The Dream Lives

Manti Te'o and his Irish might accomplish the unthinkable.

No Notre Dame fan probably would have admitted it a couple of months ago, but now that it’s happened, I think we all agree — none of us ever thought this would happen again.

Not after 15 years of mediocrity. Not after the brain trust at Notre Dame, and I use that term loosely, hired Bob Davie, Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis, none of whom had ever had any substantive head-coaching success*, in rapid succession. Not after Weis’s two trips to BCS games resulted in the talent gap between ND and their opponents being mercilessly exposed. Not after Weis proceeded to put together three straight nonwinning seasons after that, including the worst team the Irish have ever fielded, and God willing, will ever field.

* - Whenever I argue that Tyrone Willingham had never had substantive head coaching success before coming to ND, some wiseacre inevitably responds that he took Stanford to the Rose Bowl. Dragging an 8-3 Stanford team through a terrible Pac-10 when all the other California schools were in the toilet does not count as substantive head coaching success, not when you’re there six years and that’s the best you can do.

Hell, for some of us, namely me, the thought of Brian Kelly being the man to do the job died after, in a seven-day stretch in 2010, the Irish were blitzed by Navy as Kelly inexplicably identified Navy’s triple-option attack as “the veer” and claimed he’d never seen anything like it; Declan Sullivan died thanks to a reprehensibly stupid decision to send videographers 50 feet into the air in the middle of, basically, a tornado; and ND lost to Tulsa when Kelly inexplicably called a play that resulted in his true freshman quarterback that had played one series of college football in his life coming into the day chucking a Hail Mary into the end zone even though the Irish were down by one, were in field-goal range and had a kicker that didn’t miss a field goal when healthy the entire season, then told people who might question such a decision to “get used to it” in the postgame press conference.

The idea that that same man, with mostly the same coaching staff, would be the one to field this team would have been inconceivable to me two years ago at that time. And yet here we sit: Notre Dame is 12-0, with a first-year starting quarterback who’s been yanked for performance issues three different times this season and zero blue-chip wide receivers leading the offense, while a stacked defense led by the Heisman runner-up points the way to win after win. Notre Dame will play in the national championship game, coming in with the #1 scoring defense in the land and coming in as the lone eligible unbeaten in the entire country.

I mean, read that paragraph again. Can you BELIEVE this?

Like I said, now that it’s happened, I think it’s become clear that most ND fans never really thought this would happen again. I remember talking a lot of nonsense about how obviously ND would win again if they just hired the right coach, that the idea that they wouldn’t win again was really just a myth perpetuated by a bunch of haters who HOPED Notre Dame wouldn’t win again so they could keep kicking dirt on their grave as a football power. That ‘nonsense’ turned out to be true, but I used that word because, in retrospect, I didn’t really believe it. I’m 26 years old and I’ve never seen the Irish compete for a title beyond November 2nd in my conscious lifetime. Now that I’ve actually seen what happened and what it took for ND to be 12-0 - a great defense, a terrific-when-he-needs-to-be quarterback and a healthy dose of luck - I didn’t really think it could happen. And yet it has.

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The first time I let myself believe that unbeaten was a real possibility wasn’t until November 3rd, when Notre Dame, with the help of some iffy officiating, some Panthers’ chokage and the most improbable Notre Dame comeback I’ve ever witnessed in person, escaped a Pitt team that went 6-6 this year. Up until then, I had enjoyed the hell out of every stop on the unbeaten tour, especially week after week watching the Irish shove it in the face of pundits who said this was surely the week ND was going down. 

The Irish won’t be able to move the ball on Michigan State. (Yes they were.)

Denard Robinson will tear Notre Dame’s defense apart just like he has the last two years. (Alabama had exposed him, but ND put the nail in his coffin.)

ND hasn’t faced an offense like Miami’s. (Three points given up.)

ND hasn’t faced a defense like Stanford’s. (Got enough points to win.)

Winning in Norman is impossible for this bunch. (No, it’s not.)

