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Rendezvous with History: Notre Dame and Southern Cal renew college football's greatest rivalry in the House that Rockne Built
Clausen stakes claim to Heisman, Tate and Rudolph having All-American seasons, Irish defense showing team guts
When the mighty walls of ancient Troy still towered over the eastern Mediterranean, the Trojan warriors relied on technical prowess as much as military brawn. At the opposite end of that ancient world, amidst the chilly north Atlantic, in the mists of forests and hills rising above the emerald green Irish Sea, the ancient Irish of the era were likely even more savage than the far away Trojans.
While the present-day Irish have developed the most highly-skilled aerial attack in college football, Charlie Weis chose at a recent press conference to essentially challenge the manhood of his newly revitalized, mammoth offensive line. Arguing that they had been manhandled last year by Southern Cal, Weis is demanding an Irish offensive line that veritably dwarfs the smaller Trojan defense step up and take over the trenches.
Notre Dame and Southern Cal meet for the 81st time in a series initiated by Knute Rockne in 1926. Rockne reportedly wanted to play Southern Cal in the 1925 Rose Bowl, but instead blew out Stanford. The Irish ended up making another trek back out to Los Angeles for the final regular-season game of 1926, beating the Trojans 13-12 and launching the greatest rivalry in college football.
Notre Dame leads the overall series 42-33-5. Both Southern Cal and Notre Dame have beaten the other more than any other school in a series that has helped define college football.
The biggest crowd to ever watch a college football game, roughly 120,000, saw Notre Dame play Southern Cal during the Knute Rockne era, in the old configuration at Soldier Field in Rockne's hometown of Chicago.
For many years, the Notre Dame-Southern Cal game was customarily the final game of the regular season for both schools. But eventually, perhaps to accommodate California sensibilities, when the game was at Notre Dame it got shifted to mid-season.
In fact, when Notre Dame beat Southern Cal at Notre Dame in 1957, it was the last time Southern Cal ever played a game in snow. Temperatures were around 20-above.
That's right, according to their media department, Southern Cal has not played in snow in more than a half-century, and the last time was at Notre Dame.
The author has at least one eyewitness report from someone who attended a late-November Notre Dame-Southern Cal game, at Notre Dame, apparently in the late 1940's. They confirmed that the weather was indeed cold, but more notably declared -- "They brought the horse."
It sounds as if Southern Cal not only was willing to travel to Notre Dame every other year, and even play in the northern Midwest in late-November for part of the series, but in an age before jet travel, actually brought their live white stallion to Notre Dame, bearing a real live Trojan in ancient Mediterranean battle gear.
Fittingly enough, the horse's name is "Traveler."
More recently, the Trojans, while always seeming to stub their toe in mid-season, have been the top program in college football of the current decade. Meanwhile, for the first time in nearly a decade-and-a-half, Notre Dame has a fully rebuilt program across four-plus class years, among the best talent in the country, well-developed, well-conditioned, battle-tested. And in a season of tight finishes, the Fighting Irish seem to rediscovered the mystique of Notre Dame football past, that finds a way to win, that hits until there isn't any hit left and then hits harder, that digs in and digs down and plays for the ages, hearing the echoes of past crowds and past Irish teams carrying across the same grid-iron.
Not long ago, when Notre Dame was beating Southern Cal 11 years in a row in the 1980's and early 1990's (12 years if not for a phantom touchdown), there was one year when a preseason college football guide observed that Southern Cal looked pretty solid, but "if glory is ever going to return to Troy, they're going to have to beat the Irish."
Despite a #1 vs. #2 Notre Dame-Southern Cal match-up in 1988, an Irish blow-out win, Southern Cal did not really return to elite status until beating Tyrone Willingham his first season at Notre Dame and then launching their current 7-year winning streak. In the reverse of what that preseason guide years ago said about Southern Cal, it might be the case that, even as Notre Dame emerges as a solid top-15 or top-10 team, perhaps higher, onlookers might reserve judgment until the Irish top the men of Troy.
