The Blue-Gray Sky

Impound It

2009-08-21T13:50:00.009-04:00

For easy reference, all in one place: here's the full index for the Impound It series, a review of the Irish rushing attack from 2005-08.

• the Toss
• the Jab
• the Draw
• the Sprint

• the Ride
• the Look & Swing
• Missing Pieces

Devolution of an Offense

2009-04-02T06:01:00.028-04:00

Eons ago -- well, way back at the end of the 2006 season -- when Charlie Weis had an impressive 19-6 record and two BCS berths already under his belt, we examined how his offense had evolved in that short two-year span, and how it might continue to progress given the new talent recruited on offense.

Fast-forward to the present: the offense seems to have lost its way, and has yet to recover its imaginative spirit from those first two years. In fact, it's gradually devolved into a primitive, generic version of that efficient, high-powered unit that shredded defenses in 2005 and 2006.

Four years and change have passed since Weis was first introduced as the head coach. Supposedly nothing has changed -- philosophically speaking. But the declining performance on the field tells a different story.

(This post might require some background reading. If you're hiding in the back of the class because you need a refresher on Charlie's 'multiple' offensive philosophy, check out our remedial course from May 2005, or peruse this excellent 400-level course offered by the must-read Smartfootball.)

An Offense Badly Out of Balance

A quick glance at the distribution of packages utilized tells the story of the offense's devolution. Packages are listed from heaviest (more tight ends) to lightest (more wide receivers).

The 3-WR set Half has been swallowing up the offense's diversity since the end of the 2005 season. Irish fans have noticed, and you've probably seen complaints (or voiced them yourself) that the creativity and imagination of the offense seems to be missing.

There is certainly some truth in that. When an offense uses one personnel grouping 62% of the time, it's simply less imaginative because so much of it is the same. There really are only a finite number of ways to deploy three wide receivers, a tight end, and a halfback. Furthermore, the offense appears stale because a limited number of plays are run from a core group of formations within that grouping, rather than running a multitude of plays from a few formations.

Let's contrast this situation with 2005. Back then, Half was only used 37% of the time. The Irish threw the ball from Half more often (71% compared to 66% last year), but Weis employed it more as a hurry-up device, both when the Irish were behind or simply to throw the defense a curveball, and in obvious passing situations. It was a situational personnel grouping instead of a staple.

3 receivers, a tight end, and a halfback.
Look familiar?

Last year, however, Half was the base offense. Of course, the reason why it became the base offense was the fact that we had only one viable tight end for much of the year: Mike Ragone went down with a knee injury during fall camp; Will Yeatman was suspended for an alcohol-related offense; Luke Schmidt was sitting out because of multiple concussions; Konrad Reuland had transferred to Stanford; and Paddy Mullen had long ago moved to defensive line to shore up recruiting misses. True freshman Kyle Rudolph was the only tight end in the rotation for much of the year, with fellow freshman Joseph Fauria finally getting in the mix towards the end of the season.

The tight end position is what gives the Weis offense its flexibility and diversity; with only one, Rudolph, the offense was severely limited. This sameness eventually put the Irish in poor situations on the field in 2008, especially against top-five defenses like USC and Boston College, where the Irish failed to even reach the red zone. Opponents could spend the majority of their time game-planning for Half and Regular formations, and the lack of tight ends prevented Weis from being more creative with the offense.

Back in 2005, the Irish possessed three stellar tight ends in Anthony Fasano, John Carlson, and Marcus Freeman. Not surprisingly, the production out of the multiple tight end packages was solid:

Detroit - 5.7 yards per play
New York - 4.2 yards per play
Two Tites - 5.2 yards per play

Two of those three are levels that haven't been matched since; only the Golden Tate 48-yard touchdown and the 29-yard heave to Rudolph in the Hawaii Bowl pushed the average for Two Tites in 2008 to an incredible 8.6 yards per play. However, it's worth noting that the Irish only called 12 plays all year from Two Tites, compared to 88 in 2005.

Earlier this week assistant coach Bernie Parmalee noted that the lack of tight ends was a serious problem in last year's offense:

"[Last year] we couldn't do what we needed to do, we couldn't use certain packages with multiple tight ends because we only had one. The more guys we have at that position, the better we are. We have three guys right behind Rudolph that really can play some ball and allow us to do more things."

With Rudolph, Ragone, Fauria, transfer Bobby Burger, and incoming freshmen Tyler Eifert and Jake Golic, the tight end depth is beginning to look more promising again. Their development, and in particular, Ragone's health, will play a major role in helping the offense diversify its attack, and will force defenses to spend extra time game-planning for the full variety of looks that Charlie's offense can put forth.

Same Old Song and Dance

Once tight ends became scarce, the diversity of personnel groupings within a game all but vanished, as can be seen in the distribution below.

After Yeatman disappeared, the Irish used Half over half the time in every game until USC.

Tied very tightly to the lack of overall diversity in the offense is the homogeneity of personnel within a single offensive series. Although this tedium was rife through the entirety of many games in 2008, we can see it especially in an examination of several opening drives.

If we look at the first drive of games in 2008, after Yeatman's suspension following the Michigan State loss, the Irish used only one personnel grouping against Purdue, UNC, Wash, Navy, and BC: Half. In the Stanford and Pitt games, the Irish subbed a short yardage grouping on a 4th & 1 and 3rd & 1, respectively. Against Syracuse and USC, the Irish used just two personnel groupings on their two opening drives (both went three-and-out).

However, in the Hawaii Bowl, the Irish used four different personnel groupings on their opening drive. That, of course, is Charlie Weis football.

Again, let's look to 2005 for the platonic ideal. Back then, the Irish mixed and matched liberally: Charlie used five personnel groupings on the opening drive against Tennessee; four each against Pitt, Washington, USC, and Navy; three against Michigan State and Purdue; and, only two against Stanford (although Jeff Samardzija's 80-yard touchdown prevented any further plays on that drive). Weis topped all those efforts in the bowl game against Ohio State, as the first 11 plays featured six different personnel groupings. (Recall that the first drive of the Michigan game and the entire BYU game plan revolved around hurry-up offenses that didn't change personnel.)

The Irish badly need to restore such diversity in each offensive series. Defenses must be pressured to adjust constantly throughout a series to the offense's personnel groupings. Defenses should be shuffling personnel on and off the field, and they need to be forced to consider and think, rather than just react (Who's on the field? What are their tendencies? What did I see in film study?). Last year, Weis and the offense allowed defenses to find their groove, and never forced them out of their comfort zone. That can't happen in 2009.

Ir-Regular Production

The decline of overall offensive production can also be clearly linked to a decrease in production from the Regular personnel grouping, which was the second most popular grouping (21.6%) in 2008. Regular places two receivers, a tight end, halfback, and fullback onto the field. Despite its prevalent use, the Irish failed to meet two basic offensive benchmarks: they were short of four yards per carry and failed to achieve seven yards per pass attempt.

Production from "Regular" (2/1/1/1)

"REGULAR"			Rushing			Passing					Sacks		Breakdown
Year	Plays	% Used	R	Yds	Ypr	PC	PA	Yds	%	Ypa	No	Yds	Pass	Run	Per Play
2005	180	20%	82	372	4.5	61	89	941	69%	10.6	9	23	54%	46%	7.4
2006	106	12%	51	187	3.7	23	42	214	55%	5.1	13	-40	52%	48%	3.4
2008	189	22%	121	453	3.7	26	57	290	46%	5.1	11	-61	36%	64%	3.6

Looking back, it's hard to believe that the Irish averaged over ten yards per pass attempt in 2005, but it's no typo. Fourteen times that year the offense completed a pass out of Regular for 20+ yards, and five of those went for 40+ yards. Secondaries were not nearly as kind to the offense in 2008: the Irish completed only four passes all year that went for more than 15 yards, with three of those coming against Hawaii. Likewise, the poor average in 2006 resulted from the same lack of long passes: only one pass play of 20+ yards all year from Regular. It's worth noting, though, that Regular was used less frequently in 2006 once Asaph Schwapp suffered a season-ending knee injury.

A second issue with Regular was its predictability. Even Weis admitted it to an extent:

"Usually when we go into that personnel group [Regular], James and Asaph are in the game, the teams we're going against knows that there's a good chance, higher chance it's going to be run than pass. Of course, you can never just sell out because it could be a play action shot that you're throwing at the same time." (Oct 28, 2008)

For the season, the run-pass ratio out of Regular was a heavily-tilted 64-36, whereas in prior years the Irish showed a slight preference in passing the ball in 2005 (54-46) and 2006 (51-49). Teams loaded up against the run when they saw Schwapp and Aldridge, and the Irish rarely took any play-action shots until the bowl game against Hawaii. In fact, Clausen entered the bowl game having completed just six of 24 play action passes for a modest 53 yards. The 69-yarder to Tate is a great example of the possibilities of passing out of Regular; the Warriors cheated a safety into the box, Clausen faked the hand-off, and the cornerback, with no deep help, was toast. We need more of that in 2009.

The third issue with Regular was the horrifically inept toss play, which constituted 15% of the Regular rushing attack. The toss play sadly averaged 1.6 yards per carry on 18 chances, and on ten of those carries, the play was stopped for no gain or lost yardage. The best two tosses? Aldridge picked up 17 yards against Purdue, and Jonas Gray had a ten-yard run in garbage time against Washington. The other 16 attempts managed a total of one yard.

Without an effective toss play, and for that matter, without a decent outside zone run (5 attempts) from this grouping, the Irish were very limited in how they could attack a defense on the ground. Schwapp's sluggish pro day results provided further evidence of why the Irish had trouble creating gaps on the perimeter of the defense -- their lead blocker couldn't get out there. Whether the potential dual-back Aldridge, Steve Paskorz, or even Burger (his role has yet to be clarified) can do better remains to be seen.

Perhaps the break after the Southern Cal game provided Weis time to work out the kinks in Regular, with play-action passing and big play capability were evident against Hawaii. (The lone toss play run lost seven yards, so there is still work to be done). With that in mind, given the loss of Schwapp, and the move of Aldridge to fullback, which will leave Hughes or Allen as the starter in Regular, there is reason to be hopeful about Regular production heading into 2009. As Charlie noted this spring:

“The good thing is, now James is repping in there and that will eventually allow you to put in formations where you can take somebody like Armando (Allen) and line Armando out of the backfield; now all of a sudden you are running or passing against base defense because you have a base offensive personnel group out there without putting a lesser skilled player in a position to be able to do that. I think there are some serious options that would open up if this continues to move in the direction that it is going.”

Aldridge should have the foot speed to get to the perimeter, which Schwapp didn't; the question is, can he block? Aldridge is also a much more reliable runner between the tackles, and likely more of a threat to catch a pass. Furthermore, as Weis hinted at, Aldridge at fullback would also allow Weis to use Armando Allen as a receiver out of the backfield. With Hughes or Allen as the tailback, and Aldridge at fullback, the Irish should be a more diversified running team from Regular, and defenses will always have to remain vigilant for a screen pass (or even the double screen pass). Weis called a screen pass for Aldridge less than 1% of the time he was in the game as a Regular halfback; for Hughes, it was 5%; and, for Allen, it was 20% of the time.

In sum, Weis cannot afford to allow Regular to be as one-dimensional as it was last year; he should return to making defenses account for every offensive player in the huddle, and force them to defend every inch of the field.

The Decline of Detroit

As mentioned above, the lack of tight ends clearly limited the offense's creativity and production. Nowhere is this more evident than with Detroit, which utilizes two receivers, two tight ends, and a running back. In Detroit, that extra tight end allows an offense more flexibility than having a fullback or a third wide receiver: he can be lined up in the backfield, flexed out wide, on the line of scrimmage, or on the outside shoulder of the other tight end. Additionally, the match-up of a linebacker on a tight end can often favor the tight end, especially if one has recruited tight ends as well as the Irish have in recent years.

Weis mentor Bill Parcells describes the advantages of Detroit best:

"The nickel player nowadays is...playing about half the time, so he's considered a specialist. He's working on being a nickelback. My contention is the match-up that you get with an additional tight end against a normal safety or normal linebacker is really more advantageous than what you get by deploying your third wide receiver in the game and having defenses put their specialty player in."

As we saw with Regular, production from Detroit has gone down since 2005, although for different reasons. While the issue with Regular has been its predictability, lack of big play capability, and inability to force defenses to account for every player, Detroit has suffered from a shortage of healthy tight ends on the roster.

Production from "Detroit" (2/2/1/0)

"DETROIT"			Rushing			Passing					Sacks		Breakdown
Year	Plays	% Used	R	Yards	Ypr	PC	PA	Yds	%	Ypa	No	Yds	Pass	Run	Per Play
2005	179	20%	76	353	4.6	53	92	696	58%	7.6	11	28	58%	42%	6.0
2006	142	17%	57	213	3.7	45	78	478	58%	6.1	7	-31	60%	40%	4.6
2008	54	6%	32	74	2.3	16	22	116	73%	5.3	0	0	41%	59%	3.5

(It's worth mentioning the Detroit's passing numbers took a dip once John Carlson went down with injury in 2006, and when he returned less than 100%. Without Carlson, Brady Quinn completed 3-13 passes out of Detroit for 34 yards. As far as the rushing numbers, the longest run from scrimmage in 2006 was 15 yards; by contrast, Darius Walker had five runs longer than that in 2005, including 37- and 38-yard scampers.)

When we talk about "lack of creativity" in the offense, much of this can be traced back to the disappearance of Detroit over the last two years (as well as other multiple-TE packages). Lack of misdirection plays has been noticeable; but, most, if not all, of the offense's bootlegs (a staple misdirection play) are run with at least two tight ends, something we simply didn't have. Another misdirection is the counter run; these averaged 8.7 yards per carry in 2005 and 5.5 yards per carry in 2006, while all but disappearing in 2008. Another missing piece has been the wham-trap play, which Weis had predominantly used with an extra tight end; again, nearly non-existent in 2008.

The importance of Detroit to Weis is clearly evident in how he tried to bring it back late in the season against USC, albeit with Trevor Robinson as the second tight end, and then against Hawaii with Joseph Fauria. In those games, Weis called a play-action bootleg for the first time since the San Diego State game, a wham-trap play, and play-action off the wham. These were relatively small wrinkles in the offense, but important ones nonetheless.

The decline of Detroit explains the last two-thirds of the season, but it raises a question about the first three games, when Yeatman was still a factor: if the 2-TE packages are the missing link, why wasn't the offense more impressive against SDSU, UM, and MSU?

Let's start with the good news. The passing game from Detroit in the first three games was actually working fine. In the season opener against San Diego State, Clausen was 7-8 passing out of Detroit for 66 yards, including a nifty bootleg play action off the stretch play (an option that disappeared from the playcall sheet after Yeatman's suspension). In the next two games against Michigan and Michigan State, Clausen completed 4-8 passes for 25 yards. While that stat line seems a little meager, the circumstances of the incompletions suggest the passing game wasn't quite that futile and, in fact, just missed out on a few big plays:

Inc 1: Rudolph can't protect Clausen's backside, and the hurried quarterback can't improvise and connect with Kamara;
Inc 2: A defender tips a play action pass at the line of scrimmage, which results in an interception in the endzone;
Inc 3: Play action works against the aggressive Spartan defense, but Clausen slightly overthrows an open Mike Floyd in the post; and,
Inc 4: Clausen throws a nice ball down the seam to Rudolph, but the defender makes a terrific play to force an incompletion.

The bad news: there is no glossing over the fact that the run game was awful out of Detroit, no matter what the Irish tried. Robert Hughes was the primary back in this personnel grouping, and Weis tried to pound it with him in the first three games. Twelve times the Irish trotted Detroit personnel onto the field for a first & ten, and the Irish ran all twelve times, picking up just 36 yards. Worse yet, half of those yards came on one misdirection play. That's 11 carries, 18 yards, for those of you scoring at home.

Which brings us to the last point...

That Offensive Offensive Line

Schematics are important, but they're worthless without fundamentals. In every personnel grouping except for Half, rushing numbers have dropped since 2005. And that makes sense-- Dan Stevenson and Mark Levoir, both now in the NFL, were replaced by Bob Morton (not in the NFL) and Sam Young (a true freshman); in 2007, we replaced nearly everyone else with brand-new starters. The importance of OL starting experience was covered by Pat back in August 2008, and it's definitely worth another look. Assuming that Paul Duncan reclaims the left tackle spot, the Irish would have 97 returning starts at offensive line heading into the 2009 season.

For all of the items discussed above, the impact of the offensive line cannot be underestimated. Unfortunately, line play is also the hardest to measure: we simply do not have the exact knowledge of assignments against different defensive alignments, nor do we know the line calls. Whereas formations, receiver routes, running plays, and personnel groupings are easier to discern, OL play is a lot more difficult to assess. But Frank Verducci's arrival in South Bend is confirmation that Weis saw the need for change.

Although we were initially lukewarm about Verducci's hire, early returns seem positive. From the practice videos on Irish Eyes, Irish Illustrated, and UND.com, Verducci seems like more of a detail-oriented teacher than Latina. He gives constant and constructive feedback to his players rather than just barking at them, he stresses the importance of mental reps. Most importantly, as Sam Young explains:

"He's a technician. For me, that's a good thing, because I think I've been lacking in my technique, and it's something I've needed to work on. It's a different perspective. He brings a lot of things to the table that I haven't heard before, that the guys haven't heard before."

While the prospect of a three-year starter not having his technique down is alarming, in a way it's also potentially reassuring. For one, it finally sheds light on what might have vexed the line the last two years. And if there are techniques that the Irish line were not taught, and Verducci is providing that instruction, perhaps the gap between potential and performance can finally be narrowed.

And that's also the outlook for the entire offense. Although there are nine returning starters on offense, questions abound:

Who will emerge as the second TE? Who can emerge as a third TE?
Can the offense regain its big play capability-- both on the ground and in the air-- from 2005?
Can Aldridge help Regular become a more productive and less predictable personnel grouping?
Can Verducci coach up the offensive line to play more like it did in 2005, and hopefully transcend even that?

Keep an eye on these things during spring football, but realize that answers are temporary for now. It's September that counts.

And in this Corner, Rivals versus Sagarin

2009-03-03T14:57:00.013-05:00

With recruiting at the forefront of college football headlines in recent weeks, I am reminded of a lingering question that I've never been able to answer: "How much difference does talent really make?" Many a struggling coach have taken cover behind the cloak of "deficient talent", and sometimes you'll hear an excuse offered such as, "just wait until [said coach] gets his own players in there." But each year we see a host of less-star-studded teams winning plenty of games, while some more glittery squads under-perform. So, how much difference does "talent" really make?

If your answer to this question (like the answer to life, the universe, and everything) is 42, you wouldn't be far off. Talent makes a +43 (percent) difference, as we'll see below.

Now, before we go any further, I'd like to throw in a couple of hundred caveats. This is not a precise analysis, nor is the data particularly solid (you can read more under Methodology below). But this was an interesting exercise that might, over time, prove to shine some light onto the value of talent, and the ability (or inability) of coaches to maximize its potential. Or, it might just be meaningless drivel that makes for fun posting on a blog. In any case, here goes nothing.

Data Mining. I used two sets of data for this analysis: Jeff Sagarin's Predictor Ratings to judge a team's performance (which seemed a more objective choice than any of the human polls) and the Rivals recruiting score to peg a team's talent rating.

Rivals has data on their web site going back to 2002, which means that we can look at teams' performance over the 2006-2008 time frame (teams in '06 had 5th years that were recruited in '02, seniors that were recruited in '03, juniors in '04, etc.). Rivals assigns a value to each class, which I loaded into a spreadsheet. Then I regressed it against Sagarin's rating for each team. Nothing too crazy there.

The Results. So let's look at what this means. Regression provides output which can easily be used for prediction, and the results fall exactly in line with what I'd expect. In general, the overall data does seem to have some predictive value and a relatively meaningful trend line can be drawn linking the two sets of data.

And here's a table listing the teams in order of performance.

The following teams were the Top 5 over-performing teams of 2006-08. These teams achieved a higher Sagarin rating than their talent would predict by the widest margin.

Top 5: Overachievers 2006-2008
Rank	Team	Performance relative to Talent
1	Boise State	+29%
2	BYU	+26%
3	TCU	+26%
4	Utah	+22%
5	West Virginia	+20%

No surprises here, this is essentially a list of the "BCS Busters" from the WAC and MWC over the past few years. Also at the top of the list were other teams that have come on strong from out of the blue over the past few seasons: Wake Forest, Rutgers, South Florida, Missouri, and Texas Tech were all in the Top 15. As we would also expect, no powerhouse programs made the top quartile of teams. Having class after class of highly rated recruits makes it difficult to over-achieve. Among the traditionally strong teams, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Florida led the pack, ranked 34th to 37th overall (with Ball State sandwiched in the middle). These teams all overachieved by 5 to 6%, which is probably an admirable feat given the level of talent at those schools to begin with. Other notable powerhouse programs were Texas (ranked 44th, +2%), Southern Cal (47th, +2%), and LSU (52nd, 0%).

Of course, every list that has a top also has a bottom, which is not good news for ND fans. The bottom five (Eastern Michigan, Tulane, Utah State, Idaho, and North Texas) were all from weaker conferences, which I suspect is the result of a floor in the recruiting rankings, sort of like getting points for signing your name on the SATs (Methodology (1), below, has more on this). The bottom five are all teams that struggle in recruiting, so the points they got for "signing their name" are actually probably inflated, making their recruiting classes rate better than they should and thus giving the appearance on under-performing.

Most teams from BCS conferences do not end up at the bottom of the recruiting rankings, but when filtering for only BCS schools, we finally see the Irish.

Under-performing BCS teams, 2006-2008
Rank	Team	Performance relative to Talent
84	Tennessee	-7%
85	Washington	-7%
86	Iowa State	-7%
87	North Carolina	-7%
91	Michigan	-9%
92	Texas A&M	-9%
96	Syracuse	-10%
97	Florida State	-11%
101	Notre Dame	-12%
107	Miami Florida	-15%

Among major schools, only Miami underperformed its talent level by a bigger margin than the Irish. And the other schools on the list are not the company you want to keep: teams like Syracuse and Tennessee that have recently fired coaches for under performing, Florida State, where Bowden is biding his time while the program spirals down, and Washington -- well, no comment.

In fairness to the Irish, they have the heaviest underclassmen weighting on their talent of all of those teams. Furthermore, the data seems to over-weight underclassmen, so perhaps the news is not as bleak as it seems. Next season, we replace a 5th year class with 820 points with an incoming freshman class assigned 1564 points, so at least the trend is moving up.

Rivals Points Assigned by Recruiting Class, bottom BCS teams
School	5th Years	Seniors	Juniors	Sophs	Frosh	Pct Underclassmen
Tennessee	1748	2403	1245	2726	1027	41%
Washington	1011	216	891	982	1255	51%
Iowa State	626	277	285	343	281	34%
North Carolina	749	594	1148	1510	1120	51%
Michigan	2116	1995	1974	1750	2220	39%
Texas A&M	1501	1839	1165	795	1482	34%
Syracuse	361	290	451	679	621	54%
Florida State	2377	2582	2703	1394	2251	32%
Notre Dame	820	661	2189	1932	2744	56%
Miami-Florida	2329	1976	1785	1452	2467	39%

But the news isn't all bad for the Irish. Using the talent data to predict a Sagarin top 25 for next season puts the Irish in line for a very solid season, albeit not quite yet in the top 10.

Predicted 2009 Sagarin Ratings based on Talent Scores

Rank	Team	2009 Sagarin (Predicted)
1	Southern Cal	93.3
2	Florida	91.4
3	Alabama	90.6
4	LSU	90.1
5	Texas	88.5
6	Florida State	88.2
7	Ohio State	88.1
8	Georgia	87.8
9	Oklahoma	87.4
10	Michigan	87.0
11	Miami-Florida	86.1
12	Notre Dame	85.4
13	Tennessee	83.8

Rank	Team	2009 Sagarin (Predicted)
14	Auburn	82.7
15	South Carolina	82.7
16	Clemson	81.2
17	UCLA	80.5
18	Nebraska	80.1
19	North Carolina	79.5
20	Mississippi	78.5
21	Texas A&M	78.4
22	Virginia Tech	78.4
23	Arkansas	77.7
24	California	77.6
25	Penn State	77.5

The 2009 Irish will finally have talent in the Senior class on par with its Freshman; now it is up to the coaches and players to pull that talent up a notch and over-perform. If ND over-performs at the level of Ohio State, Oklahoma, or Florida, they could achieve a 90.6 Sagarin rating, good for fourth in the country. But if ND under-performs in 2009 by its average over the last 3 years, we could be looking at a Sagarin 75 and a 32nd nationwide ranking.

Fools Gold or Nuggets? A couple of other interesting things popped out from this analysis.

First of all, the number of five-star players recruited had no value whatsoever in predicting the strength of a team (if anything, it was slightly negative). What did show some correlation (a 43% R-squared), was the value that Rivals assigned to the total class.

Secondly (and oddly enough) the younger classes seemed to weigh heavier as a predictor of a team's success than the older ones (see Methodology for why I think this might be the case). The mix between classes was as follows:

Predictive Impact by Class
5th-year	Seniors	Juniors	Sophs	Frosh
12%	11%	21%	25%	28%

I'm certainly not surprised that the 5th year class shows a lower predictive value; there aren't necessarily a lot of players there, as most of the talented players forgo their final year of eligibility to pursue an NFL career. But the high number for freshman and sophomores did surprise and concern me. I would expect the Senior and Junior talent to contribute most to a team's performance rating, but it doesn't show up in the data. This could be a chicken-egg situation, as past performance may have led to both current performance and the ability to attract highly rated recruits (see Methodology (2)), meaning the causality is reversed: freshman come to the program because it is going to be good, rather than making significant contributions to the teams success. It could also be an oddity of the relatively limited time frame involved (2006-2008).

