In 1988, Notre Dame won the national championship, beating undefeated West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to finish 12–0. It was Notre Dame’s eleventh national title, its fourth since 1950, and the endpoint of the Fighting Irish’s third-longest title drought since we started winning titles under Knute Rockne in 1924.
In 1989, Notre Dame began the season 11–0, but we lost to Miami at their place the weekend after Thanksgiving. We finished 12–1.
In 1990, we fell early, upset by Stanford in South Bend. We finished 9–3. This was the year of the clipping penalty in that Orange Bowl against Colorado, but we wouldn’t have won it all even if we won that game. We’d lost to Penn State in November, coughing up a two-touchdown lead to a team which, incidentally, featured Al Golden at tight end.
In 1991, we lost in September in Ann Arbor, then late in the season to Tennessee to finish off all title hopes. We ended the season 10–3.
In 1992, we tied Michigan in the season’s second week, then were upset by Stanford at home again to fall to 3–1–1. We won out, finishing 10–1–1, but it wasn’t enough for a title.
In 1993, we were likely the best team in the country, beating Florida State in a good old-fashioned Game of the Century at Notre Dame Stadium. The next week, we blew it against Boston College. We finished 11–1, and Florida State won the title.
In 1994, the wheels came loose. We lost to Michigan in Week 2, then dropped three of four games midway through the fall. We ultimately finished 6–5–1. It was Lou Holtz’s second-worst season in South Bend.
In 1995, Northwestern came to town and beat us to open the year. After losing to Ohio State at the Horseshoe to end September, we won right up until the Orange Bowl, where Florida State took us down. We finished with a 9–3 mark.
In 1996, Ohio State won in South Bend, sweeping the home-and-home and putting us in an early hole. Three weeks later, we lost to Air Force in overtime, and the Lou Holtz era turned towards its terminus. Before Senior Day against Rutgers, Holtz announced he was stepping down at only 59 years old. The reasons were varied and remain debated, but Beth Holtz’s throat cancer was at the very least a significant factor. In the prevailing narrative, that piece has gotten overshadowed a little.
In 1997, Bob Davie took over, promoted from defensive coordinator. This was bad. His first move was to fire offensive line coach Joe Moore. His second move was to lose to Purdue. The team rallied from a 2–5 start, beating LSU in Baton Rouge and finishing the regular season 7–5, but we lost a rematch with the Tigers in the Independence Bowl. The next summer, Moore successfully sued Notre Dame for age discrimination. The dark ages had begun.
In 1998, we opened the year by upsetting Michigan, reigning national champions and bastards then as much as they are now. We lost the next week at unranked Michigan State. Eventually, we’d get to a 9–1 record, but we lost to USC to end the regular season and to Georgia Tech in the Gator Bowl. 9–3.
In 1999, Davie—fresh off a contract extension—opened the year 1–3, losing to Michigan, Purdue, and Michigan State over consecutive weeks. Again Notre Dame rallied, but another losing streak ended the season. A few weeks after the final game, the program was put on NCAA probation because of the Kim Dunbar scandal.
In 2000, the Irish beat Texas A&M to start things off, then nearly took down top-ranked Nebraska, falling in overtime after losing starting quarterback Arnaz Battle to a wrist injury. Two weeks later, we dropped to 2–2, losing at Michigan State. We finished the regular season with seven straight wins but were then obliterated by Oregon State in the Fiesta Bowl.
In 2001, we opened the year 0–3, scoring a combined 23 points in losses to Nebraska, Michigan State, and Texas A&M. We finished 5–6, and Davie was fired following the season finale. We tried to hire George O’Leary, the head coach at Georgia Tech. We briefly did hire George O’Leary, the head coach at Georgia Tech. We ran George O’Leary out on his fifth day of the job after learning he never played football at New Hampshire and didn’t earn a master’s degree from the nonexistent NYU–Stony Brook. We hired Tyrone Willingham instead.
In 2002, Willingham raced out to an 8–0 start after opening the season unranked. It was a wonderful two months. Then, in November, wearing green jerseys against 4–3 Boston College, we lost 14–7 at home. We’d go on to lose badly at USC and badly to NC State in the Gator Bowl. It was our first ten-win season since 1993.
