Brady Quinn Redux

For the second year in a row, a Notre Dame alum calling signals in the NFL has been yanked from his job partway through his third start and benched.

Guys like Kyle Boller, Jason Campbell and Rex Grossman were allowed to murder NFL franchises for years, and ND quarterbacks apparently get less than a fifth of the season.

No further comment.

The Agony of Being Irish

Being a Notre Dame football fan used to be easy. It used to be the thing that got you accused of the most egregious offense a sports fan can commit - 'fair-weather fandom'. You were the fans everybody loved to hate. Your team always won, your team never got in trouble with the law or the NCAA, and your team did all of it without compromising its unique place in college football.

Those days are long past. In my opinion, since the end of the 1993 season, when Notre Dame had a national title stolen from it so that the pollsters could give it to their buddy Bobby Bowden, there is no more tortured fan base than Notre Dame football's.

If you're not interested in the self-serving whining of a Notre Dame fan, read no further. This is way too long for you to enjoy, I'm guessing.

It's a laughable thing to say on the surface. But look closer at this claim. What are the ingredients to being a tortured fan base?

Well, first, there is the obvious: losing. Notre Dame hasn't exactly been awful since 1993, but they have performed far below the usual standard. And I mean FAR below. Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis combined to notch three of the worst winning percentages in the history of Irish football - Davie and Willingham tallied identical .583 winning percentages, while Weis, who was actually fired post-UConn last year with the same winning percentage as his predecessors, coached and lost one extra game to lower his mark. The only coaches to do worse than those three are Terry Brennan and Joe Kuharich (the only losing coach in ND football history apart from interim coaches).

The Irish haven't won a national title in 22 years now, the longest stretch without a title since ND notched their first one in 1924. They have only competed three times in BCS games since that term was introduced to the public in 1998, and they have lost them all by an average of 24.3 points a game. They only have one bowl win since 1993, as a matter of fact, and that one was a meaningless Hawaii Bowl that they probably shouldn't have even bothered playing in, since they were 6-6.

The second ingredient to being a tortured fan base is agonizing losses. Notre Dame has that market cornered. Against Michigan State alone, the Irish have suffered 4 of the most soul-crushing defeats in history in just the last 11 meetings.

Soul-Crushing Defeat 1: In 2000, ND coach Bob Davie, for reasons unknown to me to this day, blitzes his safeties on 4th and 10 with the Irish up by a point and less than 2 minutes left. The Spartans complete a pass to Herb Haygood, who races between two ND defenders and all the way to the end zone. The Irish lose 27-21.

Soul-Crushing Defeat 2: With the game tied late the very next year and the Spartans facing a crucial 3rd and long, Davie inexplicably, unforgivably, unbelievably blitzes the safeties again. In a near-carbon copy of the play the year before, Charles Rogers gets the ball and races all the way for the winning touchdown. The final is 17-10. This was also known as the "DAVIE, YOU SUCK!" game, because of a clearly audible yell from the student section during an injury delay in the second half. This loss, combined with the next week's pathetic showing at Texas A&M which gave ND its first 0-3 start ever, probably sealed Davie's fate.

Soul-Crushing Defeat 3: In 2005, Charlie Weis was taking the college football world by storm after his team clobbered Pittsburgh and Michigan on the road in back to back weeks to open his first season. The Michigan State game was expected to be a coronation for Weis, but instead it turned into a nightmare. About everything that could go wrong did for ND. Brady Quinn turned the ball over a few times. Asaph Schwapp fumbled at the MSU goal line on a play that probably should have been whistled dead for forward progress being stopped. ND's defense, solid to this point in the year, turned into a sieve. The Irish trailed 38-17. But they roared back, led by Quinn's school-record five touchdown passes, and tied it up. They even had a chance to win in regulation after recovering a fumble, but weren't able to get a drive into field-goal range.

The familiar script unfolded from there. ND kicked a field goal in overtime, and lost on MSU's first play - on an option pitch, no less. I'm pretty sure over half of ND's OT games have ended when they kicked a field goal and the other team went in the end zone. MSU plants a flag at ND because the win is their 5th in a row at the stadium, another 'first' in ND football history.

Soul-Crushing Defeat 4: This one you all know, because it's fresh in your minds in 2010. ND plays a sloppy, uninspired game at Michigan State but manages to get the game to overtime and kick a field goal for the lead. Michigan State proceeds, on 4th and 16, facing a 46-yard field goal attempt, to win on a fake field goal touchdown. I am not sure how much more gonad-kicking a loss can be than that one. It's such a big win for MSU that their coach has a freaking heart attack that night - and thankfully, is now perfectly healthy.

Again, that's just Michigan State. There are a whole slew of kicks to the nuts I could reel off since then:

• 1998 at Michigan State: Not included in the prior list because it wasn't an end-of-game loss, but with ND fans on top of the world after blowing out defending champs Michigan to open the season, the Spartans knock ND off its mountain with a first-half blitzkrieg unlike any ND has ever seen. The Irish trail 42-3 at halftime and end up losing 45-23.
• 2000 vs Nebraska: With a chance to jump legitimately into the national title conversation with a win over top-ranked Nebraska, ND struggles due to Arnaz Battle breaking his arm partway through the game ("luck of the Irish") and somehow continuing to play QB. But two special-teams touchdowns in the second half tie it and ND goes to overtime thanks to a gutless decision by Bob Davie to run the final minute-plus off the clock in regulation rather than try to kick a field goal. Needless to say, ND kicks a field goal in OT and Eric Crouch scores a TD for Nebraska.
• 2002 vs Boston College: With the entire college football world loving Tyrone Willingham's undefeated 8-0 team*, the Irish have risen all the way to #3 in the BCS rankings going into an unremarkable matchup with 4-3 BC. Willingham, for some unbelievable reason, pulls out the green jerseys for this stupid game, pumping the Eagles up. ND's offense puts the ball on the ground a ridiculous six times, and the officials call an Omar Jenkins TD catch out of bounds when he clear as day catches the ball in bounds. ND goes down 14-7, and the shine comes off Willingham for good. ND only wins two more games, having to come back late to beat a pitiful Navy team and then creaming hapless Rutgers two weeks later.
  
