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 fe
w 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.
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.
