Notre Dame hasn’t won a national championship in football since 1988. We all know it, we’re all well aware of it, we’d all like it to change. It’s the longest such drought in program history, and despite getting in the same room as the trophy a few times during Brian Kelly’s tenure, blowout losses in all three of those games have highlighted how large the gap is that the program needs to close. Notre Dame hasn’t won a national championship in football in 35 years, and that number keeps growing, and we are all in agreement that we would like the drought to end.
There’s another drought within the program, though, and it’s one year longer than the national championship drought, and that makes it too the longest Notre Dame drought ever in its category. Notre Dame hasn’t won a Heisman Trophy since 1987, and over the years since Tim Brown brought it home, all three of Ohio State, Oklahoma, and USC have closed their own gaps on us, bringing all four programs to seven trophy-winners in total.
Sam Hartman is trying to change that.
The Heisman isn’t Hartman’s goal, of course. Hartman’s goal is to win games, and he will readily share that, just as he readily shared how well everyone around him is playing right now when asked about the Heisman during media availability. But, if Sam Hartman plays well enough, Sam Hartman will win the Heisman, and Sam Hartman is trying to play as well as he can. Sam Hartman is trying to become Notre Dame’s first Heisman finalist since Manti Te’o. Sam Hartman is trying to end a 36-year Heisman drought.
It’s hard to gauge the Heisman race early in the season. The tool used most often is Heisman futures odds, but those are among the least predictive odds sportsbooks offer, with the market so inefficient that you can find Hartman anywhere from fourth to fourteenth in the race right now depending on which book you check. (Sportsbooks make this work by keeping bet limits low on the Heisman market, and by setting odds such that the book will naturally take more of the cut, if everyone bets somewhat proportionally, than the book takes on the World Series or the Super Bowl.) Really, the way the Heisman is often decided this year is via a flowchart like this:
0. Who won it last year? Are they still in college? If so, remove them from consideration before proceeding to Number 1.
1. Is there a transcendent talent? Someone like Joe Burrow? DeVonta Smith? Lamar Jackson? Johnny Manziel? If so, give them the Heisman. If not, proceed to Number 2.
2. Who’s the best quarterback? Are they really good? If so, give them the Heisman. If not, proceed to Number 3.
3. Who’s the best quarterback that’s going to play in the College Football Playoff? Are they pretty good? Acceptably good? If so, give them the Heisman. If not, expand the search to all quarterbacks of top-ten teams, or look for a running back with big numbers.
It’s not a spectacular process objectively, but it functions pretty well. Rarely does the Heisman choice really upset anyone outside of fans of a school involved. The transcendent guys—Burrow, Smith, Jackson, Manziel, Robert Griffin III—win the trophy unless there’s another transcendent guy in their transcendent season. Otherwise, it goes to a good college football player well-known to national college football fans.
Where this leaves Hartman is a tough place: Sam Hartman is going to have to be really, really good if he’s going to win the Heisman. Partially because Sam Hartman is going to have to be really, really good for Notre Dame to be good enough to keep him on the Heisman radar.
There’s no obvious transcendent talent at this point in the season. If Travis Hunter intercepts 15 passes and catches 15 touchdowns, let’s circle back, but at the moment, there does not appear to be a Manziel or even a Te’o. Caleb Williams is unlikely to win it again, though the public awareness of that practice could have a reverse effect and bully voters away from the trend. But Hartman still has to be a better quarterback than Jordan Travis and Quinn Ewers, and he has to at least be in the same ballpark as Caleb Williams and Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix and DJ Uiagalelei, and that still leaves risks that Drake Maye will pull it together after a bad two weeks and carve up the ACC, or that Shedeur Sanders’s numbers and star power will keep him in the limelight, or that Marvin Harrison Jr. or Blake Corum will turn in a Big Ten campaign for the ages at a skill position, or that J.J. McCarthy or Drew Allar will find themselves with stupendous numbers quarterbacking the top-ranked team in the country come December. Michael Pratt is a threat. Jaxson Dart is a threat. Dillon Gabriel and Tyler Van Dyke are threats. There are others. It is a wide-open race, and the simplest directive—“go be the best player in the country”—is daunting and subjective.
What does Hartman really need to do, then? He needs Notre Dame to win eleven or twelve games, and he needs to stay healthy, and he needs his numbers to stay around the top of college football (he’s currently sixth in passing yards and tied for second in passing touchdowns, but he’s also played an extra game compared to most of the nation, and he’s only played one respectable defense). He also needs to avoid any game anyone can call an implosion, particularly should Notre Dame lose to Ohio State and/or USC. If Notre Dame loses to USC but Hartman throws six touchdowns and Williams goes on to get beat up again by Utah, that’s going to look different than if Hartman throws two picks and only one score in a loss to Ohio State, even if the interceptions come in understandable ways.
The great news here is that after making a respected NC State defense look overmatched, Hartman has himself in the broader Heisman conversation. He’s currently looking better than DeShone Kizer, and while he probably isn’t as good as Brady Quinn or Jimmy Clausen*, his upside is substantial enough to make it believable he could do what neither of those guys could, and what Joe Montana couldn’t, and what Joe Theismann couldn’t even when he changed the pronunciation of his name. We’re a quarter of the way through Notre Dame’s regular season, and we have our most believable** Heisman candidate since Quinn. That’s a good place for all of us.