• (* - It figures in today's environment that ND had to hire a black coach to get any media love - and naturally, when they fired him two years later because he sucked, they were accused of racism even though racists wouldn't have hired said black coach to begin with. Moral: If you don't want to be accused of racism, just don't hire a black coach, because if you fire a white coach after 3 years because he sucks - see Ron Zook of Florida, Keith Gilbertson of Washington, Walt Harris at Stanford...the list goes on - no one bats an eye. And for the record, that 2002 team had a horseshoe up its ass all season and was the exact kind of lucky-to-be-unbeaten team that would've been castigated if Charlie Weis had been coaching them.)
  
• 2003: This pitiful exhibition gets its own entry. ND somehow manages to lose two games (Michigan and Florida St) 38-0 and 37-0 respectively, USC cleans their clock in South Bend 45-14, and the final insult comes when they go down in flames 38-12 to a bad Syracuse team in the final game, punctuated by Willingham taking knees to end the game.
• 2004 at BYU: Tyrone Willingham doesn't even take Darius Walker on the team plane to open the season at BYU, a game moved from October 30th to early September by savvy athletic director Kevin White to give the Irish a tune-up game before playing Michigan. ND's offense is toothless and the Irish go down 20-17. Walker, of course, runs for over 100 yards in essentially a half when a desperate Willingham plucks him off the bench the next week against Michigan.
• 2004 vs Boston College: Willingham punts from the BC 34-yard line at one point, then later sends D.J. Fitzpatrick out to try a 60-yard field goal with ND down a point on the final play. That sums up this game, and the Willingham Era, frankly, in one sentence.
• 2005 vs USC: I don't think I even need to describe most of this game for you, so I'll skip to the end. ND gives up a 4th and 9 conversion, a timekeeping error results in the Irish and their fans thinking they've stopped USC's 27-game win streak, the field is cleared, and then the Trojans win on a blatantly illegal shove in the back by ineligible player Reggie Bush on a QB sneak with 3 seconds left. Ultimately, this costs ND what almost certainly would have been, assuming all else remained equal, a shot at Texas in the Rose Bowl for the national title (in which they would have gotten stomped, but still).
• 2005 vs Ohio State - Fiesta Bowl: The "ND sucks" narrative is always that the Irish got blitzed in this game, but the truth is, the game didn't end until just over a minute left when the Buckeyes scored on a long TD run to make it 34-20. The Irish could have easily won the game if not for replay officials inexplicably ruling despite no video evidence that Anthony Gonzalez's fumble, which is returned for a TD by Tom Zbikowski to give ND a 20-19 lead, is an incomplete pass.
• 2007: Again, a pathetic season gets its own entry. The Irish start 0-4 for the first time ever (and then 0-5 too), give up more sacks than any team in the history of college football, go through three quarterbacks, lose to MSU at home for the 6th straight time, lose two games (Michigan and USC) 38-0, lose to Navy for the first time since 1963 when Weis inexplicably eschews a makeable field goal to go for it on 4th and long late in regulation, and notch the worst season in Notre Dame history. In a touch of irony after years of being blasted for soft schedules (a ridiculous gripe in any case), ND faces an absolutely brutal slate in which their first TEN opponents attended bowl games. The Irish beat their only two nonbowl opponents, Duke and Stanford, to end the season. (Side note: There will never be a worse matchup that aired on national network TV than 1-9 ND vs 1-9 Duke in November 2007.)
• 2008 at North Carolina: Being a freshman, Michael Floyd, instead of going down with his first-down catch on the Irish's final drive, giving ND a chance to get down the field and spike the ball before the clock starts again (there were 4 seconds left), inexplicably tries to lateral the ball. UNC recovers for the win.
• 2008 vs Pittsburgh: The Irish blow a double-digit lead (they did this 3 times that year for L's) and lose in quadruple overtime because they settle for one too many field goals and unreliable kicker Brandon Walker can't come through (in his defense, he nailed a 48-yarder in double OT to save the game for the moment).
• 2008 vs Syracuse: ND loses to an 8-loss team for the first time ever, as already-fired coach Greg Robinson celebrates a victory when his team erases a double-digit deficit. National media runs with a rumor that ND students were firing snowballs at their own players when in fact they were just throwing them around in general. Somehow, Manti Te'o decides he wants to come to ND after visiting for this game, a minor miracle.
• 2009 Part 1 - at Michigan: Probably one of the most blatantly stolen games in the history of football officiating. Replay review overturns an Armando Allen TD with absolutely no video evidence at all, costing ND 4 points in a game they lost by 4. Golden Tate is allowed to be mugged the entire game by Michigan defenders without a single flag. Eric Olsen is punched in the face after a play by a Michigan defender with no repercussions. Allen is flagged for taunting for making the "shh" gesture, probably the first time that has ever happened. Michael Floyd gets hurt on Michigan's field, leading to true freshman Shaq Evans missing a catchable ball that would have clinched the game. Tate Forcier leads Michigan to the winning score. The officials practically tackle Greg Mathews on the winning score to ensure he can't commit a penalty that they'd be forced to flag (seriously, watch the tape, they grab his arms as he's headed to the goalpost to dunk the ball). When Weis tries to get some answers regarding all of this, the refs race into the tunnel and ignore him (video of this exists as well). It was a robbery, plain and simple, and a script that would repeat itself two weeks later at the Big House when Michigan played IU.
• 2009 Part 2 - vs USC: ND by all rights should never have been in this game, as the Trojans dominated the first three quarters. But a surprise rise-up by a previously overmatched ND defense and the offense finally waking up leads to ND actually having the ball with a chance to tie the game. With Jimmy Clausen, who has led game-winning drives in the previous four games (the Michigan one was stolen from him but I'm still counting it), ND fans are confident. Clausen drives the Irish down to the red zone, helped by some nice plays by his wideouts. He throws what could have been a TD pass to Kyle Rudolph, but replay review rules that he did not have control with a foot down (in about the most bang-bang of plays you will see). After a second is put back on the clock after a 3rd-down incompletion (shades of 2005), Clausen hits Duval Kamara for the tying TD on a slant. Or he would have if Kamara hadn't slipped on his route. ND loses.
• 2009 Part 3 - vs Navy: With a BCS bid still a remote possibility with four wins to end the season, ND begins one of the most shameful November swan dives ever by losing to Navy, a loss punctuated by Clausen being sacked for a safety in his own end zone BY FREAKING NAVY. ND loses, of course, by 2.
• 2009 Part 4 - at Pittsburgh: ND plays like crap but somehow still has a remote chance at the end thanks to a Golden Tate punt return for a score. On 3rd and 16, Clausen is under heavy pressure and has his hand hit as he is getting rid of the ball to throw it away. A Pitt player scoops up the ball well after the play is blown dead. Somehow, replay review rules the pass a fumble even though video evidence clearly shows Clausen pushing the ball forward with his hand to get it out and even though THE PLAY WAS FREAKING BLOWN DEAD FIVE SECONDS BEFORE ANYONE TOUCHED THE BALL. (You might notice that ND gets shafted on replay reviews here and there.)
• 2009 Part 5 - vs UConn: Two stupid fumbles by Michael Floyd and Armando Allen keep UConn in a game they have no business being in, and ND once again loses in overtime after kicking a field goal to lead things off, then giving up a touchdown. Weis is fired the Monday after the game, though this doesn't become public knowledge for a while after that.
• 2009 Part 6 - at Stanford: In a classic Weis game to send off the outgoing coach, the offense plays brilliantly as the mastermind empties his bag of tricks, knowing he has no reason to hang on to any of them. But the defense is epically bad and in the final insult to Weis, he is forced to tell his defense to lay down and give up the winning TD in faint hopes that Clausen can use the final 45 seconds to get his team down the field and tie it. He actually may have come close if not for his offensive line allowing him to be sacked early on and then committing a penalty later. But ND loses and with Clausen and Tate already decided to go pro and with no coach or offensive coordinator, the Irish don't go to a bowl at 6-6. Naturally, they are criticized for their arrogance for this decision because apparently you are obligated to go to a bowl at 6-6 no matter how little sense it makes for your program.
• 2010 vs Michigan: Denard Robinson becomes the latest ND opponent-turned-Heisman-favorite by ripping off over 500 yards of offense, but the Irish still could have won. Dayne Crist randomly not being able to see out of one of his eyes for a half is one of the all-time "luck of the Irish" nonsensical things ever, and Brian Kelly's eschewing a chip-shot field goal to give his backup QB a chance to score a TD with 3 seconds left was absolutely nonsensical. Naturally, the Irish were in field goal range on the game's final play, but because of the decision not to kick it at halftime, were down 4 instead of 1. Take the freaking points, Kelly. Crist wings the final pass well out of the end zone and ND loses again.
• 2010 vs Tulsa: First of all, we were playing freaking Tulsa, which is a travesty. But anyway, ND gives up a pick-six, a punt return TD and a blocked PAT return for 2 points. ND is still in a position to win at the end despite having to insert Tommy Rees after Crist suffers a season-ending injury early in the game. They have a makeable field goal in front of them and a perfect kicker on the sideline. But repeating his mistake from the UM game that year, Kelly elects to chuck it into the endzone. With a true freshman QB. Rees throws a pick, ND loses, and I give up on Brian Kelly for the time being. (He might, slowly, be winning me back.)
• 2011 vs USF and at Michigan: ND has 5 turnovers in each game, so despite being far and away the better team in every other respect, they lose. I cannot describe how frustrating these games were to watch, particularly Michigan, which seems to be fated to find more insane ways to defeat ND in the final 30 seconds every year. In the Michigan game, BTW, they fumbled a ball near the goal line but it bounced right to Denard Robinson ('luck of the Irish') and he took it into the end zone for a TD.
  