Methodology Notes. Let me admit outright that this analysis is fraught with potential potholes. Well, maybe it's not that bad, but it's not anything I'd want to stake the mortgage on, even these days. I did do a couple of things to make the data more accurate. I threw out Western Kentucky and the two Florida Airports (Florida International and Florida Atlantic). All three schools have only been in 1-A (I still can't say "the Bowl Subdivision") for only a couple of years and therefore I didn't have a complete data set for them. I also removed the three service academies, since I believe their recruiting process is significantly different than the rest of college football (if someone out there knows otherwise, please let me know).

But even with my attempts to clean up the data, it is still very squirrely. While Rivals does an excellent job of ranking recruits and recruiting classes, assigning a quantifiable number to them has to be a somewhat arbitrary process. Claiming one class is 10% better or worse than another is probably not the way they intended people to use their numbers, but it is the best I have available to me. I feel much more confident in Sagarin's computers, since the inputs are all hard facts (scores), but even those rankings only predict the right outcome about 70% or the time or so. And, many people may argue with some of the results, such as West Virginia's #1 ranking in 2007, for example.

Also note that this analysis doesn't take into account injuries, transfers, early NFL entries, or how many 5th years actually stick around. Nor is there any differentiation between positions, and I suspect that an otherwise average team with a standout QB is much better than one with a stellar DB. Additionally, depth at a position is not factored in the data, but I suspect there is still value in this. A team with four highly rated QBs will be better than a team with only one, but probably not to the degree that the numbers would indicate. If anyone has the time to pull all of this data together, I'd be glad to help with the analysis. We should be done by 2012 at the latest.

(1) Concerning the graph and the most under-performing schools, my suspicion is that Rivals focuses much more on the high profile players and as a result, the ratings are much more meaningful at the top end of the spectrum than the bottom. Recruits that end up at smaller programs show less differentiation in their numbers, and as a result, the lowest number that Rivals will assign any given recruiting class is around 60. That is why the scatterplot is skewed with a horizontal cluster around 65 and why the most under-performing programs were all programs that traditionally struggle with recruiting. It is no surprise that all of the bottom five programs had 2-4 of their recruiting classes receive "baseline" ratings. I suspect if there were more differentiation among the lower-starred recruits, we'd see better correlation in the data and a steeper line.

(2) The fact that the data seems to put more weight on the underclassmen may be a chicken-egg situation. In looking at the data, an excellent predictor of a team's performance in any given season is their performance last season. I suspect that this weighting towards underclassmen is to some degree validating the statement that "strong teams tend to remain strong teams, and that attracts high-profile athletes." So, instead of a highly-rated freshman class having significant impact on a team's performance, it is more likely that last year's strong performance led to this seasons' top recruiting class as well as contributing to this season's strong performance on the field.

Cue Lou

2007-11-09T09:10:00.000-05:00

Right about now, nobody could use a pep talk more than Charlie Weis.

"Charlie, nothing's ever as good as it seems. And nothing's ever as bad as it seems. Somewhere in the middle is where reality falls.

Now it's been a bad year. We just lost to the University of the Navy and it broke one of the biggest streaks in college football history. But we can't worry about Navy, that's in the past. It's not like they can break the streak again.

Charlie you've made some mistakes. With these young guys on the team you needed to teach them to block and tackle and that's all about practice and repetition. A fisherman without tackle dudn't catch any fish, but a linebacker who can't tackle loses football games. You've made some mistakes. But everybody makes mistakes. When Notre Dame burnt to the ground, Father Sorin said his biggest mistake was that he didn't built it big enough. And when this team has been broken down and defeated, you're going to work harder to build the team back bigger and better than ever before, because that's the only way you can achieve greatness.

Never forget you've got a family. I'm not talking about your wife and kids, I'm talking about the Notre Dame family. One of the special things about the University of Notre Dame is that they will pick you up when you've stumbled. Now when you gather 'round the Thanksgiving dinner table, do you kick out the uncle who backed over the family dog? No, you don't. He made a mistake. And poor Rover paid the price. But you stand by your family, even when they make mistakes. Our fans may be disgruntled. Hell, I'm disgruntled, Charlie. But it's because I and everybody else under the Dome want to win just as badly as you. The good thing is football fans have a shorter memory than a goldfish. People may not remember your two BCS trips as well as they should, but the beauty of it is they'll forget these losses as soon as a couple wins start popping up.

The first step in winning the football game tomorrow is believing you can win the football game. Charlie, when the big ball in New York dropped at midnight last January your coaching abilities didn't go out the window. You've had a lifetime of success and that doesn't disappear overnight. Look around you, you're surrounded by a staff that didn't come here to lose, and players that didn't come here to lose. And we know you didn't come here to lose. So look on the bright side. You're all on the same page! That's a foundation for success. You believe you can win, your coaches believe you can win, your players believe you can win. And even when the players are doubting themselves you can inspire them to win. When you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. But when you squeeze a Notre Dame player, you get a winner, because that's what's inside us all.

Now tomorrow, we've got a challenge. The Air Force Academy is a tough and disciplined group. They execute well and they've got more heart than just about any team I've ever seen. We're gonna get their best. But you can rest easy knowing they don't get to use their jets or sidewinder missiles on the field of play. Tomorrow, they're just another group of guys in pads. And I guarantee you this: they don't have a monopoly on heart. Because if I can bank on anything this year it's that this Notre Dame team does not quit. We have players who believe. They believe in the University of Notre Dame, and they believe in their coaches. They want to win, every second of every game.

When Rockne gave his famous talk he said let's get out there and win one for the Gipper. Well, we're at 1-8 right now, so we got our One. But nobody ever said we had to win just One for the Gipper. We can win a couple more and here's how it's gonna happen.

Tomorrow I want you to find a play that's successful. And then I want you to find another one. You string a couple of those plays together and you get a first down. A couple of those and you've got a touchdown. A couple of those and you've got a win. And a couple of those . . . well that's how you get a championship. But don't forget, it all started with that one successful play.

And always remember this: You're only one win away from starting an undefeated streak. Now get out there and beat Air Force."

Four Horses Running Downhill

2007-08-22T15:55:00.000-04:00

After landing Julius Jones as a recruit in February '99, it seemed like Notre Dame would never sign another phenom at tailback. Lorenzo Booker. Maurice Clarett. Kelly Baraka. Lydell Ross. Thomas Clayton. Alvin Pearman. Cadillac Williams. Reggie Bush. Each one of these running backs considered joining the Fighting Irish, and each one of them ended up somewhere else. Heartbreak after heartbreak followed, until Darius Walker entered the picture, with his dazzling highlight reels and an impressive offer sheet listing some 60+ schools. Although both Rivals and Scout had ranked Walker as a 3-star (mainly because of inferior competition in high school and questionable top-end speed) Irish fans embraced Walker from day one and looked to him to rejuvenate the Irish rushing attack.

Recruiting services lust after size and speed -- sometimes to the exclusion of other football skills. While some of those aforementioned backs excelled, others struggled, and a few even disappeared. What Walker may have lacked in foot speed and frame, he made up for with exceptional vision and reliability. Get him the ball in space, and he'd stop and go, cut and spin, and twist and turn his way upfield. His understated, calculating style was never more apparent than in his debut against Michigan in 2004. Toting the ball 31 times for 115 yards and running a toss sweep seemingly two out of every three plays, Walker was still an unknown quantity at the dawn of his career. Admitted Michigan cornerback Marlin Jackson in the post-game wrap-up: "I didn't even know who that was running the ball."

Three years later, Irish opponents may find themselves echoing Jackson's words, albeit for an entirely different reason. Throughout Walker's tenure, experts regarded the Irish running game as a primarily finesse attack, predicated on draws, misdirection, and outside runs. But Walker has moved on, and Notre Dame enters the 2007 season carrying five multi-talented tailbacks: Travis Thomas, Junior Jabbie, James Aldridge, Armando Allen, and Robert Hughes. This diversity of sizes, skills, and styles should improve the Irish ground attack in '07, making it more unpredictable and more effective.

The Runs. Here's a list of the types of runs that the Irish employ. Click on the link (where available) for a short video clip of the Irish running this play in practice.

Jab - a counter play involving misdirection.
Draw - sets up like a pass, ends in a handoff.
Toss - underhanded pitch to the halfback. A terrific explanation on how the NFL uses 2-TE sets for a lot of their toss plays can be found here.
Outside Zone - the QB pivots at a 45 degree angle and hands off to the RB as deep as possible, with outside zone blocking. (If you need a refresher course, here's a solid explanation of inside/outside zone from a special guest lecturer.) The "stretch" play, a staple of the Indianapolis Colts, is one type of an outside zone run.
Inside Run - inside run with zone blocking or an isolation play with a lead blocker.
Wham - a type of inside zone run where an offensive lineman allows one defender to penetrate so that he can get to a linebacker, and a FB or TE, usually in motion, punishes the free defensive lineman.
Fullback Run - handoff to the fullback.
QB Sneak
Other - everything else, including reverses, triple option, swing passes behind the line, direct snaps to the halfback, fumbled hand-offs, etc.

We can also classify these plays as either "Power" or "Finesse" runs. Generally speaking, Power involves running directly at the defense, while Finesse involves some kind of misdirection, fake, hesitation, or emphasis on speed. Inside Runs, Whams, Tosses, FB Runs, and QB Sneaks would qualify as "Power" runs. Jabs and Draws would be "Finesse" runs. Outside Zone falls into a gray area, and its Power potential is somewhat dependent on the blockers involved and the style of the running back. Walker was very patient in waiting for a hole or a cutback lane -- some might say too patient. But a different running back might burst through the first hint of daylight, with no interest in waiting around for a cutback lane.

Here's what the Irish ran in 2005 and 2006, with color coding for Power and Finesse. The "delta" table looks at the changes from '05 to '06.

From the tables above, it's quite clear that what little power running game the Irish possessed in '05 dried up last year. Finesse runs like jabs and draws, as well as outside zone plays designed to stretch the defense dominated the playcalling, while power plays like inside runs, whams, and FB dives ended up in the orphanage.

Sneaky. The absence of a smashmouth mentality is also evident in the increase of QB sneaks. If the Irish faced a difficult short yardage situation, Weis lacked faith that his '06 offensive line could overpower an opponent. Instead of a HB or FB power run, he often opted for a sneak. And in the rare case where a sneak wasn't called, Weis would get creative. Two of the more memorable fourth down, short yardage plays last year were the play action pass to John Carlson against Michigan State, and a fake swing pass/draw with Walker against Penn State.

That same draw resulted in a Walker fumble on first and goal from the 3-yard line against USC. A fumble can occur on any play; the point here, again, is not having a reliable power run to go to when you need it most. Another example: on third and one in the same game, rather than attack the middle of the SC defense like he did in the '05 game, Weis called for an option. When Quinn pitched too early, Walker was bottled up for a two yard loss.

Close to the Vest. Having the capability to run with both power and finesse also allows an offense to become less predictable in playcalling tendencies. Take this example from the '06 game against North Carolina. It's first down and ten from the Tarheels' 12-yard line. Notre Dame lines up in the formation seen in the first panel to the right. If the defense recalls the scouting report, they'll know that the Irish have a 55%-45% run-pass ratio in this commonly used formation. Furthermore, they'll know that the Irish predominantly (about 70% of the time) utilized toss plays.

Sure enough, the Irish ran the toss, and unfortunately, the Tarheels had done their homework. They're aligned in a 4-3 under front, where four of the seven defenders are on the strongside of the offense's formation. And although Ryan Harris rode the linebacker out of the play, the defensive end beat Carlson to stop Walker in the backfield. UNC was well-prepared for the toss, and stuffed the Irish for a two-yard loss.

This example perfectly illustrates how an inability to run inside limited Charlie's playcalling options. The line couldn't open holes inside, so the Irish went to their bread and butter play from an I-formation, and the Tarheels were ready for it.

To get away from this kind of predictability, having a new stable of backs with a variety of skills isn't enough: the offense still needs the "big uglies" up front to bust open the holes. Simply alternating Walker last year with a power back probably wouldn't have yielded a better running game. Last year, the interior line play left a lot to be desired and played a major role in not only the decreased production, but also the tendency to call more outside and finesse-style runs.

It Was What It Was. Could we have done anything differently in '06? Probably not. We were mostly stuck with the starters we had at running back and offensive line, with very few battle-ready players behind them. What were the other options? Play some of the younger OL along the interior? Keep your starting Will LB at tailback? Spread the ball between your other two backs? Of those two, one was coming off a serious knee injury, and the other has since moved to cornerback (that's a good clue that he probably wasn't as suited to RB in the first place). The Irish did what they could with the running game in '06, and unfortunately, it was lacking.

Get the Motor Runnin'. Through player turnover, a heavy dose of strength and conditioning, and continued coaching and development, last year's limitations have given way to hopeful expectations for '07. The offensive line is already much bigger than last year's, not only according to roster weight comparisons, but also according to Maura Weis, who sized them up after a recent cook-out. Bigger bodies means a bigger push for the front five, which means opening bigger holes for backs to run through. Furthermore, having five running backs you can trust means you can spread the carries around and keep everyone fresh. And let's not forget the potential of a guy like Demetrius Jones, who would bring a running dimension to the quarterback position not seen since Tony Rice.

Net result? Charlie should feel more comfortable calling those power running plays he shied away from in '06. The offense should become more unpredictable, and as the rushing offense diversifies and improves, play action fakes will start to genuinely draw in the safeties and freeze linebackers. A stronger running game will mean a more open field for the passing game.

On a final note, it's worth mentioning that the most heavily used run in the Irish playbook the last two years -- the draw -- was a no-show during the recent open practice. Was this a smokescreen, or a confirmation that Notre Dame's offense won't be centered around this finesse running play?

Perhaps that question was already answered by running backs coach Mike Haywood at last April's coaching clinic. According to a coach who attended Haywood's session, the Irish running back coach kicked things off by saying the finesse identity of the Irish was a thing of the past. His eyes lit up as he described the new focus: "Last year, we were a draw and screen team. No more. This year, you're gonna see four horses running downhill."

Evolution of an Offense

2007-08-14T13:04:00.000-04:00

On Media Day, Notre Dame beat reporters wasted little time in asking Charlie Weis how he planned to replace some essential starters he was losing from the year before. What would he do without Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija, Rhema McKnight, Darius Walker, or Marcus Freeman?

Wait a second. Marcus Freeman was a starter?

While Freeman's inclusion in that list may surprise some readers, the backup tight end from St. Paul, Minnesota was technically a starter in three separate personnel groupings, or packages, in the offense. Yep, that second TE slot, while not as glamorous as a starting running back or receiver, is still an essential component of several key packages, and it will have to be filled.

During fall camp, as "starters" are announced and "back-up" players are given roles in each grouping, the offense will begin to discover its identity. Earlier this year, Charlie talked about the process of putting things together:

It all depends how the thing evolves - it really does. It depends how this evolves. You don't know what your run/pass ratio is going to be; therefore, you don't know what your lead personnel grouping is going to be.

I think a lot of times you have to figure out what your personnel groups and what your personnel can do, and then it might get heavy one way or another ... things that, right now, the jury is still out.

And it's not just as simple as picking a #1 running back, or the #1-#3 receivers. Packages, above all, are situational; Armando Allen might be your starting running back for a 4-Wides deployment, while Robert Hughes might find himself starting in the Goal Line package. Just this afternoon, coach Rob Ianello was asked about setting a "rotation" for receivers, and in his answer he rejected the premise. Instead of a simple pecking order, Ianello said, "I believe you find-- you know, Coach believes you find roles for guys in personnel groupings."

While the players practice, and the staff deliberates, and Charlie starts forming up his offense over the next couple of weeks, there's no better time to take a look at the different packages the Irish have used over the past two years. For each package we'll show you a common formation, break down some of the stats, and talk about its effectiveness. We'll also opine on how that package might be used in the '07 campaign.

To compile this post, we went back and charted each game of the '05 and '06 seasons, identifying the packages and recording the outcomes of each play. The terminology used in this post is taken from a publicly-available 2005 Notre Dame spring playbook, which Charlie had adapted from the 2004 Patriots. Actual terminology in use by the Irish may have shifted since then.

Let's start by looking at the most commonly-used package by the Irish, Half.

HALF
WR	TE	HB	FB
3	1	1	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	37%	56%
% run	30%	31%
ypc	5.07	5.95
% pass	70%	69%
comp %	68%	63%
ypa	7.93	7.61

This picture above probably looks familiar, as Half was by far the most popular package used by the Irish last year. Half usually utilized this zero-out formation, although it did appear in other incarnations, such as this bunch set. One look at the data suggests that the Irish were an offensive powerhouse out of Half, one that actually improved from '05 to '06. After all, they averaged a Holtzian 6 yards per carry. But the raw numbers don't tell the whole story.

The Irish used this package more than half the time, whereas it was used only slightly more than a third of the time in '05. Why was it used so often? For starters, Notre Dame was forced to play catch-up against Michigan, Michigan State, LSU, and UCLA, and getting three receivers on the field was crucial. In another game, against Army, Notre Dame ran all 62 plays -- the entire game -- from Half. That was the first time in two years they've used just one package for an entire game. In fact, they kept the gameplan so simple that they essentially used just 8 formations, and nothing terribly exotic.

The finesse running game thrived when the defense was spread out; even the inside zone play, which averaged 3.26 yards all season, improved to 4.5 yards per rush out of Half. That was actually the worst average for any of Notre Dame's running plays from Half, and two other runs, Outside Zone and Jab Sub (a counter), averaged nearly 7 yards per carry. Even if you take out Stanford, Purdue, MSU, and the academies, the running game was still respectable out of Half, as the Irish averaged 5.1 yards per carry.

The passing offenses from '05 and '06 were strikingly similar. The third receiver (Shelton in '05, Grimes in '06) caught about 70-75% of his passes; the tight end (Carlson, Fasano) caught about 80-85% of his passes; the Z receiver (Samardzija) caught 63% of his passes; and the halfback (Walker) caught 75% of his passes. The only difference was at the X receiver position. In '05, Stovall caught 63% of his passes, while McKnight caught just 53% of his passes. Likewise, the yards per pass play were all within a yard of each other except at tight end, where Carlson's big play potential was evident, and at the X receiver position. In '05, Stovall averaged more than 12 yards per pass attempt; McKnight, on the other hand, averaged 7.5 yards per pass attempt. The disparity at the X receiver position shows up in the overall decline of yards per pass attempt and completion percentage for Half. McKnight was simply not as strong a fit for the X receiver as Stovall was.

"Half" in '07: If Half is used more than 30% of the time in 2007, chances are that Notre Dame will have been playing catch-up in a lot of games, and that will bode ill for the season. If things go well, the percentage will likely hover between 20-25% of the time, based on the expectation of a more conservative power rushing attack. The Irish will still need Half as a situational grouping, but it shouldn't be the lead grouping as it's been the last two years. As for personnel, Grimes may have the #1 spot locked up, but where will he play? He played the F receiver last year, and in the open practice video he lined up as the Z. That should be a safe bet. Which two receivers will win the other two spots?

DETROIT
WR	TE	HB	FB
2	2	1	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	20.1%	16.7%
% run	43%	39%
ypc	4.60	3.71
% pass	57%	61%
comp %	57%	58%
ypa	6.97	6.05

Expectations for the duo of Freeman and Carlson soared after last year's Blue-Gold game, but that production never materialized on the field. In Detroit, the Irish averaged nearly a yard less per carry and per pass attempt than in '05. Even when Weis attempted a little artistry with Detroit, like splitting the tight ends wide, the results were similar. The casual observer might initially guess that losing Anthony Fasano caused this under-performance, but that was hardly the case. Looking at the stats, Carlson's numbers are comparable to Fasano's, and Freeman's to Carlson's (from '05). Instead, it was the WR production that dramatically declined. First of all, Brady Quinn completed less than 50% of his passes to McKnight (45%) and Samardzija (47%). Contrast that with the '05 output, where Maurice Stovall (63%) and Samardzija (56%) caught a much higher percentage of passes. Stovall averaged a whopping 10.92 yards per pass attempt, whereas McKnight managed just 5.68 yards per attempt last year. Meanwhile, Samardzija's production out of Detroit declined from 8.26 to 4.95 yards per attempt.

Two primary factors explain the drop: the inefficiency of the play action passing game and the loss of Stovall's big play capability. Because the Irish couldn't run the ball as effectively as they ran it in '05, play action passes were not nearly as feared nor respected. Most quarterbacks might be content with Quinn's '06 numbers (13 of 24 for 194 yards, 54% completed, 8.08 yards per pass attempt) but they paled in comparison to his '05 performance (24 of 31 for 284 yards, 77% completed, 9.16 yards per pass attempt). Normally, a quarterback's completion percetnage for play action should be higher than his overall rate, but that was not the case for Quinn last year. Finally, this grouping lacked the ability to make a big play without the benefit of a play action fake: while Stovall had five plays of 20+ yards, McKnight had zero.

"Detroit" in '07: With the talent the Irish have stockpiled at offensive line during recent recruiting classes, expect a stronger rushing attack. Higher per play averages should result across the board, regardless of who wins the starting job opposite Carlson. Play action passes should be as effective a strategy as they were in '05, which should make quarterbacking an easier task for whoever wins the starting spot. Detroit should be a featured package this year.

REGULAR
WR	TE	HB	FB
2	1	1	1

Stats	'05	'06
% used	20%	12%
% run	46%	48%
ypc	4.54	3.72
% pass	54%	52%
comp %	68%	55%
ypa	10.54	5.10

Asaph Schwapp's season-ending injury in the Penn State game likely played a large role in the diminished usage of Regular last year. In fact, it was used 21 times against Georgia Tech, which was about 28% of all offensive plays in that game. However, Weis clearly didn't have the same confidence in backup Ashley McConnell, and Regular pretty much disappeared. By the end of the year, that one game against the Yellowjackets still accounted for one-fifth of all Regular usage.

Several stats should immediately jump out in the decline from '05 to '06: -0.82 yards per carry, -13% decline in completion percentage, and a precipitous -50% drop-off in yards per pass attempt. Further, Regular yielded the worst yards per play average among last year's most commonly-used groupings. With a fullback on the field, the Irish averaged a paltry 3.4 yards per play, as compared to 5.7 yards per play for the entire season.

The biggest issue the Irish had last year in Regular was pass protection. Nearly a quarter of the time Quinn dropped back to pass, he was either sacked or forced to scramble (as compared to just 11% of the time in '05). Then there was the screen game, or more to the point, the complete absence of the screen game. In 2005, the Irish threw seven screen passes out of Regular, completing six for 89 yards. And it was a diverse screen attack, as Rashon Powers-Neal, Fasano, and Walker all caught screens. Consider, too, that more would have been thrown in Powers-Neal's direction had he not been suspended for the season. Last year? No screens were completed using Regular personnel. Worse, both attempted screen plays resulted in a total of -27 yards, as the defense sacked Quinn both times.

Meanwhile, the rushing offense struggled mightily. The best run out of Regular was arguably the draw play, a finesse run that averaged 4.14 yards per attempt. By contrast, the same play averaged 4.4 yards per carry the year before, but was only the fifth best run play, as even FB handoffs (8 attempts, 5.13 yards per carry) gained more yardage. To further illustrate last year's impotence, the Irish didn't even attempt to run an outside zone play with Regular personnel, and they ran only 4 inside zone plays, all against weak fronts (Stanford, Navy, and North Carolina). By contrast, the Irish ran 3 inside zone plays alone against Tennessee's vaunted front in '05.

One last tidbit...although Fasano caught 7 balls for 107 yards in '05, only one pass was even attempted to Carlson last year out of Regular.

"Regular" in '07: Schwapp is back, although he must now contend with Luke Schmidt, who has had a year to soak up the playbook. Schwapp will likely never be the threat that Powers-Neal was in the four games he played in this offense, but his healthy return is still welcome news. Although #44 has struggled at times as a lead blocker, he had great success laying "wham" blocks on Tennessee's defensive line. (The wham block is when an offensive lineman allows one defender to penetrate so that he can get to a linebacker. It's a trade-off; instead of lineman blocking lineman and fullback blocking linebacker, the roles are reversed.) Running wham inside zone plays is what Schwapp does best, and with a bigger, stronger, interior offensive line, more yardage should be achieved on the ground. Pass protection in Regular must improve, but when there's a threat of a FB releasing to the flat, catching a flare, and picking up big yardage because linebackers are blitzing, defensive coordinators are more hesitant to dial up the blitz. That's why the Schwapp-Schmidt battle should be interesting to watch and why it's difficult to predict how often we'll use this package. It might seem easy to stuff blitzes with seven players in protection, but considering Weis's complicated protection schemes, if two's company and three's a crowd, sometimes seven's chaos. At least it was at times last year.

TWO TITES
WR	TE	HB	FB
1	2	1	1

Stats	'05	'06
% used	9.9%	4.6%
% run	70%	67%
ypc	3.35	1.92
% pass	30%	33%
comp %	59%	67%
ypa	11.32	9.50

Although most of the time it's used for running, Two Tites also launched a bunch of big-play passes. A play-action fake freezes the linebackers and causes the safeties to creep up, and during '05 and '06, Samardzija usually found himself open downfield. There were five pass plays of 20+ yards in just 21 attempts in '05, and last year there were 3 big plays out of 12 pass attempts. Even without much of a running game, the Irish hit a big play every 4 passes. Last year teams blanketed Samardzija more, which resulted in Carlson catching two balls for 27 and 25 yards against Michigan State and Purdue, respectively. If the Irish could develop a reliable running game, that big play rate could actually improve. Last year's rushing effort out of Two Tites was an embarrassing 1.92 yards per carry, and that number actually dropped to 0.94 (17 carries, 16 yards) yards per carry against BCS conference bowl teams.

"Two Tites" in '07: The sky is the limit for this package if a legitimate rushing offense emerges. A stronger, bigger offensive line, power backs, a healthy fullback, and depth at tight end should improve the ground game out of Two Tites, and open up the field for play-action. Whoever replaces Samardzija in Two Tites will require big play capability, because the ball is definitely coming his way.

