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.

The Tim Tebow Thing, Or: Why Brady Quinn Shouldn't Have Gone to ND

Permit me for weighing in on the Tim Tebow Thing. And sharing a perspective that will have almost nothing to do with whether Tebow actually will be a successful NFL quarterback (my bet: not bloody likely).

Something hasn't stopped bugging me about the Tebow Thing the last few days. And, like you'd expect, it involves Notre Dame. If you tend to think any opinion held by an ND fan on matters involving college football is invalid - and I know more than a couple of people who do - you probably just ought to stop reading. Unlike most opinions I hold, this one's not all that strong, and I'm posting this blog more to explore the topic than because I really believe in anything I'm writing.

Mainly, the Tebow Thing has made me wonder if any good player - anyone who desires to be a pro - really ought to go to Notre Dame. More specifically, anyone at a skill position, and particularly at quarterback. Because of one big reason.

Basically, because Brady Quinn was sort of Tim Tebow before Tebow was Tebow.

No, this is not a direct comparison. It may not even be a good one. But to a guy who followed Quinn's career as closely as anyone's career, it seems that there are similarities.

Both players entered their schools in the early years of a new coaching regime (although in Quinn's case, that regime ended quickly). Both were beloved by their fans just as much, if not more so, for the way they carried themselves and the effort they gave as for the results they brought. Both received mountains of hype. Both had visceral haters emerge in response to that hype. Both were leaders. Both were demonstrative. Both were men of faith (Tebow more overtly so, of course). Both returned for their senior year when there was a chance they could have gone pro after successful junior seasons.

The main differences between them are obvious: They possessed different skill sets, with Quinn being a passer and Tebow being more of a hybrid. And of course, Tebow won national championships on loaded teams, while Quinn led flawed teams that didn't merit the hype they received, falling well short of the goal of a title.

Before they ever joined the professional ranks, each player had the NFL spotlight trained firmly upon them. But I noticed something about the run-up to each draft, the 2007 and 2010 drafts respectively. The two were not treated the same.

Everyone was after Quinn's flaws in '07. His lack of arm strength. His inability to 'win the big one'*. And...well, that was pretty much it, it seemed like. Any criticism of Quinn seemed to be vague.

* - Leaving aside the fact that the media seemed to determine retroactively which games were 'the big ones', leaving aside the fact that ND's defense gave up 30+ points in each of these media-appointed 'big ones' and leaving aside the fact that the same media who crucified Quinn for coming up short in big games were blasting ND for being an overrated team which couldn't recruit top-tier talent. There was no apparent cognitive dissonance in the media's collective mind on that point.

Criticizing Quinn wouldn't in itself have been noteworthy except for the fact that the guy being propped up at Quinn's expense was a man named JaMarcus Russell. Now, for some who might forget, JaMarcus Russell was a very large man who had never exhibited the kind of drive for football necessary to win in the pros. He also had a big arm - big enough to throw long bombs to his LSU teammates who would run wide open past slow secondaries. Slow secondaries like Notre Dame's. In the Sugar Bowl. Although Russell could make no other throws of note, everyone quickly tossed Quinn aside for Russell on the strength of Russell's performance against a horrible defense, and on the strength of Quinn's poor performance against a dynamite defense (with a pitiful offensive line, no less).

Russell, of course, was an unmitigated disaster in the pros for the Oakland Raiders. He didn't win. He wasn't accurate. He didn't care to improve himself. He basically ate himself out of the league. By the time his THIRD SEASON was over - absolutely unheard of for a guy who had as much invested in him as Russell did - he was done. Out of the league. No team had any interest in him. (Now, granted, Quinn has been a failure in the pros too, considering his draft status. No question of this. But Quinn is still in the league, which makes him the best QB selected in that 2007 first round, which is my only point.)

Alright. At this point the blog appears to have a fixation on Quinn. Quinn is my favorite collegiate athlete of all time to this point, so this happens a lot. I'm going to try, with monumental effort, to move to the topic at hand.

...and...here we go.

The 2010 draft. Tim Tebow.

