The MNC Wednesday “prequel” miniseries returns this week as we go back in time to 1929. Everyone remembers that year for the Stock Market Crash, which happened in the middle of the college football season. However, the show must go on, and so the season itself continued through to its normal end. We cannot imagine the distraction the sport must have provided to those in financial peril, however. Wow.

The 1929 MNC: Notre Dame (Helms, NCF); Notre Dame (DMP)

The accepted mythical national champion for this season is the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, although there is some room for debate, perhaps. But let’s start with the Irish: 9-0 with only two home games in there, against nine major-college teams. Notre Dame finished No. 2 in the SRS and No. 3 in the SOS. Seems like this statistical profile would be hard to beat, especially with all those road and neutral-site victories.

No. 1 in the SRS went to the USC Trojans, who won the Rose Bowl over SRS No. 9 Pittsburgh by a 47-14 margin. They played the No. 11 SOS, which is not as good as Notre Dame, and then there’s the big catch: the Irish beat the Trojans, 13-12, in South Bend on November 16, which eliminates USC from consideration here. It’s crazy to think that a home win by one point is really what gave this MNC designation to a team.

But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, isn’t it? We have some other teams to discuss, but USC really was the only sabermetric threat to Notre Dame’s claim here. Utah went 7-0 to finish No. 3 in the SRS, but the schedule was weak in the Rocky Mountain Conference. SRS No. 4 Purdue won the Western Conference with an 8-0 record, but the SOS rank (24th) was too far behind to matter. These were clearly good teams. Oh well.

Tulane won a highly contested Southern Conference with an overall 9-0 mark, but again, the SOS was really weak for whatever reasons. TCU went 9-0-1 to win the Southwest Conference, yet also suffered from a weak SOS. Interestingly, the Western Conference was the highest rated, followed by the Southwest and then the Pacific Coast conferences. We saw this reflected in USC’s SOS but not Purdue’s SOS, for specific reasons.

Yet sabermetrically, the Trojans would have been a 0.75-point favorite on a neutral field against the Irish, and the home-field advantage enjoyed by Notre Dame this calendar year ended up being the difference in determining the national champ. Sometimes, luck is in your favor; sometimes, it is not. Those are the waters, and everyone jumps in to swim understanding how this works. It’s a fascinating reality in sports.

Don’t feel too bad for USC, as they won back-to-back MNCs in 1931 and 1932, remember. Also, this gave Notre Dame two straight titles when combined with the 1930 crown we analyzed a few weeks ago. Overall, this is eight MNCs for the Fighting Irish in our estimation (so far). The origins of this sport reveal a lot.