3 WIDES
WR	TE	HB	FB
3	-	1	1

Stats	'05	'06
% used	0.1%	2.8%
% run	100%	63%
ypc	5.00	6.27
% pass	0%	38%
comp %	-	43%
ypa	-	4.43

Although at first blush it looks like a passing package with the three receivers out there, the Irish ran the ball out of 3 Wides almost two-thirds of the time. The rushing stats look impressive, but most of that yardage came against Stanford's porous front seven. Notre Dame ran 10 times for 69 yards against the Cardinal and 4 times for 15 yards against Purdue, UCLA, and USC. The passing game was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Quinn completed 2 of 3 passes against Purdue and Stanford for 26 yards. On the other hand, he was sacked twice (once by Navy) and completed 1 of 4 passes for 5 yards against the stronger defenses of USC and UCLA. As with "Regular", pass protection problems cropped up with two backs on the field.

3 Wides pulls the tight ends out of the game, but they sometimes still appear in the guise of an H-Back, which is basically a tight end playing like a fullback. Carlson, for instance, llined up as a fullback 19 times during the middle run of last year's schedule. Fasano was used in the same H-back role once against Tennessee in '05 in 3 Wides.

"3 Wides" in '07: If other packages can't jump start the rushing offense, 3 Wides could be a viable option. The Seattle Seahawks have enjoyed a dominant running game with Shaun Alexander running behind a TE-less line; there's no reason why the Irish can't do the same. It all fits into Weis's master plan for running the same offensive plays from different groupings and formations.

NEW YORK
WR	TE	HB	FB
1	3	1	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	7.1%	2.7%
% run	76%	78%
ypc	3.46	2.28
% pass	24%	22%
comp %	54%	60%
ypa	6.62	8.00

Anyone remember the first play of the Weis era? One receiver, three tight ends, and a halfback - that's New York style. Samardzija, who was the "starting" wide receiver, went in motion, and Quinn received the snap. Play action bootleg!

Unbeknownst to Weis, it was the ultimate irony: predecessors Ty Willingham and Bill Diedrick inherited a mobile quarterback in Carlyle Holiday, whom they forced into the West Coast offense like a square peg into a round hole, and they never, ever, ran a bootleg pass -- even though it appeared to be the simplest and most suitable idea to anyone who followed the Irish. Fast-forward to two years later, though, and only one other bootleg has been run (later in the first half of that Pitt game). In '06, the inability of Notre Dame's line to create any push for inside zone runs played a major factor in not utilizing New York more often, as well as the fact that two freshmen tight ends were still learning the ropes of the Weis offense (not to mention, the power back was spending the majority of his snaps at linebacker). Over the last two years, 17 of the 20 pass plays out of New York have been play action passes.

"New York" in '07: Similar to Two Tites, this could be the year we see a lot more of New York. What Weis was lacking last year he now possesses: bigger, stronger interior linemen, multiple power backs, three tight ends, and even extra offensive linemen anxious to play some snaps if that third tight end isn't pushing around defensive linemen like rag-dolls. Like in Two Tites, one question mark exists: who will be the lone wide receiver? Is a bigger receiver preferred in this package for blocking? If so, could this be an area where someone like Duval Kamara gets some early snaps as he learns the offense?

JAX
WR	TE	HB	FB
4	1	-	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	3.4%	2.2%
% run	10%	5%
ypc	3.33	7.00
% pass	90%	95%
comp %	69%	69%
ypa	4.08	11.13

Just because BYU isn't on the schedule doesn't mean the Irish can't use Jax. Although the grouping is most familiar from its usage against the Cougars in '05, it's also been used when the offense is facing a crucial third down, and four wide receivers and a tight end trot onto the field. Remember the first scoring drive against Michigan in '05? First and goal, wide open slant to McKnight? That was Jax. By and large, the grouping has been highly successful, and the slant has been an integral part of its success. Although the yards per pass attempt average is low for '05, keep in mind that against the blitz-happy Cougars, it was used essentially as a horizontal running game to spread the field as blitzers attacked Quinn. Without anyone in the backfield to pick up blitzes, most passes are usually 3-step drops, and if it's third and short-to-middling, chances are at least one receiver is running a slant. All runs out of Jax are quarterback draws or sneaks.

"Jax" in '07: This will never be more than a situational grouping, and that point is all the more true considering the current talent and depth at running back.

5 WIDES
WR	TE	HB	FB
5	-	-	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	0%	1.6%
% run	-	14%
ypc	-	4.00
% pass	-	86%
comp %	-	73%
ypa	-	9.09

All fourteen plays with 5 Wides were run against USC, when the Irish were without John Carlson. The first time 5 Wides appeared, it was this second and long that resulted in a scramble by Quinn. The next thirteen were run after the Irish were down by 18+ points. It's safe to say that the only reason that Weis chose 5 Wides rather than Jax must have been that he considered Chase Anastasio more of a receiving threat than Marcus Freeman. As far as the runs go out of 5 Wides, there were two: a swing pass behind the line of scrimmage to Samardzija, and a quarterback sneak.

"5 Wides" in '07: Barring injury to a tight end and/or falling way behind in a game -- will this ever be seen again?

4 WIDES
WR	TE	HB	FB
4	-	1	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	0.1%	0.8%
% run	0%	29%
ypc	-	0.00
% pass	100%	71%
comp %	100%	40%
ypa	33.00	8.00

4 Wides, much like 5 Wides, was used mostly against USC because of the injury to Carlson. Although Walker lined up in the backfield, he did not receive a carry; the two runs were a swing pass behind the line of scrimmage to Samardzija and a sneak by Quinn. The only other time we've seen it was way back in '05 against Michigan State, and it resulted in a 33-yard completion to Matt Shelton.

"4 Wides" in '07: Too many great tight ends currently live in or are on their way to South Bend for this to become anything but a stop-gap measure in times of injury.

GOAL LINE
WR	TE	HB	FB
-	3	1	1

Stats	'05	'06
% used	1.7%	0.2%
% run	87%	100%
ypc	0.92	-1.00
% pass	13%	0%
comp %	0%	-
ypa	0.00	-

There were only two snaps from a traditional Goal Line package last year. The first one was the last play of the Georgia Tech game, when Quinn snuck through the pile for a first down on 4th and 1. The second is shown above, and the result wasn't pretty. Upon the snap, Bob Morton was blown off the ball and Travis Thomas was stuffed for a loss of 3 yards. The previous year wasn't much better: 5 of Notre Dame's 13 rushing attempts yielded no gain or a loss of yardage.

"Goal Line" in '07: There is no place to go but up for Goal Line. Part of the answer lies in that picture. Two offensive linemen, Paul Duncan and Mike Turkovich, lined up as tight ends. Given the current depth, there is going to be at least one lineman who doesn't crack the offensive line rotation; whoever it is needs to play in the Goal Line package. Imagine a left side of Chris Stewart, Duncan, and Turkovich. Who wouldn't want to run behind that? Watch out for Robert Hughes, too. He is an ideal power back, and Goal Line would seem to be a natural fit for him.

OUT PEOPLE
WR	TE	HB	FB
2	1	2	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	0.4%	0.1%
% run	0%	0%
ypc	-	-
% pass	100%	100%
comp %	50%	0%
ypa	4.25	0

The Irish used Out People once last year. In the red zone against UCLA, Darius Walker and Munir Prince lined up as shown above. Walker motioned to the wide side of the field, leaving Prince alone in the backfield. Upon the snap, Prince ran a wheel route in the area vacated by Samardzija, and it appeared he had a step on the linebacker. However, Quinn had no time to throw the pass because one of UCLA's quick defensive ends had beaten Sam Young to the inside. The grouping was used four times in '05 with Walker and Travis Thomas; twice double screen passes were thrown, including on the first play of the game against Tennessee.

"Out People" in '07: There is a lot of potential here. If an offense sends out two wide receivers, a tight end, and then flares both backs, the defense has a lot to think about and even more ground to cover. If there's man coverage, it's even better, because with the speed that the Irish can now send out onto the field, there will undoubtedly be a match-up that favors the offense. On the downside, can Notre Dame run out of this? That is an important question because, right now, seeing this personnel grouping obviously indicates a pass play. One last thought: double screen to Armando Allen.

DENVER
WR	TE	HB	FB
3	2	-	-

Stats	'05	'06
% used	0%	0.1%
% run	-	100%
ypc	-	3.00
% pass	-	0%
comp %	-	-
ypa	-	-

Like its brethren Jax and 5 Wides, Denver always results in an empty backfield. The Irish ran this once, and it appeared to be a pass play that Quinn audibled at the line of scrimmage into a draw. Why it was run from Denver as opposed to Jax is a great question. It couldn't have been an injury issue, because the Irish used Jax three times in the same game. Weis must have seen something in UCLA's goal line defense that prompted him to do this, but whatever that was, Quinn's audible denied fans the opportunity to witness it.

"Denver" in '07: The talent is certainly there to play Denver, but what about our five tailbacks? It's hard to imagine that Weis will want to take the ball out of their hands all that often in 2007.

A Special Reverence

2006-08-22T07:01:00.000-04:00

Everyone’s talking resurrection, redemption--all manner of religiously-backed metaphors for the Weis conversion from Saturday suckage to Sunday morning euphoria. The last time it felt like our wandering in the desert was coming to an end was back in '02, during Willingham’s surprising first season. The essay that follows was originally written by our friend Gina in the flush of that once-miraculous time, and should sound a clarion note of recognition for anyone who has faced that age-old dilemma on a Fall Saturday: a family wedding, or Notre Dame football?

A SPECIAL REVERENCE

by Gina P. Vozenilek

The more years that slide in between my days in the shadow of the Golden Dome and me, the less able I am to handle the football thing. It is just too much now, too much energy to waste. In 1988 it was hard not to get swept away by the excitement; my freshman year was Holtz’ third and the National Championship. I still consider myself a big fan, but the lackluster Davie years were almost a convenience to a girl-turned-grown-up whose attention was strung out by babies and real-world concerns. Who had time to memorize players’ names and jerseys and keep track of the ugly seasons? Who had four hours every Saturday to sink into the pigskin wars that we mostly lost? Who cared that much anymore?

Used to be I would stand body–to-body in the frenzied, somewhat erotic crush of the student section, roaring or chanting or sucking teeth in the collective cacophony. Used to be I would check the papers for the AP poll on Mondays, learn the Top 20, and memorize stats. Used to be we would hang sheets out our windows decorated with collegiately witty barbs aimed at Saturday’s enemy and paint our faces and go on road trips to East Lansing and Ann Arbor and generally make a big deal of it.

After the final score would post on the board, my pal Mary and I would hustle across campus to the Basilica and suit up for the vigil Mass, still stinking of beer and sweat as we climbed up to our perch in the choir loft. The University thought they were being smart by assigning this musical duty to the Women’s Choir, not trusting any of the co-ed choral groups to make a good showing after a day of tailgating. More than a few of us ladies, however, would show up apologetically hoarse, buzzed, and off-key. It was ok. We played to a packed house of similarly compromised penitents. There was a special beauty to that kind of devotion, I always thought, a statement about what is really important.

The game-day fervor that for me has faded to a warm memory of sillier, more carefree days has only intensified with some of my brethren. I admit I am friends with some of the most obnoxious of Irish fans. Most of them are the husbands who seem to enjoy different cultural freedoms where sports-watching of all kinds is concerned. They are training their children from a very young age to watch the game quietly or go play with mommy. My poor husband, a lowly Gator, has stood by stupefied while I have posed for pictures with the alumni posse in front of Fighting Irish ice sculptures at countless weddings while the band belts out the fight song. The best of these frozen wonders was an interlocking ND positioned on a motorized lazy-susan. A spotlight illuminated its slow, majestic rotation.

Last Saturday I attended a double-Domer wedding in Milwaukee. Last Saturday was also the Michigan game. For the rowdy Irish faithful, the ones who had been the true “we” when we beat Michigan and Miami and won the National Championship in 1988, the ones who still get Blue & Gold Illustrated, this was a most unhappy coincidence. It created a fascinating crisis of conscience.

The bride and groom said never mind to all this football crap. Well, technically, I think that in the early going, the groom may have gently suggested alternate wedding dates. By all accounts this became a defining moment in the development of a young man in love and his methodology for setting priorities. This Saturday there would be no ice sculpture. This was the day two people were getting married. A man and a woman were joining their lives together in the sacred bonds of marriage.

On the steps of St. John the Evangelist Cathedral we, their friends and witnesses, gathered and greeted each other. It had only been a few weeks since the last nuptial ice-sculpture, so there wasn’t much to talk about. Admirably, the boys were careful to steer clear of football chatter just now, since the groom was right inside the great doors trying to get ready for the sacrament at hand. This was the first wedding any of us could remember that was timed to coincide exactly with an Irish kick-off. And to intensify the conflict just that much more, ND was going into their third game undefeated behind an exciting new coach and riding a tide of good press and renewed promise. There have been whispers, barely audible, of a return to glory.

My friend the groom is an amiable fellow who always enjoyed game day but who was also always able to keep it in better perspective than most of his buddies. He is rumored to have selected his two best men based on the idea that they were a flight risk; being best man was perhaps the only honor high enough to keep them in the church. One of these men—rotating ice sculpture groom—was late to his own wedding because he and his guys felt compelled to stay in the limo long enough to see a crucial play in the ‘96 Army game. They watched while the bride tapped her satin-tipped toes and Ivory Covington tackled the Army tight end at the goal line on the last play to preserve the Irish victory. When this groom walked down the aisle moments later, his joy was truly complete.

After the ceremony in Milwaukee, the strategizing began. Rumor spread that the bride had asked the reception place to physically remove all television sets from view to prevent the crowd from focusing on the wrong Big Play. Kick-off was in twenty minutes. The holy business was concluded and it was time to get serious. One of a dwindling number of yet-unmarried, and therefore especially uneducated? unencumbered? unafraid? men headed out for a Best Buy and a Sony Watchman while the rest of us snaked our way to the reception. While we waited for him, sipping champagne, the presiding priest, a Jesuit and no fan of the Holy Cross boys, lied to our faces by telling us that our friend should save his money because the game was blacked out in Milwaukee. Those Jesuits. Pity the 15-piece band was playing to a nearly empty dance floor by the time the Irish were holding off the Wolverines in the fourth. I have pictures of guilty party-goers huddled under a tree outside the hall all watching a 3-inch screen and trying to hide from the bride. Even the groom, God bless him, sneaked out behind a shield of bodies to catch the action. I hope it didn’t cost him his own.

The newlyweds are in Hawaii now, and the Irish are 3-0 for the first time since 1996. The bride is surely relaxing, the details of a beautiful wedding having been executed perfectly. I talked to her about it. She was very happy. She knew about the mini TV. It was hard to miss the thunderous roar of the Watchman throng, to which I added my voice, as the last Michigan pass was intercepted. I think she should be proud to realize that she managed to make us all at least consider what is truly important on any given Saturday in the fall or any time. It was a gorgeous wedding. And I think I may be trying to make a little time this Saturday to watch the Michigan State game.

An earlier version of this essay appeared in Sport Literate Magazine, Vol. 4, Issue 3. Thanks to Gina and the editors for letting us reprint it.

Four Plays, Part I: the Bomb

2006-07-10T09:10:00.000-04:00

Let's talk defense. Specifically: the Fiesta Bowl. That game featured four long touchdown plays by the Buckeyes that had our defense bumbling around like the Keystone Kops. We've got most of the same crew coming back on defense, so if ND is going to make a run at the title this year we're going to have to figure out how to stop plays like these.

For starters, there was Teddy Ginn's 56-yard TD catch early in the first quarter. After the Irish scored on their opening drive, we were feeling pretty confident -- and then lightning struck. I remember sitting in the ND section of the stadium, and when when Ginn got behind the secondary, so completely wide open and alone, there was an audible gasp from the crowd around me, a collective uh oh, it's gonna be a looong day. Let's take a closer look at the play and see if we can't figure out what went wrong. If you can bear it, we'll also look at the other "long burns" in the Fiesta Bowl over a few more posts. Think of it as cathartic therapy...or masochism. Whichever works for you. So fire up your telestrator and let's break this down.

Situation: ND is up 7 to 0, 10:02 left in the first quarter. The Buckeyes are still on their first drive of the ballgame. Here's what's happened on this drive up until now:

1-10 O18   OHIO STATE drive start at 12:59 (1st).
1-10 O18   Pittman rush for 1 yard to the OSU19 (HOYTE;CRUM JR.).
2-9  O19   Smith pass incomplete to Ginn.
3-9  O19   Smith rush for 15 yards to the OSU34, 1ST DOWN OSU.
1-10 O34   Smith rush for 6 yards to the OSU40 (MAYS;ZBIKOWSKI).
2-4  O40   Pittman rush for loss of 2 yards to the OSU38 (MAYS).
3-6  O38   Smith pass complete to Holmes for 6 yards to the OSU44, 
1ST DOWN OSU (WOODEN).

Troy Smith has burned us for a couple of runs and the Buckeyes have converted two crucial third downs already, one on the previous play. It's first down Buckeyes on their own 44.

	Ohio State breaks the huddle and lines up with three wide and a single back. Holmes is in the slot, and Ginn is split wide left. We have our nickel package in, as evidenced by the presence of Ferrine at the top covering Gonzalez. Pittman is the lone setback.
	Here's a wider shot of the field, pre-snap. Holmes is going to run an out from the slot, while Ginn runs a fly straight down the field. Hard to tell, but it looks like a combo coverage for us, with Ferrine and Richardson in man and Wooden and the safeties playing zone. It could be full zone, though.
	The ball is snapped and Ginn takes off.
	Here you can see Holmes about to make his cut. Ndukwe is clearly focused on Holmes, ignoring Ginn. Wooden is still looking back. Pittman has stayed in to block, so this was meant to be a deep pass all the way. Our two linebackers don't blitz.
	Wooden is eyeing the quarterback and/or Holmes, more evidence that he's in zone coverage, covering the flat. Ginn sprints past him.
	Smith is pretty much locked onto Ginn the entire way. Here we see Richardson coming across trailing Holmes, but Smith is clearly looking at Ginn downfield. We're only rushing our four DL, and against seven blockers we aren't getting any pressure.
	Holmes makes his out cut, and the defense breaks down. Ndukwe is still keyed on Holmes. Ginn is already past Wooden with Wooden still looking back at the QB. Wooden hesitates briefly when Holmes makes his cut. The big question: why did Ndukwe not come over to help? There's no WR in the middle of the field for him to be worried about.
	The ball is in the air. Ndukwe finally turns, and Wooden starts sprinting to catch up, but it's too late.
	Touchdown Buckeyes.

And here's the video.

Keith from BuckeyeCommentary tells us that Ohio State scored a TD earlier in the year against Illinois on that same exact play. This was the perfect play to call against the defense and situation we were in. We rarely blitzed on first down all year. Furthermore, Ohio State kept their RB in to block for maximum protection.

Holmes' route is designed to make Wooden hesitate since Ohio State knows that he has flat responsibility. I'm not sure what Ndukwe is supposed to do...at what point would Richardson pass Holmes off to him, and at what point would he pick up Ginn? This could be one of those "communication" issues that Weis mentioned in spring practice ("I think we're going to spend a large amount of time with a veteran secondary working on communication. I think there are too many times where we had communication problems and it's going to be an area we're going to emphasize this spring.")

Again, this was a prescient call by Tressel, a perfect play against no blitz, zone coverage on the left. The key to stopping this play -- which is designed to attack a 2-deep zone -- is to get pressure on the QB so he can't make the throw. We couldn't do that. It's not really a lack of speed in the secondary on this one, despite the tremendous acceleration of Ginn and the poor coverage by our secondary. It's really a pass rush issue. Whether or not Ginn was open, Smith, with max protect from his line and runningback, had plenty of time to set up and throw the bomb. You have to play better coverage, and letting Ginn get so wide open is embarrassing, but even so a little bit of pressure might have disrupted the touchdown here.

War Stories

2005-11-11T10:49:00.000-05:00

Veteran's Day is today, and with the added bonus of us playing Navy tomorrow, we thought this would be a nice opportunity to highlight a couple of stories from the rich history between Notre Dame sports and the U.S. armed forces. (Thanks to BGS contributor Will for putting this article together.)

ND's association with the armed forces goes all the way back to 1858, when the student-organized Continental Cadets began marching across campus. Since then, thousands of domers have served in the US military.

World War I. From a ND Magazine article by John Monczunski:

The initial campus enthusiasm for military training abated following the Civil War, but in 1880 University President William Corby, CSC, the famous chaplain who gave absolution at the Battle of Gettysburg, revived the program. Father Corby believed a military regimen would offer Notre Dame students an excellent source of recreation, exercise and discipline. The new Notre Dame cadets, sporting gray uniforms, came to be known as Hoynes Light Guards, after the professor charged with overseeing the unit, "Colonel" William J. Hoynes. Two years later, academic credit was offered for the training. By 1917 it had become a required course for most Notre Dame students.

That same year, the University administration applied to the War Department to participate in the government's Student Army Training Corps (SATC), the forerunner of today's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). With the World War I draft draining away students, administrators saw participation in SATC as essential to the economic viability of the school.

Notre Dame cadets practiced marksmanship at a firing range between Corby Hall and Old College and marched and drilled, but the training was judged inferior by the government and the bid rejected. Notre Dame President Rev. John W. Cavanaugh, CSC, was furious with the verdict. The University continued to lobby, and in autumn 1918 some 700 students were sworn into the SATC, only to be demobilized in December with the war's end. More than 2,200 Notre Dame students and alumni served in the armed forces during World War I.

Naval Reserves Come to ND. World War II: Most American companies and institutions were devoting all possible resources to the war effort, and Notre Dame was no different. Prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps became the University's first ROTC detachment. (Father Hugh O’Donnell initially offered the Army the use of University facilities, but they declined.) The Navy gradually began expanding their presence on campus, adding a Midshipmen's School and the V-12 Program, which began in 1943 and introduced the Marine Corps to campus.

By the middle of the war virtually the entire campus was military, and for all practical purposes, Notre Dame was now a naval base. The only exceptions were 250 17-year-olds who were too young for the draft, and a handful of civilians classified as 4F. Over 12,000 naval officers would end up departing the peaceful shadow of the Golden Dome for the battlefields of World War II.

Thomas J. Schlereth, historian and professor of American Studies at Notre Dame:

"The war years inextricably changed Notre Dame. Contracts came from government research. A speedup cafeteria system in the South Dining Hall replaced the form of family-style dining, feeding twice as many men in half the time, with much less than half the former intimacy and civility. The public 'caf' overflowed with military brass, WAVES, and recruits whose campus stay often extended only months rather than the usual four years. Vacation periods were abbreviated, classes accelerated, semesters shortened, and one year there was no Christmas holiday. Women appeared all over the previously all-male, semi-cloistered campus, replacing undergraduates who formerly had done part-time jobs in offices, dining halls, laboratories, and the library. Sentries patrolled the campus perimeters at night; long blue, white and khaki lines tramped the quadrangles by day."

The ’43 football team reflected the military make-up of the campus, with the roster now listing the military status of each player: Marine Reserve (14), Naval Reserve (12), Civilian (4), 17-years-old (9).

To this day, a large part of why we continue to play Navy every year in football is because during World War II, if not for the Navy, ND would have probably had to shut down.

Angelo Bertelli

The quarterback of the ’43 team, Angelo Bertelli, left the team 6 games into the season after being activated by the Marine Corps. Bertelli learned that he had won the 1943 Heisman Trophy when he was given a telegram in a boot camp in Paris Island, S.C. After boot camp, Bertelli was made a captain and saw combat on Guam and Iwo Jima.

During a battle on Iwo Jima a fellow corpsman was wounded by a mortar blast that had also landed near Bertelli. Bertelli recalled sadly that a newswire service reported the All-American’s health status without ever mentioning that a fellow corpsman was almost killed in the same combat incident. Bertelli was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart for his heroics in the war.

Leahy & Bertelli in the South Pacific

Leahy and Krause. Leahy coached the Irish to a national championship in 1943, and then spent 1944 and 1945 in the Navy as a Lieutenant before returning in 1946. He picked up right where he left off, going four seasons without a loss and winning championships in '46, '47 and '49. Many of his players from those years he had personally recruited from the armed forces, like George Connor:

Early in 1944, George's V-12 unit was called to active duty. He was commissioned an ensign and assigned to a subchaser in the Pacific, which eventually docked at Pearl Harbor. A command car pulled up to the dock and a Navy sailor approached the ship and asked where he could find Ensign Connor. Connor, who was the one he asked, said, "I am Ensign Connor." The sailor said, "Sir, I have been sent here by Commander Leahy, who requests that you meet him at Navy headquarters right away ."

Connor went below, changed uniforms, and was driven to headquarters. He explains what happened. "I met with Coach Leahy, who was very cordial and inquired as to my well-being as well as my family. Then he said, 'George, I wanted you to come to Notre Dame when you graduated from high school and I want you to come to Notre Dame after the war. If you come there, I can promise you two things: we will win the National Championship and you will be an All-American.

Leahy wasn’t the only Notre Dame coach to join the war effort. In fact it was basketball coach Moose Krause that convinced Leahy to sign up along with him. The following is compiled from stories contained in Jason Kelly's Mr. Notre Dame, the story of the life of Notre Dame's Moose Krause.

In 1943, Moose Krause was named the head coach of the men's basketball team, officially replacing the recently deceased George Keogan. In addition to his hoops duties, he was also an assistant coach on Frank Leahy's football team. However, as more and more players were being called into active service, Krause knew that enlisting in the military was the right thing to do. He also convinced Leahy to join him, reminding him that in addition to patriotic reasons, it would be hard to earn the respect of the returning veterans sure to fill the Irish rosters after the war if they did not contribute as well.