But at no point did I believe this team was definitely running the table. It was fun to smear it in the face of everyone who said ND couldn’t compete for titles, but surely it wasn’t going to be this year.

So it wasn’t all that surprising to me when I made my annual pilgrimage to ND Stadium and Pittsburgh jumped up on the Irish 20-6. Of course ND was going to lay a giant, steaming turd all over their unbeaten season at home, just like they had 10 years ago, when I was also in the building.

Just like they had proven me wrong the week before when they’d rebounded from Oklahoma’s tying touchdown and ripped off the final 17 points of the game, though, they proved me wrong again. They eked out a touchdown with the help of a key fourth-down interference call, which while blatantly obvious to everyone in the stadium, with the benefit of replay, it was...not so much obvious. 

Everett Golson, yanked earlier in the game until Tommy Rees threw his inevitable game-changing interception, threw one of his own with under four minutes left in the game. While the Irish had timeouts, it looked like the season was doomed.

The Irish defense came together, though, and stopped Pitt. Then came Golson’s announcement that he was on his way.

On three consecutive plays, Golson did this: Danced around in the pocket for about a minute and a half before lofting an excellent deep ball to DaVaris Daniels for a first down; turned a doomed QB draw into a TD pass by abandoning the draw and rolling to his right; danced around again for a minute and a half before finding a seam, bursting through it and diving in for the game-tying two-point conversion.

That was when I believed. Then Pitt’s kicker missed an easy game-winning field goal in the second overtime and ND pulled it out. 

Brent Musburger called ND ‘destiny’s darlings’ towards the end of the USC game. While part of me resents that statement because it implies that the Irish are not actually good and have somehow lucked their way to 12-0, I also embrace it to some extent. This team has had the feeling of a team of destiny ever since the goal-line stand against Stanford.

This feeling was only cemented when the Irish made fools of USC with another goal-line stand. Lane Kiffin, in his singular genius, let three minutes off the clock while trying to get the ball in from the 2-yard line and couldn’t do it. A couple of PI’s against Marqise Lee, stuffing the run a couple of times, a timeout, stuffing the run again, and then pressuring the QB into a bad throw on fourth down. It was glorious. My immediate thought was “GROWN MAN FOOTBALL”, referring to the SEC’s response to a derisive comment by a Missouri player earlier this season. This team plays grown man football.

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So here we are, with Notre Dame playing Alabama, the team that’s been deified by every college football pundit and every blindly homerific SEC fan even though they’ve played three good teams this year, lost to one and barely escaped the other two. It’s the matchup I’ve wanted since the moment ND hit the #1 mark. Because if the Irish win - and they can - there will be no more excuses left. The blind haters can throw whatever they want against the wall to see if it sticks - the Pitt game, the fact that the schedule wasn’t as taxing as it first looked, the goal-line ‘controversy’ against Stanford, whatever - but it won’t matter. Notre Dame will have won the 2012 national championship if that comes to fruition, and every blindly biased person who makes wild claims about the Irish losing to half the SEC, every chump who claims the only reason ND can stop people at the goal line is because their secondary is under orders to mug receivers in the end zone (even though the same goal-line stand would be being raised to the heavens if an SEC team accomplished it) and every person desperate to discredit the school at any cost, even if it means outwardly bigoted or blatantly false statements, will just be talking to themselves, whining and crying and making up excuses while Brian Kelly and Manti Te’o hoist the crystal football.

It’s a scene I really want to see. And for the first time in my conscious life, I might have a chance to.

The Team That Might Change Everything

Everett Golson is just one of the winners on Notre Dame's team
that just might be changing everything.

Looking back on it now, maybe November 13, 2010, WAS the day that changed it all.

That was the day Notre Dame’s fan base, reeling after back-to-back ridiculous losses to Navy and Tulsa, sandwiched around the tragic (and easily preventable) death of student videographer Declan Sulivan, might have been saved from the abyss.