Red-zone Achilles heel and third-down
Seemingly escaping the notice of most onlookers, the most curious statistical aspect of this year's match-up might be that the Notre Dame defense, opportunistic but ranked #100 in total defense, is ranked in the top-5 in red-zone defense. Meanwhile, the Southern Cal offense, anecdotally and statistically, is weakest in the red-zone, especially inside the ten. The Trojans do get a number of trips there, but apparently do not score at a very high rate. They are #50 in red zone offense, while Notre Dame is #28, and Notre Dame's red-zone defense is #4, while Southern Cal's red-zone defense is #12.
What Weis has pointed out, however, is that Notre Dame's offense needs to score more touchdown's in the red-zone, not just field-goals, while the Southern Cal defense, strong overall, tends to limit opponents to field goals in the red-zone.
Thankfully, freshman Nick Tausch has turned into a top-10 field-goal kicker, in terms of averaging 2 per game, and is making good on 91% of his attempts; but Notre Dame wants more red-zone touchdowns on offense.
Another curious twist was that both Southern Cal and Notre Dame had trouble on third-down -- against Washington. Southern Cal was 0 for 10 on 3d down against the Huskies, Notre Dame 2 of 10. That probably has nothing to do with the current game, but it's one of those Twilight Zone things that's just ... there.
Strength-on-Strength: Notre Dame on Offense
In the current match-up, the top-10 Irish offense goes up against reputedly the best defense in college football.
:: click here for Notre Dame statistical team rankings from the NCAA database
:: click here for Southern Cal statistical team rankings from the NCAA database
Notre Dame has the #1 passing offense in college football, and will be going up against the #8 passing defense (as rated by the efficiency rating of opposing quarterbacks when going up against it).
Jimmy Clausen, the Heisman front-runner, has a 179.25 quarterback rating, the nation's best, 12 touchdowns with 2 interceptions (one of which bounced off the receiver's hands), averaging 309 yards per game.
Notre Dame has a top-10 offense overall, averaging 470 yards per game, 322 yards passing and 148 yards rushing at 4.1 yards per carry.
The Southern Cal defense is #1 in sacks, however, averaging more than 4 per game; #4 in scoring defense, giving up less than 9 points per game; #5 in rushing defense, giving up only 65 yards at 2 yards per carry; and #6 in total defense, giving up only 239 yards per game. The Trojans have been giving up 174 yards per game passing.
But against Washington, Southern Cal gave up 237 yards passing to Jake Locker. And in their most recent game against a declining Cal, the Trojan defense gave up roughly 300 yards of offense, roughly 200 passing and 100 rushing.
While the Irish miss sophomore wide-receiver Michael Floyd, the top receiver in college football before breaking his collarbone, even without Floyd Notre Dame still has the best passing offense in college football.
Despite playing through an injury for multiple games, and going up against a tough schedule not including the kind of weaker early-season opponents favored by other top teams (e.g., Florida playing Charleston Southern and Troy State), as mentioned above, junior quarterback Jimmy Clausen still leads all collegiate passers. Junior wide receiver Golden Tate himself has now emerged as a top-5 receiver, who against Washington had the most receiving yards in college football in a single game up to that point, hauling in 244 yards against the Huskies.
Sophomore tight end Kyle Rudolph, probably the best receiving tight end in college football, also a good blocker, really plays multiple positions. He lines up as a wide-out in multiple wide-receiver sets, and has the speed, route-running, and hands to be a bona fide wide receiver and down-field threat, even while standing at 6-7, 265 pounds. Rudolph also has started running the fade route that used to be run by Floyd, scoring the game-winning touch-down in overtime against Washington doing so.
Junior wide-out Duval Kamara, around 6-5, 220, has been a good receiver since his freshman year, but was quietly playing sparingly do to an injury in recent games, but was expected to be healthy against Southern Cal.
