le bon temps are over for the Irish.

You really cannot get rolled last night like Notre Dame did by LSU (with Son of Dreamboat* Brady Quinn getting shut down with 145 yards) , and still be considered anywhere near a national power, as ESPN's Mark Schlabach writes today and many others throughout the blog world have noted, either in comments or in their own entries.

They got rolled by Ohio State in last year's Fiesta Bowl, and despite their 2 losses, LSU is just as talented as this year's OSU squad; they just didn't put it together when it mattered. I talked to a friend of mine at work post-game and he'd just had a very good round of winning, having taken LSU at -8.5 and Boise State to upset on Oklahoma.

Co-worker: "My friend in Vegas called me and was actually hesitating on taking LSU. I told him, 'You can't take Notre Dame in a game like this if the spread is less than two touchdowns."
Me: "Hell, you could have taken LSU if the spread was 3 TDs."

Notre Dame travels well and they absolutely wreck the service academies every year. They had the most cupcake schedule of the BCS teams; Michigan and USC just bitch-slapped them, and it doesn't bode well if you have to come back against Michigan State and UCLA late in the game. The reason the Irish aren't in a conference is because they would wind up in the bottom half of it every year, without fail.

Back to Son of Dreamboat -- I predicted in comments on another site (can't remember which) that it would be nice to see how far Quinn's draft status fell after he got beat. I'm still irritated by the "Quinn as a #1 pick" talk -- it's the same talk by draftniks and colllege ball pundits that gave Vince Young a bad rap headed into the draft, and oops, he turned out to be the Offensive Rookie of the Year. "Waiter, please send a to-go order of the crow to Mr. Merrill Hoge's table." It looks like they're ready to do it again, this time to Troy Smith, all because they don't really watch the games enough or count them as enough of a factor.

Now, neither Troy Smith nor Brady Quinn are likely superstar QBs in the NFL to me, but if I had to put my team's financial future on risking one of them, I'd probably go with Smith -- he's done nothing but win A LOT. JaMarcus Russell, however, probably just made himself a high first round pick (if he leaves) with last night's game. Dude throws 50-60+ yards off his back foot.

(*Dreamboat term for Tom Brady stolen from With Leather.)