I don't know if any of you ever watched the old UK sitcom "Yes Minister," about the shenanigans of a member of Cabinet and his efforts to get the Civil Servants in his department to do what he wanted, but there was one classic line in there explaining civil service terminology for a meeting where there was blood on the floor afterwards: frank, bordering on direct.

Which comes to mind because Stewart Mandel finally got round to saying something that a fair few others have concluded: Notre Dame isn't a powerhouse any longer, and they aren't even keeping up with their natural peers Northwestern and Stanford.

I'm not posting this in the spirit of OMFG LULZ ND WUZ PWNED, because we've all had our issues with the output of Mr Mandel, and I'm sure our Domer rivals have their thoughts in a similar vein. But when you have someone whose job is broadly to write the conventional wisdom saying that perhaps you've had your day as a national football power... well, that has to suck.

)Good thing we're still at the stage of people like Matt Hayes using phrases like "once vaunted" to describe a defense that's had 3 crap and a couple of iffy games.)