His latest is a letter to Dr. Kevin White and Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney, urging them to combine forces with the Fighting Irish joining the Big Integer.  I’m not sure if it’s meant as a joke or something, because some of his data is just wrong, at least in regards to the Irish.

He’s 100% correct in the Big Ten is seemingly on the verge of another down year, with out-of-conference losses coming to teams like Appalachian State, Florida Atlantic, Iowa State and Duke.  Other than Ohio State defeating Washington and maybe Wisconsin over Washington STate, none of their teams are yet to achieve a non-conference win of merit, as Notre Dame’s descent into "Worst Team in Football" territory has left Penn State with what might be the easiest non-conference schedule since conferences came about.  There’s also big-time issues with the Big Ten Network, and he’s right in saying the Irish joining the Big Televen (would they just change their name to the Big XII 2.0 if another team joined?) would clear up all those problems with Comcast not picking the network up, as Notre Dame is already On Demand.

But the Irish’s gains?  Mandel’s argument has a few problems, starting with the fact he’s assuming the Irish aren’t going to bounce back from this slight aberration of a season to at least modest success.  He then implies the Irish aren’t competing for national championships because of their schedule, not because they went eight years with idiot coaches and even the easiest schedule in the nation would have yielded zero rings.  On top of that – and this is my favorite – he implies the Irish are somehow having difficulty recruiting speed to South Bend.  Again, when you look at the various ratings and data on both the sophomores, freshmen and the verbal commits for next year, is just ridiculous.  Yes, our defense seems slow now, but that’s a lot of the old guard in there.  When the rest of the young guns join the likes of Armando Allen, Darrin Walls, Golden Tate and Morrice Richardson, we’ll be just fine on the speed front, thanks.

It’s stuff we’ve heard a million times before, but Mandel’s seeming insistence that we will never score an offensive touchdown ever and need to join the Big Integer to remedy this comes across as simply opportunistic and poorly thought-out.

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I'm busy the rest of the day, folks, with work slowly piling up and a weekend ahead not conducive to getting anything done.  Rob will probably be around, and you'll at least get mini-Spartan preview up before the day ends.  Big-time apologies. Hopefully this video from Deadspin and last year's highlight video can hold you over.