And after that long list of pain, we are brought to the third reason Notre Dame fans are the most tortured fan base of the last nearly-20 years: the hate. Notre Dame is now hated perhaps more universally and more uniformly by college football fans than they ever have been before, and the brunt of that hate is directed towards any ND fans that those haters happen to be friends with. The PTI-ification of sports opinion has led to anyone's like or dislike of anyone being amplified significantly, and social networking sites have given sports fans the chance to make their opinions known whenever they feel like.

The problem for Irish fans of my age and younger is that they didn't get to see any of the winning that brought this hate about. I was two when the Irish won their last national title and seven the last time they were in the mix going into the season's final weeks. It feels like you're being blamed for something your older brother did when other fans trash Notre Dame. As a fan you feel obligated to defend your team, but in the back of your mind you keep thinking "I don't deserve this. I didn't see any of the winning."

I have tried my best to be as logical as possible regarding my defense of ND in recent years, because other fans' vitriol towards ND has basically necessitated it.

The accusations and claims hurled around about Notre Dame grow more ridiculous every year, such as the claim that ND has an easy road to the BCS.

(The road for ND is actually more difficult, in terms of ranking needed to get an auto-bid, than it is for other non-automatic qualifiers. And why does ND get blasted as having an easy road when ACC teams with eight wins seem to get into the BCS every year, and when teams like Illinois get to go to the Rose Bowl just because they happen to be in the Big Ten? Truth: Eligible Irish teams have been passed over for BCS games twice - 1998 and 2002 - and no ND team with more than two losses has ever played in a BCS game.)

