[bigboydan]

Notre Dame starting to slip?

The football betting public is getting smarter every day. Perhaps they’re even ready to take a step back and think twice about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

The Irish are still crazy-go-nuts popular, don’t get me wrong. But they’re probably not the best college football team in the United States, and now that the conventional sports media have said as much in their annual previews, Irish supporters are less likely to reach into their wallets. Notre Dame has been surpassed on the BCS championship futures market by the potent Ohio State Buckeyes (+500); the Irish are listed at +600, the same odds as the West Virginia Mountaineers.

Having said that, Notre Dame and West Virginia both have built-in BCS advantages. The Irish are so popular that the bowl committee, which is ultimately in the business of football, has declared them BCS-eligible if they win nine games and finish in the Top 12 of the computer-generated standings. It would take a strange scenario for the committee to snub the lucrative Irish should they qualify. And the Mountaineers have the benefit of playing in the Big East, whose champion still gets an automatic BCS berth despite the decline of the conference. New rules to mitigate these advantages don’t kick in until after the 2006 season.

It will be relatively easy for the Irish and the Mountaineers to get into a BCS bowl game. Winning the championship is another kettle of fish. Last year, Notre Dame was crushed 34-20 by OSU in the Fiesta Bowl. West Virginia upset the Georgia Bulldogs 38-35 in the Sugar Bowl; neither game was for the championship, though, as the USC Trojans and Texas Longhorns went undefeated heading into their instant classic Rose Bowl confrontation. For either the Irish or the Mountaineers to get into the title game this time around, they’ll have to be just as dominant as the Big Ten-tested Buckeyes threaten to be.

There’s a chance Notre Dame can make the leap from good to great this year. But a +600 chance? The coaches might think so, based on their bestowal of the No. 2 ranking to respected colleague Charlie Weis and his team. Some football analysts aren’t as convinced. FOX, who relies on the excellent work done by the folks at CollegeFootballNews, has the Irish ranked No. 18 in the nation, with their questionable defense leading to a projection of eight regular-season victories. That would shut Notre Dame out of the BCS bowl picture, even with the introduction of a fifth bowl game this season.

As for West Virginia, FOX projects the Louisville Cardinals to win the Big East and the automatic berth. Louisville (+4000) is No. 13 in the coaches rankings and No. 14 for FOX, but the Mountaineers slip to No. 15 as far as FOX is concerned. Most analysts are more bullish on the Irish than FOX, but the Cardinals are splitting Big East opinion now that quarterback Brian Brohm is healthy and back under center. ESPN’s Mark Schlabach joins FOX in picking the Cards, while Sports Illustrated and CBS are leaning toward West Virginia. Note that the Mountaineers can still qualify for an at-large berth even if Louisville takes the automatic bid.

I’ve railed against the “conventional” sports media countless times, but more and more, football opinion is being shaped by the information available on the Internet, which is still anything but conventional. And I’m especially more likely to put my trust in FOX (at least, in the sports department) when it outsources its college football analysis to specialists like CollegeFootballNews. I’m not alone in this boat – perhaps you are already more than familiar with their work. The more people that are, the longer Notre Dame’s odds will become.

But we can still count on the betting public to overvalue the Irish. The preseason rankings do more to win the hearts and minds of football bettors than anything the Internet has produced – yet. As if Notre Dame needed any help in that department. The Mountaineers are a different story. The Big East was largely ignored last year after the ACC took away Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech. Then WVU went 10-1 straight up and 8-2 against the spread, losing only to the Hokies. But it took the dramatic comeback over the 7-point favorites from Georgia to get the public to take the Mountaineers seriously. That win pretty much saved the Big East from losing its automatic bid. It also ensures that expectations will be unreasonably high for West Virginia this season.

If you have any questions/suggestions, please email them to Michaelp@Betwwts.com.

[pags11]

thanks for this dan...