The ACC finally announced the start of the Notre Dame – NC State game on Saturday and for the second week in a row, Notre Dame will kick-off at 12:00 PM ET when they travel to Raleigh, North Carolina. The Irish will make the trip with a 2-3 record while the Wolfpack will host the Irish with a 3-1 record.
ABC will nationally televise the game which should make things easy for Notre Dame fans. Personally though, I have an 18 mile marathon training run in store for me on Saturday before the game which means I will be getting up hours earlier than I normally do for work to fit in the run and the game.
For Notre Dame, the early start times make for easier travel home and with Stanford on the schedule following NC State anything that can help the Irish prepare is more then welcomed. When Notre Dame traveled to Austin for the season opener and kicked off at 8:00 PM ET, they didn’t get back to campus until the early morning hours on Tuesday. Not exactly conditions prone to set up a good week of practice. And we all know how much good practice this team still needs.
If you are having a hard time remembering Notre Dame starting this many games, this early in the day you are not alone. It has been years since the Irish played this many early games. Usually the Irish are thrown into primetime slots for even weak games such as the Syracuse game two years ago. After their 1-3 start, however, the networks are not putting the Irish in prime-time.
The only unannounced start time for Notre Dame left this season is the season finale against USC on the road in LA. Like Notre Dame, USC started 1-3 this season under first year head coach Clay Helton. The Trojans beat previously unbeaten Arizona State on Saturday though to improve to 2-3.
It was a bad hire from the beginning
Swarbrick is just a pr man
It’s all become a national disgrace
It’s bend downhill for 25 years
Wadsworth
White
Swarbrick
.Kelly to be honest has done a fine job recruiting and coaching..but he only has yes men around..nobody to say no or look at it this way..he doesnt practice tuff..when ur at the 5 and dont get under center with 2 TE and shot off the ball straight up and challenge there man hood some u tend to get soft all thru the team..they still need too see and hear pads poppin in practice..when they do they will be much better..creates competition n tuffness which they still need at this level..
BK was a good hire from the point of view of a good administrator, without hindsight. It just did not pan out for whatever reason(s). Now he must produce to stay, in my opinion, (and without any knowledge at all of what’s going on out there). The way I “feel” about it is this:
He needs to right the ship, win a minor or mid-level bowl, have a 2012 or 2015 season next year, and WIN a major bowl.
Then, I think, he could stay out his contract. But I don’t really know. I’ve been “workin, workin, workin, every day” (as Eric Burden used to sing it) so I haven’t been around ND much. And everybody I knew is dead anyway (or almost so).
But I have to guess that there is no margin for error in this anymore.
bruce GC
Bruce Johnson,
You sound like an old, old bitter alum. Never mind the fact that Fr. Hesburgh hired Terry Brennan, Joe Kuharich and one other loser before Ara. Never mind the fact that Fr. Joyce hired Gerry Faust. Never mind the fact that Lou Holtz had Tony Rice and other athletes as Prop 9 recruits, something ND does not do anymore. Never mind that Lou put us in a probationary situation. And please don’t say that Notre Dame is “above” Duke or Stanford: that notion is demeaning to both ND and those other fine institutions.
Also, college football, from 1-25 in the polls, is much stronger today than in Ara’s day. Back then, ND only had to fear Purdue and USC in any given year. Maybe Michigan State as well.
We were undefeated in ’12. We came within an eyelash of that last year. If you want comfortable and mushy, then watch some reruns of Lindsay Nelson and Paul Hornung broadcasting another blowout in the 60s or 70s. If Notre Dame can’t win on its terms, then I don’t wish it to win at all.
@Damien is right…. time to look for the next “LOU”…. NEVER have seen such pathetic tackling at premier Div I level. Embarrassing. Too much talent and depth on offensive – with nothing on defensive. Unbalanced recruiting, poorly assemble. ’12 was full of nail biters barely surviving teams we should have easily dominated. The NCBS game exposed us. Humiliated. This years tackling is just too pathetic. painfully embarrassing (sort of like my writing).
It is not all Kelly’s fault. He just continues the malaise that started after the 1993 season. Except for the aberration of 2012 of winning in overtime and winning close games before being blown out by Alabama in the BCS championship, there has been NO successful ND season. Success is double digit wins, victory over your main rival (USC) and a victory in a major bowl game—Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, or Cotton (before 1996). Notre Dame’s record since 1993 in major bowl games is 0-6. This is year 7 of the Kelly reign and even if the Irish win out they are not going to a major bowl game so the streak will continue. I believe the disastrous Weis contract is finally paid up so the Irish can dump Kelly and pay off his contract over the next decade as they try a new coach. Kelly warned us to “get used to it” after his dumb-ass call lost the Tulsa
game early in his career at Notre Dame. I guess we are used to it by now.
BJ must REALLY dislike noon kickoffs
In Swarbick’s defense, when he hired BK everybody, and I mean everybody out there thought he had hit a home run. I didn’t hear one CFB expert or pundit say this was a risky hire. BK was then what Herman is today. A coach that had success everywhere he was at. Yes, Cincinatti is not a CFB powerhouse, but they got to a BCS bowl under Kelly. That was a huge deal for Cincinatti, a team that was lucky to have a winning record previously. There was absolutely nothing to suggest he would not have success at ND.
And the Irish did take a few step in the right direction for the first few years under BK. They started beating the teams they were supposed to beat. That was a huge problem under Willingham and Weis. And they started being respected again by opponents. They were no longer the patsy on the schedule.