Every sports fan can probably tell you the day, or the moment, that they feel their team hit rock bottom, and for me, anyway, going into that game with Utah, that’s where Notre Dame football was. 4-5 against what had appeared pre-season to be the easiest (and dumbest) schedule in Notre Dame history. Everyone in the media justifiably calling for Brian Kelly’s head on a stick after the gross negligence that led to Sullivan’s death. The team itself riddled with injuries that sidelined Notre Dame’s leading passer, rusher AND receiver for the team’s final three games. No end seemed in sight.

The Irish shockingly destroyed Utah that day. Utah had been ranked in the top five at one point before getting obliterated by TCU. The Utes ended up being proven as something of a fraud by season’s end, but on this day nobody cared. ND had suffered consecutive humiliating Senior Day defeats to Syracuse and UConn, and for a graduating class whose freshman year was the reprehensible 2007 season, and whose sophomore and junior years hadn’t been much better, the Utah game was, finally, a sign of hope.

ND won the rest of its 2010 games, beating Army, USC and Miami to close out the year. After the disappointment of 2011, though, the momentum of November 2010 was largely forgotten.

But now that Notre Dame is 8-0, with only USC posing a serious threat to what would be, unthinkably, Notre Dame’s first undefeated regular season since 1988, maybe that was the day that changed the Kelly era - not so much for Kelly himself or even for the team as much as for the fans.

That day allowed them to believe. To believe that Notre Dame could enter a game with a highly-regarded opponent and prove themselves. To believe that an Irish team wouldn’t toss their tail between their legs and run at the first sign of trouble. To believe that ND had toughness again.

In the grand scheme of things it was nothing, a mediocre team playing its best game against an overrated Mountain West opponent. But I don’t know if last Saturday would’ve been possible without it.

I wanted to soak every second of it in. After the Irish exploded for 17 points in the back half of the fourth quarter to spank Oklahoma 30-13 in their own house — the Sooners’ worst home loss since 1997 — all I wanted to do was watch.

See, Notre Dame fans my age aren’t used to this. Playing in big games? Sure. Competing in big games? Absolutely. Winning big games? Hell, no.

I was two the last time ND won the national title. I was seven the last time they were a serious competitor for one. One of my first Notre Dame memories is of my mother crying on the floor of our house because Boston College had just pulled a 41-39 upset of the Irish out of their collective butts, giving poll voters the excuse they needed to vote Florida State the national champion over the Irish even though ND had overpowered them just a few weeks prior. I remember trying to convince my mother it was ok because “it’s not like they can make them #1 and us #17”, which was BC’s ranking coming in. I was a kid. I was dumb.

Almost two decades later, it was me tearing up. But it was out of happiness.

Absolutely no one gave the Irish a chance. I don’t think a single pundit that didn’t once coach at Notre Dame picked the Irish to win the game. Oklahoma’s offense would be too much. The Irish offense would need to score. The young secondary was going to be exposed. ND lacks the team speed to keep up with the Sooners (sorry, channeled the Blind Oracle of Bristol for a moment).

It wasn’t until Cierre Wood burst through the middle to find no Oklahoma defenders waiting for him that I stopped believing them. Touchdown. 7-3 Irish.

The doubt crept back in, though, as ND’s offense struggled after that. Only 6 points for essentially three quarters as Oklahoma crept closer. How Notre Dame’s defense kept Oklahoma from scoring until that fourth-quarter plunge by the Bell-dozer is beyond me. Every drive was teeth-grittingly nerve-racking. When it got to 13-13, it looked like this was going to be another classic loss that prompted me to bestow a motto on Notre Dame sports a few years ago: “Good enough to make you care. Bad enough to make you wish you didn’t.”

But Everett Golson is a winner. To complete that long bomb, in Norman, with everything on the line, showed pure guts. He scored a moment or two later. It’s all a blur from there. Manti’s interception that clinched a trip to New York in December, barring catastrophe. Brindza’s you’re-damn-right-I-can-be-a-clutch-kicker 46-yard field goal that would’ve been good from 56. Another stop and a Riddick touchdown run just for good measure.

My favorite part, though, was the last play of the game. ND, not going full-speed anymore, still bulling in and sacking Landry Jones. Jones and his offensive line getting up slowly, physically beaten. They didn’t bother to run another play, although there was time. They didn’t want any more. Notre Dame had beaten the will out of them.