Meanwhile, Robbie Parris, almost as big as Kamara, and freshman speedster Shaquelle Evans have been combining to pick up a lot of the slack from the loss of Floyd working together.
An interesting twist will be watching Notre Dame on the ground, especially if Weis gets creative with his play-calling, such as by putting in a hurry-up no-huddle offense at some point. While Southern Cal is the most talented program in college football, and should be able to match up well, Notre Dame is bigger and just as athletic, and is more versatile.
Notre Dame's interior line outweighs Southern Cal's front four by about 40 pounds per man, perhaps more if Notre Dame right tackle Sam Young is actually more like the 350 or 360 he looks rather than the 320 he is listed at.
The Irish offensive line, interior linemen, as listed, average 6-6, 315. Chances are the average might be more like 320 or more per man, if Young is indeed bigger than he listed. Including tight end Rudolph, the average becomes around 6-6, 307, maybe somewhat higher.
Southern Cal's defensive front-four averages 6-3, 279 (although apparently it cannot be assumed that Pete Carroll will not play an extra tackle at times that beefs up the front for one of the nation's toughest run defenses; but even if he did, Southern Cal would still be smaller).
The linebackers are somewhat smaller, but Weis has pointed out that Southern Cal has a (linebacker-sized) 235-pound safety with blazing 4.3 speed, senior Taylor Mays.
With respect to versatility, Rudolph can essentially fill three roles, as mentioned above, and Tate showed against Purdue that he can be an electrifying flanker running back or Wildcat quarterback out of the backfield.
While clearly Tate is strong as well as fast, it is not clear if Tate necessarily has the upper body strength of many college running backs, which can rival some offensive linemen, or if he is as strong as Rocket Ismail, another flanker running back who also was a tremendous receiver and kick returner. While Ismail was renowned for his speed, he was quietly one of the strongest players on his team, and actually broke tackles on some of his long runs before turning in the blinding speed.
But to get to the point, if Weis were to ever put out a package that included both Rudolph and Tate, and was willing to flip Tate between wide-out and running back, perhaps with heavy-halfback/fullback Robert Hughes also in there, that package could include a lot of different combinations. At one end of the spectrum, Rudolph and Tate could both be part of a multiple-receiver set, and at the other end of the spectrum, Tate could be part of something akin to a power-I with Hughes. Even if, for example, the formation opened as a heavy, double-tight-end formation with Tate in the backfield with Hughes, and just one wide-out, it could flip into a multiple-receiver set with the same personnel.
In a hurry-up mode impeding substitution, it might be interesting to see if a Southern Cal team that has a lot of talent can match up for versatility.
Notre Dame on defense
Southern Cal has a top-25 offense in terms of production, averaging about 430 yards per game. Notably, while only passing for a respectable 223 yards per game, a top-55 performance, Southern Cal is averaging 5.5 yards per carry, 208 yards per game, on the ground. The Irish undoubtedly will still bring a lot of pressure on Southern Cal's freshman quarterback, Matt Barkley, but look for the Irish possibly to try to clamp down more on the run.
Now, it used to be more common to hear references to something called "team speed," especially on defense. The idea was that, in addition to specific skilled players having good enough speed for their responsibilities, the team as a whole would have sufficiently good speed across the board to have "team speed" as applied in a somewhat uniform manner.
Notre Dame's defense, in fact the entire team, has what might be called "team guts." The defense also has team speed, team athleticism and strength, and so forth. The intangibles seem to be going through the roof. While statistically the Irish defense has slipped a bit, playing one of the tougher schedules, one gets the sense they are not just going out and trying to execute. They are playing football, and playing to win.
The question against Southern Cal will be, will the Irish play every down, and especially, after the Washington game, tackle on every down, like it's fourth-and-ballgame. They probably will.
Another interesting question is what kind of game plan Irish defensive play-caller Jon Tenuta will bring.
