Not Pass Interference

We had quite a game on Monday night.  I have some thoughts.  The game reminded me of Super Bowl XLIII.  I thought the first three quarters weren't great, but it was an especially great fourth quarter.  I was rooting hard for Clemson and it was nice to see them win.  I think I'm happy that they won on pretty much the same play that we didn't win on against Florida State.  I could be bitter, but I feel like this is vindication.  And also, I'm no Brian Kelly fan right now.  So even if we had won that game, I'm sure the rest of the season still would have been pretty bad.

It's interesting to see the direction Notre Dame and Clemson have gone in since meeting in October 2015.  We lost that game by two points.  It's worth pointing out that Brian Kelly went for two when he didn't need to and didn't get it (like he did against Northwestern in 2014, which is one of the reasons we lost that game too).  We scored a touchdown to make it 21-9 with 14:13 left.  That's a lot of time left.  Sure, making it 21-11 means that a touchdown and field goal will tie the game.  But that assumes Clemson won't score again.  Clemson kicking a field goal is a very realistic scenario.  And that's exactly what Clemson did with 10:56 left.  So now being down 14, we were down 15.  We scored two touchdowns (the second one coming with seven seconds left).  Instead of needing an extra point to tie, we needed a two point conversion and we didn't get it.  And if Clemson didn't get that field goal, you could go for two on the second touchdown in the two touchdowns, one two point conversion, and one field goal to tie scenario.  Anyway, since that game, Notre Dame is 10-10 and Clemson is 24-2.  Yikes.

I was thinking about why Alabama is good.  It makes sense that USC, Texas, and any of Florida/Florida State/Miami are good.  They are in the three most talent rich states.  USC is in southern California and they are the top team in the biggest state in the country.  Texas is in a football crazy state that's the second biggest in the country.  Florida is talent rich, the weather is fantastic.  The only thing for those schools is that they have each other to compete with.  But why is Alabama so good?  Sure, it's close to Florida and Georgia and it's not too far from Texas.  They're near huge states with lots of talent, but Alabama itself is only the 24th biggest state.  I took a look at Alabama's records over the years.  They won a National Championship in 1992 under Gene Stallings (I have no memory of him at all).  The last season for Stallings was 1996.  From 1996-2006, Alabama was 67-55 (.549) under three different head coaches.  They had two top 10 finishes (8 in both 1999 and 2005) and only one other top 25 finish (11 in 2002).  And then what happened?  They hired Nick Saban.  Since then:  114-19 (.857) with four National Championships, three for three in making the playoff, and nine straight top ten finishes.  So the answer for why Alabama is so good is pretty simple, it's Nick Saban.  All it took was a great coach for them to go from mediocre to the most successful program in college football.  Notre Dame is 150-99 (.602) since Lou Holtz left.  All it will take is hiring the right coach.  Alabama had three bad hires and then they hired Saban.  Notre Dame has had four bad hires.  The problem is that one of those bad hires is still our coach.  And even when he's not anymore, I'm not confident that we'll get it right.  But if we do get it right, we can get back to being an elite college football program once again.  And I know that it's really hard to find Nick Saban, but look at how Dabo Swinney turned Clemson around.  Look at what Jim Harbaugh did at Stanford and what he has done with Michigan so far.  Are we going to get somebody as good as Saban?  Probably not, but I would think that there are coaches out there that could get us to a .750ish winning percentage.  Dan Devine was .764 and Lou Holtz was .765 and both won National Championships.

One last thought about the game.  Dabo Swinney went to Alabama.  I could never coach against Notre Dame in a meaningful game.  If I was a football coach, I couldn't ever coach a team that might play Notre Dame.  If I took my basketball coaching career from middle school girls to let's say Stony Brook (we have improved from zero wins two years ago and not having enough girls that wanted to play last year to two wins so far this year), I might be able to coach a meaningless December non-conference game against Notre Dame, but I certainly couldn't coach a tournament game against Notre Dame.  But that's what Dabo Swinney did with his alma mater.  Clemson found the right football coach.  Notre Dame needs to do that also.