It was a glorious sight, one I have never seen as a Notre Dame fan. Anyone can win a game. It takes a special team to squeeze the will to compete out of your opponent.

Apparently this Notre Dame team is special. Pittsburgh, Boston College, Wake Forest and USC are all that stands in the way of 12-0. The BCS chips may or may not fall Notre Dame’s way if that happens.

While it’s definitely in the back of my mind, right now I don’t care that much about the BCS. I want 12-0. I want perfection. I want this team to become legends.

Because they deserve it.

Because WE deserve it.

Notre Dame Is At a New Beginning

 

How have I not blogged about this Notre Dame team yet? An unforgivable oversight.

Notre Dame fans have been waiting a long time for a team like this. No, it’s not probably a national championship contender. There are at least four SEC teams, possibly five, that would be favored over the Irish on a neutral field. Oregon would be too. Maybe a few others on top of it.

But right now, they’re undefeated. And it’s been a decade since that happened. It’s been much longer since it was legitimate.

A lot of people remember the 2002 team. It was the “Return to Glory” season, supposedly. It was Tyrone Willingham’s first year as head coach. It was a miraculous 8-0 start, including road wins over Michigan State, Florida State, and an Air Force team that was generating Boise-type buzz at the time before Boise was Boise.

It was a complete mirage.

None of us admitted this at the time. Granted, I was 15 and probably not intelligent enough to see it even if I was willing to admit it, but I remember having arguments with a friend of mine who inexplicably named himself an Air Force fan for the year before that year’s game and being beyond thrilled when Notre Dame ripped the Falcons. And I remember being beyond crushed when the Irish, ranked third in the BCS, dropped a steaming turd at home against a mediocre Boston College team.

In retrospect it was obvious what had happened. That year’s team was smoke and mirrors, fueled by turnovers and a defense that was very good but not great. There was no offense – in fact it took until the third game for the offense to score a touchdown. It was Bob Davie’s recruits playing above their heads for a coach they thought they could be confident in.

The 2012 team may yet prove to not be terrific. But they damn sure are not a mirage. There’s no 5-7 2013 waiting for this team like the 5-7 team that schlepped through 2003 after that “Return to Glory” season. This team is the result of building a program – it’s just ahead of schedule, that’s all.

This is where we come to my mea culpa about Brian Kelly. I had an autographed picture of Kelly on my refrigerator heading into the fall of 2010. By the end of the Tulsa game, I was so mad, and so certain after watching consecutive travesties against Navy and the Hurricane, that I trashed the picture. I thought the guy was an unadulterated failure. I said on Facebook, with ND sitting at 4-5, “5-7 at best against this pathetic schedule means Brian Kelly cannot be our football coach next season. Under no circumstances.” I even defended that insane idea against all the people who told me firing a coach after year one was a pretty bad plan.

Well, you know what happened from there. Notre Dame upset Utah, upset USC, spanked Miami in a bowl game and sucked me in again. Then came South Florida, the Crist/Rees debacle, Michigan, and a reminder of why I’d trashed the picture.

But this year has been a reminder of why Kelly was hired in the first place. While several of its key cogs (Nix, Lewis-Moore, Te’o to name a few) are Charlie Weis recruits, make no mistake about it. Kelly and defensive coordinator Bob Diaco have built this defense. And they’ve turned them into a unit that has not surrendered a touchdown now in four straight games against four straight BCS-AQ opponents. (And consider where they might have been had Aaron Lynch used the rubber with his girlfriend.) But more importantly, Kelly and Diaco have turned this defense into a unit that wins at the line of scrimmage, and does so consistently.

Proof was in the pudding last week against Stanford. Whatever your opinion of the final play, it can’t be debated that in three straight plays inside the 4-yard line, Notre Dame won the battle at the line, and they won it over one of the best teams in that department in the country.

