Fans would be much better informed during one of the Irish away games broadcast by the ABC crew and led by Mush MushMouthberger if they turned the volume all the way down!

Listen to the radio if you can, but if you cannot, then play Notre Dame Music in the background.  We recommend Here Come the Irish by the O’Neill Brothers.  It is wonderful!!

Consider some of these idiocies:

·        All the talk about The Biggest Game of Them All was about Sparty’s players.  The Mouth may not realize that of the 33 players from that classic game in 1966 who played in the NFL, 22 of them were Domers!

·        Mush Head called Bubba invincible and then they played an insipid kaleidoscope of images to the “invincible” theme.  In fact, Bubba had a less than great game 40 years ago.  True, he made some amazing plays, but he was moved to nose guard and held in check for most of the game after his dirty hit on Hanratty, which he and Mush Head laughed about together in a sick display of masochism. 

·        This is the first time I have ever seen college players and announcers joyously celebrating a vicious knockout.  Bubba actually said that he purposely took a knock out shot at him!  By the way, Bubba sounds like he could take advantage of going back to school for remedial English—back to the fourth grade! 

·        Mush Head mused about the poor guy who played opposite Bubba for most of the game.  That poor guy was Tim Monty who spotted Bubba 75 pounds and did hold him in check most of the time—a heroic effort which Mush Head is unaware of.

·        Of course the talking heads repeated the nonsense about how that game ended, never pointing out that Coley went back to pass on the next to last play and was sacked for an eight yard loss. 

·        As soon as the Irish were behind in this year’s game by what seemed like a safe lead for Sparty, the three announcers declared that ND does not have enough good athletes to play with Sparty!

·        Bob “after the fact” Davie constantly second guessed Charlie, but never second guessed him before we could see the outcome of Charlie’s strategy.  For example, Davie questioned Charlie taking the ball into the wind at the outset of the game, saying that after the out of sync loss to Michigan, Charlie should have played it safe.  But he said this not when Charlie made the decision, but after it ND had fallen 17 points behind.  In fact, none of the announcers talked about how bad the wind was until later in the first quarter and then they made few references to it during the rest of the game.  It is obvious that Davie is gutless and that he does not understand why he is no longer Coach Davie.  He should not be in the booth for ND games.

Not since 1986 have the Irish come back from such a large deficit AND WON THE GAME!

With the dream for a great season half way down the drain, the Irish reached down deep and found guts and courage that they could not have even known they had!! This is a remarkable group of players and coaches, with its collective head in the mouth of the Beast, they found a way to come back time and again, even as most Irish fans had most probably written them off!

Since this is the tenth year of wandering in the desert, or the second year of coming out of the desert, we should all be deeply appreciative of the miracles wrought by this coaching staff and these players.  Having said that, we feel free to roast them for their shortcomings, none of which block us from loving them all and the team!! 

In the press conference Sunday morning one scribe asked if this had been Charlie’s first crisis as coach at Notre Dame.  And indeed it was!  How many of you were thinking that Charlie maybe was not the coach nearly everyone thought he was? After all, the magic left during the Michigan game and now the Irish were working hard on being a mediocre to bad .500 team with no prospects of a BCS game.

The media is focusing on the sideline incident because the whiners from Michigan State are outraged at Charlie’s statement that he was slapped during the melee.  But he also said it might have been one of his players.  Compare this whine from Sparty, which has filed a formal complaint with Big Ten officiating to the way Notre Dame handled the Bush Push!

Google delivered 542 articles this morning on the ND v Sparty!

Nonetheless, we have to say that at the time, it was unclear why the Spartans were penalized.  It looked like Ryan Harris went after Matt Trannon back behind the bench.  But, then, why was Trannon back there.  In the last 20 years, we have not seen a player do this—which is to go back behind the other team’s bench.

In the team huddle just before the McKnight TD pass, which set up the go ahead touchdown, Brady Quinn punched Dan Santucci hard on the top of his shoulder pad, as if to say, ok, now we are going to go do it!  This is the only time I have ever seen Brady do anything like this!  What passion!!  What intensity!!  What an omen!  Why cannot we have more of this???

More sideline stuff: At one point after a three and out in the third quarter, Brady looked glassy eyed, as though he had not a clue as to what was going on.  When I saw this picture on the TV screen, it almost seemed as though all hope was lost.

Charlie went for it on fourth down in Notre Dame territory.  It was fourth and one and a half.  Instead of a quarterback keeper or a dive by Darius, Brady went for his first choice, John Carlson, deep over the middle and Carlson nearly went all the way, but set up a touchdown that brought the Irish within      points. 

Now no coach plays Riverboat Gambler like this and goes for all the marbles, and so Charlie must be crazy, right????

No!!!!!!!!!!!

Coach

That is right, Coach

Not Vince, but Coach

Coach used to do it!

Are you surprised?

You think Coach was conservative?

You think he would not do such things?

Well, you are wrong, because he did it many times with the Packers!

This son of Frank Leahy!

Coach!

The greatest NFL coach of all time!

He did it!

And watching it back then, you had to love it.

He did not do it regularly, but he did it enough to be memorable, but not enough for any team to ever be waiting for it!!

Sounds like Charlie, does it not!

Of course, for he is in the lineage!

We can trace him back all the way—it is a bit tortuous but it can be done. 

Actually, Charlie is the only coach in college that would do this stuff. 

Of course, he drove us all crazy by going for it on fourth and eight and a half and failed!

But, he had good reasons.

Listen to his press conference to find out!

Many Irish fans expect Charlie to be more personally involved on the sidelines.  Remember the tantrums that Lou threw the first couple years he was on the sideline.  This writer is betting that Ara or Dick Rosenthal or someone of similar stature told Lou to curb it!  Nonetheless, the Faithful expect our coach to foam at the mouth and jump up and down.  Charlie does not do that, but in this game he sure got hot and heavy with the defense in sideline huddles on a couple of highly memorable occasions very late in the game.  When the defense took the field, they brought the emotion with them and they demonstrated it!!  The much maligned defense, maligned after their execrable performance against Penn State, rose to the occasion and performed so beautifully that there is no Irish fan in the Land who is not surprised by their clutch performance.

One of the greatest Irish comebacks ever, this game is now being compared to the Chicken Soup Bowl by some and to the 38-37 18 point comeback in 1986 against the Trojans that served as the springboard for the Lou Holtz victory string. 

This game is far more important than this last Montana game, since that game was the end of an era and because nothing but pride rode on the outcome.  This game is closer in importance to the win over the Trojans, but probably much more significant.  Charlie is in that second pivotal year, which always builds toward a national championship in the third year of a great Irish coach’s reign. 

It appears that Charlie has misjudged the emotional state of the players, for the team has simply not been ready to play in four of its last five outings!  Throw in the Stanford game last year, and make it five out of its last six games.  The Irish have been outscored 44-10 in the first quarter this year!  These are not the makings of a Dy-nasty. 

We assume that Charlie is still learning the subtle differences between managing an NFL team and a college team.  And we assume he is growing into the role of head coach, which of course he only had experienced for one year as a high school coach before coming to Notre Dame.  This great victory gives him an opportunity to learn and build toward the goals he wants to achieve, and for that reason, the game may turn out to be one of the most important in Notre Dame Football history.