The Next National Champion: Notre Dame

Bold predicttion from covers.com

The Notre Dame bandwagon is packed tighter than a Tokyo subway car at rush hour, but there’s a good chance backers could ride along with the legions of South Bend straphangers all the way to the National Championship.
A nine-win season in 2005, a head coach rapidly approaching Knute Rockne status, and a returning senior quarterback who could very well be posing with the Heisman Trophy at year`s end – these are just a few reasons a school-record 41,279 fans showed up to check out this year’s annual spring game at Notre Dame Stadium to get a glimpse of the team picked by many to kiss the crystal football this winter.
It’s also why oddsmakers like the Irish at +600 to win their first championship since 1988.
But before we all go off painting the town green, maybe everybody should forget about Rudy and the Gipper for a second and ask if this Notre Dame squad is for real, or do we have another 2003 scenario on our hands?
College football aficionados have been guzzling coach Charlie Weis’ Kool-Aid like it was free beer at frat party ever since the former NFL coordinator took over last year and brought the glory days back to Notre Dame.
It also doesn’t hurt that the school, which hasn’t produced a first-round draft pick in 12 years, has the most promising pivot in the nation in Brady Quinn and a Biletnikoff Award finalist in Jeff Samardzija – arguably the most potent offensive combo in the nation.
Things haven’t looked this good in South Bend since Joe Montana rallied the Blue and Gold to a national championship in 1977.
But even though there seems to be a rainbow leading straight to the Golden Dome, the shadows of 2003 have to be hanging somewhere in the back of every bettor’s mind. That year, Ty Willingham was a promising sophomore coach at Notre Dame just like Weis. He was coming off a 10-3 debut season in which the Irish didn’t blow a pointspread until Week 11.
Then it all fell apart.
Willingham, who came off like Ulysses S. Grant in his inaugural campaign, looked more like a Chevy Chase impersonation of Gerald Ford when Notre Dame followed up the 2002 season by stumbling to a 5-7 straight up record that hurt bandwagon bettors even more thanks to a 4-8 ATS record. Another bad performance in 2004 spelled the end of Willingham’s stay in South Bend.
It was all bad news for Irish Nation until Weis turned up last spring.
There might not be much comparison between these two coaches or their respective teams, but it’s one of those things that has to make you think twice about Notre Dame futures.
More than any other school in the country, playing for the Fighting Irish brings heavy baggage for players – especially in a season like this one with such high expectations. A renewed television deal with NBC means no team gets more airplay than Notre Dame. Don’t think that won’t affect 19 year-old kids on the field.
But a repeat of the 2003 Irish collapse in 2006? Don’t bet on it.
You only have to look to last year’s Rose Bowl to realize what ingredients it takes to win a college football championship. You don`t want to oversimplify the equation, but both Texas and USC were lead by mature quarterbacks who knew how to grab a game by the stones and squeeze out a win.
If you were a college football coach and had the chance to choose any player in the country to run your offense, you’d have to be crazy not to take Quinn this season. His numbers last year were brilliant, he has the arm to stretch defenses and the smarts to protect the football, but he’s got something else too – that magical je ne sais quoi that separates the Tom Bradys of the football world from the Ryan Leafs.
Quinn is a winner.
Under Weis’ wing, Quinn dropped the baby fat and blossomed into the kind of quarterback that can take his team on his back and charge to the end zone. He nearly did it against USC last year with a fourth quarter drive that was capped with a courageous run to put the Irish ahead against the No. 1 team in the nation.
That game was ultimately won on a last-second touchdown by SC’s Matt Leinart, but with Leinart and his Rose Bowl nemesis, Vince Young, off to the greener pastures (as in greenbacks) of the NFL, the college gridiron should belong to Quinn this year.
People might tell you that Notre Dame’s defense couldn’t stop the cheerleading team from putting up 28 points, but that situation will also improve this season. The star power is considerably less lustrous on the defensive side of the ball, but with nine returning starters and some promising recruits, things can only improve on defense.
Notre Dame’s biggest competitor, on the other hand, took a big hit to its vaunted defense when the NFL came knocking.
With last year’s top teams in rebuilding mode, Ohio State (+600) is one of Notre Dame’s few serious challengers for the National Championship. But you can’t expect the Buckeyes to rebuild the defensive stonewall that permitted only 15.2 points per game without the assistance of what was perhaps the best trio of linebackers in school history (A.J. Hawk, Bobby Carpenter and Anthony Schlegel).
Oklahoma and West Virginia are the only other teams listed with comparable odds to win the National Championship, but the Sooners looked at least a couple of years away from a return to prominence and it’s tough to take West Virginia seriously coming out of a Big East conference that’s sorely lacking in serious competition.
That brings us back to Notre Dame with its overplayed fight song and overhyped history. Some people might not appreciate the pomp and circumstance that follows this team around like they were the crown princes of college football, but unlike the Irish teams of the last few years, this one is the genuine article.
Last fall was a high point at Notre Dame, but don’t expect things to go downhill this year. Every move Weis has made since taking the reins of this program has been positive. His recruiting class was one of the best in the country and with a schedule that doesn’t take the Irish anywhere too dangerous until a trip to L.A. in late November, the path to the National Championship will certainly go though South Bend.

By Julian Dickinson