*Clausen lost a lot, and he was gifted great receivers, but his passing tools were nonetheless sensational.
**I would classify the Te’o candidacy as unbelievable, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.
The NC State Game
Movelor ranks NC State as Notre Dame’s eighth-best opponent this season, and ESPN’s SP+, which conducts the same exercise in an extremely different way, agrees. NC State is 60th in the FBS by Movelor, sharing space between James Madison and Toledo. In SP+, it’s 57th, somewhere between Illinois and Rutgers. NC State, in other words, was a team Notre Dame should have beaten handily, and it is a team Notre Dame did beat handily. There was a bit of trepidation during the lightning delay, especially when ESPN reported Notre Dame didn’t have food (this turned out to not be completely true). There was a bit of concern after Hartman’s third-quarter fumble, his first turnover in a Notre Dame uniform. But Notre Dame came out flying after the delay, and Notre Dame’s defense had Hartman’s back, and after the first quarter NC State snapped the ball only six times with the game within one possession. Pass protection was spotty early, but the offensive line and Audric Estime conspired to grind the Wolfpack’s front seven to dust, putting up such numbers that a few sportsbooks are offering Heisman odds on Estime himself. Hartman—very used to working with three-star receivers and tight ends from his time at Wake Forest—found a whole lot of Holden Staes. It was a game Notre Dame almost totally controlled, which is exactly what you would want from a playoff contender.
The receivers are still a concern. They haven’t stopped being a concern. And while Hartman does have that experience working with average talent, he also did things at Wake like turn the ball over six times against Louisville. The risk for Notre Dame in two weeks is that Ohio State’s secondary forces Hartman to force it, and the risk for Hartman’s Heisman candidacy is that the better athlete wins those jump balls while Hartman tries to dig Notre Dame out of a hole. Either the receiving corps needs to see someone break through, or one of Hartman and the offensive line needs to be the best in the country at what they do. If both Hartman and the line are great, Notre Dame might have a chance against everyone not named Georgia. The defense continues to play like a top-ten unit. The Xavier Watts sequence raised eyebrows in a good way, and Benjamin Morrison made a great play after dropping that easy interception early.
One small thing that could be big? Marcus Freeman managed the clock aggressively and managed it well at the end of the first half, an effort which got Notre Dame an extra seven points it then heavily leaned upon throughout the third quarter. I don’t know if Freeman actually played a lot of Madden this offseason, but he was assertive and it paid off.
Quick(er) Hitters
From Pete Sampson, on the injury front:
Bertrand is the concerning one there. Hopefully he’ll be at full strength for Ohio State, especially because a concussion isn’t really something where you can send a guy out at 90%.
Mike Berardino had a nice little story about Hartman and some of the NC State stadium staff, who are familiar with him from his time at Wake.
The ACC men’s basketball schedule will be released on September 26th.
The women’s basketball team will play Illinois in Washington D.C. on November 18th, the same day the football team hosts Wake Forest.
Men’s tennis sophomore Sebastian Dominko was ranked fifth in the ITA’s preseason singles rankings.
This Week
Markets and Movelor are in agreement that Notre Dame is somewhere around a five-touchdown favorite this Saturday against Central Michigan. Ideally, this is another game where Hartman and the rest of the first string doesn’t have to play the second half, but CMU’s about 21 points better than Tennessee State on paper, even if they’re seven points worse than Navy. You have to take them seriously, there’s always a world where the 35-point underdog wins, but 35 is a lot of points.
The volleyball team beat both Illinois and Oklahoma in South Bend last week, winning its own invitational. It’ll play a home-and-home with Toledo on Friday and Sunday. Neither team is receiving votes in the national poll of record.
The women’s soccer team lost at home to Michigan on Thursday but beat Bowling Green on Sunday to finish nonconference play. They’ve got their ACC opener on Friday at home against Wake Forest. The Irish were ranked 13th in this week’s coaches poll. Wake Forest is unranked.
The men’s soccer team upset Clemson in its ACC opener after beating Detroit Mercy last Tuesday, bouncing back in the Clemson game after giving up a 2–0 lead in the final moments before halftime. They lost to Michigan State last night, but they’ll look to stay undefeated in ACC play this Friday in Chapel Hill. The Irish were ranked tenth in this week’s coaches poll, conducted between the Clemson and Michigan State games. Despite being the ACC’s official preseason favorite, Clemson was unranked in the poll, but so is UNC. Let’s call it a should–win.
The men’s golf team won the Folds of Honor Invitational last week up at Michigan State, then finished eighth in the Gopher Invitational this weekend in Minnesota. The program was not among the 46 to receive votes in the preseason coaches poll, but it’s hard to know how predictive that is, just as it’s hard to know what kinds of rosters different programs are sending to these tournaments. The women’s team finished fifth in the Boilermaker Classic last week, but again: Not a lot of context there. The women’s team was also not ranked in what preseason rankings we could find. The women play an event hosted by Michigan State on Sunday and Monday. The men are off this weekend.
The cross country programs were off this weekend but host the National Catholic Invite on Friday in South Bend.
