So pretty much ever since Lou Holtz retired I've been waiting and praying for my beloved Notre Dame Fighting Irish to finally get back to where they were....to get back to playing the kind of football that they played under former head coach Lou Holtz. Oh, there was that 9-1 start in 1998 under coach Bob Davie, you remember....the one that hit the skids because Bob in his infinite wisdom decided that with 5 seconds left on the clock it would be a really good idea to have his QB, Jarious Jackson, to sprint towards his own endzone and take a safety while running out the clock rather than....um...punt the ball away. Now, ordinarily this probably wouldn't be a big deal, but....its Bob Davie we're talking about, and naturally Jackson got tackled from behind and blew out his knee---effectively ending our season at that point, since our entire offense was pretty much..."Uh, Jarious, drop back to pass....run around a little....if no one is open, run like hell". I wish that joke didn't have some semblence of truth, because that really was pretty much our offense that year. And then we had 2000, when Bob's QB Arnaz Battle broke his wrist and we spent the entire season with a TE (Gary Godsey) and a freshman (Matt Lovecchio) who they were afraid to have throw the ball. Amazingly, we managed to go 9-2 AND beat USC. Of course, because it was Bob Davie....we got smoked by Oregon State in the bowl game. Those fighting Beavers. And then of course, there was the "legendary" (just ask ESPN) 2002 "Return to Glory" campaign of Ty "0-11 and counting this season" Willingham. Great start to the season, tremendous effort by the defense....and one truly horrid offense. But I digress. We continued to hope when Charlie Weis brought his "New Jersey tough" approach to South Bend back in early 2005. He was fresh off of a Super Bowl win as the offensive coordinater of the New England Patriots. We were riding high as a kite as this guy made all sort of promises. And, truthfully, 2005 was one terrific year. The offense was positively insane, so much so that we chose to ignore the fact that the defense was horrible. It was like the reverse of 2002. But we went to a BCS bowl game and even though we lost (naturally), you sort of felt like if a couple of plays had gone our way, we might have been able to sneak past Ohio State. 2006 came, and we started the season ranked #2 in the country, and it looked like.....(deep breath)...we might be back.
Not so fast my friend. We went up to Michigan and pretty much got our asses kicked. And later in the season USC pretty much crushed us....and then we got waxed by a far superior LSU team.
And ya know, during the season....those teams we were supposed to crush sure seemed like they gave us a tougher time than they were supposed too. Now guys like Brady Quinn and Jeff Samardzja were gone, and 2007 was going to be the year that we really struggled because Ty was such a horrible recruiter and all those upper classmen that he left that were worth a damn were going to be gone. Prophetic words, because we were awful, going 3-9. But we gave old Chuck a pass, because we had expected it, and he was going gangbusters in recruiting, amazingly bringing in the #1 class in the country....2008 was going to be the year when the improvement was pretty much evident. And it was.....until just after halftime in the North Carolina game.
We had managed to take a lead against a pretty good UNC team AT their place, and on the first play of the 2nd half, QB Jimmy Clausen threw a pick six. The other way. And since then folks, its been all downhill. We somehow managed to beat Navy (onside kicks aside), but other than that, we completely failed to show up against Boston College (only our 2nd most hated rival), and then....the other night.....we lost to Syracuse. The Orange. Let me give you some details about those fighting Oranges. They fired their head coach the Monday of game week. He was 9-35 since he got there, and this season their defense was like #110 in the country....and the offense was ranked #115 in the country. If ever there was a game where the Irish should walk into the stadium (and on senior night of all things) and just kick the living beejezus (did I just write "beejezus"?) out of an opponent, this was it. And so, in keeping with a tradition that I had begun earlier in the season after a horrible opening performance against San Diego State, I taped the game and figured I would watch it later. My thought process? If I watch the thing, I would spend 3 hours or so cursing at the television, and eventually even my wife---who has the patience of a saint--would get weary of it. So I'll tape the game, if they win, I'll watch it afterwards with the understanding that....no matter what happens, I know that they've won.
And I watched the LSU-Ole Miss game on CBS, and I'm watching the crawler underneath that is showing the scores....and maybe once in awhile I'll sneak a peek at how the game is going.
And I see Jimmy C throw a couple of t.d. passes to Golden Tate and the Irish eventually take a 23-10 lead in the 3rd quarter. One more score I figure...than I can pretty much wrap up the win, even though I'm not happy that they are not completely spanking the Orange, who are really much, much worse than ND. And then I see that the score is now 23-17 early in the 4th, and I'm thinking to myself that it is a really, really bad idea to allow a huge underdog to hang with you this long, because all you as the favorite are doing is to give the other team the idea that they can.....gasp....win the damn game. And so I'm back to Ole Miss upsetting LSU.
And awhile goes by and I flip back to the ND game to see if its over....and their playing the alma mater. And I look at the faces on the players and on Charlie Weis. And I look over at my wife and say:
"Honey, they lost to Syracuse."
"How do you know that?"
"Are you kidding? Look at their faces! Those are not the faces of winners."
And indeed, they had lost. Luckily, for my own sanity and probably for the good of my television set that I didn't put a brick through, I didn't watch the end of the game and see that the Orange had thrown the game winning pass with like 45 seconds left on the clock. Or that the guy who threw the pass was the son of probably the greatest basketball player in the history of.....um....Notre Dame. Or that even after that, our team would hit a miracle long pass that put us, amazingly, in field goal position with a chance to win the game. Or, that our kicker, who struggled so mightly all season before turning it around a few games back to become our most consistent offensive weapon, suddenly was given the opportunity to make a kick that would make him a Notre Dame legend. Or, that when given the chance, his missed....by about a foot.
And then I thought that all those things weren't necessary. Because it was against SYRACUSE.
And it should have never gotten to that point. But it had. And so I began to suspect that, for the first time, Charlie Weis---Notre Dame grad, and New Jersey tough guy---wasn't the man who was going to lead Notre Dame back afterall.
Which was probably the saddest realization of them all.
Later,
Jeff
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