I know this is an underwhelming headline. It’s an equivocation, an uncertainty. But it’s also a novel truth. Notre Dame might win the national championship. This is a new thing in our day and age.
There have been moments, these last thirty years. Had only one of Kansas State and Oregon gone down on that fateful 2012 night, the drought might be over already. When we beat Clemson in the DJ Uiagalelei game, we thought it might be happening. But we knew we weren’t the best team in the country in 2012, and if we didn’t, we could see it with our own eyes when Alabama came out the tunnel. In 2020 as well, we learned the lesson emphatically, when James Skalski returned before the ACC Championship and Clemson’s defense suddenly had a lot fewer problems against our offense.
That last part is the difference right now. It’s not that a national championship is possible. It’s that it’s possible that we’re the best team in the country. We don’t know whether we are, of course. That’s what we’re going to find out, and we understand how many will say we’re going to get rocked by Georgia “like we always do,” neglecting real results and conflating Georgia with 2012 Alabama, 2018 Clemson, and 2020 Alabama, three of the best teams in college football history. But the fact we have a chance to find out again is special. We might win the national championship. We might be the best team in the country.
It was, as everyone else is saying or has said, a landmark evening for Notre Dame football. Sure, Indiana wasn’t a great team. Sure, we let them in it at the end. But there’s no overstating how much Notre Dame needed this. Notre Dame needed to lay a whooping on someone in a playoff game, and Notre Dame needed to protect its Hoosier State throne. The feeling was apocalyptic, and the early sunset just one night before the solstice only added to the eschatology. Hearing the crowd erupt for the victorious coin toss, the Xavier Watts interception, and the already-iconic Jeremiyah Love touchdown run felt like watching the gates of Hell get torn asunder. It was a liberating night.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but at home here in Texas, I was an anxious wreck all day. I was a wreck the Sunday the bracket came out. I was a wreck on Thursday, as the “Are you going?” texts flew around the group chats. I was a wreck on Friday, so on edge that when the neighbor high schooler, a Gen Z Austinite with perfectly coifed hair, saw me in the alley an hour before kickoff and said, “Big game tonight,” all I could offer in response was, “I am so nervous.” All day, they made us listen to Curt Cignetti call himself the greatest leader in the history of humanity. All day, they lobbed threats at us that Indiana’s time had somehow already come. But then ESPN showed Marcus Freeman leading the Player Walk through a pitch-black campus filled with the bundled, roaring faithful, and it was game on.
Again, I don’t know about the rest of you, but Freeman’s pregame interview stirred something up in me. After a whole day watching Curt Cignetti fellate himself on cable television with nary a slap on the wrist from the FCC, Freeman’s humble fire was invigorating. Freeman could have spent all that time on College Gameday too. ESPN would have had him. But Freeman had a football game to coach, and coach it he did. Aside from the last few minutes and a handful of blown coverages, Notre Dame executed, and Notre Dame was undaunted when confronted with adversity. Play after play after play, Notre Dame beat the shit out of Indiana. Thank God our children have Marcus Freeman to look up to.
Thank God as well that we can tell our children about Xavier Watts. I won’t get heretical and equate the man to Manti Te’o, but when there’s a ball to be caught, Xavier Watts does. not. drop. that. football. He gets an appropriate amount of love for his football IQ. His hands, though, are such a special thing. It seems that every opportunity he creates, he finishes, and he does it again and again in our biggest games. The same man who turned Caleb Williams’s college fairytale into a burned book ripped the heart out of Kurtis Rourke, exposing him as the great MAC quarterback that he’s always been.
On that play, Notre Dame won the game. Riley Leonard’s interception was funky. Falling behind would have been disastrous. Then Xavier Watts made a play which players of Indiana’s caliber don’t make, and the offensive line opened a hole which players of Indiana’s caliber can’t close, and Jeremiyah Love broke off a run which players of Indiana’s caliber couldn’t catch up to. We were bigger, faster, and stronger than they were, just like Alabama was bigger, faster, and stronger than us in 2012. We had the athletes. We had the discipline. We had the respect for the moment which Curt Cignetti did not possess. One pair of possessions later, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Indiana was done for.
I’m as baffled as anyone by Cignetti’s cowardice. He took the ball out of Rourke’s hands for three and a half quarters, and while Rourke was one of the most limited QB’s in this playoff, passing the football was also Indiana’s only chance to win the game. Rourke was a great MAC quarterback. Notre Dame got beat just this year by a mediocre MAC quarterback. Indiana’s only success was through the air, and Cignetti insisted on throwing the football.
The last few possessions were admittedly scary. It was that 2008 Navy game again, and thankfully, we survived it. Hopefully we can survive however much of the Sugar Bowl we need to without Rylie Mills, Rocco Spindler, and Bryce Young. The game felt a little like the Purdue game with so many injuries amidst the triumph. We rallied from those injuries, and from Benjamin Morrison’s in October, but can we keep doing it? I know Georgia lost its quarterback, but it feels like there should be an asterisk on the Sugar Bowl broadcast at least mentioning Morrison. Just toss it up there below the scorebug: *Benjamin Morrison is really good. Also, people forget the Bush Push was illegal when it happened.
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The men’s and women’s basketball teams both won. More on them on Friday as we prepare for the thick of conference play. The men’s team ran into Robby Carmody, I’m assuming by design? Good to see him score 13 in his return to the Joyce Center. Out of everyone in that class, he was the only one that never left us with our heads in our hands. Maybe that’s because he always got hurt too fast to disappoint us, but whether it’s fair or not, I’ll always have a soft spot for Robby Carmody.
Only one other note today, and that’s that the volleyball Final Four in Louisville was another reminder of how badly we need to figure that sport out at Notre Dame. It would be really fun to have a good volleyball team. Really, really fun. Jack Swarbrick designed us a great playoff format, so I’m not going to complain too much, but I wish Notre Dame was good at volleyball. We’ll revisit the topic again at a later date.
