Notre Dame Kicks Off Season Sunday

I love Notre Dame Football. Guess I am sincere since they lost so much last year. Here is to a better 2008 .I have included a speech of the last coach to win a championship there Lou Holtz. They may not win a championship this year or next but

Rally sons of Notre Dame
Sing her glory and sound her fame
Raise her Gold and Blue
And cheer with voices true:
Rah, rah, for Notre Dame
We will fight in every game,
Strong of heart and true to her name
We will ne'er forget her
And will cheer her ever
Loyal to Notre Dame.

Cheer, cheer for Old Notre Dame,
Wake up the echoes cheering her name,
Send a volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky!
What though the odds be great or small,
Old Notre Dame will win over all,
While her loyal sons are marching
Onward to victory!

Ed

http://post-trib.com/sports/1144448,NDfootball.article

Notre Dame still trying to return to prominence

September 4, 2008
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BY MIKE HUTTON Post-Tribune staff writer

SOUTH BEND -- Football at Notre Dame is about tradition, pageantry and winning -- and not necessarily in that order.

For the last two decades, the tradition has been void of college football's biggest prize: a national championship.

Or even a team that finished among the best in the country.

"It's kind of scary," Chris Zorich said. "The (current freshman) were born a year after we won the national championship, which is frustrating. That should be motivation to bring Notre Dame back."

Like clockwork, a No. 1 ranking was always somewhere on the horizon for the Irish, even in down years. If they weren't good for a season, they were bound to be good soon.

Since 1936, the Irish have won eight Associated Press national championships, an average of one every nine years.

Their current 20-year drought -- they haven't won a national championship since 1988 -- belies a problem that has hovered over the program since the last few years of Lou Holtz's coaching tenure.

Will the Irish consistently rank among the top teams in the country? Will it be possible to say Notre Dame and USC in the same breath sometime soon?

Those words can't even be whispered now.

The last time Notre Dame finished the season in the top five was in 1993. In comparison, USC has won two national titles in Pete Carroll's seven years as coach and has averaged 11 wins per season over the last six years.

Jerry Palm of CollegeRPI.com said the Irish still can win a national championship, but that coaching has been an issue.

"It's not that they can't do it, it's that they're not doing it," he said. "Maybe they will win a national championship. We'll see. The jury is still out (on Charlie Weis)."

The state of the program

When Weis arrived at Notre Dame, he preached nastiness and toughness.

His first-year success -- the Irish finished 9-3 and played Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl in 2006 --elevated expectations. A 4-2 start and a near-victory over USC earned Weis an unprecedented 10-year, multi-million-dollar deal from the Irish.

The 2003 and 2004 seasons under Tyrone Willingham were disappointing -- so much so that Willingham was fired after just his third season.

What Weis didn't preach was an exasperating 3-9 season in 2007 -- the worst finish for a Notre Dame team since it went 2-7 in 1963.

The lousy season should get the Irish motivated, according to Zorich.

"Everyone is dogging you and saying you're horrible," Zorich said. "It's almost one of those things where you want to walk into the locker room and have a sign that says '3-9'."

Weis gets a pass for last year in some circles because the Irish were playing with virtually a whole new offense (eight starters, including Brady Quinn and Jeff Samardzija, left). He was also relying heavily on Willingham's players. According to Rivals.com, Willingham's final two classes at Notre Dame ranked 12th and 32nd.

Tom Lemming, a recruiting analyst for CSTV who follows Notre Dame closely, said a good team is coming soon to South Bend.

Perhaps not soon enough for the rabid fan base. Lemming believes 2010 will be the year that Notre Dame turns the corner.

He cites Weis' ability to lure high school talent as the main reason. Last year, Notre Dame recruited a class ranked first by Rivals.com.

"After his first four years, there should be no excuses," Lemming said. "They have to rank among the top teams."

Actually, 2010 would be Weis' sixth year on the job.

Lemming discounts Weis' first two recruiting classes because Weis had little time to recruit in 2005, when he pulled double duty, helping the Patriots win the Super Bowl while hiring a staff at Notre Dame and recruiting. His second class is notable for some high-profile departures: Quarterbacks Zach Frazer and Demetrius Jones and tight end Konrad Reuland.

Only 20 of the 28 original players from that class are on the team this season.

Impact players

Lemming said the post-Holtz era through the Willingham era was filled with average football players at best. According to Lemming, Willingham and Bob Davie each had few impact players beyond Brady Quinn and Julius Jones.

That is in contrast with Holtz's run at Notre Dame, during which he had 36 players drafted between 1990 and 1993.

The Irish have had just 16 players drafted in the last four years.

"You gotta get impact players," Lemming said.

Vinny Cerrato, the recruiting coordinator for the 1988 Notre Dame national championship team, believes it's possible to win at Notre Dame.

"I don't think how you win at Notre Dame has changed," he said. "It's still about recruiting and getting good players and developing players. That's what we did best. We got good players and the coaching and strength staff did a good job developing those players. That was one of Lou's big things. When a guy was a senior, he was playing the best football of his career. Even if he was an All-American as a junior, they got better. We won big and had a lot of guys get drafted. It correlates."

The perception has always lingered that recruiting great players at Notre Dame is problematic because gaining admission to the university is more difficult than it is at other schools.

"They said the same thing when we got there after Gerry Faust," Cerrato said." They said Notre Dame is not the same. You can't recruit at Notre Dame. It was the same thing they said before Pete Carroll got to USC. It's all b.s."

Said Holtz: "Everyone is looking to say you can't win at Notre Dame because of academics or admissions. They don't determine whether you win or not. They told me when I came that I had nothing to do with admissions and nothing to do with (discipline) on campus. That's just the way it is. I admire that about the university."

Holtz believes that it's less difficult now to win a national championship at Notre Dame than it was 20 years ago.

The 1988 team defeated the No. 1 team (Miami), the No. 2 team (USC) and the No. 3 team (West Virginia) on its way to the title.

Notre Dame's current schedule is ranked 68th by CollegeRPI.com.

Thanks to former athletics director Kevin White, who recently accepted the same job at Duke, Notre Dame no longer lags behind other national championship contenders in facilities. The state-of-the-art, 96,000-square-foot Guglielmino Athletics Complex is a gleaming monument to big-time football with amenities that would make the most difficult-to-impress recruit stare with wide-eyed wonder. Two new artificial turf practice fields and a new grass field have also been added.

"I think it's easier now," Holtz said. "They have better football facilities than we had and their schedule is easier. You gotta get lucky to win it, though."

Palm said playing USC and Michigan every year means it's "hard to win a national championship. But it's hard to win one anywhere."

Palm points out that Notre Dame has built-in advantages that other schools don't have.

The Irish have an exclusive television contract with NBC and because they don't play in a conference, they don't have to share money from bowl appearances or from that contract. They also control their schedule.

"It's still Notre Dame," he said. "They can play whoever they want."

The landscape of television has changed over the years, according to Zorich. All the big schools have TV contracts now though none approach the magnitude of the reported $9 million per year contract the Irish have.

"Everybody is on TV now," said Zorich, now Notre Dame's manager of student welfare and development. "Before, we could say we're on TV every weekend. Now, everybody can say they're on TV every weekend. One of the things that changed is exposure."

The Sun-Times News Group's Neil Hayes contributed to this story. Contact Mike Hutton at 648-3139 or mhutton@post-trib.com.