(It’s worth noting that even Mark May, who is paid by ESPN to play the jackass ND hater to Lou Holtz’s ultra-homer on TV, said on the air that while Taylor probably scored, the play should not have been overturned based on the ‘indisputable video evidence’ standard that you hear every week from every announcer.)

Regardless of that play, Irish fans believe again, and now they believe for the right reasons. Defense. Offensive line. Running game. These have been foreign concepts to Irish fans most of the last 16 years, but they are the cornerstone of this squad.

Of course, the predictable backlash came from the media. It took until halfway through the season for Notre Dame’s feel-good story to turn into the Empire Strikes Back, but the controversial goal-line call brought with it an avalanche of hate. “Notre Dame’s not legit…they have no chance of going undefeated…their schedule isn’t that great.”

The answers to these criticisms, in respective order, by the way, are “What the heck is your definition of ‘legit’?”, “Their chances aren’t great, but they’re a hell of a lot better than the teams that aren’t undefeated”, and “Yeah, you’ve got a point”. (Seriously, this is about the umpteenth year in a row that Notre Dame’s schedule has ended up being the opposite of what was originally thought about it. Whenever ND is hammered for a creampuff schedule, it ends up being tough, and vice versa. How does that always happen?)

However, the schedule doesn’t explain the 4 straight games without surrendering a touchdown. That streak hasn’t been bettered by an Irish team since 1980. That team was coached by Dan Devine. Who’s been dead for years. That’s how long it’s been.

Hell, LSU’s vaunted D gave up as many TDs to Towson – 3 – as the Irish have surrendered all year (1 to Navy and 2 to Purdue).

This Irish team is full of flaws. Everett Golson is progressing much more slowly than was hoped. Brian Kelly, although I’m about ready to give him a full and complete apology for burying his Irish coaching career nine games in, still doesn’t commit to the run game as much as he probably ought to. The Irish don’t have what you would call a big-play guy on offense, although George Atkinson III may be fast becoming one. The secondary, while exceeding any even semi-reasonable expectation anyone may have had for them so far, are still a work in progress.

Yes, Notre Dame is full of flaws. Yes, the team is probably a year away from being in position to legitimately contend. But, most importantly, Notre Dame is 6-0.

Six wins. Zero losses. The dream, no matter how insane it may be, is still out there. At worst, if Notre Dame only wins the four games they ought to out of their remaining six, they’ll go to a BCS game.

But for now, screw the minimum expectation of a BCS game. As long as the Irish keep finding a way to win, I am on board. I’ve been waiting to get my heart stomped on, and it may yet come, against Oklahoma, or USC, or even by somebody else. But I’m all in. I’ll see you all on the other side of the coin.

Guaranteeing a Super Bowl Title: Not Just Rex Ryan Does It

So, here we are. The Carolina Panthers are Super Bowl champions.

So says Ryan Kalil, the Pro Bowl center who recently took an ad out in the Charlotte Observer guaranteeing that Carolina would raise the Lombardi trophy in New Orleans in February.

Of course, Kalil's prediction doesn't exactly come out of nowhere. Carolina is in possession of possibly the most electrifying QB in the league, Cam Newton, who exploded onto the scene last year by setting a rookie record for passing yards and broke the league record for rushing scores by a signal-caller. Carolina will also return David Gettis, who was on track to be the #2 receiver last year before tearing his ACL in camp. And Carolina's defense gets back its two best players this year, both of whom tore their ACLs in the early going of 2011 (what's with my teams and ACL tears this last year??): Thomas Davis and Jon Beason. On top of that, they drafted another one, Luke Kuechly, who promises to be on their level. Even if none of those three things works out as planned, Carolina's defense can scarcely be as bad as last year's - there's a reason Cam had to throw so often that he set the rookie passing record.

It is, however, receiving quite an amount of pub. Kalil's ad was the lead story on an admittedly-slow-news-day edition of PTI yesterday, and discussion of the ad is flying around message boards, with the general tone seeming to be: You've got to make the playoffs to win the Super Bowl, bud.

