I’m sure just about everyone is familiar with the super confusing first date; it actually may be more common than the "normal" date. What makes the super confusing first date so super confusing is the roller coaster of emotions that occur over the course of an hour and a half. It starts of with excitement and anticipation- you're with a girl you find attractive and interesting enough to at least pay for her dinner. You're not exactly sure about what her redeemable qualities are, but you think they exist. After picking the girl up, you quickly realize you’re in for a painful evening. On the way to the restaurant the conversations go nowhere and the silence is awkward, you're pretty much doing your best Evan O'Dorney impression. The dinner consists of staring off into space and resisting temptations to end it all with the butter knife. After eating both parties lie to each other and themselves claiming they’ve got to get home for some reason. On the drive home you have what I like to call the “drive home click”, it could be a song on the radio or an obscure TV show you both find entertaining. It’s some kind of connection that makes realize this person does have some redeemable qualities. By the time you finally notice this connection its too late, the date is over. You spend the rest of the night super confused wondering if it’s worth your time and effort to keep looking for those redeemable qualities and ask the girl for a second date.
The super confusing first date shares a lot of parallels with my attendance of Notre Dame's season opener against San Diego State. Going into the game I had every reason to be excited. This team had a lot of redeemable qualities to look forward to seeing as a fan. Quarterback Jimmy Clausen had spent a year growing, maturing, and learning “offensive genius” Charlie Weis’ system. If Clausen had developed as much as fans hoped and if the offensive line gave him enough time in the pocket the Irish passing game should look more like the teams of ’05 and ’06 than ’07 debacle. It should be noticed that the line improving was a pretty big “if,” the passing protection last year was horrendous. More often than not the Irish quarterbacks lost yards instead than gaining when they stepped back to pass. I felt like I needed an ice bath after a game from watching Jimmy Clausen get the crap knocked out him.
Going into this year Clausen could hope to have a decent running game to take some of the pressure of him. In the preseason, Weis led fans to believe he was going "pound the ball," with junior James Aldridge and sophomores Robert Hughes and Armando Allen leading the way. In the past Weis had tried to get too fancy and abandon the too run early in the game.
There was reason to hope the defense would be improved as well. Jon Tenuta was hired during the off-season as an assistant and promised to bring the same intensity and blitz schemes he used to make Georgia Tech's defense one of the best in the ACC. Tenuta would work with defensive coordinator Corwin Brown to form the best defensive unit in the Charlie Weis era.
I also figured the Irish special teams would be greatly improved. There was really nothing to back up my assertion about the kicking game; I just had it in my head that after fifteen years of botched snaps and field goal attempts sailing ten yards wide it couldn't get any worse. Seriously, a school with 10,000 students and not one of them can kick a ball 50 yards?
By the time I walked into Notre Dame Stadium at
3:30pm on September 6, I had every reason to believe, or at least willed myself into believing I had every reason to believe, the Irish would cover the 22 point spread with ease. It was identical to the feeling I get when I'm jamming to Mark Morrison while checking myself out in the rear view mirror trying to pump myself up for a date that I deep down in my heart will go about as smooth a Sammy Sosa's English during a congressional hearing.
By 6 pm that afternoon my “date” with the 2008 Notre Dame football season was in full act like "I'm staring at the menu so I don't have to talk with this person sitting across the table from me," mode. The Clausen/Weis offense had scored a whopping one touchdown with two interceptions through three quarters. The three-headed monster at running back of Aldridge, Hughes, and Allen turned out to be just Hughes and Allen as Aldridge rode the bench. Hughes and Allen's two-headed monster looked more like a drunk retarded Siamese twins, each fumbled once and they struggled to crack the 100 yard mark combined.
The high tech blitz schemes of Jon Tenuta picked up all of one sack. In fairness to the defense they didn't have many opportunities to attack the passer, the Aztecs only passed on their first 16 plays and 59 times overall (sarcasm). In two field goal attempts Brandon Walker kicked one that would have been good if the grounds crew was some how able to move the uprights ten yards to the right while the ball was in midair and didn't even get a chance to put a foot on the other because of a bad snap. I'm not going to allow myself to be disappointed at the kicking game though, I am more disappointed in myself for thinking they would be even remotely improved. Its like watching the season premier of Saturday Night Live this week even though it hasn't been funny since Will Ferrell left, sometimes its best just to give it up.
A quick SNL tangent- what the hell is Loren Michaels doing having Michael Phelps host the premiere episode. I realize Phelps is the flavor of the month right now, but is there anyway this is a good idea? Phelps can't even make it through a thirty second post race interview without appearing so out of his comfort zone he could cry. How the hell is he supposed to make an hour and a half live sketch comedy show entertaining?
With just over 10 minutes left in the game SDSU had a 13-7 lead and was inside the Irish five yard line looking for a score that would essentially be the nail in the coffin. The feeling was worse than date super confusing date you go on, except maybe if you took the chick from Teeth home for a night cap. Then, in an act of divine intervention (Notre Dame fans really like to think God is on our side), safeties Kyle McCarthy and David Bruton combined to make a hit on Aztec running back Brandon Sullivan forcing a fumble. When Bruton landed on the ball in the endzone you could feel the shift in moment throughout the stadium; it was the drive home click moment of the game and perhaps (I am being real optimistic here) even the season.
Following the fumble Jimmy Clausen lead the Irish 80 yards down field to take a 14-13 lead on a 38 yard touchdown pass to Golden Tate. The defense stopped the Aztecs and on the ensuing Irish possession a Clausen pass to David Grimes pushed the score to 21-13. The Irish defense forced a turnover on downs when they came back on the field essentially ending the game.