There are hypothetical scenarios thrown at you that you can't really even defend against because there's no way of knowing what would happen. Fans hurled accusations pre-season that even with ND's softer-than-ever slate, that a 12-0 record would result in a title bid, deserved or not. This despite the fact that there's really no reason to believe that an unbeaten ND would vault an unbeaten SEC team (certainly not with all the media love bestowed on that league these days) or an unbeaten Texas or Oklahoma or Ohio State (schools with much less baggage being hurled at them than at Notre Dame). This is all of course an academic issue since the Irish have again fallen short of their fans' hopeful expectations.

ND fans are always accused of arrogance for the expectations they have of their team. I'm not quite sure where this came from. Irish fans are so hospitable at South Bend that I think it comes to the detriment of their home-field advantage. ND Stadium is not intimidating anymore because the powers that be have priced out the real fans, leaving old people and people that don't really care as the only ones that can afford to come in. Even the student section isn't that great anymore, since none of the existing four-year students have seen a winning regular season and they are now jaded. Certainly there are some bad ND fans - there are more fans of ND in the country than any other college football team, so it would stand to reason there are more bad fans of ND than there are of any other college football team too. But to dismiss the entire fan base as arrogant is ridiculous. I, for instance, hate Michigan more than just about anything and most of my experiences with them have been bad. But one of my friends is also a Michigan fan and for the most part he's just fine. That doesn't mean I won't still joke about Michigan fans being awful, it just means that that's what they are - jokes, and not serious accusations like the ones hurled at ND fans.

The truth: ND fans just want to win. They are quick to jump on the bandwagon when the team is good, probably just as quick to jump off when the team is not. The ones that aren't quick aren't in denial - they're just more hopeful. The Irish fan base's desire to win doesn't come out of arrogance - it comes out of wanting to freaking win, just like everybody else. ND fans aspire not to be the dominant force in all of college football again, because most all of them accept that they will never be able to be what Notre Dame once was. But they do want to be, perhaps, what Florida, Alabama, USC, Ohio State, etc. are now - consistent contenders. And frankly, there's no reason they can't be. They just need the right coach.

Remember, all four of those programs I just mentioned were pretty much nonentities on a national scale before they got the right coach. Zook, Mike Shula, Paul Hackett, John Cooper - those were the dudes that preceded Meyer, Saban, Carroll/Kiffin, and Tressel, the giants who now rule their programs. ND's struggles are probably due much more to the fact that they hired two guys without any big-time coaching experience (Davie and Weis) and one who wasn't really any good at it to begin with (Willingham) for three straight coaches than they are to the 'fact' that ND can't win big anymore. That's a ridiculous idea. The Irish have great facilities, a great tradition, and the best TV exposure in the country. They're as equipped to win as anybody.

Will Brian Kelly turn out to be the guy to turn around that agony? Early returns say no. But Lou Holtz also started 1-3 at Notre Dame. Then again, so did Bob Davie.

And that stat in itself shows you the Jekyll and Hyde nature of being a Notre Dame football fan.

A New Era Begins for the Panthers, and for My Sports Fandom

After an ugly and occasionally depressing 0-2 start, the Panthers made the only move they could make on Monday, installing Jimmy Clausen as the new starting QB and benching Matt Moore.

The move wasn't a shock, but the rapid decline of Moore has been. The Panthers spent the off-season handing the keys to Moore, cutting Jake Delhomme as well as basically anyone else over the age of 26 on the team. Then, in April, Jimmy Clausen fell into their laps because of the gold helmet he wore in college. (That was also the last entry I wrote in this blog, due largely to a very uninspiring summer turned in by the Cubs and the Bulls not collecting any of the big prizes in free agency.)

And thank God he did, because Moore has fallen off the face of the earth. Whether this would have happened without Clausen on his tail as the backup quarterback, we'll never know, but the Panthers would have had no other option if it weren't for Clausen appearing at pick 48 in April.

For me personally, Clausen's first start against Cincinnati on Sunday represents a bit more than the normal week 3 game with an 0-2 Panthers team would for me. Clausen is sort of my sacred cause as a football fan. Like a pitcher stuck on a horrible baseball team who sees his win/loss record suffer, I found myself defending Clausen just as vehemently during and since the 2009 Notre Dame season as I once did Brady Quinn - only this time, I was even more certain of myself.

I've always been outspoken in my belief that Jimmy Clausen was the best college football player in America in 2009 for what he did with a Notre Dame team that by all rights was awful and should have won 2 or 3 games. Were it not for errors by his teammates and/or outright corruption from officials at various points in the 2009 season, the Irish could and should have finished with 10 wins or perhaps even 12, but because Duval Kamara slipped on a route against USC, because the refs flat-out stole the Michigan game and ended the Pitt game before Clausen had a chance to work magic, and because his teammates played so badly at times against Navy, UConn and Stanford that one could be forgiven for wondering if they were on the take, Clausen was denied what in my opinion should have been a Heisman Trophy.

Through all this I vehemently defended him further against accusations of cockiness and attitude, pointing out (correctly) that the cocky prick he was accused of being would have never shut up about how he basically never screwed up (he threw 2 interceptions that were his fault all season) and how his teammates and coaches were incompetent. But there isn't a single quote to be found that includes Clausen complaining - not about the 2007 offensive line that tried to get him killed, not about the 2009 defense that cost him wins he rightfully earned, and not about the incompetent coaching staff that allowed both things to happen.

Anyway, on Sunday the day will come for all that defending I did of Clausen to be proven right or wrong. He's said and done all the right things since being drafted (and frankly since Christmas Eve 2008 when he announced his awesomeness with the greatest bowl performance in ND history, albeit against Hawaii), but now it's prove-it time.

I thought I was going to be a genius about Brady Quinn, until he broke a thumb in his 2nd start against Buffalo and was never (given the chance to be) the same as the promising player he looked to be through 6 quarters of being the Browns' starting quarterback. He's riding pine now in Denver and unless some sort of miracle occurs, he will probably never start another meaningful NFL game. He's started 12 times. It happens that fast in the NFL.

