Irish Making Something Out of Nothing

Notre Dame has the week off and that’s a shame because anytime the Irish burp it’s news and anytime they’re good it’s good for college football.

Loathe them, love them, the Irish and their 4-0 start have been the September story.

The sidebar is how little Notre Dame actually has accomplished. It defeated mediocre Maryland (without star back Bruce Perry), outlasted pathetic Purdue (lost last weekend to Wake Forest), overcame overrated Michigan (most recently a Big Ten-7 winner over Utah) and squeezed out a miracle at Michigan State (California spanked the Spartans at home by 24).

Notre Dame might as easily be 1-3 with first-year Coach Tyrone Willingham this week housed at an undisclosed location, but it appears the Leprechaun has finally gotten off his (Vontez) Duff.

The madcap, green-cap, recap: Gerome Sapp returned a fumble for a touchdown in a 24-17 victory over Purdue on a play in which a Boilermaker coughed up the ball without being touched. Michigan fans are still apoplectic over Irish quarterback Carlyle Holiday’s phantom touchdown in a 25-23 victory and, last week, two Michigan State defenders collided to allow Arnaz Battle to race 60 yards for the winning score.

“The difference is,” Battle said after Saturday’s game, “we used to lose games like this.”

Bottom line: It doesn’t matter how Notre Dame got here, Notre Dame is here, and quite naturally leapfrogged to No. 10 in the national polls this week by sheer power of its ageless star power--Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

By contrast, Oregon State, which walloped Notre Dame two years ago in the Fiesta Bowl, also is 4-0 and may still be a better team.

Oregon State’s four victories have earned it a poll boost to No. 23. Because it lacks jumper cables, Oregon State probably has virtually no shot at making the bowl championship series national title game even if it goes unbeaten.

In case you haven’t heard, Notre Dame is different.

“They’re the only team that captures the front page of multiple national newspapers,” Pat Haden, the former USC quarterback and now an analyst for Notre Dame home games on NBC, said. “It’s like the Yankees.”

The only difference is the Yankees have to pay a luxury tax.

At Notre Dame, as in the Bronx, the highs are lunar and the lows subterranean.

The play Notre Dame receives in good times is matched only by the headlines posted when Irish eyes are crying, the reason the program was so savaged last winter over the George O’Leary debacle.

“I’ve been on virtually every college campus for football over the last 20 years,” Haden said, “and it’s the most difficult football job in the world, the demands are like no other job.”

There is nothing worse for football than indifference about Notre Dame. When Notre Dame is on top, fans crawl out from green crevices, television ratings soar and legends of detractors pray this is the year Navy pulls off an upset.

For those hell-bent against, a victory against a top-ranked Notre Dame is always more satisfying than kicking a 5-6 dog around the yard.

Notre Dame’s revival has an impact on the national landscape. It makes Notre Dame’s trip to Air Force on Oct. 19 a fascinating prelude to Notre Dame’s possibly epic Oct. 26 trip to Florida State, and raises the face value of the annual USC-Notre Dame clash.

How to explain Notre Dame’s best start since 1993 is more complicated.

“Some of it has been good circumstance, some of it has been good coaching,” Haden said.

Sometimes, just rearranging the office furniture helps.

“Change is as good an explanation as anything else,” Haden said of the coaching switch, from Bob Davie to Willingham. “These are young people. They got pulled down by the undertow of negativism around the program. Last year was like the Bataan Death March, they were waiting for something bad to happen.”

Haden, though, notes a distinct change of philosophy on defense.

The Irish are playing much more zone defense than man-to-man and jumping opposing receivers on their routes. With man coverage, which former coach Davie preferred, cornerbacks often play with their backs to the quarterback on coverage.

Haden says the zone is one reason why Notre Dame already has seven interceptions and why senior cornerback Shane Walton’s four interceptions in four games match his career total entering the season.

And while Haden thinks the Irish have received a few breaks, he says success is a potent elixir.

“There’s a difference in the way you play when you’re confident,” Haden said. “From this point forward, they are a different team.”

Here’s another reason Haden knows Notre Dame is back:

“I have guys call me every Monday, the Golden Domers, objecting to something I said on the air, kind of in a kidding way,” Haden, the ex-Trojan, said. “They’re fired up. People are talking about them at lunchtime again, they’re on the news.

