The Dry Season
UHND.com - Rock Kanutski
May 23, 2001

Welcome to the Dry Season, Notre Dame fans.

The dry season—that horrid no-news time of year that stretches its bony finger from the end of Spring training, through months of drought-laced, what-are-they-doing-now summer, to the holy land at last, the start of Fall camp and the first trickle of real team reporting.

Barring accident—literally—we speculate on air, with not even a whiff of news to guide us. (Actually, between this article's first draft and its submission we've had one of those sorry accidents, the story of the St. Mary's Student and Cornerback. Sigh.)

Now is the summer of our discontent. So what do we do to survive?

Without even rumor to guide us, we play the coming season entirely in our minds, and endlessly chew the ponderables—the coaches, the players, the odds of a national title. The past is the past; we left it ages ago.

What about those Beavers? Hell, those guys are gone, either to JUCO heaven (the NFL, the XFL, the EFL, the WWF) or JUCO hell ("May I supersize that for you, miss?").

What about last year's heart-breaker, the Huskers at home?

That overtime loss is already fading to legend. Didn't Joe Kuharich coach that game? Wasn't Arnaz Battle a quarterback, way back then? The game film that plays in our minds is already grainy, the missed interception frozen like a memory of childhood.

Michigan State?

Another fourth and long, gone south to stay. A killer yes, but worse than the fourth and forever Miami escaped from, an eternity of coaches ago? Hardly.

Tennessee in 1999? Stanford? Who even remembers?

These painful games, all of them, stand like ancient brothers, their relative ages forgotten, as similar as twins. The Frito-Lay Woodchucks (sorry, OSU Beavers), the '63 Trojans, Parsegian's 10-10 tie—they're all in the archives now, in the land of "I remember when."

Folks, it's a terrible time of year for serious fans. The past is too old, the future too far away, and if there's any news at all, it's bad.

We live in our dreams entirely. Or in our fears. Did someone say Nebraska?  They get their tune up against Wannabe State, and we tune up against . . . Nebraska. At home. Theirs.

Of course, you could argue that Nebraska at home was perfect preparation for Nebraska away. But even that bitter taste is fading with the loss. Time to look ahead. Time to chew the ponderables. Time to march through the dry dry desert.

So let's do that. Rock here to guide you, here to lead the caravan, or one of them.

And as deserts go, this one is interesting. I see four rich areas for groundless speculation, four imaginary oases to wander in—Bob Davie, the offense, the defense, Kevin White.

So let's do them, one at a time, starting with the coach. Next up: Bob Davie.

We'll get through this, I swear we will. Just gotta last the summer.

And pray for no more accidents.



Yours in groundless speculation,

Rock Kanutski

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