall is very much in the air in this part of the country and what better way to spend a Saturday night than enjoying a bit of that crispness in the air with the Irish playing host to annual rival Stanford.

The two are defined as rivals because they play each year and even have the Legends Trophy that the winner gets to take home each year, but do any Notre Dame fans really consider Stanford a rival?  And do Stanford fans look at Notre Dame as one?  

Those are questions to be answered in a different post but what Notre Dame has is an opportunity to not only win a fourth-straight ballgame but to show continued signs of improvement that they’ve displayed in recent weeks.

Stanford enters at just 1-4 after suffering a heartbreaking home loss last week while the Irish are 3-2.  Here is what the Fighting Irish Wire staff sees happening Saturday night in South Bend.

Notre Dame releases depth chart for Stanford game

Notre Dame’s depth chart for an annual rival

After an incredible amount of turbulence to start the 2022 season, Notre Dame football appears to be back on track.  No, they haven’t looked like the top-10 team most outlets had them as in the preseason, but have improved in winning their last three games as now a few very winnable games present themselves the rest of October.

That starts with the annual Stanford date for Notre Dame, a matchup they’ve been playing each year since 1997 outside of the COVID season of 2020.  Although the rivalry was incredibly competitive and heated for a spurt from roughly 2011-2017, things have swayed majorly in favor of Notre Dame since Ian Book’s first career start at Notre Dame Stadium.

Notre Dame enters this game 3-2 and looking better by the week while Stanford stumbles in at 1-4 after suffering a heartbreaking home loss to Oregon State last week.

Notre Dame has released their depth chart for the game which will look as follows:

Notre Dame football: Shamrock Series history

Which Shamrock Series game was the best one?

For the 11th time in program history Notre Dame is officially taking a home game to a road location as the [autotag]Shamrock Series[/autotag] is set to take place this Saturday night in Las Vegas as the Irish play “host” to BYU.  As you’re likely aware, Notre Dame has done extremely well all-time in these games going 10-0 to date with really only a couple even being competitive.

Saturday will feature a game against one of the better opponents Notre Dame will have played in this series however with the 3-1 Cougars.

Notre Dame has worn alternate uniforms for the game on nine occasions,  a tradition that wasn’t a part of things when the series began back in 2009.  Here is a quick look back at Notre Dame’s all-time showings in the Shamrock Series.

Pac-12 resurgence, Wisconsin’s downfall and rank(ed) Kansas: Winners and losers from Week 5 of the college football season

Our impressions from a wild week that saw 10 ranked teams fall.

Week after week, the 2022 college football season has treated us to absolute mayhem.

Things have been rather chalky up at the top (despite Georgia’s best efforts), but otherwise, the middle class has been entirely unpredictable. Ten teams that entered Week 5 ranked in the AP Top 25 lost, resulting in a big shakeup in the polls as we enter Week 6.

In addition to all that movement, we also saw two more Power Five jobs open up on Sunday — one fairly surprising, the other not so much.

It’s hard to believe we’re already in the month of October and closing in on the halfway point of the season, but it just goes to show how important each and every game is, at least under the current postseason format.

Here are the winners and losers from Week 5:

Stanford loses running back for the season

Tough year only getting tougher for Stanford

Notre Dame is just over two weeks away from hosting Stanford in a night contest that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t be much of a game. That likelihood probably just grew a slight bit because Stanford will make the trek to South Bend without running back E.J. Smith.

Smith, the sun of NFL all-time leading rusher Emmitt Smith, will be out the remainder of the season with an undisclosed injury according to Cardinal head coach David Shaw.

Smith had a big start to the season, rushing for 206 yards on 30 carries, finishing with three touchdowns. He hasn’t played since, however, and will not play the rest of 2022.

Stanford was already playing from behind; it is 1-2 with blowout losses to both USC and Washington. Its only victory was against Colgate.

The David Shaw-led program isn’t too far removed from being a West Coast powerhouse. It had four top-10 finishes between 2010 and 2015 but hasn’t finished a year ranked at all since 2017.

With what appears to be another long fall ahead for Shaw and Stanford, you wonder how much longer he’ll be given to lead the Cardinal program.

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1 bettor really put $1.5k put on the Colorado to win the Pac-12 despite longest odds in the conference

Go big or go home.