Krause joined the Marines and was sent to the island of Emirau in the South Pacific as part of the Marine Bomber Squadron 413. His official assignment was a combat intelligence officer charged with planning safe and effective air raids. He also took on the unoffical task of base morale officer. He constructed an officer's club and basketball courts on the island to keep the soldiers upbeat and fit. He also assisted as much as he could with the base chaplain, Rev. James Gannon.

Krause also befriened the native Moro who lived on the island. In return for his friendship, the Moro volunteered to spy on the nearby Japanese. Moose would regularly take a group out on a boat at night to the Japanese held island of Rabaul and retrieve them a day or two later. One night, Krause and Gannon were informed by the Moro that the unburied remains of six Marines were found on the island. Krause and Gannon then set out on a mission to provide a proper burial for their fellow soldiers. They snuck onto the island and retrieved the bodies but could not return to their boat before nightfall. The Moro people led them to a remote village with the promise the Japanese would not discover them while they slept. In the morning, Krause and Gannon found out the reason; they were staying in a leper colony the Japanese avoided. After leaving the island with the bodies and burying them in Emirau's cemetary, Krause and Gannon then sent supplies of clothing, medicine, and food to the leper colony that hosted them for the night.

The war ended shortly thereafter and Moose returned to the States and resumed his coaching jobs back at Notre Dame.

Motts Tonelli. By far the most amazing story involving a former Irish football player in WWII is that of Mario ‘Motts’ Tonelli. (You can read the entire account here.) Tonelli played on the Irish teams of the late 30’s, scoring the game winning touchdown against Southern Cal in 1937. He graduated from the University in 1939 then went on to join the Army in ’41. He was assigned to a regiment in Manilla. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Tonelli was ordered to retreat to Bataan along with 15,000 other American military personal. Tonelli was then captured by the Japanese and forced to set off on the now infamous Bataan Death March.

On the first day of the seven-day 70-mile death march in April 1942, Japanese soldiers swept up and down the ranks, confiscating pens, jewelry or other personal possessions from the lines of struggling U.S. prisoners. One captor pointed with his bayonet at the ring on Tonelli's finger. "Give it to him, Motts. Or he'll kill you," whispered one of Tonelli's friends. Tonelli handed over the ring.

Tonelli as a fullback
Tonelli in a Japanese prison camp

Moments later, a Japanese officer confronted Tonelli. In perfect English, he asked, "Did one of my soldiers take this from you?" The officer pulled the ring from his pocket. "I went to the University of Southern California," the officer said. "I graduated the same year you did. In fact, I saw the game when you made that long run that beat us. You were a hell of a player." "He gave me my ring back and wished me good luck," Tonelli recalled many years later.

Jack Chevigny. Perhaps the strangest story of a former Fighting Irish gridiron star and WWII is that of Jack Chevigny. Chevigny was from Chicago and starred on Knute Rockne’s great teams of the late 20’s. He scored a touchdown against Army in 1928, the game in which Rockne gave his now-famous “Win one for the Gipper” speech. As Chevigny crossed the goal line he shouted “That’s one for the Gipper!”.

In 1934 he was hired to become the head football coach at Texas. During his first year he beat Notre Dame which inspired a gift from the Longhorn fans, a fountain pen with the inscription “to an old Notre Damer who beat Notre Dame.”

When WWII started, Chevigny signed up for the Marines and became an officer. Chevigny died at Iwo Jima but his fountain pen would go on to play an important role in history. When the officers of Japan and the U.S. met aboard the U.S.S. Missouri to sign the truce signifying the end of World War II, a naval officer noticed a Japanese officer signing the documents with a shiny gold fountain pen with an inscription on it.

The officer asked to see the pen, and read the words, "to an old Notre Damer who beat Notre Dame." Aware of the legacy of Chevigny, the officer put the pen in his pocket and took it back to Chicago, and found Chevigny's sister and gave her the pen, which must have been taken from Chevigny's body during the battle where so many died.

Rocky Bleier. Rocky Bleier was a 5-9, 210 lb running back on the 1966 National Championship team, and a captain during his senior year in ’67.

After leaving Notre Dame he was a 16th round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Following his rookie season with the Steelers, Bleier was drafted and shipped off to Vietnam.

Bleier explained, “What were my options? Go to Canada? Get into the reserves? Injure myself? Ask for status as a conscientious objector? I couldn’t get into the reserves. I got drafted. I go.”

On August 20, 1969, his platoon was ambushed in a rice paddy near Chu Lai, and Bleier was wounded in his left thigh. While he was down, a grenade exploded nearby, sending pieces of shrapnel into his right leg and foot. After recovering from the injuries, Bleier showed up at the Steeler’s 1970 training camp 30 pounds under his previous playing weight and unable to walk without pain and a noticeable limp.

Even after being cut twice by Pittsburgh, Bleier never gave up. After struggling for several seasons to find a spot on the Steelers’ roster, he rushed for more than 1,000 yards in 1976 and caught the decisive touchdown pass in Super Bowl XIII. Rocky Belier would go on to play twelve seasons in the NFL, winning four Super Bowls and retiring as the fourth leading rusher in franchise history.

Again, thanks to Will for compiling these stories.

Bye Week Flashback

2005-10-13T14:05:00.001-04:00

(Our good buddy Dan was a walk-on wide receiver under Holtz and Davie. Here, Dan regales us with some stories from '93 about the bye week preparations leading up to the eventual upset of #1 Florida State.)

The historical success of the University of Notre Dame football team after having a bye week is impressive: our post-bye week record currently stands at 59-13-2 (.811) since 1900. But that success is not merely a result of an extra week of rest, or an extra week of film study, or an extra week to heal injuries... although all of these components certainly provide an advantage. Rather, post-bye week success is a direct result of how the head coach, and his football team, are able to effectively balance the myriad psychological benefits of having an additional seven days to prepare... and there was no better psychological manipulator than former Notre Dame head coach Lou Holtz.

As a walk-on, I had the opportunity to witness firsthand a master craftsman who balanced history and hype with strategy and execution to carve out another moment in the storied tradition of Notre Dame football. This is an inside account of what transpired the two weeks leading up to “The Game of the Century” in 1993 - #1 Florida St. vs. #2 Notre Dame.

After having just defeated Navy for the 30th consecutive year, we had two weeks to prep for the showdown with the top ranked Florida State Seminoles. The personality of our football team could not have been more different than that of Florida State. We were an extremely gifted team, with future NFL greats such as Bryant Young, Jeff Burris, Bobby Taylor, Aaron Taylor, Tim Ruddy, and Derrick Mayes, as well as exceptional leaders such as Greg Lane, Anthony Peterson, Brian Hamilton, Shawn Wooden, Kevin McDougal and Lake Dawson...but we were still a team with a modest, blue-collar approach to the game. On the other end of the spectrum was Florida State: Charlie Ward, Warrick Dunn, Tamarick Vanover and Peter Boulware – a team with swagger that intimidated opponents with speed, strength and showmanship. The press thoroughly enjoyed this clash of personalities and played to the differences in style. And the more we thought about the differences, the more we agreed with the comparison – and this turned out to be the main building block for how Coach Holtz intended to deliver a “W” on game day. Holtz believed that it was our approach that made us better -– a focus on fundamentals and toughness, rather than speed and swagger -- and it ultimately would lead to our success.

The beginning of the bye week was different than most weeks during the season, in that the game plan was not yet finalized. As such, we did not practice on Mondays. Rather, we spent the afternoon in film sessions, getting treatment and working on conditioning. In total, it was a rather light day – this set the tone for the rest of the week. Although we returned to a normal practice schedule on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we were working more on fundamentals of the game, footwork, balance, positioning, and accurate reads, rather than focusing on our upcoming opponent. If it wasn’t for the media (and a few of our teammates) there would have been no mention of Florida State.

In hindsight, this was one of the most powerful tactics that Coach Holtz, and the rest of the coaching staff, employed to prepare us for the game – it was a matter of pacing ourselves for the emotion that would undoubtedly build in week two. In week one, there was no hype – it was back to basics, Football 101.

However, as the bye week came to a close his strategy began to unfold. Coach Holtz normally played to the media, giving them the sob story of how every team has a legitimate chance at beating us each week; in internal discussions, however, he was always adamantly clear that we would win without a shadow of a doubt. Strangely, as the game with Florida State approached, the message to the media and the team was fairly similar – Florida State was faster and more athletic than we were. We wondered why he felt the need to remind us of this fact so frequently. But as we continued through our daily practice schedule it slowly became clear that it was Florida State’s speed and athleticism that would eventually be their downfall. The new offensive schemes for FSU were based on misdirection and cutbacks – “let their whole team swarm to the ball and over pursue, then we’ll go the other way.” Our offensive linemen had dark visors added to their helmets to give them an advantage on eyeing angles and gaps without being noticed – even the slightest advantage would equate to a magnitude of success. Slowly we began to see the total picture of the plan – and we now believed we could win.

As week two began the media circus and the buzz on campus was at full swing. Local and national media wanted any angle they could get, even to the point where they interviewed walk-ons, like me. (I had never been asked my opinion before, and come to think of it, have never been asked my opinion since.) Dorms were holding their own pep rallies and the parking lots were already filled with campers and RVs. Tickets were in high demand and everyone on the team had lots of new "friends" calling them. The hype was at a fever pitch. Inside the walls we continued to focus on execution of the script – angles, cutbacks, misdirection – and trying to keep our emotions in check. Until Wednesday, that is...

Coach Holtz often repeated the phrase “games are won on Monday through Friday, not on Saturday.” He was an avid believer that "you practice like you play." He demanded focus and perfection every day, on every play. Unfortunately, the Wednesday before the Florida State game was a practice that, if translated into game execution, would have resulted in an embarrassing loss to the Seminoles. For some reason our timing was off – the execution of the new strategy was simply not there. Coaches were frustrated and the confidence that we were beginning to build was turning into doubt.

Suddenly, the legendary offensive line coach, Joe Moore -- as old-school and rugged a football coach as there ever was -- lost his cool. He had had enough of misdirection and cutbacks – he was tired of the thought of playing Florida State football in order to beat Florida State. Yes, there would be the time and place to employ this strategy in order to keep them off-balance, but he believed that the best way to beat Florida State football was to play Notre Dame football. In the middle of practice Coach Moore huddled with Coach Holtz...and then exploded. “Get me the managers! Get these f*cking visors off these f*cking helmets! We don’t need this bullsh*t! We’re going to look them right in the eye, tell them where we’re running the ball, and kick their f*cking asses all over the f*cking field!”

We beat Florida State on that Wednesday – the rest was just for show!

The hype kept building as over 25,000 people tried to attend the Friday night pep rally at the JACC (capacity 11,500). I nearly missed the pep rally due to the fact that security locked the doors and I couldn’t convince them that I actually was on the team. Had it not been for one of the coaches randomly walking past the door, I would have missed the pep rally and most likely not been allowed to dress for the game for violating team rules (that would have been a terrible end to the story!) This pep rally was like no other: it was deafening inside and the enthusiasm was electric.

The team went through the usual post-rally schedule: returning to the Loftus Center for a team meeting and then into our relaxation routine. Our team meetings on Friday night were more administrative than anything, covering logistics for the weekend and so forth. Additionally, we would always watch a short film comprised of highlights from the previous week’s game and highlights from the previous year’s game vs. the upcoming opponent. However, with no game over the bye week and having not played Florida State in several years, there really wasn't anything to show. At least that’s what we thought.

Instead of a game film, Coach Holtz had arranged to show highlights of the 1988 Miami game. As music pumped through the speakers and highlights of Zorich, Stonebreaker, Rice and Rocket filled the screen, we began cheering for the players whose performance influenced us to join ND in the first place. We started to think about the magnitude of the event at hand. We began to realize that we were about to write another chapter in the history books. Then, the music stopped, the screen went blank, and a picture of the 1988 National Championship Ring went up... and the team went crazy! The sounds of the pep rally were silent compared to the uproar that filled the meeting room at Loftus – it was literally an out-of-body experience.

On Saturday morning it was all business. We attended the team mass at 7:00 AM and then proceeded to the team breakfast at the North Dining Hall. After breakfast we all walked to the stadium. Despite the chaos, the thousands of fans that formed a human tunnel from the Basilica to the Dining Hall and from the Dining Hall to the stadium, there were very few words said amongst the players. Occasionally you would hear a whisper or two, but mostly it was quiet. The team went through normal pre-game activities, stretching, position drills, and the like, and it remained all-business.

But then the Seminoles ran out the tunnel -- and right through our warm-up drills. It was a sign of disrespect – only adding fuel to the emotional fire and dramatically breaking the silence of every man on the team. Returning to the locker room we were in a rage. Nobody disrespects us on our own field – nobody - and the coaches struggled to contain our emotion. Coach Holtz tried to keep the team in check. He patiently waited to give his pre-game talk and awaited word that Florida State had taken the field. Unfortunately, the Seminoles refused to leave their locker room until after we took the field, forcing us, by rule, to take the field so as to not delay the start of the game. Holtz was in a fury about this second show of disrespect as he began his pre-game speech.

As was designed, the game would be about execution, Holtz said. Florida State could not win if we executed the game plan. It was simple: hit them in the mouth and get them on their heels, then we’ll work misdirection, and they will be lost. Holtz then talked about what the media believes, what the critics believe -- and how none of that matters. Inside these walls and inside your hearts was a belief that victory was imminent. Then he said: “Let there be no doubt... this sucker doesn’t have to be close!” And with that, we stormed out of the locker room.

The third and final sign of disrespect was Florida State’s decision to meet us in our own tunnel, rather than wait in their locker room. I had the fortunate (or unfortunate) experience of being in the front lines of the ensuing melee. Had it not been for the Indiana State Police and some very courageous assistant coaches, the game would have never been played.

Well, we all know what happened on that unseasonably warm November Saturday. It was a great game against two pretty evenly-matched, albeit very different teams. This “Game of the Century” definitely delivered on the hype. The game, though, was not won simply on Saturday. The foundation had been laid by Coach Holtz over the previous two weeks: a skillful balance of gameplanning and emotional management that made us believe we could beat the #1 team in the country. Notre Dame catapulted to the top of the college football world on that Saturday, but the game had been won long before kickoff.

Cirque du Purdue

2005-09-29T15:00:00.002-04:00

Playing Purdue is a little like going to the circus.

You sir, STEP right up! STEP right up! Come see PURDUE FOOTBALL!

MARVEL at the fairlyand GOLDEN GIRL, and the mysterious WOMAN IN BLACK!

Gaze in WONDER at the SILVER TWINS!

OOH and AHH at the Purdue Golden Silks!

the Pom Squads!

Baton Twirlers!

the Moustaches!
and ROARING Choo Choos!

Enjoy the COMMEMORATIVE Sun Bowl Rings!
BE AMAZED at a 6'9 wide receiver!

THRILL to the sight of BASKETBALL ON GRASS!

and CHEER to cut-blocks so VICIOUS, it's a part of the school fight song!

Fighting Varsity
Here's The Fighting Varsity
That Wears The Black And Gold.
They Fear No Foe
And They Hit Them Low.

GAZE in AMAZEMENT at not just football players, but SUPERHEROES!

DELIGHT in the wonders of the magical SHILLELAGH!

"I think it is a whoopin' stick," Purdue quarterback Brandon Kirsch said Tuesday."It's a walking stick," Tiller said. "I have no desire to take the stick off the trophy and go for a walk with it.""I've seen it. I don't know what it is though," Bryant said. "It looks like a flute."

and TREMBLE at mighty BOILERMAKER PETE!

Your huge, plastic head,
Giant sledgehammer, big drum.
Worst mascot ever.

and most of all, COWER at the GIRTH of the DRUM!

It's Spectacular, Spectacular!

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of All Ages, get a ticket for the Greatest Show in West Lafayette!

It's PURDUE FOOTBALL!

Yep, after all that, I think I need a drink.

Boilermaker

1 shot blended whiskey (preferably Wild Turkey)
1 mug of beer

The method of drinking varies. Some shoot the whiskey straight and use the beer as a chaser. Others pour the two together and drink it. A "Depth Charge" occurs when you drop the shotglass into the beer glass and down the drink all at once.

Recipe c/o the Global Gourmet.

Notre Dame Football 101

2005-08-30T08:03:00.000-04:00

(Ed. note: We're very proud to have Pete of MajorlyEnglish joining us this fall as a guest contributor to BGS. Pete's a senior at ND right now, and he'll be sending us dispatches from campus from time to time, in between classes and parties at Turtle Creek. To kick things off, here's a guide for all those fresh-faced, wide-eyed youths currently spilling across campus for the first time this fall. Enjoy.)

Dear Notre Dame Class of 2009 (you know, Freshmen),

As you and your parents pulled up to campus for the first time in your Toyota Siena, no doubt you felt overwhelmed, and perhaps a little frightened. Would you get along with your roommate? Can you handle the increased workload? Will you ever make any friends? Well, let me tell you, impressionable freshmen, all those are secondary to what should be your primary concern: football season. Yes, this Saturday, the golden helmets will explode onto the field of battle for another great season of Notre Dame football.

Maybe some of you have older siblings that have shown you the ropes in regards to Notre Dame football. Perhaps even a few of you have been smuggled into the student section to see a game. However, you will always make those mistakes during football season that place the neon-flashing FRESHMAN sign on your back. Just like that girl you hooked up with at TC that has a really nice personality, it’s inevitable.

The morning of that first home game, you wake up, struggling to settle your Dis-Oriented mind, hearing people already cheering outside. These weekends are precious. What do you do to make the most of them, and more importantly, how do you not look like an idiot in the stadium?

I give you the Freshman Football Guide. As a senior at Notre Dame, I will let you know how to handle yourself during football season. It’s not just going to stadiums and screaming until you’re hoarse; it’s much more complex than that. So, sit down, turn off your five-channel television, and enjoy.

Classes after two o’clock on Fridays should be avoided like the Hanta virus. Not only will you be stuck listening to your Calc professor while the campus is slowly stirring to life, but you’ll slowly learn to hate everyone around you who doesn’t have to.

Road trip, road trip, road trip. At least once in your college career, pile you and your buddies into a car and go to basically anywhere you can reach on a full tank of gas. Michigan, Michigan State, and Purdue trips are mandatory. Not only do you get to see another stadium, engage in some friendly jawing with opposing fans, and generally make a scene when your team wins in their house, but you also get a newfound appreciation for Notre Dame’s campus every time you return.

Pep rallies are a blast, but remember, you’re there for a purpose: to make noise. Cheer the players, applaud the speakers, salute the coach, but be sure to stay energetic, no matter what.

Another note on pep rallies: Chuck Lennon is always like that. He just is.

If you want to, buy this year’s “The Shirt.” Support the charity, it’s a good cause, but keep that pee rag out of the stadium. Opt for an old school jersey, former “The Shirts,” or just go naked. Anything but that “The Shirt.”

On Saturday mornings, stay away from the dining halls. Not only will they be overwhelmingly crowded with the influx of visitors to campus, these visitors will have no idea how to navigate through the aisles of food. If you do go for breakfast, be prepared to see 8-year olds spilling waffle batter, moms standing idly around while they crane their necks searching for their families, as dads futilely look for that damn grapefruit. And besides, your only sources of sustenance before the game should exclusively be prepared outdoors, and consist of either meat, cheese, or meat with cheese on it.

Rub Rockne’s nose. If you don't know what I'm talking about, find out. It’s good luck for you, for me, and for the football team.

Here’s an important thing to note: know when your family is coming in for games, because their presence will drastically alter your pre-game plans. If they’re coming in to town, do all the touristy things. See the team leave Mass, watch the Irish Guard inspection, listen to the band before the step off Bond Hall, eat a steak sandwich on South Quad. Trust me, if you don’t do these things with your family, you’ll never get around to doing them, and everyone should see them all at least once.

Now, if your parents aren’t coming to town for the game, do the studenty things. Wander around the JACC parkings lots, and go to tailgates. Great fun to be had there.

With that in mind, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but if you choose to live it with Natty Light prominently involved, be very careful at tailgates. People get in trouble with the SBPD at these tailgates, even when people are with their families. There’s really no way to avoid it, so if that’s a risk you’re not willing to take, stay sober or stay away from the parking lots. Also, some guy punched a police horse there last year. So stay vigilant, and keep an eye out for thirty-five-year-old undercover narcs posing as students. When they ask for a beer, they don't want to share in the fun: they're there to bust you.

Now, onto the really important stuff, Inside the Stadium:

First the basics, cheer when we’re on defense, be quiet when we’re on offense. Got it? Good.

Whenever the defense is on the field in a 3rd down situation, those are often dubbed “key plays.” As such, the student body tends to shake keys on those plays, because it’s very clever. However, shaking keys is ONLY acceptable if it is a byproduct of your entire body convulsing as you force as much sound from your larynx as possible.

A Note about Noise: Noise should start when the opponents are in their huddle calling the play because there's always some guy in there thinking mostly about sex or partying and only peripherally about the game and will miss his assignment or the snap count if there's lots of noise. Noise should continue until the ball is snapped, but it is a waste of your vocal chords to yell after the play has begun. St. Mary's chicks have a tendency to continue yelling until they are told the play is over.

TV timeouts are usually 1 minute 30 seconds and sometimes 2 minutes long, so don't waste your voice by screaming at the top of your lungs during the time-out. Watch the guy on the sideline. Affectionately called "Oven Mitts," this referee wears bright orange gloves, and his presence on the field indicates commercial time. While he is on the field, save your voice, but as soon as he steps off, resume screaming your brains out, unless, of course, EVERYBODY has been yelling throughout the ENTIRE time-out so the opposing coach cannot communicate with his players on their sideline.

Note from Pete: I found this comment made on the article to be of invaluable information, and trust me, your bleeding throat will thank you. Credit goes to O'D.

While the band and all the lovely dances that go with it are great fun, don’t forget the reason you’re there. You didn’t pay $168 to dance the Jig, you can do that at my place for $12. Enjoy the dances and cheers, provided that you never ignore the game for it.

If someone throws a marshmallow at you, throw it again.

“The Wave” is an insult, and depending on how it is used dictates who it insults. If it’s in the 3rd quarter, and we’re up by over 18 points, “the Wave” says, “Yawn, this game is already over, let’s amuse ourselves.” If it’s in the 3rd quarter and we’re losing by a touchdown, it says, “Yawn, I hate our football team and would rather be at home watching Elimidate reruns.” If you find yourself so bored during a close football game that you want to start “the Wave,” don’t be. Only break out “the Wave” if the game is decidedly out of hand, and only if we’re winning. And if you do it, get two going in opposite directions simultaneously, because that looks cool.

Officer Tim McCarthy’s jokes are always funny, even when they’re kinda not. Laugh accordingly.

Always salute the coach, provided that he is actually coaching and not just standing there while his assistants drive the program into the ground.

There are times when rushing the field is OK and times when it is not.

Times when OK: We beat USC or Michigan and they are more highly ranked than us. We beat a Top #10 team. We win in the last minute against a Top #15 team.

Times when NOT OK: We beat an unranked team. We beat a team by 4 when we were up 21 at halftime. We beat Boston College, Purdue, or any service academy.

To further emphasize this point, never, ever rush the field against BC, Purdue, or a military academy. Rushing the field implies ecstatic overjoyment, while we should always expect to beat these teams, thusly negating any field rushing.

A note on BC: They are not our rivals, they are like our 12-year old brother, an obnoxious pain in our side, and they always suck.

A note on Navy: While we beat them every year, we respect their team and what they do for our country. Always show them respect as such.

At the end of the game, no matter what the outcome, always stay to salute the players. They poured their hearts out for you, the least you could do is fight sore knees for 10 more minutes to show your appreciation. Furthermore, always stay for the Alma Mater, it’s a special right as a member of the Notre Dame family to sway to that song.

Finally, and most importantly, always get your parents to take you out to dinner after the game when they’re in town. It’s the best meal you’ll have in months.

If you take these few simple lessons to heart, you’ll be bleeding blue and perhaps gold in no time. And if you already happen to be bleeding blue, you may be a horseshoe crab.

A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

2005-07-22T07:00:00.002-04:00

We love villains. Not long ago, the American Film Institute unveiled its list of the greatest heroes and villains in film, and as noble and saintly as all the goody-two-shoes are, it's the evildoers who really grab our attention. The best villains have their own style, wit, and morbid allure. From the coolly refined (Hans Gruber) to the deranged (Alex in A Clockwork Orange) to the downright terrifying (Hannibal Lecter), it's the bad guy who hatches the plot, kidnaps the girl, plunges the knife and kicks the dog. Villains are crucial, and without them, you don't have a real story.

Notre Dame football has had plenty of dastardly antagonists over the years, from the merely irritating to the crushingly heartbreaking to the thoroughly evil. Some of these knaves eventually got their comeuppance; others still run free, wreaking their havoc. All of them, however, are among the worst of the worst of the Irish blacklist.

And now, without further ado, we give you the Notre Dame Rogues Gallery.

Desmond Howard

Every single fall of their college careers, the Michigan class of 1991 lost to Notre Dame. But with one spectacular grab on September 16, 1991, Desmond Howard prevented the Michigan class of 1992 from experiencing the same fate, improving their record against Notre Dame to 1-3. In the fourth quarter, with the game still up for grabs, Michigan went for it on 4th and 1 from the Notre Dame 25-yard-line (needless to say, Lloyd was not their coach at the time). Elvis Grbac appeared to overthrow Howard, but with a completely horizontal lunge Howard grabbed the ball, and the game, just before it hit the ground. The play seems to hold special meaning among Michigan fans.

Despite this incredible play, in college, Desmond Howard could best be described as a poor man's Raghib Ismail -- although what he lacked in talent compared to the Rocket he more than made up with braggadocio. Thus it was particularly galling when Howard won the Heisman trophy, just one year after Ismail had been passed over for Ty Detmer.

And speaking of Rocket, the most painful television I have ever watched in my life was the College Gameday piece that paired Rocket and Howard. Just thinking about it makes me ill.