In 2003, the roster turned over. Shane Walton went to the NFL. Jeff Faine went to the NFL. Battle—now a wide receiver—went to the NFL. Notre Dame lost the second game of the year 38–0 in Ann Arbor. Two weeks later, freshman Brady Quinn took over for Carlyle Holiday at quarterback. We finished 5–7.
In 2004, we responded to a season-opening loss at BYU by upsetting eighth-ranked Michigan at home. Kyle Orton whooped us in October, though, and we finished the regular season only 6–5. Prior to the Insight Bowl, Notre Dame fired Willingham, a move so controversial that even the outgoing Monk Malloy criticized it publicly, calling the days surrounding it the only time he’d been embarrassed to be president of Notre Dame. We lost that Insight Bowl. Oregon State, again.
In 2005, Urban Meyer chose Florida over Notre Dame, leading us to Charlie Weis, who—like Willingham—briefly looked like a savior. The Brady Quinn era was in full swing, we beat Michigan in Ann Arbor, and even with the overtime loss to Michigan State—disastrous, to be sure—we were 4–1 and ranked in the top ten when Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush came to South Bend. We lost that game controversially, won out from there, then lost convincingly to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl while Laura Quinn received much media attention for wearing a combined Brady Quinn/A.J. Hawk jersey. (If you missed the 2006 Fiesta Bowl, Laura Quinn married A.J. Hawk.) Quinn finished fourth in Heisman voting.
In 2006, expectations were massive, but Michigan crushed us in South Bend early in the year, USC crushed us in Los Angeles to end the regular season, and LSU crushed us in the Sugar Bowl. “Tiger bait.” Quinn finished third in Heisman voting.
In 2007, things got really bad. Quinn was off to the NFL. Jeff Samardzija was off playing minor league baseball. The quarterback room consisted of Jimmy Clausen, Evan Sharpley, Demetrius Jones, and Zach Frazer. Clausen and Sharpley saw the most action as we started the year 1–9, at one point losing to Navy for the first time since 1963.
In 2008, we did bounce back. We beat Michigan, and the freshman class—Michael Floyd, Kyle Rudolph, Dayne Crist—was stacked. But after a four-overtime Halloween weekend loss to Pitt, we limped to a 7–6 finish, and on Senior Day, much-desired recruit Manti Te’o witnessed an aggrieved student section pelting the football team with snowballs. Mercifully, we did win our first bowl game since New Year’s Day 1994. Fifteen years after defeating SWC Champion Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl, we spent Christmas Eve 2008 routing six-loss Hawaii in the Hawaii Bowl. How times had changed.
In 2009, we lost to Tate Forcier at Michigan, but Jimmy Clausen threw for 400 yards and beat Washington in an overtime thriller to get us to the USC game at 4–1. By this point, 4–1 was hardly enough to land Notre Dame in the top 25, but we hung with the sixth-ranked Trojans, losing when Duval Kamara slipped in the endzone on what would have been the game-tying touchdown pass. Three weeks later, we lost to Navy again, and two weeks after that, we lost to UConn. After the UConn game, someone punched Clausen in the face at CJ’s, leaving him with a visible black eye. One week later, Toby Gerhart murdered our children and the Charlie Weis era was over. Golden Tate did receive two first-place Heisman votes, though.
In 2010, the Brian Kelly era opened with a victory over Purdue, but we choked away a win against Denard Robinson and Michigan after Crist returned from injury and led a rousing comeback bid. In October, four days after losing yet another time to Navy, student manager Declan Sullivan was negligently killed when his hydraulic lift blew over in a windstorm.
This was, without question, the low point in the history of Notre Dame football.
After a loss to Tulsa in which Crist ruptured his patella tendon, Tommy Rees took over as the starting quarterback. Notre Dame bullied 8–1 Utah on Senior Day, beat Army at Yankee Stadium, and beat Lane Kiffin’s USC in Los Angeles to make the Sun Bowl, where we won convincingly over Miami.
In 2011, Brian Kelly opened the season with a rain-delayed loss to USF, then fell to Michigan in Ann Arbor in the Gary Gray game. With quarterback duties split between Rees, Crist, and human cannon Andrew Hendrix, the Irish managed to get to 7–3 on our way to an 8–5 finish. The following offseason, Rees—never known for being fleet of foot—was run down by a South Bend cop while fleeing a party, then pepper-sprayed as he kneed the officer in the chest.
