Notre Dame Favored by Bundle vs Rival Navy in San Diego

Rivalries make for thorny betting, with the factor of emotional effort on the gridiron tested against pure physics and pure skill.

I once had a student-athlete from my alma mater (destined for a quick exit from the squad) tell me he did not care much for football and was not planning to give 100% in every game. Raw stuff, eh? That is not an interview answer you get every day, and that is how I knew he wasn’t lying in the follow-up.

“What about the Hawks?” I asked him, bringing up a ferocious cross-town rival.

“Oh, I’ll gouge their eyes out of the sockets,” he said.

A rivalry can alter things. Michigan and Michigan State each flashed excellence on offense leading up to the Paul Bunyan battle, but the outing turned into a defensive struggle between 2 hateful units. Stanford has not played California in The Big Game thus far this season, but when that scrum happens, you can write off the Bears’ recent 3-game losing streak as sand under the Pacific.

Air Force is not as respected as Navy as a national program, but 2 weekends ago the Falcons floored the Middies for the 2^nd out of 3 tries. 3^rd-ranked Notre Dame is a capital 3-0 in rivalry match-ups this season, having trampled Michigan, Stanford and Pitt.

The former pair of UND results is especially striking, and each was whiffed-on by many handicappers, counting myself. My picks at the time intended no slight against Notre Dame, but the Wolverines are marvelous this season, and Stanford met the Irish a week after stunning Justin Herbert and the Oregon Ducks in Eugene.

Ah – but that is the ticket. Teams frequently have more than a single OOC rivalry match-up on the calendar. Coaches must watch that their squads do not burn themselves out trying to gouge-out the eyes of the hated Hawks, or Ducks, or Fighting Irish or whoever it is. The better your college is at football, the more opponents like to consider you a “rival,” even if the match-up is not annual.

Notre Dame deals with an awful rivalry scenario, with a long, rich history and an entire schedule of “out-of-conference” opponents. Many of the series (such as the UND-Navy tradition) go back decades upon decades. Navy especially tends to travel well (and mix well color-scheme and vibe-wise with UND) so that while the Irish have labored in Annapolis, when the schools meet in South Bend it feels almost akin to a neutral-site football.

This year the Notre Dame-Navy rivalry will be played on an impartial field at Qualcomm Stadium. Once again bad luck for the Irish vis-a-vis having any crowd-noise benefit. San Diego and the U.S. Navy are in a long marriage, and there are excited Academy alums in SoCal who have not seen the football team play in ages.

The betting lines for Notre Dame vs Navy can be full of trap doors, just like with any emotional meeting on the gridiron. But there are opportunities, too. For instance, Navy is currently in a dreadful slump, 2-5 on the season and in danger of missing a bowl game. The Middies’ status as a bona fide “Power-6” program in the AAC has been called into question in 2018. It is true that if Notre Dame spent a whole off-season preparing for the Mids’ wheel-of-terror running game, the Irish defense could find further ways to slow them down, and UND would triumph easily. But that is not the scenario here.

Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly dreams of blasting Navy early-on. If that happens, he can substitute copiously on defense, warding-off any injury concerns based on Navy’s devilish blocking scheme. Kelly would like to get Brandon Wimbush back in the mix behind center just in case anything happens to Ian Book in the next few weeks.

But he might not be able to do that, since the Midshipmen offense appeared to wake up behind QB Garret Lewis against Houston on Saturday. The Mids’ subpar defense gave up 50+ points to the Cougars, but HC Ken Niumatalolo has been tinkering with the QB and WR positions trying to find answers, and Lewis responded with a 9-of-14 passing day in Annapolis.

The downfield pass is likely the most crucial component of a Flexbone offense, just like the ability to run inside is a powerful weapon in the Run & Shoot playbook. Navy believed it could get away with not being able to pass this season, and Malcolm Perry (the team’s starter at QB through early October) has been savaged as a result.

Navy’s strife has affected the point spread and moneyline for the prime-time scuffle at Qualcomm. Some sportsbooks are not offering a straight-up market. BetOnline has promised a whopping (+1375) payoff to winning bettors on a Navy upset, while UND is favored by (-24) on the spread in a game with a modest O/U of (54).

I believe that the Over/Under could be the key line for the contest. The Irish got their bad offensive week out of the way against Pitt last week in a 19-14 squeaker, and the OL should be able to push around a Navy defensive front that gave up 6.3 yards per carry to Houston last week. When the faltering Mids’ offense and injury-addled special teams leaves UND with good field position, expect Book to find Miles Boykin and Chase Claypool for strike after strike on the outside and over the middle.

But I’m not buying that Notre Dame will shut down Navy for 4 quarters and win 53-0. Not in a passionate setting with the de-facto home team rediscovering its balanced attack.

I am liking the Mids to keep it exciting in a high-scoring 1^st half before getting blown out in the 2^nd half.

Take the Fighting Irish to cover (-24) and the total to go Over (53) in San Diego.