Tenuta is one of the best defensive coaches in college football, and this apparently is the first season where he actually is doing all the defensive play-calling.
Unlike Weis, Tenuta might not have had the background to face what he's up against at Notre Dame. Ironically, while some questioned how Weis's NFL background might carry into college ball, there is one area where the NFL was the best possible preparation for Weis coming to Notre Dame. That is that, in the NFL, there literally is no down week against an easy opponent. Regardless of whether one or more particular franchise might have a down record, the fact is that across the board every NFL team is just that, and full of world-class athletes.
Notre Dame plays a national schedule, against nothing but major programs in good conferences, each of whom treats the Notre Dame like a bowl game and brings their best preparation, their greatest intensity, and their most creative game plan. In addition to everything else, the games are all on national television.
Even Nevada, a 2008 bowl team whom Notre Dame blew out in the season opener, is now leading the nation in rushing and themselve blowing out opponents with massive scoring.
Tenuta is having to go from dealing with the Nevada Pistol offense, to the "RiRod" spread offense moved from West Virginia to Michigan, to Michigan State's potent attack, to post-Tiller but still-sort-of-Tiller Purdue, to Washington being coached successfully by Southern Cal's old offensive coordinator, to Southern Cal itself, with a new, highly talented offensive coach.
Tenuta is known to be blitz-happy and high-pressure oriented, which one might expect to see against Southern Cal's freshman quarterback.
On the other hand, when Notre Dame got gouged for some runs up the middle earlier in the season, and a couple of times since then when Notre Dame gave up a few bigger plays, despite an uncharacteristic rash of missed tackles in a recent game, it generally did not look as if Notre Dame was outplayed or outmuscled, but might have been a little out of position.
Some of this might be a rolling of the dice with the intensity, and Notre Dame has been in excellent position much of the time.
But one wonders if Tenuta, paradoxically, might throw confusing looks at Southern Cal, but nevertheless focus on stopping Joe McKnight, Southern Cal's best rusher, and clamping down on the run, while making blitzes count for more at unsuspected times.
Look for the Irish defense, tough in the red zone and tough when it's in position, pinning its ears back, to possibly resist the urge to over-blitz the freshman quarterback, and buckle down to stomp on the run like it did against Purdue. It will be a little tougher, in part, because while Joe McKnight is getting twice as many carries as Alan Bradford, and the Trojans suffered the terrible, horrific training injury to Stafon Johnson, Southern Cal still has a famously extensive stable of runners.
Safety Kyle McCarthy continues to lead Notre Dame tacklers, and in fact is #21 in the country with nearly 10 per game.
Freshman linbacker Manti Te'o had his first real start, where he also played extensively, against Washington, resulting in becoming essentially the co-leader tackler in that game. His playing also meant Brian Smith shifted over to another linebacker spot, with Toryan Smith displaced in the process. Corwin Brown, Jon Tenuta, and Weis clearly want Brian Smith on the field as much as possible, and wanted Te'o on the field as quickly as possible, and also think very highly of Toryan Smith.
Linebacker Darius Fleming, in another spot in the 3-linebacker set, is #12 in the country for tackles-for-loss, averaging almost two per game.
Against Washington, the defensive line showed stepped-up production as well, which bodes well against Southern Cal with its strong rushing game having to complement a rookie quarterback. Notre Dame plays two big linebackers at right defensive end, one of whom, Kerry Neal, technically started at linebacker against Washington, and got a number of tackles. Weis, at a press conference, made it sound as if Neal did indeed also get tackles as a defensive linemen.
Notre Dame's defense, to a man, will have to play the game of its life against Southern Cal, but probably will, and will be part of the overall team effort that stands a good chance to step up and beat the Trojans.
The Rivalry That Rockne Built
A few years ago when Notre Dame returned to the venue where they won their first consensus national championship, playing a regular season game in the Rose Bowl stadium against UCLA, the Los Angeles Times ran a lengthy article about Notre Dame's victory in the 1925 Rose Bowl. Culminating the 1924 season, Knute Rockne led the Four Horsemen and the Seven Mules in a 27-10 route over a Stanford team coached by the legendary Pop Warner and featuring star back Ernie Nevers.