But time has proven that BK is not able to get them that last step, to beating elite teams and winning NC’s. I was on the BK bandwagon, even when it became more evident that he was not to be THAT coach, partly because even now, I have a hard time figuring out how a coach who had been successful at other programs could not replicate the same at ND. I do believe now it’s time to move on, especially since the program didn’t just plateau, but is now regressing under BK. Now that won’t happen for at least a year because of simple economics, but it will.
While in hindsight BK did not work out for ND, there was nothing in 2009, nothing at all to suggest this was a risky hire. ND finally got the man it wanted the first time, an up and coming coach that looked like the sky was the limit (let’s not forget, guys like Urban Meyer didn’t start day one at a Florida or Ohio State winning NC’s, they too had to climb the ladder and at one time were coaches at lower rung schools).
For more than two decades, Notre Dame has neglected its greatest teaching instrument-its football team. At one time the team’s success made a Notre Dame education unique. You learned that on any give day you could rise to the challenge and beat anything, no matter what the odds. Everyone learned Rudy’s lesson: you never every give up. You learned about teamwork and that people who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society. The team’s striving for incredible excellence permeated everything at Notre Dame. Every graduate believed that in his life he could take all those lessons and apply them to politics, to public service, to his family life and his faith.
But two decades of neglect have put all that the University stands for in jeopardy. Who could not watch dumbfounded as the University let one athletic director hire one loser after another. The first an assistant coach- you never ever hire an assistant coach for the toughest coaching job in the nation. He then tried to hire the rambling Irish wreck, who was not even much of a coach, and didn’t even vet him properly. It was a huge embarrassment for the University. To save face he hires another, whose uniqueness as a black head coach makes him initially immune from criticism; but ultimately he is not a great coach. Finally, he tries to buy a big time professional coach, whose waddling across the field is an embarrassment to all great athletes. Even more embarrassing watching him yell at Brady Quinn on national tv. In the end the players gave up on him. The result was the worst football season in a forty years year. Someone was a completely poor judge of men.
We get a new athletic director who says maybe Notre Dame might win a national championship one day. Hardly a commitment to excellence, when at one time the team fought for the national title every year. Then he hires a new head coach from a winning but second rate football school in ten whole days, hardly an auspicious beginning.
If you want to be the best, you take time, you prepare, you find the best coach in America. Even then the odds are long.
It becomes quickly apparent the new offense is some quick start gimmick. There is no Joe Montana, Jerome Bettis, Rocket or Larry Conjar. The defensive coordinator the new coach brings allows the opposition 25 points a game on average. There are no shut outs. They lose more games in half a season than Ara Parseghian lost in four years And this coach too humilates his players on national tv by yelling at them. Such a lack of dignity and grace under pressure. Imagine, John Wooten, having ever have done such a thing. If they had been coached and trained properly, there would have been no need to yell. He is clearly over his head.
Even worse the new athletic director says the new coach is like a great corporate ceo. I am reminded of the JFK quote: “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.” The team’s integrity has been sold: a new plush stadium, a tv contract, Notre Dame sports productions, mass marketing of tee shirts, autographs, even a commercial where the sacred fighting Irish leprecaun is used as a prop. Shades of the gecko. Notre Dame football has become a business, not an instrument for learning, self sacrifice, excellence or teamwork.
Imagine how the players must feel. I saw one crying as they left the field after the Navy debacle. When I was there you never ever criticized the team. That was gospel. I do not do that now. But, many of the best players in the nation believe Notre Dame has lost its will to win. And go somewhere else. Jimmy Clausen left early and I heard him say on national tv, he never lost a game until he came to Notre Dame and they went 3-9. And he was a great quarterback.
Something is terribly wrong. Not just football, but the University’s acceptance of this bumbling toward pathos. Vince Lomardi said it this way: “Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.” This failure, this acceptance of failure, this benigh neglect affects all the University does and the way it presents itself to the nation.
Father Hesburgh once said: “ My belief is and always has been that the University
ought to do everything, academics, athletics, you name it in a first rate manner.”
But, the athletic director, the University’s President, the Board of Trustees and the Holy Cross Fathers have accepted something less.
Unless that changes, what set Notre Dame apart and above, Duke, Yale or Harvard or Stanford, was its belief in itself. At one time the University’s team was an inspiration for poor and middle class kids all across the country, and no other school had such a faithful feeder system nor a subway alumni. No other school had such a rich legacy. No other school had Notre dame’s true grit, or its indomitable spirit.
America’s greatest President Franklin Roosevelt knew the value of spirit:
“It is not enough to clothe and feed the body of the nation, and instruct and inform its mind. For there is the spirit and of the three, the greatest is the spirit. Without the body and mind, as all men know, the nation could not live. But, if the spirit of America were killed … the America we know would have perished.”
Our spirit, our legacy is at risk.
I have been hard. Dale Carnegie teaches us that genuine appreciation and seeing things from the other fellow’s point of view are the keys to personal success. All the efforts of every member of the Notre dame family are appreciated and we can see that many of these people did their best and often above their best. But, another coach said it this way: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
Its time for a a new deal. Its time to regain our legacy of winning and make sure that the spirit of Notre Dame never perishes. Where is the commitment, the leadership?
October 24 2010
Great info Tom, thanks for the heads up!
What’s next from you, water is wet?
@Ron Burgundy The article originally said the game was on Sunday. However, after they read my comment, they corrected they’re error!
I think this a a Saturday game guys!