For Irish, USC Is Game of Their Lives

FanHouse writer John Walters is living in South Bend, Ind., during one of the most pivotal seasons in Notre Dame history. Check back for his latest dispatches on the Irish.

SOUTH BEND, Ind -- Armando Allen and Jimmy Clausen are not only teammates, they're roommates. And this week, in particular, the Irish tailback and quarterback are psychic friends.

"When we wake up in the morning, getting ready for class, we just look at each other," says Allen. "Nothing needs to be said. We are just so motivated."

Allen, Clausen and the rest of the Irish are just three days away from playing in the biggest game of their lives. Three days, right? "I actually thought it was Thursday until an hour ago," safety Kyle McCarthy said during the weekly captains' press conference on Wednesday afternoon. "In all honesty, I'm pretty anxious to get to Saturday."

Twenty-one years ago the Fighting Irish defeated West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to cap off an undefeated 1988 season, but every member of that team will tell you that the national championship was won in a mid-October heavyweight bout against No. 1 Miami. It was that 31-30 "Catholics vs. Convicts" epic which defined not only that season, but much of the Holtz era.

You don't play for conference championships at Notre Dame.You don't even play for bowl wins (obviously, look at the recent record). The contests that you remember with the most clarity are the regular-season clashes against a seemingly indomitable foe. It's been like that ever since Dorais and Rockne introduced Army to the forward pass back in 1913.

USC does not enter South Bend this weekend with a 47-game win streak like the one Oklahoma had when the Irish visited Norman in 1957. The sixth-ranked Trojans are not No. 1 with a 36-game win streak the way Miami was when they visited in 1988. USC's win streak is a modest two games, which is less than even that of the No. 25 Irish.

Still, this is the biggest game for the Irish in four years, since those top-ranked Trojans narrowly escaped the watchful gaze of Touchdown Jesus with a 34-31 victory.

"My feeling after that game was awful," McCarthy said Wednesday. "I think I felt like the whole world was ending. I was depressed for a long time afterward."

"I felt worse for the seniors," said fellow captain Scott Smith, who like McCarthy was a freshman gridder then. Naturally. The seniors knew that, agonizingly close as they came, they would never again have a chance to provide a moment that would be fondly remembered for the rest of their lives.

It has been a grim decade for Notre Dame football, probably the darkest in the school's history. Three different coaches -- four, if you strictly count the number of men hired. A nine-loss season, the first in school history. Ten losses by at least 30 points, which has to be a first. The only decade in which the Irish have failed to beat a team ranked in the top two or won a national championship -- or both (as happened in the '30s, '40s, '60s', '70s, '80s, and for all intents, the pre-ranking era '20s). The Irish haven't even scored a touchdown versus USC the last two times they've met.

"You ask any guy on the team, 'You think you're gonna win?' and they say, 'Yeah, yeah,'" says senior right tackle Sam Young. "In the past it might just be lip service. Not this year."

Seven years have passed since the Irish last made the cover of Sports Illustrated (outside of a preview issue), the longest drought since the magazine launched in 1954. Eleven years have passed since the Irish last defeated a team ranked as highly as USC here in South Bend. Twenty-one years have passed since the Irish last produced a Heisman Trophy winner.

The decade began with a heartbreaking overtime home loss to No. 1 Nebraska and peaked with a heartbreaking last-second loss to No. 1 USC in '05. Gaze at the remainder of this season's home slate (Boston College, Navy and Connecticut) and you realize that this is the final potential "We are ND!" moment of the decade, a decade that has yet to truly produce one.

"I think that our university really, really could use this win," Charlie Weis said Tuesday. "It's been a long time coming."

How anxious are people? Someone has taken to exhorting the Irish via messages written in chalk on the sidewalk outside the Gug. "I was here at 5:15 this morning to lift," Young said on Tuesday night, "and I looked down and saw 'Kill USC' written in chalk. My first thought was, What preschool kid came in that early to do this?"



A Notre Dame student wrote an editorial yesterday exhorting his classmates to rush the field after the Irish win (as opposed to when the clock still has 0:07 seconds on it). That author is the son of a prominent writer on the Irish beat, who could only grin ruefully and hope that his parking privileges won't be revoked.

Students. Student-athletes. One very much in-the-crosshairs head coach. It's the biggest game of their lives. Four days from now someone will either be Pat Terrell or Ambrose Wooden. Lou Holtz or Bob Davie. Someone's entire college football career may be defined by one play they made, or almost made, in the final seconds. That is, if the Irish can keep it that close. But to actually believe they can win?

"I'm not leaving here without that kind of mark," said Young. "Why not now? Now's as good a time as any."