Carolina did win just 6 games last year but came on strong at the end of the season. They won 4 of their last 6 games of 2011 and let at least 5 winnable games slip away. The Panthers were 6-9 going into their last game of 2011 and they could very easily have been 8-7 or 9-6 and been right in the thick of the playoff race. It doesn't hurt their chances that New Orleans, which would have been the prohibitive divisional favorite, has been decimated by the suspensions handed out by Roger Goodell in the wake of the bounty scandal.

It remains to be seen whether Carolina has the horses to make this guarantee not look dumb. (Please, for the love of God, let all our players' ACLs remain intact this preseason.) But it's nice to see some swagger in Charlotte.

When Your Baseball Team Is Bad

The Cubs are bad. They are awful. They are atrocious. They are frighteningly terrible.

All these things are true.

And yet I find myself watching them daily.

This is not something I do with most bad teams. Pretty much only the Cubs and Notre Dame football can get away with being awful and have me still watch all of their games, although now that I have NFL Sunday Ticket (did you know it's at its lowest price in almost a decade? Did you? Did you? DID YOU KNOW THAT?!?!?!?!?!), the Carolina Panthers might be headed that way too — granted, they're not going to be awful. Or at least, I hope not.

The Cubs are an exception. They are not always, but this year is a special case. The Age of Theo has provided a reason to follow, even through all the head-slappingly awful baseball.

I'm not a Theo slurper (I personally think there was little reason the Cubs had to be this bad — the unconscionable trade where the Cubs shipped Carlos Zambrano out for Chris Volstad without saving much more than a handful of sunflower seeds from the deal was pointless and probably made the team 3 or 4 games worse, for instance), but there's no question he's made some interesting and exciting moves that have made the team more interesting to follow this year even as they collapse.

The first signing the Cubs made that made me think we'd be alright was David DeJesus. Now, DeJesus is a nothing signing in the big scheme of things. But he's the kind of player that can give you solid production for less-than-solid-production price. He's making $4.25 million this year and he's one of the better offensive players on the team (this is probably not a good thing, but still) and is a dynamite defender. There's little doubt DeJesus has been worth the money.

Not long after that, though, there was the Bomb. The shot across the bow of the rest of the National League that made us sure we were in good hands.

Anthony Rizzo.

I will spend the rest of my life wondering why the hell San Diego thought it was a good idea to ship Rizzo, the crown jewel of the haul they got for Adrian Gonzalez a year before, out for Andrew Cashner. Cashner, a solid prospect, is probably never going to be healthy enough to be a starting pitcher, and the Padres had to have known this already. It was common knowledge.

But Rizzo's weak start to his MLB career in San Diego was enough to pitch him to Chicago. Jed Hoyer, a Theo protege, drafted or traded for Rizzo three times.

Rizzo has been gangbusters, sickeningly good so far. Rarely is he cheated. His swing has been altered for the better. He's got 4 homers in a week and a half and everything that comes off his bat seems to be a frozen rope. It's frankly difficult to see him NOT turning into an MVP-type stud that carries the Cubs offensively, maybe the best Cubs offensive player since Sammy Sosa stopped taking B-12 shots.

As bad as the Cubs are, you can see it getting better. Travis Wood, who Theo fleeced from Cincinnati for about-to-be-a-free-agent Sean Marshall, has come on strong over the last month and is threatening to be a piece of the puzzle. Jeff Samardzija, who's been up and (mostly) down in his big-league career, has shown flashes of potentially being a dominant pitcher down the line. Starlin Castro, even during what seems to be a regression year, has still been more than solid at the plate and is getting better in the field. Darwin Barney is just good enough with the bat that he, and his golden second baseman's glove, play every day in the field, and he's cheap. Even Alfonso Soriano has been good enough to make us dream that maybe someone will take his contract off our hands if we pay most of it.

And there's more help coming. Brett Jackson is coming soon. Jorge Soler and Albert Almora are top-of-the-line guys that will be providing reinforcements in the future. James Russell has emerged as a fireman, almost as good in the role as Carlos Marmol once was (before he got paid a gazillion dollars and forgot how to pitch). There's lots of reason to hope that maybe, just maybe, things will be better soon.