My weekend did not go according to plan. I was supposed to be at the Notre Dame game against Virginia. Instead, I found myself picking up my car at school at 10:00 on Friday night. I was really looking forward to being back at Notre Dame, but I had no control over the situation.
My last football season as a student was 2006. I had a pretty nice run after that. Between younger friends, Dennis’s fifth year (back when he was working on Notre Dame degree 2 of 4), and Jon going to law school, I had a place to stay on or near campus for six out of seven years after I graduated (2007-2013). In those seven years, I got to 12 games on campus (Navy in 2007, Syracuse in 2008, USC and Washington in 2009, Western Michigan in 2010, Air Force and USC in 2011, Michigan and BYU in 2012, and Oklahoma, USC, and Navy in 2013). In six years since then, I’ve been to two games on campus at Notre Dame. I saw us have a nice win against Stanford in 2014 and I saw one of the many disasters of the 2016 season (Duke). So I was pretty excited to get back for the Virginia game, but it was not to be.
My flight was scheduled for 7:30 from LaGuardia. I despise pretty much everything about LaGuardia. But I discovered the bus from Woodside. I took the train from Hicksville to Woodside and you can get a bus to the airport from there. The bus was ridiculously crowded, but not until the second stop and I got on at the first stop. So I wouldn’t say it was a particularly pleasant experience, but it was easy. I got to the airport in plenty of time and had Five Guys. Getting through security was as easy as I’ve ever done it at LaGuardia. I got to my gate and there was plenty of room to sit and relax. This started as the best LaGuardia experience I’ve ever had. But the 4:30 and 5:30 flights to Chicago had been canceled. The 6:30 flight was now listed as departing at 8:50. But my 7:30 flight was allegedly still on time. I had a similar situation to this when I was flying down to Raleigh to stay with Tom and then go to Charleston. Eventually that flight got delayed so I didn’t really trust that this flight would be on time. I had been sitting down for about ten minutes when my flight got changed to 9:20. I was supposed to be landing a little after 9:00 Central. Now it was going to be around 11:00 Central. This wasn’t ideal because I was supposed to be getting a 5:00 bus to get to campus, but whatever. An hour later, my flight was canceled. There was no way I was getting to Chicago early enough to get to the game at Notre Dame at 3:30 the next day. I briefly considered going to Cleveland or Detroit. My options there were either ridiculously expensive at the last minute and/or I’d be racing to make it to campus for a 3:30 game. So I gave up. I took a depressing bus ride back to Woodside. I took the train back to Hicksville. And then I walked back to school. I was back home at about 10:30. I did watch some of the Dodgers beating up on the Giants so that was fun. Unlike my very unpleasant experience at LaGuardia when I was flying to North Carolina in 2017, I can’t blame LaGuardia for this one. It was entirely because of the weather in Chicago. It just would have been nice if they figured out earlier that my flight wouldn’t be happening. I wasn’t mad about the whole situation, I was just disappointed. I missed out on seeing Jon, his family, Kevin, and Notre Dame-Virginia.
As for the game, I missed an enjoyable second half. I’m still confused about Notre Dame, most of the teams on our schedule, and most of the currently ranked teams other than like Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, Auburn, Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. I think those teams are all pretty good. Who else is good? Who was the best team left on our schedule after the Georgia game? I think it’s one of Virginia, USC, and Michigan. I mean, USC probably has the most talent, but they don’t seem like a particularly good football team. Are we any good? All we had done was beat two bad teams and lose to a good team. Our running game had been nonexistent, our second-year starting quarterback has followed the pattern of Brian Kelly second-year starters and regressed, and our pass rush had been disappointing. We weren’t particularly good in the first half and trailed 17-14 at halftime. The defensive line dominated the second half. I thought the pass rush would be the strength of the team and they played like it in the second half with a bunch of sacks and forced turnovers. They set the offense up for one easy touchdown and scored one of their own. We ran the ball pretty well (taking out Book’s carries, the rest of the team ran for 168 yards on 28 carries, 6.0 per carry, and four touchdowns). But Ian Book continued to not be very impressive (6.6 yards per attempt and 0 touchdowns). The good news was that he didn’t turn the ball over. I also got Old Fields Barbecue delivered since I missed out on some tailgating. It came at halftime. That was a solid decision.
