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Notre Dame Football

The Back Corner Fade

October 17, 2017
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It’s that time in the season. The time when the air begins to turn cool even during the day, the leaves can’t simply be mowed over and you actually have to rake them, and you start to see Christmas commercials with perfect-looking couples buying jewelry. It’s mid-October in an odd-numbered year, it’s time for Southern Cal. 

Ah yes, time for the maroon and gold to come to town from the Left Coast to turn their nose up at all that South Bend has to offer. Time for the obnoxious Ray-Band clad band play funeral dirges and crappy Fleetwood Mac songs every 3 yard gain. Time for their Song Girls, most of them who wouldn’t spit on us if we were on fire, even in our prime, to shake it to said funeral music in the southwest end zone. And finally, time to send a message to the football world, that Notre Dame football, is, in fact, a force to be reckoned with this season. What’s the word that ABC/ESPN likes to use? Ah yes: relevant. 

We’ll get to the game in a minute, but there was a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on in college football this past weekend. Let’s dissect it shall we….

  • Friday the 13th was a scary day for a couple of teams now wasn’t it? First off, what in the hell was that Dabo? Losing to Syracuse?!? Everyone has a bad day, even great teams. Heck, the Tigers lost to a mediocre Pitt team last year at home so I guess losing to the Orange is on par with head-scratching loses to garbage teams. Dabo should have headed some wise words that Lionel Tyrone once said: “there’s a lot of wind in that Dome.”
  • Then we had what happened in Berkeley as Wazzou not only got beat, but was destroyed by a bad Cal team. That’ll pretty much say good-bye to their Rose Bowl dreams, and have to live yet another year knowing their greatest team was led by Ryan Leaf. Speaking of The Pirate, feel free to enter the “fat girlfriends” and “locking kids in a broom closest” jokes here.
  • Last week I made mentioned how nobody was talking about Washington. They had the “BCF Curse” put upon them and went out and got beat around by ASU. Todd Graham goes down the list on the BCF Coaching Death Pool.
  • Mike Riley was heard after the Huskers latest mauling calling up realty agencies in Corvallis to see if there might be a nice Cape Cod close to campus.
  • In the last two home games, the Tennessee Vols have scored a whopping 9 points. C’mon UT brass, do Sgt. Carter a favor and put him out of his misery once and for all. I almost feel bad for the guy. By the way, dark horse name to take over that program: Tee Martin.
  • It’s pretty much a given that Kansas is the worst Power Five school out there. I would like to congratulate Illinois though. They’re trying really, really hard to get in to that conversation.
  • Coach O is back, baby! Two nice wins in a row. This time coming back from 20 down to beat Auburn. This makes me so happy. After the Troy game, it was looking like we might only be able to talk about the greatest Hummer salesmen ever for this season. 

Now on to this week. I gotta tell you, this week is bad. There is simply isn’t a lot of games to get all fired up about outside of ours. That being said, what do we have to look forward to before 7:30 on NBC?....

  • In case you haven’t noticed, and unless you live in the greater Bowling Green, KY area you probably haven’t, but our old pal, Mike Sanford (with Mo Crum coaching up the LB’s) is off to a 4-2 start and has Old Dominion this weekend. Granted, he hasn’t exactly been beating on studs and has lost to the aforementioned Fighting Illini, but 4-2 is 4-2. Congrats, Coach!
  • Welcome to Big Boy Football, Tom Herman. They’ve lost to Maryland, had a soul crushing lose to SC, came close to beating OU this past weekend and now have to lick their wounds and welcome Okie State and their flying circus to town on Saturday. Little different than playing Tulsa, Tulane, and other schools that suck and might start with a T. By the way, if you’re in Austin this weekend, head on over to DKR and take the game in on the cheap. Tickets start at $2 on Vivid Seats.
  • Louisville heads to Bowden World and takes on Free Shoes. Did you think at the start of the season this game would feature 4-3 and 2-3 teams? Snicker…..giggle….snicker……enter bad guy in Bond flick laugh.
  • Fredo, fresh off of beating Lamar Jackson and a bunch of other guys that basically suck, head to C-Ville and take on Virginia. In case you haven’t noticed, Bronco has the Hoos playing some pretty damn good football and are currently sitting at 5-1. This column is supposed to be light hearted, but on a serious note, it’s nice that the fans of UVA and the folks in the Charlottesville area have something to enjoy and get behind after the events this past summer.
  • Finally, THE GAME. For $225 on Vivid you can take in all the sights and sounds of College Game Day and all their fluff piece stories and exceptionally witty banter, then be graced with seeing the most overrated Top 5 team ever play a team that has zero business sniffing the Top 15 when Penn St. welcomes the offensive eye-sore that is the Michigan Wolverines. Seriously, this is what ESPN thinks is a big game? Hanging at James Madison last week makes almost as much sense as wasting money and brain cells covering these sucks. Laying odds at 3/2 that ESPN does a piece on “the healing in Happy Valley.” Yawn….

Finally, let’s get to it: ND and USC. Don’t know about you guys, but I’m a tad excited for this one. Let’s face it, SC is beatable. Frankly, they could easily have 3 loses coming into this one, but found ways to pull out wins against Texas and then this past weekend against Utah (by the way, that was the right call going for two and the win. Utah’s defense was flat out done and Kyle knew it.) In both contests, Sam Darnold pulled some magic out of his hat and got the job done. Also to be noted, he had to bring them back because of his erratic play and turnovers. If he does turn the ball over as he has every game this year, ND has to make them pay. They’ve done a great job all season of capitalizing off turnovers and this simply can’t be any different. Looking at SC’s defense, they’ve struggled against QB’s that can move, well last I checked, we’ve got one. Wimbush really is the key to this whole thing. Nobody is expecting him to go off for 300 in the air and 125 on the ground, but if he can go 200/75 and soften the SC defense for Josh, Dex and Deon, we’re going to win this game. SC will make plays on offense, they simply have too many weapons not to. But if they can limit the damage, say in the 20-24 point range, I think we’re going to be just fine. SC is the best offense we’ve played all season, period. They also are nowhere near the best defense we’ve seen. We will score points, and score more than the experts believe. Is this a “vintage” SC team? No, not even close. The injuries on both sides of the ball and erratic play of Darnold simply don’t make it one. They still are very good though and nothing less than a great performance is going to beat them.

But, this is an odd year Kelly team. One that wasn’t supposed to be any good and here they are raising some eye brows and still hovering below the radar. Come 11:30 EST, on Saturday, the college football world will be on notice. ND 2016 is a distant, bad dream. The Irish are a team to worry about the rest of the way home.

BEAT SC.

 
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