It's the final game of the season and Notre Dame travels west, this time to meet the USC Trojans and the 2002 edition of the always dangerous Coliseum Refs. This will be a tough game — the Refs are strong, rested, and ready; and the Trojans aren't half bad either.

The Irish and the Trojans, of course, meet on the field, while the Refs will once more try to decide the election from the sidelines, vigilante-style. Rough justice.

One of the field combatants will fly like an eagle from this West Coast Thanksgiving weekend to soar into the post-season "trailing clouds of glory" (as the old darling of the Lake country, Rumpole's favorite poet, would say).

The other will take that long turkey trot to lesser fame, wattle wagging, head held high, but surrounded by no respect and not a few ink-stained marksmen.

Which will it be for the Irish?

MAKING THE CALL

Calling this game yields a statistical conundrum, a prediction in which the unknowns produce a greater point range than any projected margin of victory.

What if:

Carson Palmer gets hot and his receivers get open? Big gains for Troy, 21 points easy.

Palmer gets shut down? Another one bites the dust — Palmer joins Rix, Rutherford, Navarre, and a host of this season's others. He gets maybe seven. Maybe.

The SC backs run well? Another 14 points.

The SC backs get stuffed? Nada. Welcome to Air Force who, like several of our foes, needed turnovers to score.

What if Carlyle and his receivers get hot? What if Ryan Power-Neal (Inc.) rushes for 150 yards? What if Carlyle really gets loose? What if the Irish go BC-like? (They'll be stuffed and served.) What if they go Rutgers-like? (The flood gates open.)

What if the Refs get hot, and score twice for the Trojans?

A lot of ifs, and a lot riding on those ifs. What if God stays home for Thanksgiving and we get world peace? What if he visits his cousin and the cats play with the nukes? Quite the range of outcomes.

The game could end 35-7 USC, 17-15 Refs, or 28-3 ND. That's a 60-point spread, win to win. Quite the range of outcomes.

KEEPING THE HORSE OFF THE FIELD

So let's approach this one differently. Clearly ND can win. What will it take? How do we keep that horse, the one that trots when Trojans score, off the field?

ND rush defense — ND will have to shut down the Trojan running game, as they've shut down almost every running game this year. If they don't do this, it's over.

The good news is if Hilliard plays well in the middle, ND can accomplish this easily. If Hilliard plays poorly, or not at all, the job gets harder. Remember that Cedric is the lynch-pin for the front seven. His good play lessens everyone else's work, frees them up to play a broader field. He gives that front seven range, lets them swarm.

ND pass defense — Up front, they'll have to hit Palmer early and often. Hilliard's play is again critical. Tuck may get the sacks, but credit Campbell and Cedric as well. With those two next to him, whom does the offense double? If no one, or one of the others, Tuck runs free. If he doesn't let himself get taken too deep by the DT, the result is a hurry or worse (for the quarterback).

In the defensive backfield, the Irish have two problems — three good receivers and a tendency to give it up to the tight end. G. Sapp & Co. (Inc.) will have to cover three good men all day, be well positioned on every play (welcome back, Gerome) and bring hard Midwest justice when the ball comes close. I believe this bunch of receivers can be intimidated, as Rogers was in the Michigan State game. If so, it could be fun back there.

In addition, our linebackers must to keep Alex Holmes, their good tight end, from running loose over the middle. This is perhaps the hardest job of all, since we haven't shown much skill at it.

What are the odds here? Actually pretty good. SC could be held to seven points or less, but only if the defense brings its best.

ND rush offense — To win through the air, the running game will have to keep the defense honest. (How's that for a reversal?) That is, even if they don't score running, the ND rush game will need to produce at least 125 yards, spread among the non-Carlyle backs.

Also, the odds of a win are so much greater if Holiday breaks loose as a runner. Like Hilliard opening up the game for the rest of the defense, Carlyle running opens lanes for the other runners, through delays, draws, and screens. The longer Carlyle has the ball in his hands, the more the defense scrambles to prevent improvisation, and the greater the odds some linebacker will be out of his coverage lane for the other backs. (Imagine if Carlyle had John Huarte's ball deception; we'd be unstoppable on offense. Maybe next year.)

Odds of that? Again, pretty good. Grant Powers-Neal (our committee running team) may not be able to carry the rush game alone unless the offensive line grows another menu option (File / Run Blocking / Very Very Good). But with Carlyle running misdirection-by-design (remember the naked bootlegs against Air Force) and getting the green light to improvise, we've got winning cards on the ground, if we can play them.

ND pass offense — Easy to win here; just play the Rutgers game again. If we get lots of 20- and 30-yard passes, some for scores, and go 0-for-INT, the game will be in the hands of the ND defense to win or lose. In that scenario, if Baer's Boys play well, we win.

Carlyle will have to be accurate through the entire range of passes, but this expectation is reasonable, given his recent play. He's especially good long, where SC may be weakest. He'll also have to see the whole field, since he'll be scrambling (and blitzed) much of the time. Seeing the field has been a problem in the past. Still, the Rutgers game gives us hope. Breakout play from McKnight would be a real bonus as well.

