Believe me, I am aware this sounds ridiculous. There is gold leaf in the helmet paint. Our quarterback reportedly cost two million dollars. But the truth has been that Notre Dame isn’t spending as much money on our football roster as a lot of other top-25 programs, and while that’s showing major signs of change (and while the 2012 run taught us how the better you are, the more attainable five-stars become), this roster has one composite five-star recruit. One. Jaylen Sneed, who—nothing against Sneed, he plays good football—is not expected to declare early for the NFL Draft.
How did Notre Dame do it?
We devoted a lot of time to this earlier today under the Joe Stunardi name. If you’re interested, here’s that post, which starts with a look at what Notre Dame helped do to the SEC’s narrative and continues with some pretty detailed praise of Marcus Freeman. That praise indirectly highlights Jack Swarbrick and now Pete Bevacqua’s great work, and it fairly directly points out why Brian Kelly could never win the way Freeman is winning, even if Kelly did move this program forward competitively.
The short version is something we talked about earlier this week: Notre Dame spent a lot of money on Mike Denbrock and Al Golden, and those guys are the two best coordinators in college football. If we elaborate, Notre Dame is also probably spending a lot of money on Mike Mickens, and that guy might be the best defensive backs coach in college football. Add in some precise, affordable transfer portal pickups, place them under a revolutionarily humble head coach, mix in a Director of Analytics plucked from the football internet, and you’ve got something which embodies the spirit of moneyball: Hunt inefficiencies. Use your dollars wisely. Even Riley Leonard, a seeming overpay most of 2024, has transformed into a phenomenon as genuine as he is tough, a culture-building force we can now readily admit was worth every penny. Again, here’s the full post, but the gist of it is this:
Notre Dame beat the SEC champions yesterday. We beat them with culture, and we beat them with ingenuity. We beat them by spending our money more efficiently than they spent theirs.
What now?
We are, paradoxically, back into a can’t-lose situation. Had Notre Dame lost to Georgia, it would not have been a step back. Losing to SEC championship material is what was expected of Notre Dame, even after Adon Shuler—blessed Adon Shuler, beautiful Adon Shuler—jumped that snap and put his helmet in Trevor Etienne’s basket, stopping Georgia’s scariest drive of the day and setting the stage for all the heroics to come. Losing to Penn State, though? It wouldn’t be as bad as a loss to Indiana would have been, but Notre Dame outranks Penn State in the pecking order. We’ve been to the national championship more recently than they have. We made the four-team playoff two more times than them.
Penn State is a lot like Notre Dame, at least in terms of its place in modern college football. It’s storied. It’s a Northern program. It hasn’t been national championship caliber since the 1990’s, it hasn’t won one since the 80’s, and there are credible people who’d prognosticate it will never win one again. We, though, have been better lately, and our history is of course superior to theirs, with more patriarchs and more successful patriarchs and none of the dishonor which now leads all recollections of their one greatest coach. But Penn State is a peer, and they’re behind us, and we need to keep them behind us. Ohio State and Michigan already lead us among the non-Southern schools. Some would argue Oregon leads us right now as well. We cannot allow Penn State to leapfrog our meager national standing. We cannot allow Penn State to make a national championship.
I’m hopeful that overlooking Penn State isn’t a serious risk. I don’t think the college football industry is writing off Texas to the degree which Texas has earned, so “looking ahead to Ohio State” doesn’t seem as tempting as it otherwise might be. We could get satisfied here, a little fat and happy having taken down the big bad SEC, and I’m on the anxious side when it comes to yesterday’s bumps and bruises. But I’m hopeful we won’t overlook Penn State, that we’ll give them our best and that our best will continue to be enough. The nice thing about Penn State—and something not true against Georgia, Ohio State, or Texas—is that our best should be better than theirs. We couldn’t out-talent Georgia. We can out-talent Penn State.
Before we get to basketball, a few more thoughts about yesterday, mostly things that made and make me very happy:
- I was pleased with the “God. Country. Notre Dame.” response to the terrorist attacks, including that awesome picture of Pat Coogan carrying the flag out of the tunnel. It’s easy to overdo a thing like that and make it look like you’re co-opting a horrific tragedy suffered by others. I thought it was subtle and respectful and still enough to be meaningful.
- Speaking of things that are meaningful: I tend to roll my eyes when quarterbacks thank God in the postgame interview, turned off by the leaked texts sent by SEC quarterbacks whose Instagram bios make prominent use of a cross emoji. Riley Leonard gets a pass, though. That guy, again, seems as genuine as they come. Leaked texts of that nature would be shocking coming from Riley Leonard.