But according to the LA Times, Rockne had wanted to play Southern Cal in the Rose Bowl. It seems the Rose Bowl invited Notre Dame first, and then considered a couple of different PAC-8 teams, settling on Stanford.
Rockne would get his match-up with Southern Cal two seasons later in 1926. The first game was a road game at Los Angeles that Notre Dame won 14-13, and a rivalry was born.
Interestingly enough, for some time the game was always the final game of the regular season, until, apparently to appease California sensibilities, the game was played at the end of the regular season when it was in sunny southern California, but moved up to mid-season when it was played at Notre Dame.
The 2009 game is the 81st in the series, which went into hiatus in World War II when the entire nation was geared up for a complete war effort and reducing travel to conserve resources for the national defense (note also that for a few years during that time, the Notre Dame coaches and players, including Frank Leahy himself, were absent when they went into the military).
Overall Notre Dame leads the series 43-33-5. In the past few decades, including Southern Cal's recent winning streak, the series has been more even, but Notre Dame still has the advantage.
During a decade-and-a-half stretch from the mid-1960's to the early 1980's, the two teams combined to win roughly half of the national championships, and the Notre Dame-Southern Cal often had national title implications. Notre Dame won somewhat sparingly during that stretch, but when they did the Irish were national champions.
In Ara Parseghian's first year, 1964, a Notre Dame team that had a losing record the previous year was undefeated and cruising to a national championship when they lost a close one at Southern Cal.
In Parseghian's third year, 1966, an injury-riddled Notre Dame team gutted out a 10-10 tie at Michigan State, in a #1 vs. #2 matchup, and hung onto the #1 ranking. But to the chagrin of Alabama fans, the Irish went on to ratify and solidify their #1 ranking by absolutely blowing out a top-10 Southern Cal team to take home the national title without even playing a bowl game. (Notre Dame did not play in a bowl game between the 1925 Rose Bowl and the #1 vs. #2 1970 Cotton Bowl, but still won many national titles. Notre Dame's decision to return to bowl games was a key factor in bowl games taking on greater significance and being more than just post-season exhibition games.)
After Notre Dame trounced the Trojans in 1966, perhaps because of a Southern Cal desire for redemption, other than a tie, Southern Cal beat Notre Dame several years in a row. But when Notre Dame beat them in 1973, reportedly prompting an emotional Southern Cal Head Coach John Robinson to visit the Notre Dame locker room afterwards to congratulate the Irish, it was part of an undefeated national championship run for Notre Dame, culminating in a defeat over Alabama in a #1 vs. #2 Sugar Bowl.
Then, Notre Dame would not win again over the Trojans until the famed "Green Jerseys" game of 1977. The Irish warmed up in their usual blue jerseys, only to go back to their locker-room awaiting the start of the game, and discover that Head Coach Dan Devine had surprised them all with green jerseys waiting in each locker. The student body even built a giant Trojan Horse for the game, which the captains would jump out of, and an afternoon of legends played well. Joe Montana was at quarterback; Ken McAfee, who finished third for the Heisman, was a favored receiving target at tight end; Ross Brown, who finished fifth for the Heisman, was at defensive end; Bob Golic was at linebacker, and blocked a punt run back by a lineman for a touchdown; Ted Bergmeier had an interception at defensive back that prevented a Southern Cal touchdown, and as a holder on placekicks set up a touchdown with a run off a fake field goal, and passed for a two-point conversion off a bobbled snap; bone-crushing Luther Bradley was at safety; Jerome Heavens was at running back. The Irish beat Southern Cal 49-19 on their way to another national championship.
