Daily Domer: 'Linebacker Alumni' Didn't Study Latin

John Walters has come a long way. Twenty [or so] years ago he lived alone in a small room on the campus of Notre Dame. Today he lives alone in a small room just off the campus of Notre Dame. Having embedded himself in South Bend, Walters will provide daily updates on Notre Dame football in this, the 20th year of his sportswriting internship.

Now I don't want to get all Life of Brian on you at the outset, but shouldn't that bumptious billboard that was erected earlier this week be signed, "Linebacker Alumnus"?

As you already know, a billboard appeared earlier this week above the corner of Edison Road and South Bend Ave., just beyond the southeast corner of the campus of the University of Notre Dame -- or, to place it more vividly for those who've visited or attended school here, almost directly above the Linebacker Inn.

The giant ad reads as follows: "Best wishes to Charlie Weis in the fifth year of his college coaching internship-Linebacker Alumni."

The author of the ad is former Notre Dame linebacker Tom Reynolds, who presumably will not be a featured speaker at Friday night's pep rally.

Reynolds is a Notre Dame "alumnus," which is Latin and loosely translated as "your annual donation makes you eligible for the ticket lottery." The plural of alumus is "alumni." Until another former Notre Dame linebacker-and not a former Notre Dame student who patronized the Linebacker, because in that case we are all of us, Charlie Weis included, "Linebacker Alumni" -- comes out in support of this, um, salutation, then a fix is needed.

Reynolds is a retired marketing professor. Give him props for mastering his field of study. Did anyone not realize that Weis, after guiding the Irish through the worst two-year era (10-15) in school history, has no more mulligans? And yet, in the past 24 hours, columnists near and far have taken to the bait as if they were District 9 "Prawns" and it were cat food.

Marketing is manipulation. All Reynolds did was provide columnists a catalyst to dredge up the "Charlie Weis is no Urban Legend" angle without actually doing any reporting.

And by discussing the topic here, I'm no better. You know what they say: If you're stuck in traffic, realize that you're part of the problem.

Just Wondering

Three questions heading into Saturday's game:

1) Is Notre Dame's passing game that good and Nevada's pass defense that poor, and if so, is everything else irrelevant? Two different preseason publications rate Notre Dame as having the best group of receivers nationally -- and to think that only two seasons ago David Grimes was the top returning receiver. With Golden Tate, Michael Floyd and tight end Kyle Rudolph (plus Duval Kamara and Robby Parris ... and keep an eye out for John Goodman), the Irish don't just have a passing game; theirs is a surpassing game.

Meanwhile, Nevada finished dead-last in nationally in pass defense last season (granted, the Wolf Pack did face Texas Tech and Mizzou out of conference, which is crazy). So what is to discourage Weis from game-planning a Hawaii Bowl redux, in which Clausen was 22-26 for a career-best 401 yards and five TD passes?

Very little, given that the temps on Saturday will be roughly the same as they were in Honolulu last Christmas eve. But there's one big difference...

2) Will Nevada be able to Navy Notre Dame to death?

Even if Luke Lippincott, the WAC's leading rusher two years ago-before his season-ending knee injury early in 2008 -- has not returned to form, the Wolf Pack still boast the core of the nation's third-best rushing offense of last season. Think about that: even without their leading rusher, Nevada gained more yards on the ground than every team except Navy and Oregon. And their two leading rushers, quarterback Colin Kaepernick and running back Vai Taua, were sophomores.

Nevada coach Chris Ault, who has a home in South Bend of sorts (he has already been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame), will likely attempt to eat clock while exploiting Notre Dame's inexperienced front-seven. That's Nevada's best hope to pull off the upset.

The Wolf Pack are 14-point underdogs, by the way. That spread says that some very shrewd men in a city south of Reno are counting on irrational exuberance on the part of Irish investors this weekend.

3) Are the infant Irish all growed up?

For the past two seasons the Blue and Gold have been green: freshmen and sophomores being made to play meaningful minutes well before they were prepared to do so. Just ask Clausen his impressions of Ann Arbor.

The training wheels are off. Did this group at last reach puberty in the Hawaii Bowl? This team has the look of the 2005 edition: just the right blend of hunger and experience. The '06 Irish were more experienced, but they were a little too satisfied with themselves. This crop of Irish, which has in the past two seasons beaten just one team that finished the year with a winning record (Navy, in 2008, finished 8-5), has no reason to be smug. And they know it.

And by the way, for the first time since 2005, the Notre Dame offense will not start a freshman (true or red-shirt) in the season opener-they won't need to.

---

"Tackle by Smith": There will probably be a time when the Irish will have as many as four Smiths on the field Saturday: linebackers Brian, Scott and Toryan Smith and erstwhile linebacker-now-free safety Harrison Smith. Of the quartet of Smith defensive players only Scott Smith, who is the oldest scholarship player on the roster (Born July 16, 1986), is not listed as a starter.

---

The Irish have never played a school from the Silver State in 121 seasons of football. Once Nevada is in the books, there will be eleven remaining states that have never had a school from within their borders meet Notre Dame. Name them (answer at bottom).

---

Only 34 players on Notre Dame's roster were alive the last time the Fighting Irish won the national championship in 1988. It has been 21 years since the Irish finished atop a national poll (and 16 years since the Irish should have won a national championship ... old grudges die hard), the longest drought in the school's history since its first national title in 1924.

The previous longest void is 17 seasons, betwixt 1949 and 1966. In that fallow time ("Happy Days" everywhere but South Bend, apparently) the Irish had four different head coaches. Weis, by the way, is the fourth head coach (Lou Holtz included) since the Irish went 12-0 and captured the national title in '88.

All of which is to say that the current Notre Dame roster is comprised of people with no eyewitness memories to the school's dominance, even if for only a year's time. They simply can't appreciate the feeling; it's like trying to persuade someone under age 30 that "Three's Company" ("where the kisses were hers and hers and his"...even though none of them ever did with one another) was racy. This, by the way, is exponentially more difficult to do if you happen to be watching "Hung" at the time.

So when you hear current Notre Dame players talking about getting the program back to where it belongs, take that with a grain of NaCl. They're just going off what they've seen on ESPN Classic.

The slogan on "The Shirt" this season? "Rise and Strike". Karl Marx approves. If anyone saw the second halves of North Carolina, Pitt and Syracuse in '08, they might want to suggest an alternate slogan: "Kill and Bury".



This is Ryan Hall. And this is Ryan Hall. One is the newest dormitory at Notre Dame, whose physical plant is growing by leaps (as opposed to Gurley Leeps) and bounds. The other is the USA's premier marathoner, a veteran of the Beijing Olympics.

Shouldn't someone at NBC invite Ryan Hall to visit Ryan Hall? It's cross-promotion gold!

---

T-shirt spotted on campus today: "GOLDEN IS THY TATE".

---

Three predictions for Nevada-ND:

1) Wolf Pack come out in vaunted "Pistol" offense, in which QB Colin Kaepernick lines up 4-5 yards behind center as opposed to the 5-6 yards that the commonly employed shotgun formation employs.

2) Not to be outsmarted, Charlie Weis has Jimmy Clausen line up 2-3 yards behind center Eric Olsen and dubs it the "Derringer" offense.

3) Not to be out-witted, the Notre Dame marching band plays Rick Derringer's "Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo" whenever the Irish come out in this formation. By the fourth quarter the student section will have choreographed an entire dance around it.

(Answer): Arkansas, Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wyoming.