Now, I had a vested interest in the media's opinion of Tebow as well, as it so happened that Jimmy Clausen, Quinn's successor at ND and a solid college QB in his own right, albeit one trapped on horribly coached Charlie Weis teams, was in that draft, a projected first-rounder. I was following all the QBs in that draft because of this.

I was utterly shocked at how Tebow's flaws were swept under the rug. His ridiculous throwing motion, which he claimed to have revamped (his NFL game tape shows this was a complete farce). His horrible accuracy. His happy feet. All in the name of "he's a winner!!!". His flaws were so blatantly ignored that he ended up being a first-round pick, as Denver's moronic coach Josh McDaniels (fired a year later, by the way) traded a bunch of picks to move up and get him, out of fear that he'd have been drafted by someone else...apparently, even though there was no indication another team was looking to take Tebow that high. Clausen, meanwhile, fell to the 2nd round for no other apparent reason than 'character concerns' that were vaguely expressed by no one with enough guts to put their name behind them - except of course Todd McShay, who was being less gutsy than legally retarded by doing so. Of course, Clausen appears to have crapped out as well, getting my Carolina Panthers Cam Newton in the process.

I will never stop wondering why Tebow, an overtly religious man, a demonstrative individual, and the same kind of intangibles-laden hype machine that Quinn was in college, was - and is - practically beatified by the football community when I have no doubt that Tebow's act would have earned him nothing but vitriol had he been wearing ND blue and gold.

Think about it. Consider an alternate reality where Clausen does what he probably should have done and just goes to USC, where you can do whatever you want and no one will evidently care, and your pro prospects won't be derailed by vague whispers about character even though you have a nearly-spotless record in all respects except the part where you're not supposed to think you're good even if you are.

Consider an alternate reality in which Tebow (who admittedly never considered ND to my knowledge) decides that with Clausen not going to South Bend, his chance is clear to become a star after Quinn graduates. Tebow has the exact same career, winning two titles (again, alternate reality, folks) and generating a cult of personality in South Bend instead of Gainesville.

Is there any way - ANY way - that Tebow's sanctimonious overt religion, his viewing of himself as a pseudo-prophet even though he plays football, his demonstrative behavior on the sidelines, and all the hype about the 'spark' and 'energy' he brings to the ND team does NOT result in him being universally loathed, not to mention lambasted by the ESPN machine?

I say no. And this is the sad conclusion (or happy if you hate ND): Why would any quarterback hoping to achieve NFL fame go to a place that seems so doomed to inspire so much vitriol? People who achieve the position of ND quarterback are so festooned with hatred that it seems a scarlet letter. I don't know why it is, but it seems clear that it does.

Just a thought or two - and again, don't take me seriously, because this is just a theory, and a half-baked, ridiculously biased theory at that.

D-Rose Raises the Stakes

Too few people get to see special seasons from their teams. I mean, truly special seasons.

I’m of the belief that the most fun sports seasons to follow are ones that were unexpected. Not necessarily from nowhere, though that would be even better, but reasonably unexpected. The best recent example I can come up with is the S.F. Giants’ 2010 championship season, which was SF’s first playoff appearance since the Juiced-Up Bonds Era after seven years of fielding reasonably competitive but never contending teams.

I have gotten to witness two sports seasons that I would qualify as truly special. One, the 2008 Cubs team that won 97 games, saw literally every player on the team be prominently involved in a game-winning play at some point, and proceeded to inexplicably turn into the Cubs of old in their three-game playoff series, were the first. The second’s outcome is TBD.

The 2010-11 Bulls were supposed to be good. It was well-documented before the season began that Chicago had done a splendid job rebounding from their failed pursuit of LeBron James and/or Dwyane Wade. The team regrouped and used their massive cap room to net one slightly smaller fish – Carlos Boozer – then surrounded Derrick Rose with role players such as Keith Bogans, Kyle Korver, Ronnie Brewer, and others. Most outfits – Sports Illustrated notably excepted – chose the Bulls to win the Central Division and most expected the Bulls to be a present but hardly threatening foil to the Magic, Heat and Celtics’ further domination of the Eastern Conference.

But none of the pundits – and certainly not me – expected what happened to Rose.