1977 Notre Dame-Southern Cal Highlights
Gerry Faust had good luck against Southern Cal. Faust and Lou Holtz combined for an 11-year winning streak (actually, it would have been 12 years if not for a phantom touchdown credited to Southern Cal in 1982, when Notre Dame recovered a fumble around the two and newspapers around the country showed the Southern Cal would-be ball-carrier crossing the goal line without the ball; and the 11/12-year Notre Dame winning streak was followed by a tie and another Notre Dame win to make it a 13/14-year winning or unbeaten streak for Notre Dame).
At one time, Southern Cal Head Coach Pete Carroll actually did lose at Notre Dame, to then-Notre Dame Head Coach Bob Davie, now an ESPN commentator. That experience apparently convinced Carroll to completely change his approach to games at Notre Dame Stadium, and avoid any kind of campus tour at Notre Dame or any kind of exposure to Notre Dame tradition, sights, or sounds for the Southern Cal players prior to the game.
Carroll had what apparently was a well-regarded career in the NFL as a defensive coach, and did not fare as well as a head coach but was apparently on the cusp of consideration for additional chances. But in a Trojan football fan webpage purporting to provide a transcript for Carroll addressing a Nike football camp, Carroll is quoted as saying his biggest break was getting the opportunity to be a graduate assistant for Lou Holtz at Arkansas. It was during that time that Carroll indicated he learned the "4-3-under" defense associated with Lane Kiffin's father, that Carroll has continued applying to this day.
Weis inherited a Notre Dame program which, as a program, with respect to its foundations, was at its weakest point in more than a century. Everybody who bothered to realize this fact knew, taking into account the ebbing and flowing of how players do or do not come through, and injuries, and other factors, that it would take Weis five or six years to rebuild fully to the program's potential. At the same time, it was realized that the potential would be as great as always.
No one seemed to want to admit, when Weis took USC to the wire his first season, how thin Notre Dame really was, and how Weis had cobbled together a skelaton crew to accomplish it. Weis has had two home games, and two away games against Southern Cal. The first home game was the one Notre Dame deserved to win on the field, and the second was in the big third-year downturn that was the balloon payment for the Davie-Willingham chickens coming home to roost.
The other two games, at the Coliseum, were at the end of the regular season, when an already thin and rebuilding Notre Dame was depleted by injuries. In the second Weis year, Notre Dame, at the receiver position, was down to one NFL-caliber wide receiver, a borderline rookie free agent, and David Grimes when he was a sophomore. The NFL-caliber tight-end was out with an injury. The back-up tight-end was decent, but not an NFL draft pick.
So Notre Dame is really just now in a position to be rebuilt and hitting their stride. It would be nice if Floyd was there to play, but Notre Dame has a little more depth now, at least, apparently more than, for example, Oklahama.
Prediction: Notre Dame vs. Southern Cal
Expect the hardest-played, most dramatic college football game of the season thus far, with the best skilled players in the college game on both sides of the ball. If Notre Dame pulls out a win they deserve to be part of the pack in line for the BCS self-proclaimed "national title" game.
Notre Dame vs. Southern Cal Links and Resources
:: #25 Irish Return From Bye Week, Play Host To #6/5 USC: Nation's greatest intersectional rivalry resumes for the 81st time Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium (3:42 p.m. ET, NBC), Notre Dame Football news release
:: Notre Dame vs. Southern Cal game notes (PDF)
:: Notre Dame Football official site
:: Notre Dame depth chart (PDF)
:: Notre Dame statistical team rankings from the NCAA database
:: Southern Cal statistical team rankings from the NCAA database
:: Southern Cal official site
:: Southern Cal game notes (depth chart on p. 14)
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Keywords: Notre Dame Football, Fighting Irish, Jimmy Clausen, Charlie Weis, Kyle Rudolph, Golden Tate, Robert Hughes, Armando Allen, Duval Kamara, Robbie Parris, Shaquelle Evans, Southen Cal Football, University of Southern California, USC Football, Pete Carrol, Matt Barkley, Joe McKnight
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