To visit the above on line go to the Notre Dame Club of Memphis site:

 

http://alumni.nd.edu/~ndc_memp/GrandCircle.htm#4

 

College football is not for the faint of heart.  We all learned this lesson one more time on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  As the seconds began slipping away in Stanford Stadium, and correlatively as our collective visions of Fiesta Glory began to fade, the Irish players and the Irish Faithful reached down into their guts for faith, for hope and for anything to hold onto. 

 

Afterward, a few of the fans at our game watch said they knew all along that the Irish would do it!!  But, no one made such brash predictions with 1:44 left on the clock!  How brave and resolute we are after the fact!

 

After Stanford scored, in the last two minutes, I heard none of the brash remarks that we had all heard prior to the game—remarks that made it obvious that the fans were not taking the Cardinal tree bark seriously.

 

But then Irish Lightening struck, almost too quickly.  First, we had a semi-bomb to Samardzija—on a play that the team had not practiced since mid-season!  Wow, Charlie has cohunes!  Nobody ever does this.  Word is that that Charlie actually diagrammed the play for the team on the sideline, during the time out!  If it sounds like sand lot football, then in this respect it is, but the difference is that Charlie’s perceptive genius saw something that he was not prepared for—a hole in the Tree Bark defense that could be exploited and once it was, well, everyone began to expect the Montana-like miracle!  And of course, it came to pass.  And it came to a run, and what a run, the most ferocious determined straight ahead run by our little tailback who everyone had been saying can only run the stretch play, and that the Irish cannot go up the middle and that they cannot run in the clutch and so on and so on and yet the Irish and Darius confound their critics and produce this:

 

One thing is for sure, and that is that few if any will ever doubt Charlie and his teams in the future!

 

After the Michigan State game, at Irish Musings we said that the comeback, although not a cause for celebration, was a proof that this team had gone through a magic door and had passed into the new Dy-nasty!  That the Irish came back in such fashion from a 21 point deficit on that October Saturday afternoon in Notre Dame Stadium showed themselves and all of their fans that they could do anything on the football field—anything that they might have to do to win.  And they did that “anything” twice in the last two minutes—once against the Trojans and now once against the trees from California.  (By the way, what is that tree all about in the middle of their logo?)

 

After watching them play eleven mostly inspired games and play with inspiration most of the time in most of these games, it is obvious that this team is made of the same DNA that the great Joe Montana teams were made of!  And that is saying a lot.  That is saying a hall of fame lot! 

 

We are blessed with a story that illustrates how Notre Dame always comes back to its roots and how that DNA survives from generation to generation. The story comes to us courtesy of our Vice President of Intellectual Property here at Irish Musings, Rick Duerr.  He has shared a unique story with us.  It starts with his father screaming “The Phantom is back!”  Now I have never heard that expression before, and neither have any of you, but we all know precisely what his dad meant.  (Since I wrote this line, I have seen a reference to the “Phantom” in this context.  I have no idea where I saw it, so if anyone has seen it, please let us know.)

 

By the way, Rick’s dad screamed out these words as the Irish were demonstrating that they were going to beat Michigan State in 1964 for the first time in eight games over an eleven year span.  In that game we all knew that the Phantom had indeed come back!!!  The magical Era of Ara had begun!

 

Just as the doubters and skeptics said that Notre Dame was finished in 1963, that they could not get a good coach, that the tradition was dead, that academics was inconsistent with great football, so also did the same doubters and skeptics return in 2004 to say that it is all over for ND, that it is too cold in South Bend, that Urban Meyer will get all the great players from Florida, that there is no social life at ND for the players, that we cannot recruit the best black athletes, that ND cannot recruit the best players, etc.

 

Charlie has banished all of this nonsense, and done it in a way that surpasses what Ara and Lou did in many ways.  

 

Yet we must ask why it was necessary for such an apparently fine Irish team to let an ordinary Stanford team come so close to beating them.  What happened?  Surely, if these two teams were to play ten games, the Irish would win at least nine and probably ten!

 

In search of an explanation we go back to the Syracuse game in which the Irish also failed to play up to the level that they had showed over the first nine games of the season.  Did Charlie miss something in preparing the team?  Has the opposition found something here at the end of the season that has thrown the Irish off kilter?  Or, is it just a matter of how difficult it is today to keep a team focused and sharp for most of their games? 

 

We don’t know the answer to these questions for certain, but we do believe that Charlie is using the team’s shortcomings in an ongoing mind game to show them that they are not the all-world wonders that they think they have become overnight, and that they have to redouble their efforts or they will lose it all on January 2. 

 

Ohio State is a formidable football machine and if the Irish are not sharp, they will go down in defeat.  Think on this one: who has Notre Dame played this year that has a defense that is even close to as good as the one the Buckeyes will bring to Pasadena?  Tennessee had the best one, but The answer is NO ONE.

 

The best defense the Irish played came from Knoxville, and Michigan sported a fairly good one too.  Surely no one would accuse the Spartans or the Trojans of having a good defense!  Charlie will need all of his considerable offensive genius and then some to out-scheme this Buckeye unit, and the players will have to execute at their maximum level.

 

We know this for sure—do not bet on the game.  Of course we say that all the time.  Betting on football games, especially the way the pros want you to bet, on points, is a fool’s errand.  It should never be practiced except for fun with people you know and hopefully love.

 

If Notre Dame and Southern Cal win their bowl games, then we can say that the national championship game was played in Notre Dame Stadium on October 15 of this year.  Had Notre Dame won, Texas would be playing Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl.  Looked at another way, had Ohio State beaten Texas, and ND beaten USC, then the Buckeyes and the Irish would be in the Rose Bowl playing for the national championship. 

 

If ND beats Ohio State, and Southern Cal beats Texas, will ND be ranked Number Two in the country ahead of once beaten Texas?

 

Fortunately, we do have a secret weapon.  Just as Father Corby blessed the troops before Pickett’s Charge, we can imagine him doing the same in the locker room before the Fiesta Bowl.  And, hopefully with the same result…