If you hold for the field goal, and the other team runs back the kickoff for a touchdown, you're going to look pretty foolish. Always go for the 7.
This...
As events transpired, Stanford scored a TD on first down, left the Irish :59 to play with, and sure enough ND damn near scored. So the guy in 116 certainly had a point.
...is more a reflection of Stanford being a lousy defensive team than anything.
But, still, even if ND had scored, isn't it better to take it to overtime instead of kicking a field goal and running the risk of losing? If Stanford gets the TD, the worst they do is overtime.
Plus, it's Notre Dame. Just playing the odds on ND, which hasn't even really been a national power for about 20 years (and really more like 30 when you consider what little power they had during the '80s and early '90s derived from Miami and Florida State tripping over their own egos and each other), you have to figure Weis & Co would blow it. I've been saying all year that Notre Dame was garbage (they're always garbage), but they always get massive coverage because most sports reporters are Catholics from the Midwest and the Northeast, where the Notre Dame Cult -- 99% of which has no ties to the school beyond a general sense of Irishness -- is still chugging along. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
you are the media you consume.
Weis was a great offensive coordinator for the Patriots (and he has three Super Bowl rings from a four-year span to prove it). As a pro coach, I respect the guy a lot. Hell, I wish the Fins had him instead of Dan Henning.
But college and pro ball are pretty dramatically different, especially given that Notre Dame isn't regionally positioned to do the kind of recruiting it really needs to do to be an elite team. Best recruiting in that region is done in western Penn/eastern Ohio, around Pittsburgh. But those kids are mostly growing up as Ohio State and Penn State fans (and Michigan to a lesser degree).
Sort of the reverse of what happened with Steve Spurrier. Amazing college coach, but not a very good pro coach. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
There are maybe 4 or 5 quarterbacks in the country who could pull that off: Tim Tebow of Florida (mostly because Florida receivers can just flat beat anybody -- they're just too strong and too fast for a Stanford defense -- and Tebow can do enough to help them), Colt McCoy of Texas, Christian Ponder of Florida State, and perhaps a couple others. Only because those guys have done similar work against top-rated defenses in the past and clearly have a nose for winning with time fighting against them.
I wouldn't even trust Alabama, which I think is the best team in the country, to pull it off, because their QB simply doesn't have the air attack needed ('Bama is more of a smash-mouth running team).
Even in that nigh-unfathomable scenario, I might still go for 7. But with a shot at beating a team like Florida, I'd have to at least consider taking the field goal and leaving almost no time left. One important question that would need to be answered: How many timeouts do I and the opposing team have? If the opposing team has none, and I have one or two, that would make me lean that way, because I can then drain the clock without feeling too much pressure on my kicking game.
But again, only given the prospect of beating a high-flying, top-ranked offense whom I know would beat me down the field, and whom I figure I'll undoubtedly lose to in overtime. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
