The best part of college football is the hope. For Notre Dame football fans, “hope” continues to be a strong driver for our expectations each season — despite 30 years of bipolar results on the field.

Think about that for a moment. Our own hope for something continues to drive our expectations year in and year out. As a fan myself, it’s easy to understand how and why we get to there just about every year, but if we’re honest, it does take away from accurate discussion of the possibilities of a season.

But also… who gives a shit? It’s college football and we can do what we want. Do what makes you feel good, and if you don’t feel good about it anymore, feel free to to fall in a hole of misery and despair. Choose your own adventure.

In that spirit, I have some expectations for this season — which is a willful way of declaring some predictions. I’ll keep this fairly brief and spill out just three of them today.

The offensive line is going to struggle in College Station.

One of my biggest fears for the season comes in game one. There is some uncertainty with a position group that Notre Dame needs to hang its hat on every season. The offensive line saw the departures of tackles Joe Alt and Blake Fisher to the NFL along with the transfer of center Zeke Correll. While good talent will take their places, one of the biggest strengths of the Texas A&M Aggies will be their defensive front and a Mike Elko shoe up their asses. I don’t expect failure, but I do expect a long tough day in the trenches — and one that will keep this game very close.

Keeping the hardware.

Notre Dame is in possession of all of its rivalry trophies, and I expect them to continue to hold on to the three that are up for grabs this season (Purdue Boilermakers — Shillelagh Trophy, Stanford Cardinal — Legends Trophy, and USC Trojans — Jeweled Shillelagh).

Fighting for position.

I’ll save you the suspense — I do expect Notre Dame to go 12-0 this season. They have a very manageable schedule (to say the least) and the combination of an elite defense with a real offensive play caller in Mike Denbrock should take care of every team in front of them. I do, however, expect a battle for the 5 seed. Before you hand wank that away, there are several scenarios that I could see being an issue (like a 12-1 SEC runner up for example). ND’s weak schedule could become a real issue at that point. The difference between a 5 seed and a 6 seed could very well be the difference between playing Ole Miss instead of Air Force.

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