- One more on Leonard, and on the internet: The guy posted an Instagram story of himself in front of Touchdown Jesus at 1:32 AM, seemingly right after getting back to South Bend. This is a small thing. But. May we all love Notre Dame the way Riley Leonard loves Notre Dame.
- Can we talk about the Adon Shuler play again? That was an amazing play. We live in a blessed time to have Xavier Watts and Adon Shuler as our safeties. And Shuler’s still a redshirt freshman!
- We would have had an easier time against the run with Rylie Mills, but we had a great time against the run, and RJ Oben getting the fatal strip sack in relief of Mills was script-worthy.
- I know I’m in the minority here and am being entirely unreasonable, but I liked Bryce Young running into that punter the second time. We were coming for his ass. Could have backfired, but a lot of things could backfire that don’t. I don’t want Young to do anything dirty, but if he can annihilate one punter per game while coming very close to blocking the kick, I endorse it.
- That opening sequence—the one where we won the toss, made them play offense, then blew them up four times in the backfield—made a statement. I thought we were going to tear Gunner Stockton’s UCL too the way he was waving the ball around.
- I think the SEC powerbrokers like us. Kirby Smart. Greg Sankey. Nick Saban. Those kinds of folks. They speak highly of us, and I don’t think we need to get too into the “ulterior motive” angle when it comes to Sankey trying to get the CFP to give us our extra day of rest. I think part of this friendly relationship is that Swarbrick and Sankey were two of the three playoff architects, and for all their NIL differences, they often saw eye-to-eye. Another is probably that Marcus Freeman is among the most respected current coaches within the sport. Most of it, though, is assumedly that the SEC sees us as an ally against the Big Ten. Meanwhile, Big Ten fans are using our win as an excuse to dance on the SEC’s grave. The consolidation of the industry into two warring factions has made us everybody’s best friend. Being the third wheel in a triangulation situation rocks.
- Where does one get Al Golden’s glasses? You could do anything in those. Teach math. Drive a combine. Murder fourteen innocent transients in a mountain pass. Coach the most defiantly excellent defense in college football. Those are glasses you wear when you expect to spend your day walking around with a little blood on your face. And/or teaching math.
- Did we mention Adon Shuler jumping that snap and treating Trevor Etienne like a target at a gun range? Except that instead of a bullet, Adon Shuler used Adon Shuler’s head? Did we mention that Adon Shuler has three years of eligibility left and at least one more year before he could get drafted? Did we mention that between Xavier Watts and Adon Shuler, our safeties room is worthy of cult hero status? Fate willing, we will beat Penn State and get to talk about these guys a whole lot the week after next.
- Gutsy again from Mitch Jeter. I’d think it’d be very easy to let doubt creep in as a sub-50% kicker, no matter how much better your groin feels than it did when you were missing. He came through huge.
- The crowd push-ups always look so fun on TV.
Notre Dame vs. UNC
The ACC has both our basketball teams playing both UNC’s basketball teams this weekend. Tomorrow, the men host the Tar Heels at a sold out JACC. Sunday, the women visit UNC at Carmichael Arena, the older and smaller of UNC’s two basketball courts.
In the men’s game, it’s not the worst spot. UNC’s in the first wave behind Duke in the ACC, which is to say they’re a bubble team until they prove otherwise, one direction or the other. They did lose on Wednesday, which might have woken them up a bit, but they’ve lost three straight once this year, the game’s in the early window (Noon EST, CBS), and Hubert Davis’s UNC teams are underachievers in all the traditional ways. We’re not a huge underdog, even without Markus Burton. It’s possible to win this game.
As we talked about on Wednesday, we’re struggling to slow teams down at the point of attack, and RJ Davis is a very good point guard, one we’re not well-equipped to guard without Burton. UNC is prone to laziness defensively. Our best angle for an upset is to move the ball well and then knock down whatever open shots we create.
Cormac Ryan finally exhausted his eligibility, but Ven-Allen Lubin has found his way to Chapel Hill, so keep an eye out for that old friend. His minutes are up and down, but he’s played every game.
On the women’s side, we’re a healthy favorite but not an overwhelming one. Going off of T-Rank, UNC’s the second-best team in the ACC, a program making a big leap back forward in what’s now Courtney Banghart’s sixth year. Their best player—Alyssa Ustby—isn’t a huge name, but this is a disciplined, strong defensive team, one who’s only lost to UConn and a competitive Georgia Tech.
Again, Notre Dame’s a healthy favorite on the road here, but this is, on paper, the toughest game remaining before the NCAA Tournament. That makes it a good opportunity.