Now's the time for Clausen. And the stakes are doubled this time because it's my pro team that took a chance on him. His destiny is intertwined with the Panthers', the team I've been rooting for throughout their entire existence - a fact that gives me something of a closeness with them because I can't say that about any other team I pull for. And on Sunday, my Panthers fandom will change forever.

Good luck, Jimmy.

When College and Pro Alliances Collide...How Sweet It Is

It's not too often that your favorite pro team uses a high draft pick on one of your favorite players from your favorite college team. It's something that I wasn't sure I'd ever see. Other than a brief, albeit successful, flirtation with Rocket Ismail in the latter stages of his NFL career, my team had never had a notable Notre Dame player on roster. I didn't expect that to change last weekend during the NFL draft. Every indication was that Carolina was going to select either a possession wideout or a defensive player with their first pick in the 2010 draft, neither of which portended an Irish player.

Watching the draft, I was much more concerned with where two of my all-time favorite college players, Jimmy Clausen and Golden Tate, were headed than I was with Carolina's pick. I'm rarely enthralled with the Panthers' early picks - DeAngelo Williams in 2006 excepted - although often I turn out to be wrong.

The most shining examples of this wrongness came in 2005 and 2008, when I wanted different players at the same position as the Panthers drafted in round 1. In '05, I was smitten with Derrick Johnson and was thoroughly bummed when Carolina selected fellow linebacker Thomas Davis one pick before Johnson. In '08, I wanted Rashard Mendenhall instead of our pick, Jonathan Stewart. As of now, Davis is a Pro Bowler and Stewart is part of one of only four double-1,100 yard rush tandems in NFL history, while Johnson has been virtually nonexistent and Mendenhall has been good, but not as good as Stewart. Since then I've generally trusted the front office's judgment.

Anyway, it didn't even occur to me, even when Clausen slipped out of the first round mostly due to the fact that he wore a gold helmet in college, that the two rooting interests would intersect. I had good reason not to suspect this.

For one thing, entering this year, Carolina had not selected a quarterback before the FOURTH round of the draft since their first-ever draft pick of Kerry Collins back in 1995. (Impossible for me to believe, but true.)

For another, coach John Fox and general manager Marty Hurney are in the last years of their contract, and both would probably have been fired three months ago if not for the looming lockout, and our owner's reluctance to potentially be paying two different coaches and GMs during it. With that factor in play, selecting a rookie quarterback, pretty much the only position where the media will freak out on you if you dare to play a rookie, seemed impossible.

I could write a whole article about how asinine it was that Jimmy Clausen, the most accurate quarterback I've ever witnessed play (that's college OR pro, and yes, I'm going there) was still available at 48 when Sam "My Throwing Shoulder Is Held Together by Spellotape" Bradford is going to get $50 million guaranteed and the Denver Broncos traded half their draft to select Tim "I've Never Used My Current Throwing Motion in a Game" Tebow. But luckily for me, I don't have to, because the very, very fine folks at WalterFootball.com wrote one for me. It was written pre-draft, but it's still a very enlightening read.

Back on topic. I was so certain that Clausen would not be taken when pick 48 rolled around and he was still there that I posted a Facebook comment on a friend's "Carolina will get a QB" status stating, basically, that I'd love to be wrong, but I didn't see any way we were going to do it.

About a minute later, I received a Tweet on my feed that I will never forget. It came from ESPN's Chris Mortensen, who had been among the handful of people occasionally Tweeting draft picks, or at least predictions, before they were made. The Tweet read simply, "Clausen to panthers #nfldraft".

I had to read it like 3 times before I registered it. This could not be true. Clausen, the guy who I vehemently defended for the last 3 years? Clausen, who both Mel Kiper Jr. and myself had both basically stated that if Clausen couldn't succeed in the pros, no quarterback could? Clausen, a QUARTERBACK?

Sure enough, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell emerged a couple of minutes later and read the pick. It was Jimmy Clausen. My team, for the first time since Collins, had a legitimate franchise quarterback.

I'm pretty sure I blacked out. When we picked Williams in 2006, I ran around my dorm room pumping my fist. When we picked Clausen, I'm not quite sure what I did. I think I got up and did a little dance. I'm not even sure. I do know that I sent my mom, a die-hard ND fan whom I was updating on the proceedings, an all-caps text with the news. I then fielded at least 4 Facebook wall posts congratulating me, as well as a call from my best friend, Mark, congratulating me as well.

Let me tell you what this means. This is a game-changer for the Panthers' franchise. Up until now, I wasn't sure where Carolina was headed. They had spent the off-season slashing costs by cutting highly-compensated veterans. Our entire QB corps has a total of 8 starts (all by Matt Moore) among them. We had some building blocks - a good offensive line and secondary, and of course Williams and Stewart - but nothing indicated that this was going to get put together this year.

Well, it still probably isn't getting put together this year. After all, I'm the biggest Jimmy Clausen fan without a blood relationship on the planet, but even Peyton Manning was pretty bad his rookie year. (Then again, Manning didn't have the benefit of said offensive line and running backs.) But the future of this franchise is set. And Jimmy Clausen is the man to guide it. Coach Fox was quick to inform Clausen that Carolina's offense is all but a carbon copy of the offense he ran under Charlie Weis at Notre Dame - no surprise, since Jeff Davidson, the offensive coordinator, is a Weis disciple.

So by the end of 2010, expect the Jimmy Clausen era to begin at Carolina.

I still have to pinch myself that I get to write that sentence.

Go Irish. Go Panthers. Go Clausen.

A Bracket in Tatters

Luckily, my bracket is not among those in tatters after Northern Iowa shocked Kansas, the tournament favorite (roughly 40 percent of ESPN.com users picked the Jayhawks to win it all). I had much more trouble picking the Midwest Region than any other bracket, struggling with my pick of Ohio State-Georgetown (that one was taken care of for me) and Ohio State-Kansas.