We play Bowling Green next week. Brian Van Gorder is their defensive coordinator and not surprisingly, they’re giving up 50 points per game against FBS schools. They’re scoring 9 per game against FBS schools. That game should be over by the middle of the second quarter. Then we have USC, a bye week, and then we go to the most evil place on earth to play Michigan. If we can get through those two games, our November schedule does not look bad. We’re home for Virginia Tech (2-2), at Duke (3-1, they got smacked by Alabama, beat two pretty horrendous teams, and beat up on Virginia Tech), home for Navy (2-1), home for Boston College (3-2 with losses to Kansas and Wake Forest), and at Stanford (2-3, they seem pretty bad). I guess Duke is the best team of that group. I would still say I’m expecting another loss and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than one, but with our talent, a well-coached team should probably go 11-1 and certainly no worse than 10-2.
I had a really fun trip to Notre Dame for a stadium tour, basketball game, and hockey game in February 2016. I was on campus in the summer of 2018 to see Dennis (then working on Notre Dame degree 4 of 4), do a stadium tour, and get to a South Bend Cubs game. I made a last minute trip to Notre Dame in January for outdoor hockey. And that’s all fun, but it’s not the same as being there for football. I definitely hope I get there next year, but my top football priority next year is the game against Wisconsin at Lambeau Field (I still say we should have done one at Lambeau, one at Wisconsin, and one at Notre Dame against them instead of one at Lambeau and one at Soldier Field). Let’s look at the rest of Notre Dame’s 2020 home schedule:
9/12- Arkansas
9/19- Western Michigan
10/10- Stanford
10/31- Duke
11/7- Clemson
11/21- Louisville
Obviously, Clemson is the highlight. But it’s going to be the most expensive and it’s almost certainly going to be a night game and it’s in November. Night games are not ideal when I don’t have a place to stay on campus. Traffic is going to be really bad leaving because nobody is hanging around after the game. I can pretty much rule out Western Michigan and Louisville unless a bunch of my friends all plan on going (even then, I wouldn’t really want to go to a game at Notre Dame the Saturday before Thanksgiving). Maybe Arkansas would be interesting (they haven’t been very good lately, but they’re an SEC team and it’s the first home game and we should be 1-0 after beating Navy in Dublin). I’ve generally avoided October games lately because of baseball playoffs, but Stanford would be early in the NLCS so I could live with missing games at that point (if the Dodgers win the World Series this year, I’ll be more willing to miss playoff games next year). But Stanford might be a night game also. Next year’s World Series will be over before Halloween so the Duke game would be a possibility too. I guess a lot will depend on what my friends are doing. If they want to rent a house somewhere near campus, that would make a night game much more appealing. So I hope I get to the Lambeau Field game and one home game. Next year’s away schedule isn’t very interesting. There’s Navy in Dublin (I guess I would be interested in that one if I hadn’t done that in 2012, but I’m mad at Ireland for turning their backs on Catholicism), Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, and Georgia Tech in NFL stadiums (Pittsburgh plays all of its home games in an NFL stadium so that’s fine, but I’ve done that game before, I’d rather play Wake Forest and Georgia Tech on their campuses), and USC. It would be cool to do a Notre Dame-USC game in Los Angeles and my brother does live out there now, but it’s Thanksgiving weekend and flying home the Sunday after Thanksgiving from LAX doesn’t sound like fun (that might be worth staying an extra day and taking a personal day on Monday).
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I have a big October ahead. Hopefully 2019 is finally going to be 1955 again for the Dodgers. And Notre Dame has games with their biggest rival (USC) and their biggest enemy (Michigan is not our rival). Go Dodgers! Go Irish!
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