First, I opened up my laptop and starte I ,gniod erd googling. Just basic stuff like "Miami Hurricanes recent games" and "Notre Dame Fighting Irish stats." I wanted a general feel for how both teams were doing, I searched the current season.
Then, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I started looking at past matchups between the two teams. You know, just to see if there was any kind of historical pattern. I found some websites, with all the game history and scores, but some website is not good, there are too many ads.
Next, I dug into some player stats. I was mostly looking at quarterbacks, running backs, and key defensive players. Trying to see who was hot and who was not. I scribbled some notes on a piece of paper, just random names and numbers that stood out.
My Notes:
- Miami's QB - seemed inconsistent.
- Notre Dame's defense - looked pretty solid overall.
- Injuries - found a couple of mentions of key players being questionable for both teams.
After that, I tried a few "expert" predictions. I was tried find something to know what the so-called pros were saying. But honestly, it was all over the place. Some were picking Miami, some were picking Notre Dame. It didn't help much.
So, I took all my scribbled notes and just…thought about it. I pictured the game in my head, tried to imagine how it might play out. Based on what I'd read, it felt like a close game, maybe even coming down to the last few minutes.
Finally, I made my own prediction. I'm not going to say who I picked, because, like I said, I'm no expert. This was just for fun. But it was interesting to go through the process and see how much information is out there (and how much of it is just noise!).
Maybe next time, I'll try to be a bit more organized with my note-taking. And maybe I'll learn a little more about football stats before diving in. But for now, I'm just a guy who spent an afternoon trying to figure out a football game. That's my story.