For no discernible reason I went with the Buckeyes, a pick that looks prescient now that OSU seems to have a sweetheart draw to the Final Four (a Jekyll-and-Hyde Tennessee team, followed by either UNI or a depleted Michigan State squad). I ended up with OSU as champion, and I was outspoken in my belief that the winner of that presumed Kansas-Ohio State matchup would win the title. Now that matchup won't happen.

A portion of my bracket that's not so hot? The South, of course.

The most befuddling region in the tournament due to Duke's placement as a #1 seed and the seedings that appear to have been determined via drunken darts, the South proved my downfall. The total number of games I will get right in that region, out of 15? The answer is 5.

Duke, Villanova, Baylor, Texas A&M and St. Mary's. I picked those 5 teams to win in round 1. I missed EVERY OTHER GAME in the region. This was due in equal parts to my catastrophic pick of Louisville to the Sweet 16 (bet on Good Louisville showing up and instead got When's-Tip-Again? Louisville), Notre Dame to the Sweet 16 (complete homer pick, should have known better) and Villanova to the Final Four (I would've had them out in round 2 in almost any other draw). I also bet on Purdue to go out to Siena - something I should have known wouldn't happen because I wanted it to. Generally, my least-favorite team in the tournament does spectacularly well, whether it's UNC (almost always), or this year, Purdue. All bets are off with them, and frankly the more I root against them, the better their chances get.

Still, I stand in decent shape. Both of my title game participants are intact, something only 6 of the other 17 people in my bracket pool can claim. (Half our pool - 9 people - had Kansas to win the whole thing.) Only one of my Final Four - Villanova - has been dispatched. Only one person in our pool has an intact Final Four, and his Final Four includes Butler, so that will last about 1 more day.

But brackets aside, the first weekend, as has been beaten to death by the national pundits, was spectacular. Game after game seemed to come down to the wire. Friday was a relative clunker, but the other 3 days of the Dance proved to be unreal. The only regret was that neither Gus Johnson (marooned in Buffalo, where no game came down to the final minute) nor Bill Raftery (in Providence where Nova/Robert Morris proved to be the only great game) were there for the most exciting shots: Farokhmanesh, Lucious, and Danero.

I'm of the opinion that Ali Farokhmanesh's shot should be revered perhaps above all the others. Farokhmanesh's chuck (I predict the shot gets remembered simply as his last name, with no other description needed) defined what the tournament is all about - underdogs playing to win, playing as if they have nothing to lose. As one sportswriter (Pat Forde or Seth Davis, can't remember which) said, Farokhmanesh wasn't in a 'nothing to lose' situation. Most great tournament shots were made by people for whom a miss wouldn't have been blamed on them, given the circumstance. After all, no one ever blames a loss on a last-second miss (unless it's a layup or something). But Farokhmanesh was in a spot where the 'on paper' play is to run more clock. If he missed, and UNI lost, it would've been on him. But he saw an opportunity for greatness, and he took it. Really inspiring stuff. I'll never forget "the Farokhmanesh", just like I'll never forget Murray and Michigan State's buzzer-beating wins. Great stuff. One can only hope Cornell, UNI and St. Mary's can carry the mid-major banner even further.

Selection Sunday: The Good (6 Seed?) and the Bad (Quinn Dumped for Two Footballs and a Helmet)

For Notre Dame fans, as with many fans, the good often comes with the bad. And of course, because they're Notre Dame, it's usually magnified in both cases.

Selection Sunday was slightly different, because the good involved the Irish hoops team, which has been much less polarizing than the football team due mostly to its lack of historical success and its conference membership. The bad - Brady Quinn's trade, which may or may not signal the death knell for his starting hopes - was played down somewhat due to its proximity to Selection Sunday.

But for me, they were the top stories of the day.

Notre Dame's seeding was truly shocking. After ND's run to end the year (see prior post), I was thinking ND was headed for a 10 or 11 seed, with some thinking the Irish needed to win a Big East tournament game to even make the field. The Irish cruised by Seton Hall to end that discussion, upset Pitt in the quarterfinals, then took West Virginia to the wire in the Big East semifinals to place themselves firmly into the field. The apparent bad news was that ND had played themselves squarely into position for the 8/9 game. A clear majority of bracketologists placed the Irish on the 8 seed line - and with Syracuse a presumptive 1 seed, that left, for most, a 2/3 chance that ND would be matched up with Kansas or Kentucky, the 2 teams I fear most, in round 2. Some people had WVU as a 1 seed (something I endorsed and believed should happen) which meant Notre Dame would've had to play KU or UK in the 2nd round.

After a lot of talk and a lot of deliberation (my own message board did a mock selection committee of a small group of people that would end up getting 64 teams correct and placing 61 of those within one seed line, much better than most of the major bracketologists, for what that's worth), the selection show was on. I, as I do every time ND makes it, sat at rapt attention to see where the Irish would end up.

And quickly, something weird became clear. The first bracket was revealed, the Midwest region. And only one Big East team - Georgetown - was in it. To this point, the committee had never placed more than two league teams in the same region (avoiding a potential conference game before the Elite 8), so alarm bells quickly began going off. I realized this after the 2nd bracket was revealed - only 3 league teams had been shown so far. This meant one thing to me: Someone got left out. Louisville, who had been mentioned in passing as a bubble team, was first in my mind, but...could it be?

After all, this is the same selection committee that placed a 14-4 Big East team on the 5 seed line. The year before, that selection committee underseeded Notre Dame to 6, THEN dramatically underseeded tournament darling Winthrop to ensure they faced the Irish in round 1. Could ND have somehow been left out?

To make a long story short, no. It turned out the goofs on the committee placed 3 Big East teams in the South bracket - one of whom was Notre Dame. The Irish, the last matchup revealed, were shown as a 6 seed against Old Dominion.