Everything had finally started clicking, what the hell took so long? Where was this the first fifty minutes? I walked out of the game in a heightened state of super confused mode. I could see the over sized question marks hovering over the heads of the other 80,000 people who nearly witnessed the worst loss in Notre Dame history with me. Did we really almost lose to a team that lost to California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo last week? Are those redeeming qualities we saw in the last ten minutes enough for us to get excited about the game for next week?
After having a few days to digest what I saw I've reached a middle ground between the excitement and suicidal depression I went through during the game, and have made a few observations.
First, Jimmy Clausen is slowly developing into a premier quarterback in college football, I should probably apologize now for the euthanize Clausen comments I made during the first half. He went 21-34 for 237 yards with three touchdown passes. More importantly he managed the game well and didn't make many mistakes; his first interception bounced of a receiver’s chest and into defenders hands- it really should have been a completed pass. He has learned to throw the ball away when he gets into trouble instead of forcing a bad pass or running out of bounds and taking a big loss (so frustrating). Sophomore Golden Tate looks like he may develop into Clausen's go to guy for the rest of the season, and freshman Michael Floyd was more than impressive the one time he had the ball thrown to him (22 yard touchdown catch). With all the hype that has surrounded him since he was in high school, and his knack for haircuts that make him look like a total d-bag, it’s easy to get down on Clausen. It's important to remember he is just a true sophomore playing behind an offensive line that's shaky at best, all things considered he is doing quite well.
You can also see there are some bright spots in the running game, but they have to stay committed to it. Robert Hughes looks like he can turn into a workhorse of a back. If he gets the ball 20 times a game he will get you 100 yards more often than not, it’s just a matter of getting him the ball. On a drive early in the 2nd quarter Hughes accounted for 34 yards worth of offense before he fumbled on the three yard line. I don't know if the fumble put Hughes in the dog house or if an ankle injury he suffered later in the quarter was bothering him, but he was virtually invisible after that until the end of the game.
If Armando Allen is able to stay healthy and hang onto the football he has the quickness to develop into a real playmaker (this clip shows the quickness, the possibilities of injury, and the fumble issues all in one), I really like him as a change of pace from a more bruising Hughes. Maybe it’s because Allen wears number 5 or maybe it’s because I'm an overly optimistic Notre Dame fan, but I could see the Allen/Hughes combo developing into a poor man’s Reggie Bush/LenDale White from the '05 USC team.
As for the defense, the front line play needs a lot of work, the linebacking core needs a little, and the secondary (even with Darrin Walls MIA) looks solid. Only recording one sack and not putting on constant pressure on the quarterback against a beaten up SDSU O-line is cause for concern. Brown had this unit improving throughout last year, I've got to think (hope) the adding Tenuta will only help. The thing I saw thatI liked most about the D is that they do play with some attitude, something the Irish haven’t done for years. They also showed they can stop a team (albeit a poor one) when they need to.
To wrap it up, like many I thought Notre Dame would answer questions about the direction of the program in their opener. Now, after the game, I‘m more confused than ever about the direction of Irish football under Charlie Weis. If Notre Dame plays like they did the first fifty minutes they will struggle to win three games this year. If they play the way they did the last ten minutes they can win ten games against their soft schedule. Hopefully after this weekend when
Michigan comes to town we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on in
South Bend.
Now for some random observations I made about a Notre Dame Football weekend:
If you have extra cash in your wallet and want to get rid of it fast go ahead and drive on I-90 from
Chicago to
South Bend. for starters, filling up your tank in Chi-town will run you about $4 a gallon. Once you get on the road be ready to go through three tollbooths on 80 miles of highway. The worst part is each booth charges you a different price ranging from two to five dollars. It’s like the attendant looks into your eyes, knows what kind of cash you’ve got on you, and charges you the exact dollar amount down to the cent to make you break a large bill. By the time you get to Notre Dame you’ll be feeling like Ving Rhames’s character after the basement scene from Pulp Fiction.
The Dorms at Notre Dame/St. Mary’s are a lot different than your normal school. Apparently a Catholic school likes to make there dormitories look more like a church than living corridors for 18-22 year olds. Right when I walked into the lobby of my sisters dorm I had a bust of the Virgin Mary giving me the evil eye (I mean evil in a good way in case she is reading this), and then you got portraits of nuns hanging in every hallway. My buddies Dan, Trevor, and I spent thirty minutes speculating what kind of shenanigans we pulled would have gotten us expelled and possibly excommunicated if we had been living under similar circumstances.
To be a successful sports bar and grill in
South Bend you must do what ever you can to show that you support Notre Dame Football. I think it’s a rule that every restaurant must have a Notre Dame flag hanging, an autographed Tim Brown jersey in a frame, and at least two of three pictures:
- The Golden Dome
- Knute Rockne
- Pat Terrell knocking down Steve Walsh’s 2pt conversion attempt from the ’88
Miami game
Finally, if you lost all of your money on I-90 don’t worry, you can get a free T-shirts on campus. There is kind of a catch to getting the free shirt in that you have to sign up for a credit card, a classic scam to catch naïve youngsters. Trevor, the consummate daredevil, decided to get one anyway. Trev getting a shirt like that wouldn’t be too funny, but the fact that Dan and I made a project about scams like this with Trev playing the lead role made it pretty well hilarious.