In terms of raw numbers, it was a noticeable but not mind-blowing leap. Rose went from 20.8 points a game to 25, six assists a game to nearly eight, and 77 percent free throw shooting to 86.

But Rose’s rise couldn’t possibly be explained by numbers. Emboldened out of the rejection of the big stars, the removal of all the remaining veterans that preceded him (save Luol Deng) on the Bulls, a new coach in Tom Thibodeau, or some combination of the three, Rose became The Man overnight. This new status meant that Rose took more shots (was effectively forced to take more shots out of necessity) and his shooting percentage took a hit, going from 49 percent in his 2^nd season to 44.5 percent. This earned him some criticism from some statheads, who preferred LeBron James’s usual sterling numbers to be rewarded with an MVP award rather than Rose – a natural reaction to the freight train of Rose’s MVP candidacy that shot from nowhere midseason.

But LeBron James had consciously chosen a situation where he didn’t always have to carry the load. He had Dwyane Wade to take big shots here and there. He could choose to distribute in big moments rather than put it on his own shoulders. Rose had no such luxury. Not only is there no one else on the Bulls’ team who can consistently make big shots, no one else wants to even try.

I haven’t even mentioned to this point that Rose pulled this rise off while missing two of his most important sidekicks. Carlos Boozer missed the first month and a half with a broken hand, and before you had even gotten used to seeing him in the Bulls’ lineup, Joakim Noah followed with hand surgery (what is it with the hands on this team?) that kept HIM out until the All-Star break. Rose played essentially the first 55 games of the season without his whole team – and incredibly, that was his best stretch of the season.

And now, after a couple of tough playoff series with Indiana and Atlanta, the Bulls find themselves in the center of a morality play. James, Wade and the Heat are coming to town in a series that no less a basketball mind than ESPN’s Bill Simmons has repeatedly dubbed a series that will test everything he ever knew about basketball. A well-constructed team built around one star and a bunch of guys who know their role versus a couple of studs.

The series begins Sunday. Will my magical season continue?

Inspiration

What inspires people?

Everyone is inspired by different things. I am inspired mainly by two things: the sports teams at the University of Notre Dame, and seeing good things happen to my college classmates.

I have definitely seen a lot of the latter. It seems like every time I look around, another awesome thing has happened to someone I graduated with. A slew of people I graduated with are now on their second job; ironically, in most cases, their first job is one I'd have killed to have. Hell, someone who graduated a year behind me (albeit from Notre Dame, a much better school than my own) just got promoted to his second position, barely a year and a half out of college.

It's not like I never want good things to happen to my classmates. After all, many of them are my friends - according to Facebook at least, they all are. The selfish part of me feels alone, though, because none of those professionally good things are happening to me. Hell, one of my friends who can barely write at all got a job which includes a weekly sports column. It is in North Dakota, granted, a state I have no intention of going to ever, and I'd probably rather just live here with a shitty job the rest of my life than go there. But the simple fact that anyone out there would rather employ someone besides me when I'm a better writer stings.

I recently applied to a position in Maryland, a position that wasn't yet open but was expected to be. The present occupant of said position was expected to be going to grad school, but did not get in. I wouldn't have gotten the job anyway, but it was indicative of the marketplace - people are trying to get out of it, and I still can't sneak in. I've almost completely given up on the idea of having a sportswriting job and now I'm kind of just hoping I can get a 9-5 job that would allow me to have a family and continue to be a sports fan. It's a sad turn of events in a life that most people once believed had such potential.

Perhaps I've been wrong all along to view being a sports fan as my real calling. I have placed too much emphasis my whole life on being the best sports fan I can be and not enough on making myself employable. I suppose, in a way, this whole situation is my fault. I have long prefaced any complaint I had about my life by saying that no one is more responsible for the predicament than I am. And it's true, unfortunately. It'd be nice I guess, to blame someone besides me for what my life is, but I can't, because it wouldn't be true.

I'm not sure what set me off on this off-topic post except that I ought to keep this blog alive, if only for my own self-interest. Maybe the occasional personal entry isn't such a bad idea.