“Topping tonight’s headlines, Eminem is going to be the next ‘Mr. Rogers’, Notre Dame scores 57 points in a single game, and Arnold Schwarzenegger makes good on his promise to buy everyone who voted for him a new car. Plus, weather.”
One of these outlandish stories is false, one is true, and one, if found to be correct, would explain a lot. But since you’re visiting a sports website, you probably know which one is certifiable via polygraph.
“Well,” you say,” I thought Em’s bond with the little girl who played his sister in 8 Mile was touching, but I never knew he had it in him to like me just the way I am.”
OK, maybe it really isn’t that obvious. Indeed, the real story is that Notre Dame, they who were on the business end of two shutouts and possessing a 17.4 scoring average, scored 34 points in the first half and beat the leftover stuffing out of Stanford, 57-7, on Saturday.
Christmas came on Thanksgiving weekend for Irish fans who thought a lump of coal might be stretching it this year. No Notre Dame team had scored that many points in a game since a man named Holtz leprechauningly stalked the sidelines. And the points came on 512 yards of offense, 500 yards a barrier that the Sons of South Bend hadn’t cracked in an incredible 50 games.
For the first time in forever, including last season’s magical 10-3 year, the Irish came out from the opening whistle and absolutely blew the doors off of an opponent. For sixty minutes, they looked like an elite team and did what such a team is supposed to do:
Go to a weak opponent’s field, stun ‘em early (Julius Jones had hit 100 yards rushing half way through the first quarter), put the game out of reach by the half, get your marquee back his 200 yards three minutes into the 3rd, and watch the backups get some reps.
Jones, it should be noted, not only passed the 1,000-yard mark for the year but also became the first Notre Dame back to ever record three 200-plus yard games in one season. The 218 he ran for in Palo Alto on Saturday night gives him 1,214 for the season, 224 yards away from breaking ND’s single season mark of 1,437.
But does it mean anything? After all, they did just beat a team whose band has a mascot, and it’s a dancing tree at that. And while the Irish have outscored their last three opponents 117-45 in compiling a three game winning streak, the fact that the first eight teams they met drilled them by a combined count of 232-114 will stand as the measuring stick for the 2003 season.
In reality, the Irish have gotten fat, or as fat as a 5-6 team can be, on the weaker tail end of their schedule. Some NFL schedules might have been weaker than what they faced in those first eight games, but they clearly demonstrated they were not anywhere near the Michigans, USCs, and Florida States of the world.
So with four games against Navy, BYU, Stanford, and Syracuse to go and sporting a 2-6 record, Tyrone Willingham and his guys had a choice. Show up for the final four games or attack them like they had something to prove.
And attack with a burden of proof they have. Not with an eye to the college football world, mind you. These last three wins and a win over a sub-.500 Syracuse team next week isn’t going to wow anyone.
Instead, they’re proving something to themselves, that they can execute an offense, punish with their defense, and find a way to win some football games.
They’re proving to themselves that they can once again be Notre Dame.
This past weekend could not have been set up any better for an Irish loss. A 4-6 team, having found out that there would be no bowl for them even if they won out, traveling to the West Coast on a holiday weekend to tackle a squad they hadn’t beaten away from home since 1993.
I had seen this game before. Two years ago, in my next to last game as an ND student broadcaster and Bob Davie’s next to last as coach, a 4-5 Notre Dame made the same Thanksgiving weekend trip to play in front of an apathetic Cardinal crowd. True, that was a much better Stanford team, led by Willingham, but it was hard to expect anything from the Irish. When they lost 17-13, you weren’t surprised.
Two years before, Notre Dame quarterback Jarious Jackson’s career concluded on the same field. This time, it was a 5-6 Irish team getting edged by a field goal with no time remaining after the defense seemed to concede a Cardinal win before the final drive even started. Once again, that was a solid Willingham team, headed to the Rose Bowl, even though they finished with a pedestrian 8-4 record.
This year, while they faced a much worse Stanford team, what Notre Dame had to play for once again didn’t amount to much at a school where time is marked in national championship intervals.
How did they respond? By playing their best game of the year. Whether the motivation came from helping Jones pursue personal milestones, giving Willingham a win in his return, building for next season, or just old-fashioned pride, it worked to the tune of a fifty point blasting.
So that brings us to this coming weekend. The country will be watching to see if Notre Dame can beat the Orangemen, a tall order since that game will be played in the Carrier Dome, not because the Irish can make 6-6 but to see how the game will affect USC’s strength of schedule.
This season, however, long ago ceased to be about everyone else’s expectations for Notre Dame. For them, a win means they will finish a season having won their final four games for the first time since 1992.
That, along with giving a popular running back a chance to make some more history, seems to be all the motivation the Irish need to set the table for a better year in 2004.
In the meantime, Irish fans can savor a win that might have made them think they were back in the late 80s or early 90s. However, one play from this game remains a bit puzzling.
Leading by fifty late in the fourth, Notre Dame faked a punt. Who made that call, whether coach or player was unclear from the broadcast. It did, however, prompt the ABC analyst, unhappy with the apparent lack of sportsmanship, to declare that Notre Dame better watch out because “What goes around, comes around.”
He must not have been in South Bend this fall. Whatever bad could come has already done come around.
Besides, as a rule of thumb, if you’re going to allow a dancing tree, expect some consequences.
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Ted Fox delivered play-by-play of Irish football and men's basketball for three years as a student. He wrote a weekly sports column for the Notre Dame student newspaper for over three years and has been a contributing writer to "The Wolverine", the official publication of University of Michigan athletics. Ted recently finished working in production at ESPN and is currently pursuing an on-air and writing career. 