Now, Old Dominion is a good team, probably underseeded, so Notre Dame is effectively getting a 7, but still. Baylor seems pretty good for a 2nd round matchup compared to the 2 seeds ND could have drawn (KSU, Ohio St) or Kansas or Kentucky if it'd been a 1. The seeding of ND has been panned by most, although many have bigger complaints about the bracket (Cal as an 8 and Duke's ridiculous path to Indy among them). Three weeks ago, ND was 6-8 in the Big East, so a 6 seed is absolutely mind-blowing considering the big picture. I have high hopes. My bracket places ND in the Sweet 16, but I think ND could go anywhere from home Thursday afternoon to the Final Four. They're unpredictable, and so is the South region.

The bad thing? Oh, the Quinn trade.

You know my opinion of Quinn. I'm a blue and gold bleeder and always* will be, and I feel like he got the screw job in Cleveland.

(*I will - WILL - bail if the Irish join a conference, unless they truly are forced to by the creation of superconferences. If they join when no real change occurs, I will bail because the leadership will have hoodwinked us into it with their hideous scheduling. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.)

The Browns married themselves to a bad QB who had a fluky season and didn't let Quinn play until halfway through year 2. A broken thumb submarined a really bright start to Quinn's career, then the Browns fired their coach. The guy they brought in, Eric Mangini, is a grade-A d-bag (no one argues this). He didn't give Quinn any confidence whatsoever, and when Quinn floundered early on a team that had jettisoned all their talent against good defenses, he was unfairly benched at halftime of game 3 for Anderson. Quinn was then left on the bench as Anderson continued to suck, and it was clear as day that the Browns were keeping him there simply to keep Quinn's contract escalators from kicking in. Then, when he returned, Quinn showed a bit (a fantastic performance against the Lions) but mostly struggled again - on a talentless team. He would later get hurt again to end his season.

The Mike Holmgren era began as GM and Holmgren was noncommittal on his QB situation. We now know it was because he disliked both - he cut Anderson and shipped Quinn off for two third-day draft picks and a backup RB. Quite a haul for a guy you burned a first-round pick on, and gave 12 starts to before pitching him.

The trade, particularly the nothing that Denver surrendered for him, makes me think Quinn may be done as a starting QB - something that would be among the bigger injustices in the history of young NFL quarterbacks, in my opinion. (And Cleveland is now rumored to be after Jimmy Clausen - if that happens I'll start to wonder if the league has it out for ND quarterbacks, because Clausen, though more talented than Quinn, will flounder just the same way if presented with that mess.)

Kyle Orton is a beat-out-able quarterback, but he did little last year to lose his job. Quinn will now be working with a Weis disciple (Josh McDaniels succeeded him as Patriots' offensive coordinator), but Romeo Crennel worked with Weis too and that didn't seem to be enough to give Quinn a look for quite a while. We shall see, but my hopes aren't high. It's a sad saga for my all-time favorite college football player (for personal reasons more so than on-field reasons).

Either way, it was an eventful Sunday for Notre Dame.

Carleton Scott Explodes, Luke Harangody Watches, and Notre Dame Defines the Ewing Theory

In my sports fan life, the list of miraculous in-season turnarounds I've been privileged enough to witness as a fan of the team involved is incredibly short.

The 2004-05 Chicago Bulls started 0-9 before finishing the year winning 45 of their last 73 games, making the playoffs for the first time in 7 years.

The 2007 Chicago Cubs were as many as 8.5 games behind Milwaukee in late June before a 5-run comeback, capped by a walk-off Aramis Ramirez home run, propelled the team to the best 15-month stretch I've ever had in my sports-fan life, as the team ripped off the best record in baseball the rest of that season to win the division and the best record in baseball the following season to win another division. Typical of the Cubs (and for that matter all of my teams in important games), they failed to win a playoff game either time, but that's not the point.

Well, add the 2009-10 Notre Dame Fighting Irish to that list. And, incredibly, it all began with their best player (and one of their top 5 players ever) being injured - proving, again, the Ewing Theory perfected by Bill Simmons reader Dave Cirilli. This theory follows around players whose teams 'inexplicably' play better when they are injured or unavailable - but there are usually good reasons why. In Harangody's case, the injury forced Carleton Scott into the lineup full-time, forced Jack Cooley into Scott's spot as the 7th guy in the rotation, and made ND more athletic, bigger and better on defense. In addition, Mike Brey decided to go Princeton on us, slowing down ND's pace rather than trying to outrun people. It's a move that coach Mike Brey claims was in the works prior to Gody's injury, but because of the injury made ND a team that had more energy at the end of games.

It started with the Irish at 6-5 in the Big East going into the Seton Hall game. To that point, ND had been relatively disappointing, showing flashes of brilliance (an incredible 1st half that propelled them to a key win over West Virginia early in Big East season, for instance), but for the most part seemed, just like the 08-09 model, to be playing below their talent level. Stupid losses to Cincinnati (horrible FT shooting by a usually-good free throw shooting team) and Rutgers (RUTGERS?) had ND fans scratching their heads and wondering if it was OK to call for Mike Brey's ouster just two years after a 14-4 Big East season.

Naturally (because bad things just happen to the Irish hoopsters without explanation), Jeremy Hazell chose that game to shoot out his ass, making at least four wild off-balance three-pointers and scoring, I believe, 35 points on 20 shot attempts or something insane. The Pirates not only won, but their arena was the site of Luke Harangody's deep knee bone bruise when he landed wrong attempting to get a rebound. The injury would keep him out the next five games.

It looked like ND was screwed regarding its latent NCAA hopes. Even more so when the team managed to lose at home to St. John's, thanks to a horrid game from Tory Jackson, to fall to 6-7 in the league. Without Luke, the five games that remained - @Louisville, Pittsburgh, @Georgetown, UConn, @Marquette - looked like a gauntlet. The team needed 4-1 to even consider a tournament bid, it appeared. And 1-4 (or 0-5) looked a hell of a lot more likely.

Instead, Notre Dame did something neither I nor any other close observers thought possible - they toughened up on defense, they slowed down their pace, and they didn't miss a beat whatsoever. In fact, the Irish got better. A lot better.