“If you really love college football, even if you are kind of neutral, or agnostic about who wins, I think it’s a good thing.”

Add Domers

Notre Dame fans are hyperventilating over the prospects of being 7-0 headed to Florida State on Oct. 26, but Irish watchers had best keep eyes glued to that Oct. 19 game at Air Force.

The Falcons are 3-0 after last week’s 23-21 victory over California and appear to be on the triple-option rebound after last year’s 6-6 disappointment. Saturday’s victory marked the first time in school history Air Force has defeated a team from the Big Ten (Northwestern) and the Pacific 10 (Cal) in the same season.

Air Force Coach Fisher DeBerry has had only two losing seasons since becoming coach in 1984 and has defeated Notre Dame three times.

The last two Air Force-Notre Dame games have been overtime thrillers, Air Force winning, 20-17, in 1996 and Notre Dame winning in 2000, 34-31.

Class Acts

Need your faith in humanity restored in the wake of that ugly father-and-son assault on a first base coach at Comiskey Park last week?

There could not have been a more civil sporting atmosphere than last weekend’s Air Force at California game at Berkeley. Cal fans cheered Air Force players as they entered Memorial Stadium and sang along with the Falcon Band as it played “Off We Go (Into the Wild Blue Yonder).”

The Cal athletic department paid tribute to the men and women of Air Force who have dedicated their lives to military service.

With talk of war in the news, and the Air Force a big part of those plans, everyone seemed to understand the game’s context.

After Air Force held on for a 23-21 victory, DeBerry would say of his players: “These guys are going to do a great job representing your nation in the coming years.”

Air Force quarterback Chance Harridge, who led his team’s victory with three touchdown runs, said he felt the same way about Cal players.

“This is probably one of the classiest group of guys that I have ever played against in my life,” Harridge said. “There was no trash talking and they would say things like ‘good play, good hit, good run’ and they would try to help you up after the play.”

Hurry-Up Offense

A lot of schools are hiding behind the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 as a reason why they can’t disclose player injuries without permission, when in fact injury obfuscation has always been an important part of the game plan. Despite HIPAA, reporting of injuries still varies widely from campus to campus.

Arizona Coach John Mackovic says full disclosure of injuries makes the most sense for one reason: gambling. Mackovic says shutting off public information only gives the advantage to illegal bookmakers and those associated with organized crime, who will get their information by whatever means necessary. “And they play for keeps,” Mackovic said.

On the injury subject, here’s the latest on Notre Dame quarterback Holiday. “Carlyle has a shoulder injury,” Willingham reported, “the specifics of it I’m not going to discuss.”

It could end up a numbers crunch when Oklahoma hosts South Florida in Norman on Saturday. Oklahoma has won more national titles (seven) than South Florida has played seasons (six). The Bulls first fielded a football team in 1997, moved to Division I-A in 2001 and will join Conference USA in 2003.

Three of the four schools involved in two potential national title deciding games Oct. 12 are almost cinches to get there with their present top-five rankings.

No. 2 Oklahoma and No. 3 Texas are all but dialed in for their annual Red River Shootout at Dallas. Oklahoma plays host to South Florida, then plays at Missouri, while Texas plays at Tulane and then plays host to Oklahoma State. We like Texas’ chances this weekend. The Longhorns own a 15-1-1 series record, nine of the victories coming by shutout. Of course, no Longhorn fan over 105 years old will forget the time Tulane beat Texas at Austin in 1908.

No. 4 Florida State at No. 1 Miami, also scheduled for Oct. 12, also should hold up. Miami will certainly be 5-0 going in with byes the next two weeks (an open date followed by Connecticut), while Florida State’s path is complicated only slightly by consecutive Thursday night games against Louisville and Clemson.

The latest on Notre Dame and the BCS flap: The Irish need nine victories or a top-12 finish to become eligible for one of two at-large BCS berths, but the season-opening victory against Maryland does not count toward that total because the Kickoff Classic is considered an “exempt” game. The Irish could have scheduled a 13th game but declined for philosophical reasons, and now will ask the BCS commissioners to reconsider its case. It’s hard to image the BCS re-writing its rules in midseason, but never underestimate Notre Dame’s power of persuasion especially when you consider the financial impact of having the Irish in a BCS game.