ND special teams and defensive scoring — The wild card. ND could easily put three scores on the board this way, either directly or via a short offensive field — or none. A three-score cushion could break their backs. Can you say Florida State?

By the same token, Carlyle might hand out balls like pieces of wedding cake, given his tendency to carry the thing like baked goods when he runs. Or worse, the inverse-Irish could show up. Yikes.

Either way, odds are good that Hildbold will punt the Trojans into a hole most of the game, which SC will then have to pass out of. Can all those passes and all that hitting kick some of those balls into Irish hands? Odds say yes, but who knows?

So there you have it. ND wins if:

• The defense stuffs the run and makes Palmer pay Midwest prices for PAC 10 goods and services
• The offense runs well enough to open up the pass
• Carlyle and receivers play as they did last week
• Turnovers (and turnover scores) favor ND

SC wins if:

• They frustrate Holiday's passing
• Palmer finds his receivers and they hang onto the ball
• Hilliard and Sapp don't play well
• The Refs steal a close one

Look for a terrific game, Florida State-terrific. And don't be surprised by a Florida State outcome. The Irish have that capability.

If you want my best guess, it's ND, four scores to two. But as I said, the range produced by the if's is too great to for my predictive comfort.

BUT CAN HE BEAT THE REFS?

A quick note about the Refs. I'm not just being playful. In many (not all) pockets of college football, refereeing is corrupt. I'm not talking about judgement calls, or horrid but honest mistakes. (It's clear, for example, that the miscalled incomplete pass that Duff started to run back against FSU was an honest mistake; note that the refs (corruptly) spent the rest of the game apologizing for it, by handing ND a slew of deliberately questionable calls in return, including an obvious unmeasured non-first down.)

No, by corruption I mean the blatant attempt to use penalties to negate scores, create scores, and otherwise influence the outcome of a game, under cover of "judicial error."

In some leagues and in some traditional games, there are just too many well-timed "bad calls" to ignore. In 1964 for example, Ara Parseghian had a national championship taken from him by a blatantly bad holding call in the last three minutes of the USC game. That's a national championship lost in the last three minutes of the season's last game, thanks to Coliseum refs. LA games have been notorious for this, as have Big 10 games. (Recall the excessive celebration penalty that handed Michigan a Davie-coached loss a few years ago; in that year he got a slew of those kinds of calls, in one close Big 10 game after another.)

We tend to wink at corrupt refereeing, as we wink at corruption in a few other professions. Why? Because corrupt refereeing flies just below the radar of proof, and because no money changes hands (if money changed hands, proof would soon follow). The money part is critical. We tend not to see corruption if it's unpaid, or paid in a different coin (for example, as "campaign contributions" instead of bribes). Another blowback from our money-centered culture.

But money or no, many of our refs are corrupt in the strongest sense of the word. Some indeed fix games, and some games are notorious for it. I wish someone would investigate this problem seriously. It's a national scandal waiting for exposure.

Can Ty beat the refs? One of the signs of recognizing corruption is knowing that it's useless to complain. (It's a negative sign — it proves the presence of something by the absence of something else — but a powerful sign nonetheless.)

I think Ty recognizes the problem; he understands, as few coaches do, that you can't complain to the corrupt about the corrupt and get anywhere. Ty is remarkable in this respect, as he is in many others. He appreciates that Team Ref is part of the game; that every team has its weakness; and that the way to beat Team Ref is to take away their scoring opportunities, by scoring big yourself. They win all the close ones they care to win, but they can't touch the blowouts.

PINSTICKER SPECIALS

There are only two games this week that voodoo can remotely influence — Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State, and Georgia vs. Georgia Tech. Our voodoo pins and bobblehead victims have been mildly successful for us this year — we got the Cougars last week, for example.

This week the odds aren't great, but the reward is sweet. An Irish win, coupled with OU and Georgia losses, puts us fourth in the BCS — right where early on I thought we'd end up.

So pins to you, Sooners. Eat steel, Dawgs. You should be used to it by now. Maybe this time our partisan magic will "take."

And on that note — corruption and voodoo — we leave you to your turkey, your leftovers, and our Irish. May the turkey taste good, the Irish feast well, and your leftovers, for a change, soak up odors from the fridge.

Yours in corruption (it's theirs that makes us the good guys),

The Rock

(c) Rock Kanutski
All rights reserved.
 

The season according to Rock:

Out On a Limb: This Problematic Season
(season's predictions, after Purdue)

Backward and Forward: Between the Michigans
(before Michigan State)

Back In the Saddle
(before Stanford)

Midterm Grades: Is There an A In Team?
(before Air Force)

One More Myth, One More Legend
(before Florida State)

Once and Future Giants
(on Willingham)

Like Fighting Your Brother
(before Boston College)

Playing the Pickup Game
(before Navy)

The Seventh Inning Stretch
(before Rutgers)