Blue & Gold Illustrated: 2012 Notre Dame Football Preview
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114 ✦ BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2015 FOOTBALL PREVIEW BY LOU SOMOGYI T here is a preseason win-loss ritual among college football followers throughout the nation, particularly the ones who believe their team has what it takes to vie for a high ranking, maybe even a championship. The schedule for that season is closely evaluated — and the first inclination is to look at the marquee games on the slate. Is it home or away? Does either team have a bye the week before the game? How many prime players did that opponent lose or retain from the previous year? It is those three or four contests that gener- ally are used to evaluate whether your team will be a contender or pretender. For Notre Dame, those contests over the decades have almost always included USC, used to feature Michigan before the series was discontinued after last season, and in recent years it has seen Stanford among the top-tier foes. Interspersed along the way are showdowns such as the road game at Clemson this year, the trip to Florida State last season, or the home-and-home series with Oklahoma in 2012-13, Arizona State in 2013-14, Texas in 2015-16, and Georgia in 2017 and 2019. The "name" teams generally serve as the gauge of the Fighting Irish. Under head coach Brian Kelly the past five years, Notre Dame has held its own in most of the marquee clashes, highlighted by a 3-2 ledger against USC (after losing eight in a row to the Trojans from 2002-09), al- though the 2-3 marks against Michigan and Stanford were disappointing. Unfortunately, the real monkey wrench in four of Kelly's five seasons were disconcert- ing or demoralizing setbacks to heavy un- derdogs, or teams where the overwhelming perception was Notre Dame had no business losing, especially at home: • The consecutive games in 2010 when the Irish were waxed by Navy (35-17) before losing at home to Tulsa (28-27) the follow- ing week. Notre Dame "should have" fin- ished the regular season 9-3 instead of 7-5. • The stunning 23-20 opening-game 2011 loss to South Florida, which would finish with a losing record. Again, Notre Dame "could have" been a 9-3 team instead of 8-4. • Losing 28-21 in 2013 to a Pitt team that otherwise was 2-5 over the last two months of the regular season. That early November setback also squashed the remaining BCS aspirations Notre Dame "would have" had. • With a 7-2 record and still in major bowl contention in November 2014, Notre Dame fell 43-40 in overtime at home to a 16.5-point underdog Northwestern team that was 3-6, had lost four in a row (including 48-7 to Iowa) and averaged 12.5 points per game during its four-game losing streak. The one season in the last nine where Notre Dame averted the "how could they lose that one?" upset was 2012. Even then, the Irish had to rally at home from a 20-6 deficit versus 18.5-point underdog Pitt — and saw the officiating crew miss two Notre Dame players with the same jersey num- ber on the field during a missed Panthers 33-yard field goal attempt in overtime that would have won the game — to survive. It's not necessarily the marquee games that have cast the die on a Notre Dame cam- paign in recent years. Rather it's been the "where did that come from?" losses against heavy underdogs, particularly at home. It's now to the point where each preseason one can pretty much state when predicting a won-lost record "and you know there's always one that will be lost that you don't expect." Letdown Factor Without upsets, sports would be boring. Underdogs love the David-versus-Goliath story, the "Rocky" figure rising up or "the little engine that could." It happens to the best of them, even reign- ing national champ Ohio State, which was a double-digit favorite at home over Virginia Tech last year, but lost 35-21. UPSETTING DAYS Avoiding 'The Given Day' by a heavy underdog is often overlooked