Villain Comparsion: Vanilla Ice

Like Howard, a one-hit-wonder who copied an original but didn't stack up, and in the process gained too much unfair recognition. Word to your mother.

John McKay

Quite possibly the best coach Notre Dame ever faced (excluding this guy at Northwestern a long time ago). While Duffy Daugherty edges McKay for most wins against Notre Dame, Daugherty did not deliver any blows as devastating as the 1964 or 1974 losses to Southern Cal. In 1964, Southern Cal pulled out a last-minute victory over the undefeated Irish when a Notre Dame victory would have secured Ara a national championship in his first season. As we’ll be forced to address the 1974 game later, we’ll spare ourselves the burden of mentioning it here.

He's the kind of guy who'd school you on the basketball court, then pat you on the back and give you a word of encouragement. I hated those guys. Always respectful of Notre Dame, but never awed, McKay always seemed to bring out the best in his team against the Irish. As he said in "McKay, a Coach's Story":

I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it again. There's no greater thrill in football than playing in South Bend. I get keyed up and ready to play myself, but thank God that won't happen. I always hope my kids are as keyed up as I am... Pick any year. The Irish will be as good or better than any team we play. I tell our kids if you don't get up for Notre Dame, you must be dead.

You almost didn't mind losing to McKay. Almost.

Villain Comparison: Robert E. Lee, Confederate Army

As with Lee, McKay is a villain because he made the unforgivable mistake of casting his lot with the bad guys. Both were some of the best at what they did and both conducted themselves with class, but you just can’t get past their allegiance. (Feldmarshall Erwin Rommel might also make a good doppelgänger for McKay.)

Jimmy Johnson

The anti-McKay. Jimmah, also known affectionately as the “Pig-Faced Satan”, first faced off against Notre Dame in Gerry Faust’s final game. With Faust on his way out, Pig-Faced Satan seized the opportunity to run up the score 58-7, and handed Notre Dame its fourth-worst loss in school history and the worst loss since a stacked Army team trounced a World War II-depleted Irish team in 1944.

During this and the ensuing years, Pig-Faced Satan did his damnedest to cultivate the renegade image of his program: clothing his team in camouflage instead of coats and ties for travelling, encouraging pre-game fights in the tunnel, and giving carte blanche to knuckleheads like Michael Irvin to run his mouth both on and off the field. These factors served to fuel the incredibly heated Catholics vs. Convicts rivalry of the late Eighties. Emotions ran so high that savvy Irish fans knew to "beat the rush -- hate Miami now", as a popular bumper sticker put it. The night before the game in 1988, Jimmah was burned in effigy at Stonehenge. Even Holtz dialed it way up; in the locker room before the game he told his players to "save Jimmy Johnson's ass for me!"

The smug grin. The freeze-dried hair. The beady little eyes. So much to dislike. And he never learned to clap properly either.

Villain Comparison: Hoggish Greedly, Captain Planet

The resemblance is uncanny.

Michigan Coaches, the Early Days: Fielding Yost & Fritz Crisler

Yost (left) and Crisler (right) were at the forefront of Big Ten efforts to smother Notre Dame football in the cradle. Not content merely to exclude Notre Dame from their conference, they worked to convince other schools from scheduling out-of-conference games against Notre Dame.

In seeking to explain the depths of Yost and Crisler's animus towards Notre Dame, many historians point to a general anti-Catholic sentiment. Given Crisler's nativist leanings, this possibility should not be ruled out. However, the explanation might be far simpler. Yost and Crisler were overshadowed in their eras by Rockne and Leahy respectively. The simple explanation? They were jealous, and afraid of Notre Dame.

In 1909, Yost was enjoying his popularity as coach of the "Point a Minute" Wolverines and destroying opponents left and right, until Notre Dame deflated his Wolverine juggernaut, 11-3. It was ND's first victory over the mighty Wolverines and, at the time, was a huge David vs. Goliath victory.

To further infuriate Yost, Walter Camp was in attendance and told anyone who would listen that ND's running game was the best he'd ever seen. Yost was so embarassed and enraged he would ultimately refuse to play Notre Dame again. ND was scheduled to play in Ann Arbor in 1910, but Yost waited until the night before the game to cancel it, claiming ND was using ineligible players. Once Rockne started winning, Yost's hatred towards ND was cemented.

Maize: a more cowardly shade of yellow.

Villain Comparison: Ian Paisley, Member, European Parliament

These brave souls have done their part to save the world from Papery.

Anthony Davis

You would think that when someone scores eleven touchdowns over his career against your team, the stats would speak for themselves. Yet when it comes to Anthony Davis and Notre Dame, they don’t. In 1972, Davis ran for an astonishing six touchdowns against the Irish...but it was the 1974 game that most people remember.

No one has had a game against Notre Dame like Anthony Davis did in 1974. With Notre Dame ahead 24-0 late in the second quarter, Davis scored a touchdown to put Southern Cal on the board. Nonetheless, Notre Dame had a 18-point lead at halftime and a win seemed certain. But Davis returned the opening kickoff of the second half 100 yards for a touchdown and the rout was on. Final score: Southern Cal 55, Notre Dame 24. If you have a high threshold for pain, you can read more in this article. At least you get to read about Davis being burned in effigy.

For many Irish fans, the most memorable and galling part of the 1974 game was Davis dancing on his knees in the endzone. Was this the inspiration for the elaborate voguing the Hurricanes would do a decade later?

Villain Comparison: Damien, The Omen

Anyone that’s heard Davis tell the following story – and he tells it every chance he gets – understands why.

After the game, Davis, who was the last to leave the Coliseum - bruised and battered - encountered firsthand just how much Notre Dame fans hated him.

"I come outside and I notice these people in dark clothes, and this woman comes out of the shadows and has a crucifix and she says, ‘No one does that against Notre Dame. You must be the devil,'" Davis said.

AP Voters, various years

Older Irish fans can point to the AP voters giving Maryland the national championship over a better Notre Dame team in 1953, but everyone knows the shifting logic employed by the AP voters between 1989 and 1993.

In 1989, Notre Dame finished 12-1 and second in the poll to 11-1 Miami. That year, Notre Dame played the toughest schedule in the nation, notching wins against Colorado (Big Eight champ, final rank – 4), Michigan (Big Ten champ, final rank – 7), Southern Cal (PAC-10 champ, final rank – 8), and UVa (ACC champ, final rank – 18). In other words, Notre Dame knocked off virtually all of what would constitute today’s BCS. The Irish also defeated Penn State (final rank – 15), Michigan State (final rank – 16), and Pittsburgh (final rank – 17). Three wins against Top 10 teams, and seven wins against Top 20 teams.

However, Notre Dame lost the head-to-head match-up with Miami, and Miami was crowned champion. Most Notre Dame fans could accept this result. After all, Miami had defeated Notre Dame. And if Notre Dame’s accomplishments in 1989 were insufficient to overcome such a head-to-head loss, surely the head-to-head precedent had been set.

We all know what happened in 1993: FSU & ND finished with the same record, but ND had beaten the Seminoles. Following the precedent, the Irish are national champs -- case closed, right? Yet AP voters disregarded the head-to-head result and awarded the national championship to Florida State. Unbelievable.

Even ESPN marvelled at the result.

Villain Comparison: denizens of Bolgia Six, The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri

Enjoy your leaden robes, gentlemen.

Bo, you realize you're about to finish up your
career with three straight losses to me, right?

Michigan Coaches, modern era:

Bo Schembechler (4-6)
Gary Moeller (2-2-1)
Lloyd Carr (3-3)

It’s not hard to figure out why the Michigan coaches of the modern era can’t stand Notre Dame. The numbers in parentheses following the coaches’ names are their records against the Irish, and what do you notice? Not a winning record among them. According to a recent post on a Michigan blog, more of Michigan’s losses since 1988 have come against Notre Dame than any other team. (It’s worth noting that during this period, Ohio State and Michigan State have each played Michigan four more times than Notre Dame has.)

Nonetheless, do these losses really excuse the pettiness displayed by the trifling trio? Let's review.

Schembechler. Schembechler has never attempted to hide his smallness vis-à-vis Notre Dame. Recall these words:

Q: Would Notre Dame be a strong addition for the conference?

A: Why? What would they contribute than any other 12th team can't contribute?

Q: The name, the tradition, the Notre Dame history, perhaps?

A: They may find out what (Penn State Coach) Joe Paterno found out, which is, it was a lot easier when they were playing Syracuse and Rutgers and Temple. When they went into the Big Ten, they found out they couldn't go to the Rose Bowl every year.

Yes, our schedule would be quite a bit tougher if we replaced Southern Cal with Indiana, or teams like Tennessee and Florida State (to name a couple of recent opponents) with Northwestern and Illinois.

And yes, it’s all about the Rose Bowl, right Bo? In fairness to Schembechler, he did lead his last two Michigan squads to the Rose Bowl. Both years, Michigan faced Southern Cal. Of course, the combined record of Michigan and Southern Cal against Notre Dame in those two years was 0-4. What a sweet bowl. I don’t see how anyone could disagree with Schembechler’s assertion that winning that game is more important than winning a national championship.

Moeller. Reports have circulated that Moeller completely omitted Notre Dame from his final Coaches Poll ballot in 1993. As a wise man once said, “looks to me like a Big Ten suckhole.”

Carr. When Michigan traded in Three-Tie Moeller for Three-Loss Lloyd, Notre Dame frequently found itself the target of Lloyd’s incessant whining. The most notable such occurrence was Lloyd’s outrage at Notre Dame’s participation in the Eddie Robinson Classic in 1999, alleging a violation of a “gentlemen’s agreement.” Although it was obvious Lloyd was lying (due to the fact that it would be metaphysically impossible for Lloyd to enter into a gentlemen’s agreement), the record was finally set straight by former Michigan Athletic Director Don Canham, who denied any such agreement ever existed. It also bears mentioning that Canham, a true man of principle, was the AD who finally ended Michigan’s boycott of Notre Dame and, along with Moose Krause, got the series going again.

Villain Comparison: Zod, Non, and Ursa, the intergalactic exiles of Superman II. Jealous of Superman's power on Earth, these three tried like hell to bump him off but came up short. Obviously Bo is Zod, and Moeller's the big oafy guy. Lloyd is the one with the boobs.

Randall “Thrill” Hill

It’s actually possible to pinpoint the exact play where Notre Dame’s 23-game winning streak was snapped.

During the third quarter of the 1989 game against Miami, the Hurricanes found themselves backed up to their seven yard line and facing 3rd and 43. The tide seemed to be turning in Notre Dame’s favor, and it looked like the top-ranked Irish would prevail after all.

Then Craig Erickson connected with the ever-preening Hill for a 44 yard gain, and, for the first time in two years, the Irish spirit seemed to have been broken. Miami would ultimately score a touchdown on the drive, but only after burning 10:47 off the clock.

Hill epitomized the cocky, dickish attitude of Jimmah's teams. At one point he actually legally changed his middle name to "Thrill".

Villain Comparison: the rat-like creature from Return of the Jedi. He's just like "Thrill" -- a smug, cackling little pest sitting at the feet of Jimmah the Hutt, whose only claim to fame is plucking out the eye of C-3PO. Or catching one 44-yard pass.

[The Ref Who Threw The Clipping Flag in the Orange Bowl]

With 65 seconds left in the Jan. 1, 1991 Orange Bowl, No.1 ranked Colorado was clinging to a one point lead over Notre Dame. Following two sacks that had prevented CU from running out the clock, Colorado punter Tom Rouen stepped on to the field.

Inexplicably, Rouen did not kick the ball out of bounds, and Rocket Ismail fielded the ball at the nine. Then what appeared to be the most exciting play in bowl history unfolded.

Ismail was nearly smothered by a pack of Buffalo jerseys, then somehow broke free. Ninety-one yards later, Rocket was kneeling in the Colorado endzone and Colorado’s national title hopes appeared to have been dashed. Irish fans went nuts.

But wait. [Unnamed Orange Bowl Dunderhead] threw a flag, a clipping penalty on the return, and Rocket’s fabulous run was called back. It was -- well, I don't know how to put this delicately. It was bullshit. Even Collegefootballnews noted that “[a]fter various replays, the clip was questionable at very best.”

Villain Comparison: Don Denkinger, Rich Garcia, and Neville Chamberlain, MLB umpires and British Prime Minister. Like [Unnamed Orange Bowl Jackass], Denkinger, Garcia and Chamberlain made ill-timed, boneheaded, and ultimately wrong calls when championships were on the line.

During the 1996 ALCS, Derek Jeter hit what should have been a deep fly ball to Orioles right fielder Tony Tarasco. However, fan Jeffrey Maier reached out and grabbed the ball, a clear instance of fan interference. Garcia apparently got caught daydreaming in the outfield and missed Maier’s grab, because he did not call interference. Jeter was given the game-tying home run and the Yankees would proceed to win the game in extra innings.

Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938 which effectively allowed Germany to annex the Sudentenland, leaving Czechoslovakia vulnerable, one of the inciting acts of World War II.

And in maybe the most dire example of the three, in the ninth inning of Game Six of the 1985 World Series, Denkinger ruled the Royals’ Jorge Orta safe at first when Todd Worrell had clearly beaten Orta to the base. The Royals then proceeded to pull out a two-run rally and force a game seven, which the Royals would proceed to win (to Joaquin Andujar’s crushing dismay).

Don Yaeger and Douglas S. Looney

During Lou Holtz’s reign at Notre Dame, Yaeger and Looney approached Holtz with the idea of following him for a year and producing a traditional “year in the life” puff piece. Holtz rebuffed their advances, and Yaeger and Looney proceeded to go batshit. The result was Under the Tarnished Dome: How Notre Dame Betrayed Its Ideals for Football Glory.

On the journalistic accuracy scale, Tarnished Dome falls somewhere between “Dewey Defeats Truman!” and a Jayson Blair story. Yaeger and Looney’s hatchet job was thoroughly exposed in an excellent Forbes Media Critic article by Paul Sheehan that is well worth reading in its entirety.

However, far more attention was given to Yaeger and Looney’s unsubstantiated allegations than the substantiated rebuttals. Released before the 1993 season, the book did prove to be a rallying point for that year’s team. Following the win at Michigan, many of the players dedicated the win to Holtz.

Villain Comparsion: Alex (Glenn Close), Fatal Attraction. Hell hath no fury like a sociopath scorned.

Keith Jackson

“Whoa Nellie, I’m a jackass!” Doddering Keith Jackson combines a complete lack of any sports announcing ability whatsoever with an intense dislike for Notre Dame. While both of these traits have been on display many times both individually and collectively, these two combined in truly epic fashion during his call of the 1988 final regular season game between #1 Notre Dame and #2 Southern Cal at the Coliseum.

To wit, on Tony Rice’s bomb to Rocket Ismail from the endzone, Jackson insisted that Rice had stepped out of the endzone, and thus a safety should have been called. In actuality, Rice had merely stepped off of the USC logo within the endzone. Jackson never corrected himself. He then proceeded to completely miss Stan Smagala’s interception, announcing that Rodney Peete’s pass had fallen incomplete while Smagala raced to the endzone.

Villain Comparison: Mustafa, Austin Powers

Like Mustafa, Jackson just won’t go away. Jackson announced he was retiring at the end of the 1998 season, but somehow we're still being subjected to this overweening windbag. Please, Keith, once and for all: just go away. Don't make us break out the ill-tempered sea bass.

The Ku Klux Klan

Fans of Generic State U often have difficulty understanding the passion subway alums have towards Notre Dame. ("Why do these people who never went to the school - many of whom have never even been to the school - love Notre Dame so much?") For many, love of Notre Dame has been passed down through the generations. Notre Dame's wild success during the 1920s, an era of rampant anti-Catholicism, assumed incredible importance to the Catholics who would become "subway alums." An excellent account of one family's story can be read here.

Perhaps no event better symbolizes the struggle of Notre Dame and American Catholics during the early 20th century than the rumble in the streets of South Bend that took place on May 17, 1924, as chronicled in Todd Tucker's Notre Dame vs. the Klan. When Klan members arrived in South Bend via the South Shore railroad for a massive rally, ND students confronted them. Two days of ferocious rioting ensued, rioting that only subsided when the heavens unleashed a torrential downpour.

Additional recommended reading: Robert Burns, Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934.

Villain Comparison: None needed. While other parts of this post are facetious, the Klan are truly, objectively villainous.

Assorted Also-Rans, Boston College

In 1993, Boston College notched the second greatest moment in BC football history when a questionable personal foul allowed Boston College to get close enough for David Gordon to kick a career-long field goal and defeat Notre Dame 41-39.

Unfortunately for BC, following this game they immediately disappeared from the collective consciousness of the college football world, just as they had in the time between Flutie's pass against Miami and Gordon's kick against the Irish. In a desperate attempt to sustain relevance, BC adopted the C-list celeb's belief that any attention is better than no attention at all.

Thus BC has engaged in a series of classless acts reminiscent of a neglected child's cries for acknowledgment. To wit, tearing up the field at Notre Dame Stadium, vandalizing the visitors' locker room at Notre Dame Stadium, making absurd comparisons between Boston College on the one hand and Notre Dame and Cornell on the other in a Newsweek special, publicly avowing themselves to be Miami's bitch, and on and on.

Villain Comparison: Fredo Corleone, The Godfather II

I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says...like dumb...I'm smart and I want respect!

Southern Cal's Band

“Thiiiiiis is the only song we knoooooow. It's boring and it's slooooooow.” What’s not to like about being subjected to the same handful of bars for four consecutive hours? Everything.

Touchdown? Cue the song. First down? Cue the song. The quarterback tied his shoe? Cue the song. Just finished playing the song? Cue the song. You get the idea.

In classic Notre Dame magnanimity, we are willing to offer Southern Cal a compromise that is more than fair. The next time Southern Cal comes to Notre Dame, we are willing to double the space available to the SC band in the stadium, provided that all band members are replaced with Song Girls.

Note that the Stanford Band has aspired to the throne of the most-annoying band, producing a halftime show mocking, among other things, Catholics, the Pope, and the Irish potato famine. However, the ensuing ban from Notre Dame's campus has prevented the Stanford band from developing the body of work necessary to be a true villain. Plus, they just try too hard to be taken seriously. "Hey, we're not dorks, we're edgy and provocative." Sure you are, Butters.

Villain Comparison: Los Del Rio. One crappy song. Over and over and over and over and over. Aye-yah.

Whom did we miss? Please add your additional villain(s) in the comments, as someday we might get around to a Rogues Gallery par deux.

The Big Day

2005-07-01T07:00:00.000-04:00

So the hour is, at last, upon us.

For some, the transition of the Presidency of the University stirs feelings akin to those of the wandering Israelites upon Moses leading them out of the desert and into the promised land. For others, it's the biggest anti-climax since Hugh Hefner's 80th birthday party. One thing should be obvious to all, though. Based on his handling of Ty Willingham's dismissal and Charlie Weis' hiring, it's clear that Fr. Jenkins' vision of the University is substantially different from that of his predecessor.

We here at BGS have drafted a manifesto, which we hope to slip into Fr. Jenkins' pocket in the vacuum of moments during Dr. Monkenstein's wane and Fr. Jenkins' wax, hopefully to be read during his remarks after formally assuming his new position.

Here's what we would do if we were President.

NOTING that the U has been akin to a ship, if not without a rudder, then one with a drunken (and likely French) mime at the helm, and

DESIRING to set the compass both backward and forward at the same time, and

ENSURING that the student experience is the renewed and continued focus of the university,

WE PROPOSE the following changes:

• The immediate and prejudiced destruction of Legends. Surely one of our alums owns a bulldozer. In its place shall be constructed an establishment containing 2 parts Harry's Bar, 2 parts Doug Weston's Troubador, and 1 part O'Connell Street. In this establishment, students and alums will be able to eat food that does not suck, drink booze that does not suck, and hear live music that does not suck, all in an atmosphere that does not resemble the Perkins restaurant on 33. The fact that alums' first reaction upon entering will no longer be, "What the &@%# is this?" will be gravy.

• The university will commission a statue of Ara Parseghian, to be placed outside the northwest wall of the stadium.

• The University shall no longer engage in underhanded, dopey, ridiculous, heavy-handed tactics in the parking lots during home football weekends. Never again will an 85 year-old man named Bud and his 35 year-old grandson be asked, "You fellas gonna behave today?" by a mall cop in a plastic dayglo vest whose most intimate experience with a golden dome was when his date's hair fell out after too much fake-bake before the 1978 IUSB Spring Mixer.

• And speaking of tailgating, we will ease up on the black ops that have been found in the lots every football Saturday. We get it; underage drinking is wrong, but we believe undercover agents are a little much. We don't want you to feel like bolting whenever you see two casually dressed people who are too old to be students and too young to be parents; tailgating should be a relaxed and fun experience for all ages, not an episode of COPS.

• The University will shutter the Office of Manufactured Spirit, which has been flooding the campus with saccharine, inane, Ned-Flanders-on-laughing-gas "mystique" since the publication of the 1991 Dome. Any student or adminstrator found creating, proposing, or otherwise endorsing a "spirit banner" shall be forced to wear it as his lone garment for the period of one week. All hazing of said offender during this time shall be considered to have been performed in self-defense and, therefore, immune from prosecution.

• The University is hereby out of the Gameday T-shirt business. We will no longer defile our unparallelled football tradition by commemorating, in cotton, games against Navy, BYU, and Stanford. Students will not be prohibited from doing so, but are subject to the whims of the market. If you can sell a Notre Dame vs. Rutgers t-shirt, good on ya.

• The University will draw up an amendment to its charter, a "Declaration of (Conference) Independence," as a bit of preventive medicine to avoid the fate of other once-proud Independents. We are not whores, so we figured we might as well put that one on paper. The Big 10 Polka is over.

• From this point on, referring to Boston College as our rival will be grounds for mandatory enrollment in a 3-credit course on the history of the University. We have one rival, and they know who they are. If you are an ND opponent and are asking yourself, "Are they talking about our school?" then you ain't it.

• An expanded and improved display of Notre Dame's football awards, team and game photos, and all manners of ND football memorabilia will be included in the upcoming Joyce Center renovation. (Thanks to Gator77 for the fine suggestion, by the way). The current hallway displays at the JACC fall way, way short of what a ND Sports Hall of Fame should be. Great care will be taken to construct a well-researched and non-cheesy exhibit space that will feature archived photographs of teams gone by, trophies, award displays, film clips of great games, and an interactive experience on what it feels like to be sacked by Ross Browner.

• In light of the recent tragedy and in an effort to maintain the University's cultural heritage, the recently-condemned CJ's Pub will be relocated to LaFortune, complete with crappy popcorn, Ricky Joe on guitar, and the best burgers in the country, bar none. ($2 pitchers of Bud Light on Tuesdays.)

• Pep rallies will be returned to student control, where they rightfully belong. Chuck Lennon is a good man, but he comes flying out of that tunnel every Friday night, spouting off as if he's been drinking straight Red Bull for the past 4 hours. He tries his best, but students "raise the roof" out of ironic bemusement, not school pride. Scratch Chuck, or at least give him a less vital role, find students willing to fire up their peers, and be less concerned with showing Mom and Dad a good time and more concerned with getting ourselves and the football team excited for tomorrow's game. A return to the noisy, cramped space of Stepan Center will be a good first step in reclaiming the spirit of the old rallies, as any alum who recalls the old Fieldhouse days will attest. Oh, and a yearly guest appearance by Coach Holtz wouldn't hurt, either.

• SYRs will be returned to the dorms. The reason for this is two-fold. First, the students are adults, and should be treated as such. Second, it is invariably true that, given the choice between drinking in their rooms with their section-mates and skipping down to the K of C for a junior-high-style social with punch and cookies, Notre Dame Men and Women choose option A every time. We might as well let them have dates while they do it. This is logical, and the University is, above all, a place of learning. This senior class will be the first class without SYRs, and as a result an important tradition is about to die. It only takes four years to kill a campus tradition, and the cultural memory is about to run out, to be lost forever. Save the SYR.

• A new "Champions of Notre Dame" commerical will be created to replace the ones in rotation on NBC. The new version will feature Motts Tonelli, Fr. Paul Doyle, Mary the maid in Morrissey, George Wendt, Ted Leo, Clashmore Mike, Tony Rice, Terri Buck, and Steve Bartman.

• DART will no longer be available online. DART will go back to the phones. DART's beeps and boops will be replaced by Officer Tim McCarthy saying "May I have your attention: congratulations!" or "I'm sorry, that class is full. Please drive safely!"

• Chris Zorich will be brought on to be the Associate Provost for Kicking Ass.

• The defunct ethanol plant, in recognition of its years of serving the University through the production of, well, ethanol, will be converted into a brewery, manufacturing high quality beverages such as Ara's Ale and Leahy's Lager. Tours and tastings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, appointments available through DART. Students will handle Quality Control.

• Parietals will be revoked; however, in order to maintain in loco parentis, the University will ban alcohol for everyone from 2AM to 4AM during the weekend. This will be known as the "Dodged Bullet" period, in which men and women recover their senses and avoid making those special errors that earn them the mockery/pity of their peers.

• The New Bookstore will be lifted off its foundations, placed on a very large flatbed or perhaps a barge, and will be transported to Orlando, Florida so it can do what it was born to do: it will sell overpriced Mickey Mouse garbage to people who have no choice but to buy it there. An exact replica of the Old Bookstore will be built on the vacated spot. Waiting in lines in cramped areas builds character.

• Michigan sucks.

It is so decreed by us, BGS, on this First Day of July, in the year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Five.

Yours in Notre Dame, et cetera and so forth.

In all seriousness, we wish Father Jenkins well in his new endeavor. We know it's a tough job, and we pray that the University, under his guidance, will continue to reach for the heavens while acknowledging and nurturing its roots. Welcome aboard, Father.

(Thanks to Pete for his help in brainstorming the above.)

Uniformly Excellent

2005-05-17T17:00:00.002-04:00

(Today's piece was compiled and written by our friend Will. Enjoy.)

