One of the best weekends of my life

Our view of the opening kickoff from the South endzone

The Notre Dame defense De-narded Robinson.  From now on, he'll be known as De Robinson.  I totally stole that joke from an NDNation poster.  Before I get to the story of the weekend, let's go back six years:

September 16, 2006:  One of the worst days of my life.  If you know what I'm talking about, I'm not joking.  Notre Dame had come off giving Penn State a beatdown in the second game of the season.  With a 2-0 record, we were ranked number 2 in the AP poll (I actually didn't remember being ranked quite that high).  I woke up that day being extremely confident that we would beat Michigan.  They destroyed us and it was the first time I was worried about Charlie Weis as a head coach.  As it turned out, the Weis Era ended poorly.

Until this weekend, 2006 was the only game against Michigan that I've attended.  It was one of several disappointing losses.  So it was a personal score that needed to be settled.  I needed to see us beat Michigan in person.  I think it was our biggest game since I was a student.  I would even say it was our biggest home game since USC in 2005.  The Michigan game in 2006 is an obvious contender for that title, and it probably should be the answer since we were ranked number 2 and they were number 11.  But I think we were too confident going into that game.  If we had won, it would have been totally expected.  For this game, I hoped we would win, but nothing was going to surprise me.  The other contenders for biggest home game since 2005 are USC in 2009 and 2011.  In 2011, we already had two losses.  And in 2009, I think the 2007 and 2008 seasons put a damper on that.  We were already seriously worried about Weis (and that loss was when I gave up on Weis).

This game was made huge by our win over Michigan State and the last three years against Michigan.  It was our first time at 3-0 since 2002 and we needed to stop losing in the most painful ways possible to Michigan.  A win would put us into the top 10.  A loss would mean that we still weren't ready for primetime.

I applied for this game in the alumni lottery totally expecting not to win.  I ended up getting two tickets and I was joined at this game by my brother Sean.  We met at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and drove to campus.  The night game allowed us to fly in the day of the game (a move I had never pulled before).  As we were driving to campus, the weather got really bad.  It was coming down for a while.  When we got to campus around 2:30, we didn't want to get out of the car.  My friend/Notre Dame law student Jon picked us up and drove us to campus and right around that time, the weather began improving.  We had a beverage in Jon's room with another former St. Ed's resident Kevin.  Unfortunately, Kevin's sister and Kyle were not there because they got along so well.  Then Sean and I went to mass at 4:00 (which counted for Sunday, awesome).  The priest was pretty funny.  He got his biggest laugh from a line I had heard before when welcoming any visiting Michigan fans:  "God is neutral, but his mother isn't."

After mass, we were ready to go.  We met with big Notre Dame fan/former camp co-worker Chris to get the tailgating started in the library parking lot.  Chris is also a big Giants fan who attended the Super Bowl last year.  I hoped he'd bring some good results with him.  After that, we met up with Jon again in the Joyce Center lot.  The tailgating there was significantly more intense.  Four fighter jets did a practice run for their flyover about an hour early and got everybody excited.  That was pretty cool because Sean and I missed the real thing because we were headed to our seats right when the national anthem was happening.  They held us up until it was over, so we missed it.

I won't really go into all the details of the game, but we won behind some great defense.  Prince Shembo was mad because Michigan stole his bike seat.  Shembo, Stephon Tuitt, and Sheldon Day each sacked Denard Robinson.  Manti Te'o made eight takles and picked off two passes. Te'o is an amazing human being (not surprising considering he's a Mormon) and he's becoming just as good of a football player.  Dealing with incredible emotional pain, he's playing his best football.  I remember Te'o committing on signing day in 2009.  I gave all my students high fives when I found out he committed.  In his first three years on the team, I always thought he was very good, but not great.  Right now, he's great.  I've never seen a Notre Dame defensive player play this well.

The crowd was great.  This was the first really big game that I watched from anywhere other than the student section (USC in 2005, Penn State and Michigan in 2006, and I was able to sneak in with Jon for the USC games in 2009 and 2011), so it's a little hard to compare this one to other games.  We actually did move over to the student section with Jon for the second quarter, but we watched the rest of the game with the regular folks in section 20.  The crowd stood the whole game, except for timeouts.  It's three days later and I still haven't fully regained my voice.  I doubt anybody would notice it now, but I can still feel that it's not all the way back.  It was noticeable yesterday.  Hopefully the my next game will be an easier win and I won't have to be quite so loud for four quarters.

And I have to mention Tommy Rees.  I wore my Rees jersey to the game (which I have because 11 would be my number if I was a real athlete, but also because he holds a special place in my heart for beating Utah, Army, USC, and Miami in his first four starts to salvage the 2010 season), which was fitting because he had to come in to relieve Everett Golson.  He scored the only touchdown of the game and he audibled from a run and completed a huge pass on third down to Tyler Eifert late in the fourth quarter to pretty much seal the victory.

It was a great feeling.  This was the most significant win for Notre Dame that I've witnessed in person.  At 4-0, I've started dreaming.  Brian Kelly might be bringing Notre Dame back.  There's a lot of work still to be done, but this defense gives me hope.  One score is settled for me.  I'm hoping that we settle the score with USC (the other team I absolutely must see Notre Dame beat in person), but it's not time for that yet.  Hopefully we'll beat them in Los Angeles in November and then I'll be there for another win against USC at home next October.  Until then, we have some other big games coming up.  I'll be headed out to Notre Dame again for the BYU game on October 20.  Hopefully we'll go into that game at 6-0.  But for now, the only thing that matters is another old enemy:  Miami.  I actually heard it was Miami that stole Prince Shembo's bike seat.  Somebody needs to tell him.

It's a little blurry, but Sean and I are enjoying a great win.