In 2012…
In 2012, Notre Dame opened the season by thrashing Navy in Ireland, the game highlighted by 300-pound (and 4.9-second 40-yard dasher) Stephon Tuitt returning a fumble for a touchdown. Back in South Bend, we survived Purdue when Rees, booed by the student section as he relieved a seemingly injured Everett Golson, led the offense down the field for a game-winning Kyle Brindza kick. Five days later, Te’o’s father told the Chicago Tribune that Te’o’s grandmother and girlfriend had both passed away. Notre Dame beat Michigan State in East Lansing, 20–3, then returned home to beat Michigan 13–6 after a tear-stained pep rally in which Te’o spoke publicly about his grief.
From there: We crushed Miami in Chicago. We held off Stanford in the rain on an overtime goal line stand. We came back from a second-half deficit to beat BYU without Golson. We took down Oklahoma in Norman. We came back from a 14-point fourth-quarter gap and survived Pitt in three overtimes, saved by a missed field goal along the way. We beat Boston College and Wake Forest, then got to 12–0 by escaping USC, Te’o notching yet another interception on his way to a narrow runner-up Heisman finish. Then, Alabama smoked us in the national championship and we found out Te’o had been catfished.
In 2013, Golson got suspended from school for cheating and we lost at Michigan to open September, then again to Oklahoma at home later in the month. We’d finish the season 9–4, beating Rutgers in the Fiesta Bowl.
In 2014, we shut out Michigan behind a dominant performance in Brian VanGorder’s second game as defensive coordinator, but after losing in Tallahassee on a controversial pick play, we dropped our last four games of the regular season, including an overtime defeat at home at the hands of Northwestern. Mercifully, we edged LSU in the Music City Bowl to finish 8–5.
In 2015, we opened the season by decimating Texas, then escaped Virginia in Charlottesville as DeShone Kizer relieved an injured Malik Zaire. After beating a hyped Georgia Tech, we entered October 4–0, ranked sixth in the country. At Clemson, we fell behind 21–3 in a hurricane, but we managed to get back in it, Kizer throwing for two fourth-quarter touchdowns and rushing for a third. An attempted game-tying two-point conversion came up short, and we lost to Deshaun Watson, Dabo Swinney, and a Tigers team who’d go on to nearly take down Alabama in the national championship. Some have called this Notre Dame team our best since 1993, until this one. They have a case. We entered Thanksgiving weekend still in playoff contention, but while we bottled up Christian McCaffrey, Stanford beat us through the air. The season ended with an emphatic loss to Ohio State in which Jaylon Smith shredded his left knee.
In 2016, high expectations met disaster. We lost a two-overtime melee in Austin, beat Nevada, then fell to Michigan State back home. Then, the wheels came off. Duke beat us. NC State beat us in an other hurricane. Stanford beat us. We lost to Navy again. Notre Dame’s final record was 4–8, and VanGorder was fired after the Duke game.
In 2017, low expectations met promising results. We nearly beat Georgia in a stadium full of Georgia fans (our own stadium, to be clear) before Georgia went and won 13 games, the SEC, the Rose Bowl, and nearly the national championship. Josh Adams ran all over USC in the first of many recent South Bend beatdowns. We reached November in playoff position, 7–1 with all our wins by three possessions or more. But Miami rocked us, we lost handily to Stanford, and it was off to the Miles Boykin Citrus Bowl win over LSU. 10–3.
In 2018, Ian Book replaced a struggling Brandon Wimbush after three games, and with the help of an advantageous schedule we managed our second 12–0 regular season under Kelly. In the Cotton Bowl—a playoff semifinal—the offense never got going and Julian Love went down early, opening the door for a 30–3 beatdown at the hands of Trevor Lawrence and Clemson. The gap was still wide.
In 2019, we went to Athens and had a shot to beat Georgia on the final drive, but it came up short. Any playoff hopes were dashed a month later when Michigan pulverized us in the rain in Ann Arbor. We went 11–2, but we got that eleventh win in the Camping World Bowl.