"You have to look good to play good." -- Jerry Rice

Freshly-painted golden helmets, glinting in the sun. Jerseys of deep, rich blues and stark, crisp whites: simple, unadorned but for a small interlocking ND, numbered yet nameless. Flat-finish pants, golden-brown, almost dun-colored. There is no better feeling for Fighting Irish fans than to be sitting in Notre Dame stadium on a fall afternoon waiting to see those pristine Golden Domes above navy blue jerseys emerge from the tunnel and run out onto the field. It's not just a game anymore, it's reliving tradition.

Of course, the uniform is more than simply the clothes you wear when you play the game, and more than just your battle insignia that tells you apart from the other team...it's also a tie to your cultural heritage, your own personal link to the past. After all, when you think of a football team, the first thing you remember is its colors, its unique coat of arms: Michigan's winged helmet, for instance, Alabama's classic white numbers on crimson, Penn State's martial simplicity. These cultural signifiers are as important to a team's identity as its nickname and its mascot. And when you put on the mantle of your alma mater, you're wearing the tradition of hundreds of players and fans to go before you.

It's funny, though. As traditional as we think ND's uniforms are today -- and they've been largely unchanged for a while now -- we've actually had quite a variety of interesting styles since the early days of football at Notre Dame. Two-tone jerseys and shamrocks on the helmet; names on the back and logos on the front; stripes, and flanks, and little blue stars have all made appearances at various times throughout our history.

I've always been interested in sports uniforms and logos...so, I thought I'd explore the history of the ND uniform, and see if I couldn't piece together the evolution of, well, tradition. Let's take a look.

(For any of the pictures below, go ahead and click on them to bring up a larger version.)

The pre-Rockne years (1887-1917)

Very little research material is available on the very early Notre Dame uniform. The first ND team, in 1888, wore an all-white uniform with an "ND" written across the chest (right). It is around this time when the blue and gold colors became the official school colors. At the time of its founding in 1842, Notre Dame’s original school colors were yellow and blue; yellow symbolized "the light" and blue "the truth". However, sometime after the Dome and Statue of Mary atop the Main Building was gilded in 1886, blue and gold became the official colors of the University.

The 1900 team is pictured in a photo wearing uniforms that look anything but uniform (left). It's likely that there was no standard uniform during this time. ND at this time was fairly strapped for cash, and so players probably wore whatever was readily available to them (as a result, these guys look like extras from the cast of Braveheart.)

In 1914, ND coach Jesse Harper scheduled a game against the Pop Warner-coached Carlisle Indian School. The game was to be played at Chicago's Comiskey Field and believe it or not, it was considered a very important game in Notre Dame's quest to become a national college football power.

To render the game more attractive to spectators, Harper decided to have the players wear numbers, and he wrote Carlisle asking for a list of their players and the numerals that Warner would assign them. Rockne is often credited with this innovation but he merely copied what he observed as Harper's assistant coach.

The Rockne Years (1918-30)

The first uniforms of the 20th century were very simple, a dark blue jersey with no numbers or logos. The now-familiar interlocking ND logo seems to have made its debut around this time on letterman sweaters. Seen here on Rockne in 1913, as well as on George Gipp’s sweater now on display in the Reagan library (below right).

Rockne’s first team wore the simple blue jerseys that he had worn as a player (below left). In addition, the green jersey is believed to have made its debut during Rockne’s tenure when he assigned them to the freshman team, while the varsity squad wore blue. The green jersey then made its debut for the varsity team, when it was worn in the early 20’s simply for purpose of distinction when the Irish opponent also came out in blue.

In the late 20’s, contests against Navy featured green-clad Notre Dame teams, to avoid confusion with Navy’s blue uniforms. Ever the innovator, Rockne began the tradition of using the green jersey as a psychological ploy, a strategy that would be copied by numerous Irish coaches in the years to come. When Notre Dame played Navy in Baltimore in 1927, Rockne started his second-string reserves. As the Midshipmen were scoring a touchdown in the first 5 minutes of the game, reported George Trevor in the New York Sun, Rockne made his move:

“Instantaneously the Notre Dame regulars yanked off their blue outer sweaters and like a horde of green Gila monsters darted onto the field. From that moment on Notre Dame held the initiative, imposed its collective will upon the Navy.”

The Irish came from behind to win that one 19-6. Later that year in the contest against Army, Rockne had more uniform tricks up his sleeve:

"The ND coach prepared a number of surprises: to help his passers see their targets better and his ball carries locate their blockers more easily in the Yankee Stadium twilight and against the dark Army uniforms, he substituted bright green outfits for the regular dark blue Notre Dame suits; he also changed the players' numbers from those he had sent to Harry Stevens for the game program, thus confusing the fans, the press corps, and, he hoped, the Army coaches."

The green uniforms also helped the Fighting Irish nickname gain momentum. The New York Herald-Tribune reported that when the team ran onto the field, the "Celtic representation" in the crowd "took to this display of green immediately and cheers from all their sections" arose.

Rockne then did the same thing the following year in Chicago’s Soldier Field, this time beating Navy 7-0. The 1928 edition of the Scholastic Football Review included this description:

“Mr. K. K. Rockne may, or may not, be a psychologist. But, he did array his Fighting Irish in bright green jerseys for their battle with the United States Naval Academy. Mr. Rockne evidently surmised that garbing a band of native and adopted Irish in their native color is somewhat akin to showing a bull the Russian flag.”

Throughout his career Rockne continued the practice of having his players switch uniform numbers for big games against Army and Navy in order to confuse the opposing team. This prompted several New York newspaper columnists to chastise the coach for having his players wear uniform numbers that did not correspond to the official program.

The Leahy Years (1941-53)

Frank Leahy’s first game as head coach, versus Arizona in 1941, featured an unusual two-tone jersey, modeled here by Angelo Bertelli (left and below).

At the time, the Irish also donned leather helmets with the player’s number on the back (below left). It is unknown whether this jersey was worn again, but with his 2nd game against Indiana, the uniform returned to solid blue (right). Also, if any of our readers are aware of the two-tone colors, please let us know.

It's hard to tell exactly when the fabled gold helmet first made its appearance, but we do know that Leahy painted the helmets gold for at least part of his tenure, and they've been in use in one version or another ever since.

Leahy was also quite fond of the green jersey and his squads wore it often, some years exclusively. Bertelli in ‘43 (below), Johnny Lujack on the cover of Life magazine in ’47 (below), and Johnny Lattner on the cover of Time magazine in ’53 (right), all wore the green jersey those years. Notice the black stripe down the center of Lattner’s gold helmet.

I found it interesting that Notre Dame football players once graced the covers of national magazines such as Time and Life. Would we ever see this again?

The Brennan Years (1954-58)

Terry Brennan continued the practice of wearing green almost exclusively as seen here on Paul Hornung in a 1956 issue of Sport Magazine (left). The leather helmets during this time featured 2 dark stripes: one going from front to back, the other from side to side.

The number of the player also appeared on both sides of the helmet as seen here in the celebration of Notre Dame's upset of Oklahoma in 1957, ending the Sooners' 47-game winning streak (right).

The Kuharich Years (1959-1963)

Joe Kuharich made the most drastic changes to the uniform than any Notre Dame head coach before him.

In 1959 Kuharich added gold UCLA-style shoulder stripes to the jerseys along with a shamrock on the sides of the helmet (below). The shamrock is of particular interest since it’s one of only 3 designs to appear on the side of a Notre Dame helmet.

Kuharich returned the primary uniform color to blue, after an absence of many years. However, he still broke out the green jerseys on occasion, still featuring the gold shoulder stripes.

____________

During Hugh Devore’s one-year stint in ’63, he kept the shoulder stripes but replaced the shamrock on the helmet with Alabama-style numbers (right). Even after wearing navy blue all season, Devore switched to green in the finale against Syracuse at Yankee Stadium.

The Parseghian Years (1964-1974)

Ara Parseghian changed the uniform to a very simple blue home jersey and white away jersey, with the player’s number on the sleeves. The photo on the left must have been taken during the spring practice or in the fall before the first contest, because the Hugh Devore numbers on the helmet were gone by Ara’s first game versus Wisconsin (right). The stripes and shamrocks from the previous coaching regime were also removed.

Notre Dame has continued to use the plain gold helmet ever since, which makes it the longest-running unchanged helmet design among the NCAA Division I-A colleges. Ara would keep these simple jerseys for his entire tenure, never once having his squad wear the green jerseys that were so favored by previous Irish coaches.

There are at least 2 games where Ara’s squad wore jerseys with names on the back. The ’73 Sugar Bowl and the ’75 Orange Bowl featured the Irish clad in jerseys with names. The names are believed to have only been used in the bowl games since the names did not appear on in regular season games, such as ’73 USC.

Ara did institute one unique change to the ND helmet; he handed out blue stars for big plays, a la the Ohio State Buckeye (right). The 1-inch stars were stenciled on the front of the helmet.

At first, the stars were given out only to defensive players for recovering a fumble or getting an interception, but this changed sometime around ’71 or ’72 when the awarding of the stars was extended to offensive players such as Tom Clements (right, below).

____________

The Devine Years (1975-1980)

Dan Devine made 2 changes to the uniform; he discontinued the use of the blue merit stars and he added names to back of the jerseys (left). Devine’s major mark on the history of the ND uniform would come on October 22, 1977 in Notre Dame Stadium.

The 11th-ranked Irish were taking on 5th-ranked USC in another important battle between the two rivals. The spirited students made an enormous Trojan horse and Coach Devine pulled out his biggest trick: after warming up in standard blue jerseys, the ND players stormed the field for the game in green jerseys (right). Led by Joe Montana, the Irish went on to destroy USC 49-19. Notre Dame would wear the green jerseys with gold numbers through the rest of the season, including the 1978 Cotton Bowl that gave Devine his one and only national championship (below left).

The jerseys worn in the USC game did not feature names on the back, but names were added sometime before the Cotton Bowl. Devine would outfit his squad in the green jerseys throughout the rest of his time at Notre Dame.

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The Faust Years (1981-85)

With the arrival of Gerry Faust the Notre Dame uniform went through another rather drastic change. Not only did he do away with the green jersey that was worn during the last half of Devine’s career, but he also decided to change the shade of blue from the color worn during the Parseghian years. The new Irish coach suggested some research into the University archives to determine the history of Notre Dame’s gold and blue colors.

Those findings indicated the blue color was actually Madonna blue, a light blue shade, as opposed to the navy blue shade that had been most common in recent Notre Dame uniforms. The royal blue jerseys featured three one-inch stripes on the sleeves, two gold surrounding one white. The away jerseys also had 3 stripes, two blue surrounding one gold. The stripes were eliminated on the ’84 tops, which didn’t feature any trim other than the white numbers on the navy blue shirts.

Faust also continued the practice of having player’s names appear on the back of the jerseys.

Faust made use of the green jersey on two occasions. He outfitted his squad in green in a 27-6 win over USC in ’83 - six years to the day after Devine first went to the green in a win over those same Trojans. The Irish also wore green during the second half of the 37-3 win over USC in ’85.

The Holtz Years (1986-96)

Lou Holtz made a few changes to the uniform beginning in ’86. These involved adding the interlocked Notre Dame logo to the shoulder of the jerseys (replacing the numbers) and to the left front side of the pants. Holtz also removed the names on the jerseys that were featured by the previous two coaching regimes. Holtz's uniforms were largely a throwback to the era of Ara, and the Irish would wear this uniform through 1991.

Champion was the manufacturer of the uniform and in ‘92 they made a couple of additions to the jersey. These changes came in the form of a gold sleeve edging, a gold collar, and a small Golden Dome stitched at the bottom of the “V” on the collar (below left).

At the same time the away uniform had a blue sleeve edging and a blue collar added. Another minor change was made when the color of the small interlocking ND logo on the front of the pants was switched from blue to green beginning in ’95.

Holtz hauled out the green twice, the first time in the 1992 Sugar Bowl when the Irish donned white jerseys with green numbers and green socks (bottom right). With the help of 3 touchdowns by Jerome Bettis, the ND went on to defeat #3-ranked Florida 39-28. The last time the Irish had worn their road white jerseys with green numbers was in the Superdome in Notre Dame's loss to Georgia in the Sugar Bowl 17-10, exactly 11 years earlier. Notre Dame again wore green jerseys for Lou in a 41-24 loss to Colorado in the ’95 Fiesta Bowl.

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The Davie Years (1997-2001)

Under Bob Davie, the Champion-made jersey underwent a slight modification in ’98 when the piping on the sleeves and collar was changed to a gold/white/gold stripe pattern (left).

The uniforms stayed unchanged through the first few years of Davie’s career until 2001 when Adidas was given the contract to manufacture the uniforms, replacing Champion. The home jerseys remained similar to the Champion jersey, except for the addition of the Adidas logo to the right shoulder, a small shamrock replacing the Golden Dome at the “V” in the collar, and a script “Irish” appearing under the shamrock.

Notice that a small green shamrock was also added to the left front side of the pants, replacing the standard interlocking ND logo. The American flag was added to the left shoulder and the back of the helmets in remembrance of the September 11th tragedy.

The 2001 away uniforms also underwent changes. In a move unpopular among many Irish fans, gold flanks were added to the sides of the jersey (right).

Davie’s one use of the green jersey also turned out to be unsuccessful, as the Irish donned the green against Georgia Tech in the ’99 Gator Bowl and lost, 35-28.

The Willingham Years (2002-04)

The regular Adidas-made uniforms remained the same under Willingham until 2004 when they underwent several changes. The green shamrock and small script Irish were replaced with a small interlocking ND logo while the logo on the front of the pants was changed from green to blue. The ND logo on the shoulder sleeves was replaced with the number of the player and the gold flanks were finally removed from the away uniforms.

Like his predecessor, Willingham’s one attempt at the magic of the green jersey ended in failure. After starting out the 2002 season 8-0 and ascending to the #4 ranking in the nation, the Irish were set to face Boston College. The students and many fans had been wearing that year’s “The Shirt”, which in its many printings evolved into a bright neon-green color.

Coach Willingham outfitted his team in similar bright green jerseys, and explained his reasoning: “We have been talking about the sea of green all season, and I wanted to get our team involved in it. The sea of green is important, because it talks about attitude. It talks about the Notre Dame family and football team coming together as one. I thought it was a good time for our team to become a part of that oneness, the single mindedness and the pursuit of victory.”

Boston College took the jerseys to mean something entirely different. Coach Tom O’Brien: “The kids were excited when we saw the green jerseys. They took the green jerseys as a sign of great respect, as if we were something to be reckoned with.”

The Irish played terribly in the game, losing three of seven fumbles and losing by a score of 14-7. This last appearance of the green left a bad taste in the mouth of many Irish fans, and I think it's safe to say that most Irish faithful are probably leery of seeing the green again anytime soon.

The Weis Years (2005+)

It's not clear that Charlie Weis has any changes planned for the uniforms (as of yet), and if we can use the spring game as a guide, then it looks like the uniforms will be exactly the same as last year's.

As far as the green goes...during his 6am "wakeup" meeting with the students during his first days on campus, someone asked Charlie about the green jerseys, and requested that we only use those for the big games. Charlie said something to the effect of, "That rah rah stuff only lasts about 10 minutes. Preparation is the reason you win -- not emotions. Emotions can carry you only through part of the 1st quarter and then it comes down to who is better prepared."

So look for Charlie to not do anything radical with the uniforms, and don't hold your breath waiting for him to use the green jerseys as a motivational ploy. That doesn't seem to be Charlie's style.

Then again, all-green was in vogue when he was a student...

In conclusion, if you were to ask the average ND fan what his or her idea of the traditional uniform was, you would likely get the following response: an unadorned gold helmet, a simple navy blue jersey, and plain gold pants. No names on the back...no designs on the helmet. Classic and elegant. And above all, traditional, right?

Yet it's interesting to note that the "traditional" style of uniform was only worn from ‘64-’77, and again from ’86 to the present.

It's possible we consider this style as "traditional" due in large part to the success of the coaches who used them. Not only were Ara and Lou fabulously successful on the field, they can rightly be considered the most popular coaches at ND in the last fifty years. (Also maybe not-so-coincidentally, the two coaches that made the most drastic changes to the uniform, Joe Kuharich and Gerry Faust, are also two of the least successful and least popular in the history of the program.)

Probably, though, the "traditional" look is accepted as such simply because of its inherent style. The nameless jersey, the classic blue & gold, the no-frills simplicity and elegance...

It's just so damned beautiful, no matter the era.

The Green Jersey games

Since the 1977 USC game, the green jersey has taken on a slightly different significance then it did under Rockne and Leahy. It is now associated with a special occasion, or a motivational ploy for an important game. Including the ’77 USC game, the jersey has been worn on 7 occasions. Notre Dame’s record in these games is 4-3 with the past 3 games all resulting in a loss.

The Green Jersey games as ranked from 'most successful' to 'least':

1977 vs. USC: (above right) This game matched 11th ranked ND against 5th ranked USC. The inspired Irish destroyed the Trojans 49-19, a win that propelled ND to their 10th National Championship.

1992 Sugar Bowl vs. Florida: (second from top) The Irish were the underdogs in this game to the 3rd ranked Gators. As Lou Holtz explained, “I was having dinner with my family at a restaurant just prior to taking the team to New Orleans in 1991, and our waiter came up and said, 'What's the difference between Cheerios and Notre Dame? Cheerios belong in a bowl.' That didn't make me feel real good and when I repeated it to our players in New Orleans, I think they understood how our team was viewed coming into the Sugar Bowl.” The Irish, clad in white jerseys with green numbers, beat Florida 39-28. Within a week after the Sugar Bowl victory, General Mills-maker of Cheerios-sent 120 boxes of the breakfast cereal to Holtz with a note that said, "Like the Fighting Irish, we have been one of America's favorites for years. And as your team dramatically proved, both do belong in bowls."

1985 vs. USC: Both teams were mediocre at the time, the Irish would finish the year 5-6 while the Trojans would end up 6-6. Gerry Faust's 1985 team took a 27-0 halftime lead against USC and then donned the green jerseys for the second half, en route to a 37-3 win.

1983 vs. USC: Faust’s first use of the green jerseys resulted in a 27-6 win over a USC team that finish the season 4-6-1.

1995 Fiesta Bowl vs. Colorado: (middle picture) The magic of the green was not enough for the unranked Irish to beat #4 ranked Colorado. ND was crushed 41-24 and would end up the season with a record of 6-5-1.

1999 Gator Bowl vs. Georgia Tech: (second from bottom) Bob Davie’s one attempt at the green jerseys resulted in a 35-28 loss to the Yellow Jackets.

2002 vs. Boston College: (bottom right) The heavily favored Irish played terribly against Boston College, losing 14-7. This game would start a downward spiral for Coach Willingham with ND losing 10 of their next 17 games.

Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank the guys at BGS for all of their help in the research, writing, editing, and layout of this article. I would also like to thank the following websites and books for supplying background information and pictures:

Irish Legends

Sports Illustrated Covers Gallery

The Helmet Project

The Notre Dame Official Athletic Site

The Notre Dame Archives

Echoes of Notre Dame Football

Rites of Autumn

Shake Down the Thunder

-- Will

The War Room

2005-05-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

This is a rush transcript - NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

Emergency Meeting - 5/1/05 8:00 AM

Attendees:

Pete Carroll
Lloyd Carr
Tyrone Willingham
Ed Orgeron
Phil Fulmer
Steve Spurrier
Joe Paterno
Bobby Bowden

Minutes transcribed by War Room secretary Urban Meyer

Coach Carroll: Okay. Hey fellas, this is great. Let’s rock and roll, alright? Man, I’m jazzed to be here. I’m just, like, totally jazzed and ready to PARTY! PHIL! Easy on the bear claws!

Coach Fulmer: grmphl shruotnbbsgf...

Coach Paterno: WHA? Whoozat? (snort)

Carroll: Sorry, JoePa! Sometimes I get a little jazzed, you know? Psyched! I’m totally jacked! You might wanna turn down your Miracle Ear. Anyway, I brought you here because we have to talk about Notre Dame.

Coach Orgeron: AAGHHH you sonsabitches! I dare any one of you to squat with me. Who wants to kick me in the jimmy? I said, WHO WANTS TO KICK ME IN THE JIMMY?!?

Carroll: Uhh, coach. Put your shirt back on, please.

Orgeron: You pansy mothereffers, I’ll whip every frackin razzamuffin batch packin one of you!

(Orgeron barrels out of the room, knocking the door off its hinges)

Carroll: It's 8:02 and we're already down a door. Urban, make a note to take it out of Orgeron’s check. That dude is JACKED. Like I was sayin’, we got a problem. There’s something brewing in South Bend, and I don’t like the smell of it.

Coach Spurrier: Hold on a sec, Pete. Urby, you clean my clubs? You're loopin’ at 6:30 sharp, and they better not look like they did this mornin’. Got that, sweetheart?

Carroll: HA! You're totally fleepin' hilarious, but can it wait Steve?

There's a knock at the door.

Carroll: EVERYBODY DOWN! Bobby hit the lights. I think it's Ricky! Steve-o, you can hide under the table with me!

Neuheisel: Guys? Hey, guys? Awww, c'mon! Lemme in, guys. Fine. I'm slipping my resume under the door....and some bracket sheets for next year's tournament.

Neuheisel walks off.

Carroll: Whew! That was close! My heart's totally jacked, like a thousand beats a minute. Ball Coach, touch my chest and feel that sucker!

Spurrier: I'll defer on that one, sugar.

Carroll: Like I was saying, we got a problem here. We gotta figure out what to do about Charlie and the Irish. He’s getting players, he’s getting buy-in from the alums-

Fulmer: Buy-in? How much? If it's more than $200K I gotta git my agent on the horn, pronto. Gimme that bacon.

Carroll: Not like that, Phil. Dang! Stay with me, fellas. Fans, alums, players, the new administration, they’re all on board. Everyone's getting fired up. We’re in a whole heap of trouble, my friends.

Coach Bowden: Whoa, now just hold on there just a dang ol’ second. I seen this here Weis up’n at the dang ol’ Boston team there in them Super Bowls winnin’ Gawd knows what all in the freezin’ cold with the other guys who was just like ‘em. It's just a dang ol’ football coach is all.

Carroll: Bobby, that’s a GREAT point! So we gotta ask the question, "how are we gonna fix this?" I’ve invited Coach Willingham to join us today to give us the inside dirt on Notre Dame and how to keep 'em down and out. What's the story, Ty? What makes them tick?

Coach Willingham: First things first, okay? It is our sincere intention to make the most out of the upcoming season and the experiences that our young men experience, okay? Football is a very precise and physical game, which one plays.

Carroll: Right. Now about Notre Dame?

Willingham: Well, in order to understand it, you need to address the foundations that one brings into these circumstances, okay? As one builds that knowledge base, you have a situation where the rest falls into place in the way our young men apply important principles. Okay?

Carroll: And? Anything in particular?

Willingham: The Irish are a vicious animal?

Willingham sprints stoically from the conference room with his arm raised, giving a #1 sign.

Carroll: I apologize for that, fellas. Don’t know what I was thinking. I figured he must have picked up something. (dejected) He's so not jacked. Alright, so how do we handle this guy Charlie?

Coach Carr: Don't ask me. I never wanted these guys on the schedule to begin with. Football fans aren't interested in Michigan-Notre Dame. They want to see Michigan-UCF. Michigan-Buffalo. You know, marquee matchups.

Fulmer: Does Horsey Sauce go on a cinnamon twist? And to hell with it anyway, I ain't sweatin' Notre Dame.

Spurrier: C'mon Phil. I saw you sweat through seven of them awful orange t-shirts against 'em, and it was November. Seriously, it looked like you were carryin' two greasy pumpkin pies under your arms.

Paterno, who has been dozing off, suddenly wakes up.

Paterno: HOLY CRAP, did he run outta here in a hurry! Ara gets along pretty good for a guy his age. Looks like he’s been playing too much golf, though. Pansy shouldn’t have played for the tie against MSU last year. I remember the first time I coached against him. Like it was yesterday. It was 1958. My 63rd birthday. Dottie, wheel me closer to the light...

Carroll: Oh, brother. C’mon dudes! Get with it! Steve, you’re a genius like me. I love this guy! You were a legend at Florida and coached against the Irish when they were a powerhouse. How did you beat them?

Spurrier: Well, ahh, first you gotta git yourself a good visor...

CRASH! Orgeron has returned.

Carroll: Make that two doors.

Orgeron: Bazzle dunkin flip swattin' pieces of donkey puke, WHO WANTS A PIECE! But to your point, Pete, it is my contention that the real problem is that the Irish are going to be, as Charlie has foreseen, "nasty" this year. In years past, they were not. They were poorly coached. They were soft. They were abandoned on game day. They were anything but "nasty." Mr. Chairman, we cannot allow a "nasty" gap!

Paterno: Mein Fuhrer! Heh...I'm sorry. Mr. Orgeron.

Orgeron: Has anyone seen my pants?

Fulmer: Lloyd, you gon’ eat that? Mmff...Petey, what the hell are you doin?

Carroll has wrapped himself around Spurrier's right leg.

Bowden: Like some kind a dang ol’ schnauzer done just got out a prison and ain’t had a lady in 30 years so’s he’s all worked up like a runaway piston engine with some kind a foofy haircut looks just like a dang ol’ poodle is all.

Spurrier: First Dan Snyder, now you? You owe me five million clams, twinkie.

Carroll: Sorry, Steve. But I’m just so daggone JACKED I can hardly take it anymore! Ed, you were saying? Ed?

Coach O is sanding the fireplace with his forehead.

Carroll: Dang, fellas! I gotta beat this Weis guy. Who’s gonna tell me how to…what’s that Urban? Norm Chow on two? Okay. Hello, Norm. Yes, of course. What’s that, Norm? You're in Nashville? No. No, Norm, there must be some mistake. No, I'm certain of that. I'm perfectly certain of that, Norm. Just a second. (puts down phone) You know what he says? He says he never got the contract extension....Norm? Norm? I think he's hung up on me.

