ARLINGTON, Texas — There is a sizable portion of you, dear readers, who will read the sentence two paragraphs hence and say: “Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! Of course that is true! That, in fact, is how God Himself intended this all to be back at the beginning!” Scream it from the highest mountaintop.
Ah, but there is also the likelihood — more of a certainhood — that more of you dear readers will read the sentence that is now only one paragraph ahead and that will be the last one you read because you will throw your newspaper across the room or you will angrily flip the page on your app (please don’t throw your iPad across the room) or you will click your mouse with enough anger to light up your entire neighborhood. But here goes anyway:
College football is more interesting — it is, in fact, a lot more interesting — when Notre Dame is good.
(Allowing a few idle moments to pass now as the chips all fall where they may …)
OK. Now where were we?
Oh. Right. Notre Dame. And look: the Golden Domers have given us plenty of material — more than enough material — through the years where it’s understandable if we all have a little Fighting Irish Fatigue. But, you see, there is a reason that you who don’t count yourselves along Notre Dame’s alumni — either the subway variety or the real McCoy — wanted to throw that newspaper across the room.
Because it’s true.
“We have a lot of people who care a great deal about our football program,” coach Brian Kelly said earlier this week in the run-up to the Cotton Bowl, which featured Notre Dame and Clemson on Saturday afternoon at AT&T Stadium. “We are incredibly fortunate for that. If that means the expectations or the burdens are a little high sometimes … well, that’s the price you pay for being part of a tradition so many people care about. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Notre Dame has, for most of the past 30 years anyway, dined out on the reputation it built across the previous 60 or so. Solve the Irish’s last national title following the 1988 season, they have been passed by a good dozen programs on the list of the eldest of the elite. They are not Alabama. They have not been USC, or Texas, or Clemson, or Ohio State.
For various reasons there is annually the illusion they are among that crop — every game is on TV, always, and they remain the only university ever to have an exclusive deal with an over-the-air network, NBC, which for 28 seasons has broadcast every game originating from Notre Dame Stadium. But they have an awful lot of three- and four- and five- and six-win seasons in there, too, which isn’t against the law but is far more than the highest echelon of college football usually allows.
It was only two years ago, in fact, the Irish won just four games. I was at the game in South Bend against Miami, another erstwhile superpower that had fallen on hard times, and it was like a surreal joke. It is impossible not to conjure the old “Catholics vs. Convicts” storyline when those two teams share a field but the level of play was so abysmal — ND won, 30-27, almost in spite of itself — and every conversation on the long walk from the stadium to the parking areas was tinged with the same theme:
(“Do you think we’ll ever be good again? How on earth can we possibly be good again?”)
And now, here they are. Good again. 12-0 good. Maybe their credentials can be questioned because the schedule is never going to match, say, Alabama’s. But 12 times this year the Irish have lined up and 12 times they have won, and in almost every year that’s going to be good enough to land them in the playoff.
And the playoff was better off as a result. You don’t have to like it, don’t have to like it one bit, in fact. But it is certainly true. That is just as undeniable.
“It’s a privilege playing in this game and wearing this uniform,” quarterback Ian Book said this week, and feel free to roll your eyes if you must. Or just embrace the truth. Notre Dame being here makes here the place to be. Even if you just want to see them lose.