In 2020, playing a Covid-altered schedule, we again put together an undefeated regular season, going 10–0 against USF and a full ACC slate. The highlight of the season was a two-overtime upset of Clemson in a partially closed Notre Dame Stadium. The lowlight was a noncompetitive loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship. We held our own better in the playoff than we did in 2012 or 2018, holding Alabama to “only” 31 points. But we lost to the eventual national champions by three possessions.
In 2021, we dashed our early momentum when Cincinnati upset us at home to open October. We finished the regular season 11–1, but the head-to-head loss to Cincy kept us out of the playoff. This turned out to be a very good thing. Three days after that eleventh win, Kelly shocked South Bend by leaving for LSU. Three days after that, after much public lobbying by the players, Marcus Freeman was named the 30th head coach in Notre Dame football history. Freeman opened his tenure by mismanaging a 21-point halftime lead in the Fiesta Bowl, a game Oklahoma State eventually won by two points.
In 2022, Freeman followed up an expected loss to Ohio State with a devastating loss at home to Marshall, then fell to 3–3 in mid-October with a similarly perplexing defeat at the hands of woebegone Stanford. In a sign of things to come, the Irish rallied, exposing an over-ranked Clemson team to open November in a rejuvenating, landmark win. Still, the regular season ended just 8–4, as Caleb Williams cooked our secondary and Austin Jones ran all over us in Los Angeles.
In 2023, we again met Ohio State, and expectations were higher but still not high. We entered the game a 3.5-point home underdog. Still, we nearly beat the Buckeyes, only to miss multiple chances to wrap the game up in the closing minutes. In the end, we lost through more mismanagement. On the final two plays of the game, we somehow had only ten defensive players on the field. Two weeks later, having narrowly survived Riley Leonard and Duke in Durham, Louisville brought the blitz and left Sam Hartman bloodied and befuddled. Playoff aspirations were again gone, and while the Irish did rally to throttle USC—Xavier Watts effectively ended Caleb Williams’s college career—a disappointing loss to Clemson took a sneakily good Irish team to a 10–3 finish.
In 2024? We don’t yet know what the book will say. It’ll mention Leonard. It’ll mention the loss to NIU. It’ll probably mention Troy bailing us out by hiring Gerad Parker, a move which opened the door for Mike Denbrock’s return at offensive coordinator. It’ll mention the first home game in College Football Playoff history, a dispatching of Indiana that wasn’t as close as the final score looked. It’ll mention a terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, a rising count of injuries, and wins over Georgia and Penn State that would have seemed inconceivable given that injury count if we’d been told about them back in August. It’ll mention the win at Kyle Field. It’ll mention Jeremiyah Love’s outrageous touchdown runs. It’ll mention Christian Gray’s interception and Mitch Jeter’s kick. It’ll forget dozens if not hundreds of things which were so captivating in the moment, little things like the fake punt that was called back against Virginia and the bludgeoning of Navy’s offense in those early moments at MetLife Stadium. It’ll conclude with tonight, either the conclusion or the continuation of 36 years of waiting for that long-promised Return to Glory. We didn’t know a return was necessary in 1993. We thought the return was here in 2002. We came close to returns in 2005 and 2015, and we thought we came close in 2012 as well, only for Alabama to leave those cleat marks all over every one of our brains. We got better in fits and starts. We got worse in ways we once thought impossible. We lost in the rain and in the snow and, in infuriating tragedy, in the wind. We were overrated, then disrespected, then written off. We stopped landing five-stars. We started developing five-stars of our own. We turned the program over to a defensive coordinator, just like we did at the end of 1995. That coach shocked us with early losses, much like the one from the 90’s. But Marcus Freeman did something Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham and Charlie Weis never could, and he did things Brian Kelly couldn’t do either. Now, he gets a chance to do what Lou Holtz did, and what Knute Rockne did, and what Ara Parseghian did. He gets a chance to join Frank Leahy and Dan Devine alongside those storied men.