I confess to having skipped both the Louisville and Pittsburgh games. They conflicted with what I thought were more important Ball State home games. Both teams would go on to make me look silly for feeling that way, but anyway. Herewith, a game by game recap of the team that (appears to have) changed everything.

Game 1: ND loses to Louisville in double OT

ND went on to fight their butts off against Louisville, losing only because 1) Ben Hansbrough missed 4 free throws at the end of regulation and 2) Samardo Samuels was allowed way too much latitude, resulting in every ND big man fouling out of the game. (This info is gleaned from the ND board I frequent, so take it with whatever sodium substitute you choose.) So many Irish fouled out that we were left with four people who were no taller than 6'2" in the game towards the end of double OT. The game sadly ended when ND failed to get a shot off on their final possession, stepping out of bounds. At this point the Irish were 6-8 in the league and were essentially out of tournament consideration. Only sweeping their final four games would even broach the attention of the selection committee - ND's nonconference schedule, as it has always been the last few years, was too weak for ND to be considered at 9-9.

Game 2: ND blows out Pittsburgh at home

Again, I skipped this game. Although impressed by the Irish's gutty performance against Louisville, I prioritized Ball State's game against Eastern Michigan - Senior Night - above this one. Pitt came in as the hottest team in the league and I assumed a beatdown was forthcoming for my Irish.

Instead, the Irish blasted Pitt. The final was 68-53, but 15 was about as close as Pitt had come the entire second half. The Irish physically dominated Pitt (a sentence that I never thought I'd write about a basketball game). Four Irish scored in double figures, and ND outrebounded Pitt by nine. It was a command performance by Notre Dame, but for the time being, it seemed to serve as little else but a reminder that these Irish should have been a lot better than they were. After all, ND still had two road games left against top-notch Big East competition, and they had to this point won exactly once at an opposing team's venue.

Game 3: ND handles Georgetown in Washington, DC

Georgetown played the toughest schedule in the league this year, their RPI is in the top 15, and as a big, tough team, they are a matchup nightmare for Notre Dame, a team that makes a living out of being quicker and getting open shots. This would seem impossible for ND against a bigger team. Austin Freeman was sporadic and ineffective - we would later find out he had diabetes - but this seemed like a minor stumbling block.

Notre Dame shot 57 percent from the floor and blocked 7 shots. I sat for much of the game in a state of shock. This was a Notre Dame team that was unlike any team the Irish had turned in since I had begun following them at the turn of the century. Carleton Scott was, quite simply, the best player on the floor, scoring 21, blocking 3 shots, absorbing a blatant cheap shot from Greg Monroe of Georgetown, and playing beyond his experience level. ND had 12 offensive rebounds. Georgetown had 12 defensive rebounds. Ben Hansbrough fought off the only serious Hoya threat late in the game by canning a 3. Suddenly, Notre Dame had two winnable games left (in fans' eyes), and a tourney bid was, impossibly, in our sights.

Game 4: ND earns revenge on UConn

UConn can be described using the old adage 'million dollar talent, ten-cent heads'. UConn is a talented team. UConn plays like a "bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob out there", to quote Patches O'Houlihan. UConn chucked 14 3's, many long after it became obvious it wasn't going to work (they only made three). ND, of course, was 3/15 themselves, but they fought their butts off. Although UConn was so much bigger than the Irish that ND couldn't have a rebounding advantage, the Irish managed to keep UConn's advantage to 1.

Carleton Scott, so much a non-factor early in the season that he actually quit the team for a time (he missed the WVU game), had another double-double, with 12 and 14. And Tory Jackson, quite possibly the most unappreciated player in Notre Dame history, had 22 points in his final home game. Jackson has led the Big East in assists 3 times in his 4 years in South Bend. He has received all-Big East mention zero times. How is this? You tell me.

Game 5: ND pulls off a heart-stopping win at Marquette

I must confess something: At no point in this game did I think Notre Dame was going to win. At no point whatsoever. I wasn't comfortable with the way the game was going, Lazar Hayward is a ninny who always seems to save his best performances for us, Luke Harangody was back (which against all odds was not something I was looking forward to, considering the last two weeks), and Maurice Acker, who transferred from Ball State, is precisely the kind of player who would haunt Notre Dame. Acker already had by randomly lighting us up for 11 points in the 2nd half of Marquette's Big East tourney win over ND in 2008 that probably knocked the Irish down a seed line (or two).

ND couldn't shoot - again - so they were reduced to scrapping - again. Gody played but a few minutes, scoring 5 points and generally trying not to mess up his new team's flow. (I have to say, I admire the way Gody has handled all of this. It would be easy for a guy like him to get selfish after 3 straight years of carrying ND on his back, but when it was announced this weekend that he will continue to come off the bench the rest of the year, he was more than happy to do it. He knows that he has a chance to reinvent his legacy somewhat here at ND, and helping the Irish to a Sweet 16 bid - even not as the focal point - would simply add to his legend. Gotta love him.)

Tim Abromaitis hasn't been able to shoot in weeks, but showing why I love him so much, he powered his way to 18 points anyway. Tyrone Nash quietly had 13 and 9. The Irish outrebounded a bigger, faster, more athletic Golden Eagles team by TWELVE. Still, I doubted, doubted and continued to doubt, right up until the last four seconds, where, with ND down three and Marquette unbelievably refusing to foul despite plenty of opportunities, this happened.

The Carleton Scott 3 might end up going right in there with the Aramis Ramirez walk-off homer in 2007 and the Ben Gordon running floater at the buzzer to beat the Knicks in 2005 as moments that changed everything for me as a fan for quite some time. I've watched the clip of Jack Nolan losing his mind at least 15 times and I will watch it at least 30 more. From that moment, I knew ND was going to win, and sure enough, they did.

ND's now 10-8 in the Big East and pretty much a shoo-in for the NCAA tournament, barring some very surprising occurrences in Championship Week. It's an in-season turnaround that defied all description. And for once, it happened to my team.

Go Irish, and watch out, you 6/7 seed types that may end up drawing Notre Dame in round 1.