Battle of the Columnists

Andrew Howard

Four.

While the Fighting Irish have yet to win a game, lose a game by less than 14 points, or actually put up a fight against an opponent, I believe that Notre Dame will win the last four games on its schedule.

Call me crazy. Call me pretentious and arrogant. But don’t call me asinine.

I know my facts, and the facts don’t lie. Notre Dame will not beat us on Saturday at the Rose Bowl. Without Charlie Weis’ golden boy Brady Quinn and receiver/pitcher Jeff Samardzija, the Fighting Irish will have no chance at reenacting that last scoring drive that absolutely crushed the Bruins last year in South Bend, Ind. And the Irish will not find any success against Boston College or USC either.

But, on Nov. 3, the moment for Irish fans everywhere (and I am not one of them, if you were wondering) will arrive.

They play consecutive home games against Navy and Air Force. Now, if picking Notre Dame to defeat the service academies makes me a communist, as my colleague so astutely put it, I can live with that. I just pick winners, baby. And these two are winners for the Irish and have been for a while.

As far as Duke and Stanford go, Weis should have Jimmy Clausen and the offense going enough by then to defeat a couple of bad defenses.

So, while I might be a communist, at least I’m not a liar.

Nik Lampros

One.

I agree with my colleague that Notre Dame isn’t picking up any wins against UCLA, USC or Boston College.

But unlike that communist, I refuse to pick the Irish to defeat one of our noble service academies.

Between the two of them, Air Force and Navy have scored impressive victories against such dangerous opponents as TCU, Utah and fascism. While the Irish might appear to have home-field advantage for both games, upon closer examination South Bend, Ind., is still a part of America, which means that Navy and Air Force will still be defending their homeland. So put the Irish down for 0-10.

Now, as much as I’d love to keep playing devil’s advocate after that, that’d involve literally advocating the Duke Blue Devils, and unless a basketball game breaks out under the Golden Dome, that’s not a very good idea.

I see the Irish getting off their slide at home and being 1-10 heading into their season-ending battle for college football inferiority with Stanford in Palo Alto.

Assuming that Stanford has recovered from their flattening at USC by then, this game could be close. Call me a Pac-10 homer, but I’m banking on coach Jim Harbaugh’s boys working like dogs to send Notre Dame home for the year with a 1-11 record.

And if Harbaugh has anything to say about it, you can bet they’ll have fun doing it.

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