Irish Need to Emphasize Grit, Toughness

STANFORD, Calif. -- High hopes.

There is not currently, but there has been and there will once again be a certain "Whoops, there goes another rubber tree plant" sensibility to Notre Dame football. There has to be in order for this university to attain the gridiron goals to which it aspires.

As I listened to Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick field questions from the media Monday, and as I listen to the pundits on a pair of networks whose first letter begins with an E ("for Effort!"), I hear a recurring sentiment. In fact, verbatim, this question was posed to Swarbrick on Monday evening: "Do you think it's realistic for Notre Dame to get back to winning national championships?"

A fair question given the fact that the Fighting Irish have won 11 national championships but none since 1988, a 21-year drought. However, there's a certain insidious cynicism in such inquiries and/or pronouncements. An underlying concession that, yeah, it may be just to much to ask 18-to-22-year-olds to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

National championships, per se, and Swarbrick was swift to make this point, should not be the immediate goal of Notre Dame. "The standard for success in this industry now is to be in a position to be selected for the BCS [bowls] each year," Swarbrick said. "Our standard ... is are we in a position to compete for a BCS berth."

Georgia last won a national championship in 1980. Alabama, Michigan, Penn State, Tennessee and Texas have each won as many national titles in the past quarter-century as the Fighting Irish (one), and yet each season these schools recruit and prepare as if to at least compete for a national title, and why shouldn't they? That is the goal.

When Alabama hired Nick Saban in 2007 no one, as far as I know, asked whether it was realistic for the Crimson Tide to get back to winning national championships, even though 'Bama has claimed just one in the past 30 seasons. Why was that?

Was it due to the belief that Alabama need not jump through the same academic hoops as schools such as Notre Dame (or Vanderbilt or Duke or Northwestern or Stanford)? And that because of that, the Tide is at an advantage?

How wonderful is it, as folks debate whether a school such as Notre Dame can attract BCS-bowl level talent, that a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy is the tailback at Stanford?

Of the many comments that made an indelible mark on me this past season, something that Notre Dame senior safety Kyle McCarthy said the week of the Boston College game stuck. McCarthy, who led the Irish in tackles each of the past two seasons after having rarely played his first two years, noted that he was pumped up to play the Eagles because "they never offered me a scholarship."

"In the past five seasons Notre Dame was all about schematic advantage and five-star recruits and not enough about plain old grit."
I bet they would now.

With the exception of Pittsburgh, none of the four teams that beat Notre Dame in November and sent Charlie Weis packing had more talent on defense than did the Irish. And certainly none of them, not even the Cardinal with the amazing Toby Gerhart, had more talent on offense.

The error is in believing that talent matters so much more than chemistry, or motivation or strategy, all intangibles upon which a coach must deliver. From 1960-62 Notre Dame went 12-18 with a starting quarterback by the name of Daryle Lamonica. He threw just 12 touchdown passes in those three years in an age, admittedly, when passing was secondary to rushing.

Lamonica, a.k.a. "The Mad Bomber", would go on to a pro career in which he was twice named American Football League's Most Valuable Player. Meanwhile, two seasons after Lamonica left South Bend, the first-year head coach, Ara Parseghian, installed a senior who had never started as his quarterback. That player, John Huarte, led the Irish to a 9-1 record and won the Heisman Trophy.

Lamonica went 106-20-5 as a starter in the AFL and NFL, predominantly for the Oakland Raiders. Huarte was a career back-up for eight NFL seasons.

In his final season in South Bend, 1985, Gerry Faust boasted an offense that had Allen Pinkett, Steve Beuerlein and Tim Brown as well as kicker John Carney. The offensive line was adequate. With all that talent, Notre Dame scored 230 points that season. Only once since then (in Bob Davie's final season as head coach, 2001) have the Irish scored fewer points in a year.

Talent matters, but not as much as determination and discipline. Not in college football. In the next two to three years you are going to see more players from Notre Dame taken in the NFL draft than from Navy, Connecticut or Stanford. Even from Michigan. If talent were the most important element, Notre Dame would be far better than a .500 outfit the past two seasons because to be a .500 program would mean that the Irish were right at the median, in terms of talent, of their opponents. That simply was not the case.

Do the Irish need help, a lot more help, on the defensive line? Of course they do. And you will hear the whispers that such players are difficult to attract to South Bend, which is what they used to say about cornerbacks, although that position has not been a terrible liability the past few seasons (at least not in terms of the talent recruited to the position).

In the next year or two, if Swarbrick makes as good a hire at head coach as Notre Dame did when it hired him, the Irish will play with much more fire than they have since, well, 2005. Players whom you thought were capable of more -- guys such as cornerback Robert Blanton, safety Harrison Smith and defensive lineman Ethan Johnson -- will fulfill their promise. And if Notre Dame isn't exactly competing for the national championship, they will likely be competing for BCS bowls.

It's all a matter of believing. There are very few schools that have the talent of Florida or Texas or USC. But Notre Dame has just as much talent as everyone else below that top rung. Let the skeptics wonder aloud whether gridiron success and academic prowess can coexist (as they write the name "Toby Gerhart" somewhere on their Heisman ballots; Gerhart, by the way, is taking 21 units this semester).

Meanwhile, let the dreamers (including Swarbrick, a guy who was a good enough athlete to start three years for a high school football team that never lost a game and yet smart enough to graduate from Stanford Law School) dream. Just what makes that little ant think he can move a rubber tree plant? Because he cannot afford not to think that way.

In the past five seasons Notre Dame was all about schematic advantage and five-star recruits and not enough about plain old grit. As this program moves forward, its principles might want to acquaint (or reacquaint) themselves with the aforementioned classic Sinatra tune. Or, to go a little more, but not much more, contemporary, they could view the final moments of the 1989 Cameron Crowe film "Say Anything".

Diane: "Nobody thinks it will work, do they?"

Lloyd: "No. You just described every great success story."