The Game: Of Course We’ll Play Some Zone
Pivoting to these next twelve hours…
I’m surprised at how much media is taking Leonard Moore at his word when he says we’re going to play our usual Cover 1 man scheme tonight. It’s not that I think Moore’s comments (and those of plenty others) are gamesmanship. I’m sure we’ll play a lot of our best, most comfortable scheme. But it’s not like defenses run one coverage for sixty minutes of football. We’re going to mix it up. We’re going to try to trick Will Howard. We’re going to try to exploit Howard’s weaknesses. We’re going to adjust to Ohio State’s opening drive, and adjust to Ohio State’s adjustments, and adjust to how Ohio State adjusts to our adjustments.
Whatever we do, though, the Cover 1 man conversation does get at where this game will most likely be won or lost: For Notre Dame to pull off tonight’s upset, Moore and Christian Gray and Jordan Clark each probably need to play a career game.
We don’t know for sure that this will be the case. You can rattle Ryan Day. Michigan’s done it for years. Lou Holtz seemed to do it last season. Every now and then, Day coaches like someone convinced him he isn’t a man if he doesn’t win between the tackles.
The issue with this tonight is that Day might be able to beat us between the tackles, if he does try to go that route. We still lost Rylie Mills. Ohio State’s latest line shuffle seems to have worked out. Ohio State has good backs. Gee Scott Jr. is a problem in the receiving game and will command a lot of attention from our linebackers.
But most likely, whether we play exclusively man or a lot of zone or do the likely thing and throw a lot of looks at an overwhelm-able quarterback, we’re going to need Moore to play his best against Jeremiah Smith, and Clark to play his best against Emeka Egbuka, and Gray to play his best against Carnell Tate. Moore’s looked the part ever since he entered the lineup. Clark’s looked the part more and more as the season’s gone on. Gray looked the part in the Orange Bowl against Penn State, where his play was more than what turned into the game-winning interception.
Our offense might struggle, but as long as it protects the ball, offense is not where we’ll win or lose this game. This game will be decided by our defense and Ohio State’s offense. We need every advantage we can gain on that side of the ball. We need to make every tackle and win the war of fourth downs. We need a lot of people to play and call the games of their lives.
We are the underdog. We need the confidence of the favorite, but we need that underdog aggression. Don’t let a fourth-and-short pass us by.
The Opportunity: These Don’t Come Often
We’re a big underdog, and we’ve come a long way, and there’s a temptation to emotionally prepare for work tomorrow morning in a scenario in which we’ve lost. “The future’s bright.” “We haven’t made it this far in 30 years.” That kind of thing. Even against great odds, though, our chances are better tonight than they’ll be season, and they’re better tonight than they’ll be in any preseason setting over the rest of time. College football has too many powers and is too fickle a sport for a preseason or even pre-playoff favorite to enjoy the opportunity we get in tonight’s game. Tonight is do or die. We could build the best college football team in America and still take years to get back to this stage.
The Moment: We’re Riding With Our Guys
As the morning ticks on and the apprehension rises, I’m drawn again to gratitude for the guys who got us here. Denbrock and Golden, each actively choosing Notre Dame. Those who hired Denbrock and Golden, betting big on an area of the sport where Notre Dame can win big. Love, throwing caution to the wind and not only playing through his knee injury, but playing like a man possessed. Watts, the closest thing this defense has seen to Manti Te’o since Te’o graduated, sure-handed and a leader and a firewall at safety just like Te’o was at linebacker. Leonard, who was asked last week what it would mean to win a national championship and spoke not about his own career, but about how much he wants us fans to have this. So many more. Most of all, Marcus Freeman, a Buckeye himself who chose and chooses us, a leader who has shaped every aspect of this football program, a man who is changing Notre Dame’s identity as a university and is changing it for the better.
Whatever happens tonight, we’re lucky to win or lose with these guys. We’re lucky these guys are our football team. That’s almost all you can ask for.
But ask for more, we do. We ask for history. We ask for our four-stars to beat their five-stars, for our tenacity to beat their talent. We ask for a place for Leonard in Notre Dame lore, and a place for Freeman on a pedestal outside Notre Dame Stadium. We ask for 36 years of frustration, embarrassment, and questioning to end. We ask for a national championship, the very thing we helped pioneer one hundred years ago. In Atlanta, Georgia, playing the Ohio State Buckeyes, we ask for something as massive as it is simple: We ask for one more win.
God. Country. Notre Dame.
In glory everlasting.