I’ve seen some bets in my day that made me do a double take. I’ve even seen some that made me triple back. But I’d never come across a bet that left me staring at the screen.

Until today.

A bettor at Caesars Sportsbook placed a $1,5000 wager on the Colorado Buffaloes football team to win the Pac-12 this season. The same Colorado team that is 300-1 to win the Pac-12.

And, yes, Colorado’s odds are the longest of any team in the conference.

I can’t say that I’ve heard of a bet quite like this, although a recent $1k bet on Utah State to win the national championship comes awfully close.

For Colorado to turn this bettor’s $1.5k  into $450,000, it’ll have to spend the season doing some serious upsetting. The Buffaloes face all three of the Pac-12’s preseason AP Top 25 teams (USC, Utah, Oregon).

They haven’t beaten a ranked team since the 2019 season.

Hey, perhaps CU can get an early jump on the upsetting and set the tone for the type of season they’ll have when it opens up this weekend against TCU, who is a 13.5-point favorite (at Tipico Sportsbook) over the Buffaloes.

That’s probably what the bettor is hoping for.

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1 burning question for each Power Five conference entering the 2022 season

After a genuinely wild offseason, we have some questions.

After what has felt like an offseason filled with nonstop drama, we’re so close to actual, honest-to-god football being played.

This offseason has been dominated by topics such as the transfer portal, name, image and likeness benefits, conference realignment and coaching changes at a number of traditional powers. It’s been a constant deluge of talking points.

It goes without saying that as we approach kickoff in the 2022 season, we have some questions. It may be a while before we have a large enough sample size of games to answer many of them, but with talking season coming to an end, here is the main burning question surrounding each Power Five conference.

Stream live college football games every week this season from conferences across the country on ESPN+.

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Candidates the Big 12 should consider for potential expansion

The college football world as we know it is changing rapidly.

The college football world as we know it is changing rapidly. The days of regional matchups and the traditional Power Five conferences are coming to an end.

Shocking news broke earlier in the week that USC and UCLA will be moving from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten ahead of the 2024 athletic season.

The move is likely to have some major dominos fall behind it. The future of the Power Five conferences is now in jeopardy.

The Pac-12 seems to be in trouble with two of its most notable brands walking out the door. The Big 12 was able to stay afloat after Texas and Oklahoma announced their move to the SEC by adding four reputable group of five schools to the fold.

Conference realignment is not expected to slow down anytime soon. Here is a look at a few programs the Big 12 should consider for possible expansion in the near future.

Predicting the new CFB landscape: 4 conferences, 20 teams apiece

Predicting what the future of college athletics will look like. How would you feel about this?

Wow, the dust has begun to settle after one of the craziest days we’ve had in college football since USC fired Lane Kiffin on the airport tarmac. Seemingly out of thin air, the University of Southern California and the University of California Los Angeles will leave the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten in 2024.

Everything we know about the college football landscape has quickly eroded in the past few years, beginning with Colorado and Nebraska departing from the Big 12 in 2010 to the end of the BCS era and the start of the College Football Playoff in 2015.

Power five programs Texas, Oklahoma USC and UCLA plus group of five programs BYU, Houston UCF and Cincinnati have all left their conferences in roughly the past year. It is safe to say that quite a few more drastic changes are on the horizon.

There is a widespread belief that we could be facing two mega-conferences with 20 members a piece building around the current SEC and Big Ten.

However, consolidating everything down to two major conferences would be difficult. Four conferences at 20 teams apiece sounds more realistic.

So, what is this ultimately going to look like?

The numbers in bold indicate the number of programs in the conference if the schools listed preceding them join that respective conference. 

Report: Notre Dame rival could be heading to the Big Ten

A major shake-up in college athletics if this is true

The rivalry between [autotag]Notre Dame[/autotag] and [autotag]USC[/autotag] is a storied one, one that has been a West coast versus Midwest battle. There is however a very interesting twist that happened this afternoon as multiple sources have indicated that USC along with [autotag]UCLA[/autotag] will be joining the [autotag]Big Ten[/autotag], leaving the [autotag]PAC-12[/autotag] in the dust as early as the 2024 season.

This is a very interesting development, as the Big Ten expansion over the past two decades has been mainly to the East. By going out West they would challenge the current college athletics landscape, having a national reach instead of just regional.

The next question is where does that leave the PAC-12, who will they look to replace some of their most recognizable schools?

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