Fulmer: When's lunch git here?

Carroll: Phil, it's 8:15. We need to get back on track, fellas! I'm a little worried. I'm hearing Weis use words like "adjustments" and "personnel" and "scheme." I'm gonna have to game-plan these guys now, and that makes, like, three games a year I gotta work on! I'm spread too thin, and when I'm spread too thin, I can't get partied up. I need help!

Carr: C'mon, Pete. You can handle it, right? You used to coach the Patriots just like Charlie Weis. Can't pad your schedule with teams like Eastern Michigan there, can you? How'd that turn out, anyway? You got fired, and he won three Super Bowls?

Carroll: I released myself on my own recognizance. Lloyd, the NFL's overrated anyway. The PAC-10, now THERE'S a challenge. But hey, why are you picking on ME? Spurrier flamed out in the NFL too! Pick on HIM!

Suddenly, the temperature in the War Room drops thirty degrees. A disembodied voice says...

Disembodied Voice: I have seen the future...beware the blue and gold...beware the IRISH!

Bowden: Well I'll be a free-loadin', hog-ridin', monkey chaser! It's Joe Paterno's ghost!

Paterno: What the hell are you doing here?

Paterno's Ghost: I was about to ask you the same thing.

The coaches run screaming from the room.

Paterno: But I'm not dead yet!

Paterno's Ghost: The hell you ain't. You've been dead for three years. You bought it when you tried to run down that official in Columbus. Haven't you noticed that when you take a leak, dust comes out?

Paterno: Well, now that you mention it...

Paterno's Ghost: And that the only guy who talks to you is that kid from The Sixth Sense?

Carroll: Fellas! We gotta finish the meeting! Somebody's gotta help me with this ND thing. I mean, they might actually be good again!

Paterno's Ghost: Well don't look at me, toots!

(Paterno's ghost disappears in a puff of grey smoke)

Paterno: (sobbing) STOP! TAKE ME TO THE LIGHT!

Carroll: Dang! Coach Paterno's ghost is JACKED!

Taking it Personnel-ly

2005-05-03T16:00:00.000-04:00

"Let them try to stop a pro-style offense, which has 'multiple' personnel groups and 'multiple' formations. Let's see how they are going to do.”

-- Charlie Weis

Coach Weis issued that bold challenge to opposing defensive coordinators earlier this spring in an ND Magazine article. There were probably a few Irish fans who, when they heard the "M" word, couldn't help but remember a certain failed ex-coordinator's philosophy of "multiplicity". You remember, this one:

"At Syracuse, we did about eight different groupings like that," Kevin Rogers says. "And within those groupings, we can have anywhere from 25 to 30 formations. The multiplicity of that -- having an option game, a dropback passing game, a play-action passing game out of each one of those formations -- enables you to really keep defenses off balance."

I apologize for dredging up ugly memories of the Davie era...and I'm here to tell you that it's safe to climb back off the ledge.

Despite their shared use of the "M" word, there are key differences in the offensive philosophies between Weis and Rogers. While Rogers utilized a wide variety of plays and formations, Weis on the other hand appears to prefer running the same plays, repeatedly, out of different formations and personnel groups. One leads to confusion within your own offense; the other creates confusion for the defense.

But there's that phrase again: personnel groups. What exactly are those? Let's quickly run through some of the basics, but keep in mind that teams may have different names for these groupings, or "packages"; these are just some common terms.

(To view the different formations, "mouse over" the bulleted items)

• "Regular" - 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 TE
• "Deuce" - 2 RBs, 1 WR, 2 TEs
• "Ace" - 1 RB, 2 WRs, 2 TEs
• "Heavy" - 1 RB, 1 WR, 3 TEs
• "Jumbo" - 2 RBs, 0 WRs, 3 TEs
• "Double" - 1 RB, 3 WRs, 1 TE
• "Trio" - 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 0 TEs
• "Spread" - 1 RB, 4 WRs, 0 TE
• "Empty" - 0 RB, 5 WRs, 0 TEs

Here's how different personnel groups are used.

In the weeks and months leading up to a game, an offensive coach will scout his opponent to determine at what breaking point their defense, if they substitute according to down and distance, will switch from base personnel. For example, in short yardage, goal line, and nickel and dime packages, they will examine who comes in, who comes out, and when. He'll also note when a defense substitutes according to the offensive personnel on the field, and prepare against these patterns and tendencies.

Furthermore, once the game starts, what a good offensive coach like Weis will do is show different offensive personnel groupings early in the game to see how the defense responds. Based upon those initial reactions -- plus the tendencies that the staff has noted from the previous scouting prep work -- the OC will begin to group his players together with formations and plays where they now have an excellent idea of what personnel the defense will use. Creating the most favorable match-ups and keeping the defense on its heels is the desired outcome.

Check out this excellent article by Pat Kirwan of NFL.com on the Patriots' offense. While it gives a lot of credit to Bill Belichick, obviously Weis deserves kudos as well when discussing offensive personnel groupings. There's some great stuff in there, including this tasty nugget from Kirwan:

In the Pats' first 20 plays I recorded, they were in six different personnel groupings...During the third series of offensive plays, [Weis] sent out four different personnel groups in the first four plays, which can create stress on a defense.

Now, it's important to draw a distinction between a player's stated "position" on the depth chart, and where they actually line up for a given play. Maryland head coach Ralph Friedgen is another offensive mind who thinks in terms of personnel groupings. Commenting on his offense, he says, "The more you can do with the same personnel group the better you are. When I went to Georgia Tech with George O'Leary, he used to talk about personnel groups being synonymous with formations. He thought like a lot of defensive coaches. He thought if you had two tight ends, one back and two wide receivers, you were going to be in that formation. I didn't understand that." Neither does Weis.

What further strengthens this concept is when you have versatile players who are capable of playing different positions: tailbacks who can catch the ball; fullbacks quick enough to play tailback, etc. For instance, Coach Weis has talked about using Rashon Powers-Neal as both a fullback and a tailback, and running back Justin Hoskins is reportedly working in the slot as well as in the backfield. As you can imagine, versatility magnifies how you can exploit a defense through the mixing and matching of personnel groups.

Let's try an example using a set that I think we may see quite a bit of next year considering the talents of tight ends Anthony Fasano, Marcus Freeman and John Carlson - a "Heavy" package with three tight ends.

If a defense sees three TEs and doesn't substitute for run-stopping personnel, Weis might run Darius Walker at them until they do. If and when they do bring in that personnel, Weis might have a RB, especially someone like Hoskins, line up in the slot to give an "empty look".

Fasano, Freeman, Carlson, Hoskins and McKnight would make an impressive group of receivers on the field, but more importantly, the multi-dimensionality of our TEs is what makes such a scheme possible: the threat of "spreading" the field using run-based, or "heavy" personnel will immediately create problems for a defense. This is just one example, out of many, but hopefully it provides some context.

What makes Weis' system even more difficult to prepare for is that week after week, he doesn't settle into predictable tendencies (another significant difference from Kevin Rogers). An ESPN article from last fall talks about how Charlie liked to switch it up:

The Patriots [give] you different flavors each week. Against Indianapolis, New England ran something like 25 snaps out of a new variation of its empty set (no backs, two tight ends, three wide receivers). Arizona spent a lot of practice time preparing for the empty look, and saw the formation [only] twice the following week.

Let's look ahead to our first game this fall. Given that new Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt wants smaller, faster players on his Panthers defense this year, there is a very good chance that our game plan will involve trying to overpower them with the run, and Coach Weis may decide to attack Pittsburgh with a fairly vanilla offense. He may utilize the Deuce package quite a bit (two running backs, 2 tight ends, 1 wide receiver). Assume Walker and Powers-Neal comprise the backfield, Fasano and Carlson are the tight ends, and Maurice Stovall is playing WR:

There's a lot of size on the field in this group, and we may run 75% of the time, maybe more, out of various formations from this personnel grouping. However, against Michigan the following week, Weis might reverse that gameplan and throw the ball 75% of the time -- even with the same group of players, and possibly out of the same exact formations. When you consider how talented our tight ends should be in '05, play-action out of this personnel group would be highly effective.

As Weis has demonstrated, by concentrating on avoiding predictable tendencies, an offense can really stress out a defense. It's worth noting that only once in three years under Tyrone Willingham did we achieve this kind of week-to-week unpredictability: at Pitt in 2003. Former Pitt head coach Walt Harris was so focused on stopping the pass after Brady Quinn threw 59 times against Purdue the previous week, but instead of throwing, we ran the ball. The Irish pounded Pitt for 353 yards rushing, and Julius Jones even set the school single-game rushing record (262 yards). Of course, this inventiveness and adaptability was short-lived, and our offense turned back into a pumpkin soon after.

The upcoming season should be different, however. In a few 2005 post-game pressers, I fully expect to hear something like this Charlie Weis excerpt from a post-Super Bowl interview:

"We were able to spread them out and get them in some personnel groups that they were uncomfortable with."

A New Recruit

2005-04-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago Charlie and Company hosted a Junior Day for about 80 players, and it looks like the staff will continue to bring in more kids as the semester winds down, and try and get a headstart on recruiting for next year's class.

One player, in particular, might be something special. If you've been reading the premium-access recruiting message boards the last few days, you know that a few rumors have been floating around about a certain "overseas" recruit that may be making an appearance on campus sometime soon for an official visit. In trying to research the story, I came upon this article in the Irish Times of Dublin from this week. Take a look.

----

(GAA NEWS) It's not often that a Gaelic footballer would merit notice from his counterparts in the States, but all that is about to change for one Finbar Rory O'Hanlon of Donegal.

Keen observers of this year's Connacht Club league might know the name; O'Hanlon, from Tory Island, latched onto Letterkenney Gaels FC at the end of the season, played in a grand total of two matches, yet stunned the locals with his lightning-quick reflexes, his innate, almost preternatural skill with the leather, and his country good looks.

"He's maybe the fastest I've ever seen on the field," remarked Hugh Downey, assistant coach of the Gaels. "He's a blur of shaggy red hair. If you blink, you'll miss him."

O'Hanlon, known as "Tunney" to his mates, is already a sensation in Donegal. "Nobody knew about him. From what I heard, he grew up on Tory, and never played the game until this year. But I've never seen a lad his size move that quickly and throw, catch, and kick so fluidly. It's like he was born to play the game," said Downey.

O'Hanlon debuted at halfback, but he was soon moved up to full-forward. "You'd think he was too big to play up front," said Downey of the 1.93m lad, "but he's faster than everyone on the field, so it doesn't really matter, does it?"

"He really is from out there in the water, you can barely understand the lad," says team manager Tim Mooney, "but he's the full shilling. Smart and instinctual. And tough."

Tough would be an understatement. Opposing defender Mike McHugh of Donegal Town found out just how intimidating O'Hanlon can be, when he went toe-to-toe and got the full shiner right in the face. "He flattened me, period. And I'm not a small guy. When he barrells down at you, it's hard not to be a little shook." Tunney seems to live for the hard crunch, often going out of his way to deliver a blow en route to a score.

Tracking down O'Hanlon's legacy is a bit of a challenge. He grew up on Tory the son of a fisherman and a schoolteacher, although Mrs. Bridie O'Hanlon has been retired for some time. Tunney never enrolled in the local school, having been taught by his mum for these ten years or so. This probably explains why he never surfaced on the local GAA scene until now.

"We always knew he was something special," explained the honourable Mrs. O'Hanlon. "When he was a child, he would run and chase the gulls on the beach. When he got bored with that, he would chase goats. After a while, he was faster than the goats, so he chased rabbits. And he caught them, too."

O'Hanlon's father was a fisherman, and he taught young Tunney how to cast and reel. Soon, however, he was fishing without a pole. "He would simply stare at the water, sometimes for twenty minutes, and then, in a flash, his hand would dart into the water, and come out with a very surprised mackeral in his grip. His father loved to watch him catch fish this way, and would just laugh and laugh, God rest his soul." When Tunney was done fishing, he'd jump into the sea, fully clothed, and swim with the seals who would gather around the Tory docks. Sometimes he'd circle the island with a pod of the friendly sea creatures, mimicking their fluid movement and getting faster and faster. "Sometimes he'd swim to the mainland, and be back before lunch," says Mrs. O'Hanlon.

O'Hanlon's father, Finbar senior, aka "Finn" O'Hanlon, was also a local quarryman who supplied most of the stone for new houses on the island from a quarry he dug himself. Foregoing draft horses and mechanized equipment, Finn would lift the gargantuan rocks onto his back and lug them seven or ten miles for a new construction. Oftentimes Tunney would tag along, chipping in by carrying the odd boulder or slag at his father's heels at the age of four. Together they built most of the structures on the island, including a holy Grotto to Mary, modeled after the one at Lourdes.

Tunney was homeschooled by Bridie for most of his formative years, learning language and customs and folklore and the manual arts. He makes most of his own clothes on a loom in his bedroom, he plays both the violin and the saxophone, and he enjoys translating the legends of Finn MacCool (a distant relative of his) from the original primitive Gaelic. His translations are widely considered the definitive works on the subject, and the manuscript, along with a collection of his poetry and several short novels he's written, are on display at Trinity College in Dublin.

But it's his athletic endeavors that really capture young Tunney's heart. Bored with a lifetime of outrunning and outsmarting most of the wildlife on Tory island, O'Hanlon finally made his way to the mainland last year and took up a more human challenge by joining the Gaels FC. He was immediately taken by the competition and camaraderie of the energetic matches.

If there is one Achilles heel to the great O'Hanlon, it is his love of drink. When he was a child, a terrible storm swept through Tory, sending great waves upon the beach and contaminating the local water sources for a few weeks. To supplement the water supply, the O'Hanlon's turned to a healthy stash of Guinness they had in the cellar, and a bottle was filled with the brown nectar and given to young Tunney. He lapped it up like a puppy, and developed quite a taste for the stout that continues to this day. It's said that he often goes through an entire barrel by himself in the course of a month's time, and often he'll be seen on the bench at a match, sending some young lad down to the corner pub for a fresh pint before the half ends. The drink never seems to affect his play adversely, however; in one of those rare phenomena of nature, it is perhaps the beer itself that sends O'Hanlon's skill from the merely superior and into the stratosphere.

"His natural talent is simply breathtaking," said Downey, apparently struggling for more superlatives. "You can't teach it -- it's all from within. He's got a bright future -- but I hope he stays in the GAA. He could play just about sport, I think. I'm not sure if it's the beer, or what, but he can do anything."

In fact, after the second (and last) game of his career, Tunney seemed to be a little bit bored by his achievements. A keen eye could sense a restlessness in his heart, as if his journey to the mainland that took 17 years was merely the first step in a round-the-world adventure.

This is where the Americans enter the picture. Two weeks ago a few Yanks on holiday were playing the west course at Ballyliffin and saw young O'Hanlon running along the water, as he usually does for morning exercise. The men were shocked by the speed of the young sprinter. Just then, O'Hanlon stopped, and picked up a good sized rock, and hurled it seventy or eighty yards through the air, striking a flying sea gull dead between the shoulder blades. The men were amazed. Their caddy, a local ruffian by the name of Jim Muldoon, filled them in. "That's Tunney O'Hanlon -- yeah, he's fast and all. And smart. And friendly. And a great player. I can't stand him." The men immediately asked to be introduced. They managed to flag down O'Hanlon, who was about to dive into the ocean and swim back to Tory, and offered to buy him lunch.

One of these happened to be a man by the name of Gene Corrigan, a prominent member of the American college sporting landscape, and a former athletic director at the University of Notre Dame, a college known for its American football team. Over a sheperd's pie at Flynn's (still the best in Donegal) Mr. Corrigan began to talk about college in the United States and an opportunity to play American football. As he pitched the game, describing the strange pads, the unorthodox scoring system, and arcane rules, O'Hanlon became more and more intrigued, and by all accounts, at the end of the interview O'Hanlon was faintly salivating at the prospect of proving himself with yet another challenge. Corrigan began to put the plan into motion. O'Hanlon ordered a beer.

Now, the wheels are turning. Last week a coach from the University of Notre Dame, a Mr. Robert Ianello, flew into Shannon by way of Chicago and rented a car to drive to Donegal, whereupon he met with Tunney O'Hanlon on the GAA local field, and put him through a battery of tests. Jumping, throwing, catching, kicking, and running -- above all, running -- O'Hanlon flew through the drills, and left the American with his mouth agape. It was, as an onlooker described it, as if Ianello had seen the Future. Trying to suppress his shock, Ianello turned to several onlookers and said, "Well, he's pretty good, isn't he? I'm glad we got here first." Ianello departed with promises of future meetings, and discussed a possible trip to the States. O'Hanlon's never even been to Dublin, let alone out of the country.

Someday soon, Finbar Rory "Tunney" O'Hanlon, this son of a fisherman, who runs like a rabbit, swims with the seals, and drinks Guinness for breakfast, may be trading the leather for the pigskin, donning a golden gleaming helmet, and playing for the only American squad that could honestly bear his membership: the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

Who knows? Instead of a flight overseas, he might just swim it.

Monikers

2005-02-15T19:07:00.000-05:00

Today's fun feature was sparked by a conversation I had with a friend of mine named Murphy. I call him "Murph", which is a unique and special nickname I coined just for him.

One of the best things about Irish football is the sheer volume of it. Notre Dame's been playing football in one form or another since 1887, playing 1,107 games with 117 different teams and featuring over 2,200 different players. That adds up to a lot of names.

Now major-league baseball is the grand repository of wonderful names (Enos Slaughter, Satchel Paige, Stubby Clapp, Kirby Puckett, Jayhawk Owens, Esix Snead, Covelli Crisp, Scarborough Green, Biff Pocoroba, Minnie Minoso, Ugeuth Urtain Urbina, Garth Iorg -- I could go on and on) and college hoops has a mellifluous medley of magnificent monikers (Baskerville Holmes, God Shammgod, Fennis Dembo, Scientific Mapp, his brother Majestic Mapp, Exree Hipp, Boubacar Aw, Commander King, Shaquille O'Neal).

As for ND football, this past season alone, we had some great ones: Chase Anastasio, Nick Borseti, Mike Goolsby, Carlyle Holiday, Chauncey Incarnato, Chinedum Ndukwe, Rashon Powers-Neal, Abdel Banda.

Of course, this is just one year. ND history is stocked with quite a few good names (including maybe the single greatest coach's name of any sport, anywhere), so we thought we'd break it down into smaller categories. So here goes...

Great tough-guy names. Some guys are just born to play football: Ned Bolcar, Torgus Oaas, Demetrius DuBose, Donn Grimm, Cedric Hilliard, Herm Hooten, Grant Irons, Kinnon Tatum, George Streeter, Darius Walker, Mike Stonebreaker.

Throwbacks. These guys would have fit right in with Red Grange and Doc Holliday: Ray Griggs, Glenn Earl, Jim Flanigan, Chris Zorich, Braxston Banks, Joey Goodspeed.

Warsaw Metro all-stars. Ziggy Czarobski, Len Cyterski, Tom Lopienski, Tom Zbikowski, Pete Chryplewicz, Bronko Nagurski, Scott Kowalkowski, Terry Andrysiak, Steve Toczylowski, Emil Sitko.

Epic names. Hercules Bereolos, Cikai Champion, Achille Magioli, Arnaz Battle, Alton Maiden, Seraphine Bouwens, Garron Bible.

AC Italia. Vito Racanelli, Angelo Bertelli, Rocco Schiralli, Joe Scibelli, Cammille Piccone, Domenic Prinzivalli, Bruno Opela, Cedric Figaro.

Great Melting-Pot Names. The beauty of American names is that you can squish any two together, regardless of ethnic origin, and get something completely original and authentic: Hiawatha Francisco, Ron Israel, Reggie Ho, Lorenzo Rausch, Karmeeleyah McGill, Rashon Powers-Neal, Renaldo Wynn, Carlos Pierre-Antoine, Leroy Keach.

the All--Nickname team. More often than not, these guys went by their informal appellation: Hunk Anderson, Clipper Smith, Rocky Bleier, Fod Cotton, Cy DeGree, Smoush Donovan, Smousherette Bob Donovan, Thunder Flanigan, Moose Krause, Flash Gordon, Speedy Hart, Bunny Larkin, Curly Lambeau, Rocket Ismail, Dinger McCabe, Happy Lonergan, One-Play O'Brien.

the All-Banal team. Bill Cook, John Smith, Mike Favorite, Jimmy Friday, Frank Brew, Art Funk, Mark Green, Lake Dawson, John Law, Russ Nickel, Jack Snow, Jerry Groom, Bernie Meter, Tom Fine.

Department of Redundancy Department. Frank Gaul.

Super Slavs. Mirko Jurkovic, Mike Turkovich, Tom Hecomovich.

Presidential timber. John Adams, John Kennedy, Byron Abraham, Bob Washington, Preston Jackson, Alonzo Jefferson, Pete Buchanan, Tom Carter, Bob Reagan, Jim Bartlett.

Onomatopoetic names. Andy Heck, Vontez Duff, Andy Huff, Jim Hack, Dick Naab, Denis Szot, Kenny Spears, Fred Staab, Al Skat.

Alliterative names. Corwin Clatt, Bert Berry, Demetrius DuBose, Jarious Jackson, Julius Jones, Kevin Kopka, Mugsy McGrath, Ronnie Rodamer.

A good old-fashioned Irish donnybrook.. Would the O's really have a better O than the Mc's?

QB Coley O'Brien
RB Harry O'Boyle
RB Charlie O'Hara
WR Michael O'Hara
TE Dan O'Leary
LT Tom O'Brien
LG Brendan O'Connor
C Hugh O'Donnell
RG Bill O'Connor
RT Tom O'Regan
SE Bill O'Laughlin

QB Kevin McDougal
RB Mike McNair
RB Tom McHugh
WR Rhema McKnight
TE Oscar McBride
LT Bill McCarthy
LG Jim McGoldrick
C Gene McGuire
RG Steve McDaniels
RT Mike McGlinn
SE Fuzzy McGlew

Non-football names. With names like these, they should be in some other profession: Rusty Lisch (auto mechanic), Ray Whipple (insurance salesman), Benny Guilbeaux (New Orleans chef), Ivory Covington (director of British arthouse movies), Lyron Cobbins (character in a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story), Irv Smith (accountant), Basil Stanley (MI-6 operative), Lew Miskovitz and Jacob Rosenthal (rabbis), Menil Mavraides (Greek shipping magnate), Bill Shakespeare (not sure...let me think about this one).

Best pedigreed Notre Dame name. Rockne Morrissey.

The all-time great names. Dezera Cartier, Joe Montana, Vagas Ferguson, Gasper Urban, Arunas Vasys, Noah Van Hook-Drucker, Gus Dorais, LeShane Saddler, George Gipp, Sherrill Sipes, Jarvis Edison, Thaddeus Cassidy.

The best name in ND football history, bar none. Romanus Nadolney, nickname "Peaches". Peaches was a left tackle from Ironwood, Michigan who lettered in 1918.

As we all know, ND fans love to name things after Irish football greats, so feel free to clip and save this handy list for important occasions such as the acquisition of pets, birthing of children, or launching of ships.

Thanks to the UND.com's All-time Roster for help with this research. And if you have any other suggestions on great names, please don't hesitate to pass 'em along.

81

2005-01-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

It’s those kick returns. The football equivalent of a one-punch knockout, except that it is more deliciously anticipated, or at least awaited, yet always a surprise when it happens.

The ball floats skyward while down below nearly two dozen bodies perform a confused choreography. Sometimes the bodies fan out – either to pursue No. 81 or, depending on their alliances, to throw a miserable two-second block – two seconds? – on his behalf. Sometimes they converge at midfield, a dangerous clot of tacklers zeroing in on this poor man with the ball. Once in a while it’s an awful collision, the kick catcher looking up from the ball just in time to collect 230 hurtling pounds in his face mask. Usually in this game, the play ends with a whimper, the victim slowed by the gauntlet and eventually buried harmlessly in a pile.

But sometimes, more often with Tim Brown than anybody in the country, this muddle down below becomes suddenly transformed. This particle emerges from the mid-field jumble with an astonishing suddenness. The acceleration is breathtaking. “Like a draft when he goes by you,” Michigan State coach George Perles remarked.

No two of these are ever alike. Last week, against Air Force, Brown simply smashed up the middle to open field, or mostly open field. The punter remained lamely holding the fort. Punters are the worst.

“It can be kind of pitiful,” Brown agrees. “But I don’t think they open their eyes anyway.”

Or perhaps, as against Michigan State, it’s entirely freelance. One of those was supposed to be a fair catch and there was no return blocking scheme set up. But he caught the ball – not even Brown knows why – and curled toward a sideline. That acceleration again. He whooshed past everybody, his 4.3-second time in the 40 stirring up a breeze by his own bench.

“Sometimes I break tackles, sometimes I run by people,” he says, trying to be helpful. Explanations, though, are exasperating. “I find it hard to explain. I really don’t know what’s going on, except I’m trying not to get hit.”

It is one of football’s greatest sights, Tim Brown not getting hit. Picture it.

-- Richard Hoffer, LA Times

What picture sticks in your mind when you think of Tim Brown, Irish football hero, Heisman Trophy winner, and surefire lock for the NFL Hall of Fame?

He was of average build for a receiver, about six feet, one-ninety, and he wore oversized shoulder pads fit for a lineman. He caught passes, mostly over the middle, and somehow, with a juke and a cut he’d make you miss, and turn a ten-yard toss-and-catch into a seventy yard romp into the endzone. He got open – a lot. And he caught everything.

He was fast, but he wasn’t a sprinter. He had shifty moves; his hips seemed to go one way while his body went the other. His remarkable peripheral vision enabled him to see the entirety of the field, his eyes anticipating danger, and he’d adjust and change course in a split second.

He was a triple threat, taking handoffs, catching passes, and fielding kicks and punts. He pioneered the importance of “all-purpose yards”, and single-handedly made the stat famous.

