Serving up one more surprise

I never thought I’d be sitting here… writing this.  Specifically, in the airport lounge, waiting for my delayed redeye journey (to Dallas, then Fort Lauderdale, then train to Miami if you’re keeping tabs) to witness the Irish play for the crystal ball on January 7^th, 2013, only five years removed from a 3-9 season under Charlie Weis, followed by four more seasons that saw the Irish do no better than five losses in each.

Surprise!

To be clear, and I’m sure everyone who’s ever loved or even liked the Irish will tell you the same thing, I NEVER stopped believing we’d be here some day… just not now, so soon.  The rate of change in college football is too slow, with great teams rising and falling over the course of decades while sport-jacketed blue-haired geezers pull their puppeteer strings to ensure that nothing alters what they so steadfastly believe to be the way things ought to be.

And I also didn’t think my flight would be delayed.

But it was.  And thus here I sit… surprised on many levels.  And I can’t help but tell myself a couple things that apply to all of the above:  good things come to those who wait, and surprises (good, or bad) tend to come in flurries.

Which brings me to my title game analysis and ultimate prediction.  Those who know my approach to predicting games are familiar with the fact that I tend to rely on objective, statistic-based measures to arrive at a conclusion, centered primarily around two areas:  the computer models, and efficiency statistics.

The computer models like Alabama.  Not by nearly as much as Vegas does, but the outcome is clear nonetheless:  Alabama wins by between 4 and 6 points if you look to the mean and median respectively of the over 30 computer models that our friends over at thepredictiontracker.com have aggregated.  One point to highlight is that, consistent with virtually every Notre Dame regular season game, the standard deviation between the models on this particular game is higher than virtually all other bowl games.  Models vary from anywhere as high as a 14 point Tide Roll and a 10 point Irish upset.  That’s substantial.  Why is that, you ask?  The Irish are unpredictable.  Prone to surprise people.  And surprises, as I look up at the blinking red 1:09 estimated new departure time for my flight, tend to come in flurries.

Efficiency statistics are much closer, but also favor Alabama by a pachyderm nose when you think about the way this particular game will be played.  Football Outsiders’ Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) has Notre Dame ranked 3^rd overall, and Alabama 4^th.  This is a blended average however, of Offense, Defense, Special Teams, and Field Position ratings.  When you look at each a little closer, Alabama has the 19^th ranked offense, the 8^th best defense, 30^th best special teams, and 7^th best field position average in the nation.  Notre Dame ranks 6^th, 2^nd, 89^th, and 68^th in those categories.  This seems to suggest that, when adjusted for strength of schedule, the Irish have the better offense and defense, but lag far behind in the intangibles.  It means the game will likely be tight but the Irish will find themselves needing to overcome a pronounced disadvantage in field position and some very scary things that may happen in the kicking game.  In a game that virtually all agree will be played close to the vest and won or lost in the trenches, it is hard to see that working out for us if the game is played 100 times on paper.  But there’s only one flight left out of Seattle to Dallas tonight, and there’s only one game being played at Sun Life on Monday, so… say it with me now:  surprises tend to come in flurries.

Are my hopes pinned on a surprise then?  Yep.  Am I worried about that?  Nope.  This team and this season have delivered far too many surprises to stop now.  There is only one team that will take the field on Monday with the knowledge that no matter what happens, things just always seem to work out for them.  The other team has doubt indelibly etched in its collective psyche, born from the lack of a clean sheet, a pronounced late season slide in performance, and an average of 24 points per game surrendered vs. the high quality opponents they played.

Notre Dame will win Monday night.  24-20.  It will not be pretty.  It never has been with us.  Golson will struggle at times, the offense will sputter, the defense will give up more than one rushing touchdown and get burned a few times on the play action deep ball, special teams will blow a play or two, and we will find ourselves playing for our lives at times.  But that will be all too familiar to our side, and we will find ourselves looking up at the sky saying “here we go again.”  But in the end there will be only one statistic that matters:  surprises.  And we will deliver one when it counts, taking that part of the game with a clean sheet, 1-0.  Crazy as it sounds, we can rely on that, and it will be enough.