<p>^ Uhh, PSU came close to playing for the national championship (also came close a few years ago) and they graduate 80% of their FB players and they don’t have as low standards as many SEC schools.</p>
<p>Northwestern, which has a bit higher standard for recruits than ND, easily beat Syracuse this season.</p>
<p>Other schools w/ decent academic standards (like Wake and BC) for recruits have also found recent success on the gridiron.</p>
<p>This whole “academics thing” is just an easy excuse (even if academics prevents ND from beating the no.1 SEC school, it still shouldn’t prevent ND from making it to the national championship game, much less a BCS bowl or achieve the level of success that BC, Wake or NU have achieved in the past decade or two).</p>