And even when he didn’t touch the ball, he changed the dynamic of the game, drawing double (and triple) teams to open up other options, inducing short punts and squib kicks, throwing blocks downfield to help out his teammates.

Off the field, he was contemplative and analytical, with a strong faith and a real dedication to the guys in the locker room. Incredible work ethic. Great sense of humor.

The superlatives that resonate: hardworking, humble, smart, versatile. One of the all-time greats, and for many Irish fans, their absolute favorite player, ever. He had a combination of intense competitiveness and sincere modesty that’s so rare these days, and it’s no exagerration to say that Tim was good at everything he did, on and off the field. As Lou Holtz once said, “He’s special. He’s the type of guy, you’re around him just a few minutes and you can tell: he isn’t average. He’s isn’t an average athlete, and he isn’t an average person.”

And now, amazingly, it looks like we’re getting the legend back. The rumor’s been floating for about a week or so, but on Saturday Tim confirmed that he was in talks to return to Notre Dame in some capacity, probably as a co-recruiting coordinator or a player liaison. He may moonlight as a NFL receiver for another season or two, but come next year, he’ll be working for his alma mater once again.

And so, in light of this excellent news, we thought we’d take the opportunity to pay a little tribute to one of our favorites, No. 81.

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“You know how moms are.” -- Tim Brown.

When Tim was a kid growing up in Dallas, Texas, he knew he was talented. “I just realized there were certain things I could do that other kids just couldn’t seem to do. I don’t know why that is,” he remarked later. "Maybe it’s because I’m special.”

He grew up in a very religious family, and his mother, Josephine Brown, had a career path worked out for young Tim: go to college, become a Pentecostal minister.

(Even at the Heisman ceremony, right there in the Downtown Athletic Club, as the award was being presented, Mrs. Brown pushed the idea. “I love my son. I’m proud of him. But one day, he will give up football and become a minister. I really believe that,” she said to the reporters. For the record, Brown doesn’t reject the idea, but he seems to relegate it to later in life. “When the time comes, I will make that decision. But right now, I’ve got to do what’s in front of me.”)

Josephine objected to competitive sports, so she forbade her 5’4” son from playing freshman football in high school. Tim joined the band instead, but after a year he dropped the bass drum in favor of a helmet and shoulder pads, getting his father Eugene to sign the permission slip, unbeknownst to his mother.

“He kind of slipped football on me. Until the band leader called wanting to know why he was skipping practice, I was still thinking he was in the band,” Josephine said.

“The old band story,” said Tim. It worked.

Woodrow Wilson High had only 25 players on their varsity squad, and they were terrible, winning a grand total of four games in Tim’s career. Still, Brown was a standout. “I played wide receiver and running back, returned kickoffs and punts and also played quarterback and free safety. And I played them pretty well. I think that was a big eye-catcher for the recruiters.” He scored 25 touchdowns in his variety of roles, but the team never enjoyed success.

“Possibly it’s because when a bunch of guys think more about getting drunk than playing football, that’s what happens. They just had other aspirations, things they concentrated on, and football wasn’t one of them,” he remarked.

Funnily enough, Brown was also the sports editor of the school paper (and was elected VP of his senior class), and he often found he had to write feature stories about himself. Too modest to print a byline, he wrote them anonymously. “I always ended up writing about myself, but I tried to act like someone else wrote it when I wrote about games I played in. I wouldn’t put my byline on the story. But everyone knew who the sports editor was.”

He had a pretty good senior year on the football field, but in a theme that would repeat itself throughout his career, he was lightly regarded, and was not named to the Texas All-State HS team. Recruiting interest started to trickle in, with Iowa, Oklahoma, Nebraska among others doing some preliminary inquiry. But the decision came down to SMU and Notre Dame. Josephine Brown lobbied hard for SMU so that Tim would be close to home. In fact, Tim was close to signing with SMU when the recruiting scandals broke out, and SMU was placed on probation.

“I really thought I was going to end up at SMU. I’m definitely glad I didn’t end up going there. In the end, I figured if football didn’t work out and I had to have something to fall back on, a Notre Dame education was best," Tim said.

ND was overjoyed. Assistant coach Jay Robertson, who had recruited him, was effusive in his praise: “He was phenomenal – like smoke through a keyhole. He had the sixth sense of anticipating where trouble was. And he had the quickness and athletic ability to get away from it."

(By the way, is "like smoke through a keyhole" one of the most evocative descriptions you'll ever hear about a football player? I'm still not sure what it means, but it seems so damn cool.)

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“He’s a thrill to throw to. I can toss a five-yard pass and I never know what’s going to happen.” -- Terry Andrysiak

Brown arrived on Campus in the fall of '84 and promptly ingratiated himself to his teammates. "They called me Country Boy...they thought Texas was a hick state."

Tim saw the field as a freshman, playing third-string wide receiver and returning a few kicks. He got off to an ignoble start -- in his first game, he fumbled a kickoff and Purdue recovered.

The Boilermakers got 3 cheap points off the turnover, and ended up winning 23-21. Brown wasn't fazed. “I knew what I could do. It was just a matter of bouncing back.” Brown finished 1984 tied with Milt Jackson as the #2 receiver on the team.

The next year he started to make a few waves. Against Michigan State, he would return the first of many kickoffs in his career, a 93-yard beauty. It was the first Irish kickoff return for a TD in three years. Later in the game, he caught a 49-yard pass that set up another Irish touchdown.

Still, the Irish were laboring under the inept leadership of Gerry Faust, and were getting booed at home routinely. The offense was mostly a predictable and boring reliance on Allen Pinkett, a great talent, but over-utilized (immortalized in the slogan known to many Irish fans of that era: "Pinkett, Pinkett, Pass, Punt").

For Brown, the two years under Faust were “really tough. It’s nothing against him. He’s a great man and he did all he could. I just felt he was really in over his head.” Faust was fired and replaced by Lou Holtz after the season ended, and for Brown, this would prove to be quite fortuitous.

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“Who’s 81? He’s good." -- Beth Holtz.

When Lou Holtz arrived, everything changed for Brown. And for Holtz, discovering No. 81 on the roster was like finding a diamond in a coal mine. Holtz quickly decided that Brown was being underused, and found there were plenty of ways to get him involved in the offense. In addition to keeping him on the return teams, he bumped him up to first-string receiver, and even put him in at tailback in some wishbone formations.

“After three days of spring practice, I made the comment that Tim Brown may be the best football player I’ve ever seen," Holtz said. "He just grasped things. He has an awareness on the field of what he needs to do. He knows the down and distance and when to try to outrun someone and when to cut it back. It’s nothing you can teach or coach.”

This would be the dawning of the classic hybrid role that Holtz would install time and again, first with Tim Brown, and later with the Rocket.

It was the annual game against USC that really launched Brown's reputation as a premiere college football player. On that Thanksgiving weekend at the Coliseum, Tim had a 57-yard kickoff return, a 49-yard catch, and a 56-yard punt return. Brown had 13 touches and 252 all-purpose yards.

He finished out 1986 with 45 catches, 846 receiving yards, and 254 yards rushing on 59 carries, and 698 kickoff return yards, for a total of 1,937 all-purpose yards. He scored 9 touchdowns: 5 receiving, 2 rushing, and 2 on kickoff returns.

Brown had mixed feelings about running the ball out of the backfield. “I like running the ball because you have a chance to see where everybody’s going. But at this level, I don’t think I could take the punishment. "

Holtz agreed. “He’ll run physically, but if he does it on a continuous basis, he will not be the same player he is.”

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“What a move Timmy put on him. I don’t know where a dance is being held tonight, but that’s the only place you might see another move like that.” -- Lou Holtz.

1987 was the pinnacle of Brown's collegiate career, and the game against Michigan State was his finest moment. He returned not one, but two punts against the Spartans.

The first return was 71 yards, a beautiful tackle-breaking jaunt helped along by two key blocks. At one point Spartan cover man Todd Krumm taunted Brown as he ran up the field. "He was saying, Come on, come on," Brown related later. "So I came to him." One swivel-hip fake later, and Krumm was left in the dust.

The second return was shorter (66 yards) but much more impressive. ND put on a 10-man rush, and Brown had no blockers. In fact, “I was supposed to call for a fair catch” Brown said later.

“But we knew Greg Montgomery [MSU punter] had a 53-yard average. We figured he’d overkick the coverage, and that’s exactly what he did.”

Brown said he was going to run the return out of bounds for a short gain until he sensed the Spartans were overflying their mark. In a flash, he burst past all seven. He beat three others then raced toward Montgomery, the last defender.

“One and then another ran past me,” Brown said. “Then another one left his lane, and pretty soon it was just me and the punter.”

“I had to beat the punter. If I got tackled by the punter, I knew I’d hear it from my teammates.”

With a fake and a dodge, he put a beautiful move on Montgomery that buckled his knees and sunk him to the dirt.

Brown also caught 4 passes for 72 yards in the game. All told, he touched the ball 14 times for 275 all-purpose yards, and cemented his reputation as a legitimate Heisman candidate.

Brown was typically modest. “I think this game might have helped me out a little, but I think our defense deserves it more. They gave us field position.”

A few games later, Brown got to showcase how well he played without the ball. Against USC, he was held to only 109 all-purpose yards. Trojan coach Larry Smith had ordered squib kicks and high, short punts. Said Smith, “I’ll give them 10 yards on a kick with no return. I’m no dummy.”

Instead of carrying the offense, Brown threw several key blocks that paved the way for Irish scores.

He also had a long catch called back when an overzealouos referee called the play dead a little too early.

“The official told me it was an inadvertent whistle," Holtz said. "I couldn’t blame him. It’s natural from somebody who hasn’t seen much of Timmy Brown to think, on a play like that, ‘There ain’t no way that sucker can get out of this one.’”

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“It’s nice to pick up a magazine and see my name mentioned with the Heisman, but star-gazing can hurt you. My feeling is if it happens, it happens.” -- Tim Brown

As 1987 wound down, No. 81 found himself the subject of deserving, but intense Heisman hype. Yet, none of it came from Notre Dame, or Brown himself.

The low-key response was vintage Brown. “No, I’m not worried about it. I’m only concerned that we keep on winning and that I go out and play good. They were talking about me winning the Heisman, but I think those guys (the defense) deserve it.”

Holtz, perhaps in a bit of creative oratory, seemed to downplay it while bringing it up. “We don’t plan on doing anything special for Tim Brown and the Heisman award.”

Still, the hype was there, and as often happens when you get too much of a good thing, national sentiment turned against him late in the season. Brown heard a lot of reasons why he wasn’t worthy. There was focus on a couple of dropped passes, some terrible losses against Miami and Penn State. As the year went on, teams started to short kick him, kick it away or squib it, and his all-purpose yardage totals started to diminish.

“Air Force kicks two out of bounds and three more so high I had to call for fair catches. The one I returned, I kind of thought he was trying to kick it out of bounds, too," observed Brown. He had 25 return opportunities in ’86; only about half that in 87.

Furthermore, there was a sentiment that the whole idea of "all-purpose yards" was somehow illegitimate.

As one letter to the editor put it, “How long will the nation’s sportswriters let themselves be duped by the inflated 'total yards' statistic pumped out by the ND publicity department on the behalf of Tim Brown? Total Yards includes kickoff return yards which, for each kickoff, contains about 20 yards of running through empty space before meeting any tacklers. I am a 38-year-old executive and even I could lumber for 15 yards per kickoff return."

Pitt fullback Ironhead Hayward, a Heisman candidate himself, jumped into the fray. “I thought the Heisman was supposed to be somebody who dominated his position, not somebody who runs all over the field playing hide and seek.”

Mike Downey of the LA Times wrote, “If TB played for any other school, there is no way he would have a shot at the Heisman. His statistics just didn’t measure up." And yet, in the end, Downey argued that there was nobody more valuable to his team than Brown. “So there is nothing wrong with awarding the Heisman to someone who was extremely valuable to his team, as Tim Brown has been, rather than someone who just piled up better statistics.”

Brown essentially concurred. “I’m not going to apologize for going to ND. I went there because I felt I could better myself as a person, and I found out it helped me in football also.”

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"He’s incredibly valuable -- even when he doesn’t get the ball.” -- ND Heisman winner Leon Hart

In the history of the Heisman, runners and passers dominate. Even in the heyday of the two-way athlete, almost every winner was primarily a running back or a quarterback. And so it was something of an anomaly that Brown would win. He was only the 3rd receiver to take the award, the others being Johnny Rogers in 1972 and ND's own Leon Hart in 1949. Brown finished way ahead of the second place honoree, Don McPherson of Syracuse (the perennial trivia answer Gordie Lockbaum of Holy Cross finished third).

Although they were both receivers, Hart and Brown couldn’t have been more different. Hart was 6’5 and weighed 252 pounds, which was gargantuan for his era. He was a “giant end” who played both offense and defense.

Yet Hart admired Brown. “The important thing with Tim Brown is, he affects the game so subtly that anybody with a trained eye can see what’s occurring when the other team doesn’t kick to him and they loft the ball on a punt so that the teammates can get down under it. They only kick a 25-yard punt instead of a 40-yard punt, and Tim gained 15 yards just by standing there. So he signals for a fair catch and actually gains yards.”

“But the important thing is what Holtz does with him," Hart explained. "His talent is such that they double- and triple-cover him, they put him out wide to the right and then run the option opposite Brown, and the defense doesn’t have enough men left over the cover what ends up as the QB and the pitch man."

Brown responded to the award in his typical modesty, and shared the award with his team. “I thank God, and my coaches and teammates. I said from the start, this was a team award. It would not have been possible if they did not block for me or pass the ball to me. God bless you all, and thank you very much.”

Although the Heisman award is still populated by mostly QBs and RBs, Brown did pave the way for the consideration of other positions for the award, and both Desmond Howard and Charles Woodson owe a lot to his legacy.

(Random Heisman fact: an ND player has finished among the top 10 in Heisman ballotting 35 times in the 68-year history of the award.)

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"I got my towel back. That was that.” -- Tim Brown

Perhaps the low point of Brown's career -- and it wasn't even that low, despite the negative publicity that surrounded the incident -- happened during the Cotton Bowl against Texas A&M in 1987.

In the 4th quarter, Brown was tackled on a kickoff return. After the whistle sounded, he chased an A&M player and tackled him from behind because he had stolen his towel.

It was a blue towel with gold trim and a “T 81” embroidered on it. A gift from teammate Cedric Figaro.

The towel thief was Warren Barhorst, a non-scholarship player who is the infamous “Twelfth Man” on A&M’s kickoff coverage team – a longtime tradition in A&M lore, where a student walk-on plays on the kickoff coverage team.

The score was already 28-10 when Brown was tackled and Barhorst landed on top of him.

Brown got up and ran about 20 yards towards the Aggie bench to catch up with Barhorst. Brown jumped on his back and fell with him to the ground. Benches cleared and surrounded the scuffle.

“Evidently, they had something planned on the sidelines. One guy held me down, and another guy took my towel. I didn’t mean to tackle him. It looked like I tackled him, I know. But I got my towel back. That was that.”

Brown did his part in the game. Returned the opening kickoff 37 yards, caught 10 passes, including a TD, and finished with 238 all-purpose yards. But ND got crushed, 35-10.

Incidentally, Barhorst had been in on only 5 kickoffs all season, and when he landed on top of Brown, it was his first (and last) college tackle. “What a way to end my football career,” Barhorst exclaimed jubilantly.

Brown is a first-ballot NFL hall-of-famer. Wonder what Warren Barhorst is up to these days.

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“I’ve never seen anybody in this football game like Timmy Brown. His mere presence…his leadership...his blocking...the things he does without the ball.” -- Lou Holtz

Brown left ND as the all-time receiving leader with 2,493 yards. He accounted for 5,025 all-purpose yards, scored 22 touchdowns, and averaged 116.8 yards per game over his entire career.

Yet in a continuation of what seems a lifetime of underappreciation, many pro scouts were poo-pooing his accomplishments. Some were trumpeting Michael Irvin, Anthony Miller, or Sterling Sharpe as better pro prospects. Said Tampa Bay coach Ray Perkins of Sharpe, "He's more of a football player [than Brown]."

Brown ended up going 6th overall, to the Los Angeles Raiders. Aundray Bruce, Neil Smith, Bennie Blades, Paul Gruber, and Rickey Dixon were all picked ahead of him. Sterling Sharpe went one spot later, and Michael Irvin went 11th.

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Brown and the Raiders couldn't agree on a contract right away, but Brown, in an act that seems completely foreign to NFL fans these days, still reported to camp anyway. He signed a temporary 1-year deal at half the going rate just to get in camp and get started (later he agreed to a 4-year, $2.8 million deal.)

In his first regular-season game with the Raiders, he returned a kickoff 97 yards for a TD. By the end of the year, he had broken Gayle Sayers’s league record for total yardage by a rookie with 2317 yards. He racked up 725 receiving yards, 50 rushing, 1,098 on KO returns and 444 on punt returns.

He was named to the Pro Bowl as a rookie kick returner, and also won the Rookie of the Year.

Jim Murray, the great sportswriter of the LA Times, looked back on the low expectations for Brown following his selection by the Raiders:

“So, the Raiders sighed and took what they could get. In this case, it was Timothy Donell Brown, of the Dallas, Texas, Browns, a nice enough young man, soft-spoke, dependable. He’d gone to Notre Dame, which was good, but he was a kind of what-is-it quantity on the football field, which wasn’t.

Then, too, he had won the Heisman Trophy. Now for those of you who think this would be a big plus, you haven’t been paying close attention. Heisman winners have historically been something less than sensational in the pros…besides, there was a notion that for a Notre Damer to win it, all he had to do was be able to frost a glass and not fumble too much.

It’s hard to believe the Raiders didn’t have high hopes for this terrific Tim. But kickoff specialists are a dime a dozen in the NFL. Even Brown’s Heisman didn’t stand out: there were three of them already on the team.

It’s hard to think of a Heisman-Notre Dame luminary, the most celebrated college player of his season as a surprise in his pro debut. But Tim Brown has made a lot of NFL owners look frowningly at their general managers.

Who would have thought you’d get a star like this out of a Heisman? Here’s a guy who started at the top and went up, who rose above the adversity of reputation. Before him, all-purpose used to signify a guy who did a lot of things – with mediocrity. Tim Brown does so many things so well, the Raiders should just be glad he never took up baseball."

In the first game of 1989, he blew out his knee and missed the rest of the season.

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“I hate that I have to ask to play football, but if it comes down to that, I’m going to do whatever it takes to get me on the field.” -- Tim Brown

Recovering from the injury took a lot longer than Brown anticipated, even after it was completely healed. He found that when he returned the team, he wasn't nearly as involved in the offense, and he soon was begging for playing time.

To be sure, he wasn't a "me-first" player by any stretch, not Keyshawn saying "give me the damn ball." Rather, he felt like he could contribute, and he didn't think he was doing enough.

“Every time you lose, you can’t help but ask yourself, ‘Is there anything more I could have done?’ Then, it starts to become an ego thing.”

Later, he explained how he went to talk things over with Al Davis. He described what the eccentric Raider owner said to him, mimicking his drawl: “Ya doing aw great job, Timmer, just keep it up. We love ya.”

But Al loved breakaway speed, long bombs and track stars. Willie Gault – fast as lightning, running the streak pattern -- was his prototype, not a dependable but boring over-the-middle possession guy like Brown. Brown was frustrated and contemplated leaving.

He thought a clause in his contract would make him a free agent after the season, but the commissioner ruled in the Raiders favor, and he was stuck with the team for another two years.

But rather than slinking into training camp and pouting his way through the season, Brown took the opposite approach. “I prepared myself harder than I ever have in the off-season. And I worked harder than I ever did in training camp. I wasn’t going to get the money, but I still play this game because I love it.”

He gradually worked his way back into the offensive scheme, and established a great chemistry with new Raiders QB Jeff Hostetler.

Jim Murray again, looking back on this period:

“The Raiders didn’t quite know what to do with Tim. He was a wide receiver but he also returned punts and kickoffs. Stumped, they put him on special teams.

Al Davis’s quarterbacks were known as mad bombers, blitzkriegers. His teams didn’t need the ball much. Let the other guys push it up through the mud. Davis’s teams struck like cavalry.

They had some trouble seeing Tim Brown in this scheme. Tim is not going to anchor the Olympic relay team. They liked his moves – on kickoffs and punts. They were less sold on fly patterns. One year, in 1991, he started only one game.

But gradually, one thing began to dawn on this Raider brain trust: When he was in there – usually on third and long – Brown would be as wide open as Dodge City on a Saturday night.

Brown perfected his craft. He studied defenders the way a pitcher studies hitters, but mostly he studied coverages. He found the soft spots, the open spaces in his opponents’ zones. He exploited them.

And now, Tim Brown is striking a blow for Heisman winners everywhere."

In ’94 he had his best season to date. He caught 89 balls for 1,309 receiving yards and made the Pro Bowl for the first time as a receiver, not just a special teams player.

And from there, he was simply one of the best players in the league for over a decade, and one of the best players in the history of the game.

Brown went on to capture almost all of the Raider franchise records: most pro bowls, most touchdowns, most receiving yards, most receptions, most yards from scrimmage, most punt returns, most 1,000 yard seasons (9).

Led the Raiders 11 times in receiving yards.
Was the only raider to score on a run, a reception, a punt return and a kickoff return.
Went to 9 pro bowls.

His overall NFL standing is among the top two or three at his position. He's had the most consecutive 50+ catch seasons in NFL history (11).

He's 2nd all time receiving yards in the NFL, after Jerry Rice.

He's 3rd in receptions all-time – and he could move up to second with 7 more catches.

And he's tied for 3rd in receiving touchdowns (100).

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Last year, Brown was let go by the Raiders, and he elected to sign a one-year contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers rather than retire. At the press conference to announce he would no longer be a Raider, Brown was his usual honest, gracious self.

“This is a very emotional day for me. I gave my heart and soul to the organization. I battled as much as I possibly could on the field, and tried to restore the image off the field. Obviously coming in here, me being a Notre Dame guy, everybody said that I didn’t fit in here as the typical Raider. I have thoroughly enjoyed my career here. Mr. D and I have not always seen eye to eye, but we have always had respect for each other.”

For his part, Al Davis praised Brown. “One of the truly great players who has ever played the game, and obviously one of the truly great players that has ever played for the Raiders.”

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“One thing I have never done is take the game for granted. I have always known that any given play could be your last.” -- Tim Brown

On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Tribune reported that Tim Brown will be joining Charlie Weis's staff in some capacity this year, although exactly what his role will be is dependent on if he chooses to play another year in the NFL at the same time.

"I will have some title there,'' Brown said of Notre Dame. ''And whatever the title is, it won't interfere with me playing ball - whether I play ball or do TV or whatever.''

Brown met Thursday with Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White to discuss aiding the Irish in their attempted return to prominence.

Brown's role likely will be decided during a future meeting with new coach Charlie Weis.

''Charlie's not in the loop right now,'' Brown said, referring to Weis' role as offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots. ''Once he's out of the playoffs, after the Super Bowl, we'll be able to come up with an official title and see if I can help with recruiting or be a player liaison or something so players there can have an outlet.''

Brown said it might be another month or two before he decides whether to retire as a player.

''I don't know if I'll make a decision before March or not,'' he said.

Brown said he intends to devote a lot of time to the Irish program if he decides to retire as a player.

'If I'm not playing I can have a lot more of an impact,'' he said. ''If I do decide to play ball, then it's up to what Charlie wants me to do. After the playoffs we'll have a chance to iron some things out.''

Whatever the exact timeline happens to be, it seems certain that Tim will be returning to ND, and fairly soon. Even if he plays another year in the NFL, it looks like he's pretty close to retiring, and when he does, we can expect his role and responsibility for the Irish to be substantial.

For a while in the mid-90s, I worked in El Segundo, California, where the Raiders had their practice facility, and I used to see Tim out at lunch a couple of times a year. Always had a smile for me when I mentioned the ND connection; always was gracious in talking to anyone who recognized him and said hello.

Like most fans, I remember Tim Brown for his great catches and his electrifying kick returns. I remember the games and the touchdowns, the Heisman award and the towel incident. I remember liking the Raiders just a little bit more when they drafted Tim, and I remember feeling some gratification that Brown was one of the few Heisman winners to actually live up to his billing.

But I'm glad I had the opportunity to take a look back over his career, and dig up some stories that maybe I'd missed or I'd forgotten. The complete picture of Tim Brown, the person, is one of not just God-given talent, but incredible honesty, integrity, and perseverance.

I can't imagine a better homecoming and sense of personal satisfaction for Tim in this next stage of his professional life, nor can I imagine a greater benefit for the University than having No. 81 back on campus. Congratulations, Tim: another brilliant run is about to begin.

ND Coaching Search: The Movie

2004-12-15T02:00:00.001-05:00

These last few weeks have not been the feel-good comedy of the season. But they'd still make for a decent movie: lots of action (firings, hirings, people going ballistic in the press), some head-spinning plot twists (It's Urban! No, it's Clements! No, wait...), and loaded with mystery and intrigue (who really did fire Ty? Why did Meyer turn us down? And how many razors did Chandra have to go through to get that perfect sheen?).

We got together at BGS to cast the movie, which we plan to shop around to the studios. Here's who we have lined up so far:

charlie weis john goodman

monk malloy donald sutherland

john jenkins gary burghoff

tyrone willingham samuel l. jackson

urban meyer frankie muniz

pat mccartan dave thomas

chandra johnson curly neal

dave duerson reginald veljohnson

joe theisman don johnson

mike shanahan chuck e. cheese

brady quinn gary busey

kevin white john ratzenberger

darius walker smoove B

bill diedrick kent baer

kent baer bill diedrick

bill belichick sam kinison

tom clements gary cole

nathan hatch max wright

gene corrigan leslie nielsen

bobby petrino james cagney

michael wilbon francis

I think that would make for a very, very mediocre movie.