Last Saturday night the Clemson Tigers, the number 1 ranked college football team in the country, came into Notre Dame Stadium where they were upset by the fourth-ranked Fighting Irish in double overtime, 47-40. The game was billed as the most important so far in the current college season, and was viewed by over 10 million fans on television and streaming devices. For this season only, Notre Dame is a full member of the Atlantic Coast Conference ("ACC"), so the showdown's result has implications not only for the ACC title but also the College Football Playoffs, with the national championship as the ultimate goal.
The pre-game hype was off the charts. Clemson had won 36 games in a row and was a 5 point favorite even though its All America quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, had to sit out per Covid-19 protocol. Their second string QB, DJ Uiagalelei, was not exactly chopped liver (to coin a phrase). The six foot five, 245 pounder was the USA Today high school player of the year two years ago. The rest of the Tigers two-deep roster was filled with four and five star recruits.
Clemson's visit to The Bend marked only the fourth time in the last 32 years that the Irish have hosted the number 1 team in the country. On October 15, 1988, the Miami Hurricanes were the defending national champion and ranked number 1 when they invaded Notre Dame. This was the famous Catholics vs. Convicts Game, which has become so legendary that ESPN produced a documentary about it. The Canes' "Convicts" sobriquet was well-earned, as some players on the Miami roster had run afoul of NCAA regulations as well as confrontations with the police. Before the game Miami lived down to its reputation as thugs when they ran through the Notre Dame warm up line. A rumble in the tunnel ensued. Back in the locker room the Irish players were stoked. Referring to his counterpart, ND head coach Lou Holtz famously instructed his squad, "Save Jimmy Johnson's ass for me!" The Catholics pulled off the upset 31-30. The final Miami play was an unsuccessful two point conversion attempt. Momma Cuandito and I had seats on the twenty yard line, compliments of my cousin Louie. That '88 season was the last time Notre Dame won the national championship.
Prior to last Saturday night's slugfest, the last time a number 1 opponent visited was October 15, 2005 when the Trojans of Southern California faced ninth ranked ND. The game's most lasting memory was a quarterback sneak by SC's quarterback Matt Leinart from the one yard line with three seconds left in the game, resulting in a thrilling 34-31 victory. On that play Trojan running back Reggie Bush pushed Leinart into the endzone after Leinart had originally been stacked up short of the goal line. That play was almost immediately dubbed the "Bush Push" and is a sore topic among Domers. Under the then-existing rules, aiding a ball-carrying teammate with a push or a pull was illegal, but admittedly that kind of infraction was rarely called. There are two postscripts concerning that action. First, a few years later the "no push" rule was taken off the books. Secondly and ironically, in 2010 the NCAA vacated 14 SC victories in which Bush played because he and his family (and at least one other SC athlete) received improper benefits from or on behalf of the school. [Note: Who was the Southern Cal head coach who looked the other way? None other than smilin' (but slimey) Pete Carroll who got out of Dodge (i.e., LA) right before the NCAA lowered the boom with severe sanctions, including reduction of scholarships, bowl bans and vacated victories. Carroll is now the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, which explains why I am always happy to see that team lose.]
In between the '88 Miami game and the '05 Southern Cal game was the November 13, 1993 showdown billed by the national media as "The Game Of The Century," the number 1 Florida State Seminoles vs. number 2 Notre Dame. [Note: The media likes to use the term "Game Of The Century" more than once every 100 years. For example, the Domers of my vintage consider the famous 10-10 tie with Michigan State on November 19, 1966 to be the real Game Of The Century. I attended that game in East Lansing. It was my sophomore year, the only one of the four while I was an ND student when we won the national championship.] The Irish dominated Florida State until the fourth quarter when the Noles staged a comeback. Trailing by 7 points, FSU's Heisman Trophy quarterback Charlie Ward marched his team down the field. On the last play of the game, Ward's pass from the Irish 14 yard line was batted down and a 31-24 upset was in the books. Pandemonium prevailed over the campus. Two days later ND moved up to number 1 in the Associated Press poll while Florida State dropped to number 2. Only one regular season game remained. All the Irish had to do was beat the number 12 Boston College Eagles in South Bend to qualify for what would be the NCAA title game, the Orange Bowl.
We have at last arrived at the point where the title of this post comes into play. What is a "trap game"? The term generally refers to a contest where a heavily favored team takes its underdog opponent lightly, thereby through their own fault increasing the likelihood of an upset. A narrower definition would be a game which either immediately precedes or follows a game against either an arch rival or a highly touted team. That narrower definition applies to the last week of Notre Dame's 1993 regular season. The Irish had just defeated Florida State and had replaced the Noles as the number 1 team in the country. If ND could beat number 1, surely ND could beat number 12.
The Boston College contest did not prove to be the ho-hummer we Domers foolishly expected. Notre Dame led 39-38 in the closing minute of the game. BC quarterback Glenn Foley led a furious last gasp march down the field. Just into Notre Dame territory Foley launched a long pass which an ND linebacker, stretching above his head, got both of his hands on, but he dropped the ball. A play or two later on the last snap of the game, BC's David Gordon kicked a 41 yard field goal to upset ND by one point. I was at that game. Watching that kick sail through the uprights brought a tear to my eye, but I was not embarrassed; almost all the other 59,000 fans in the stadium felt the same way. [The Irish linebacker who dropped the "sure" interception was Pete Bercich, an excellent player who went on to a five year career with the Vikings and is currently the radio analyst on Vikings' radio broadcasts. I have never felt so bad for an athlete as I did for Pete, but obviously he has turned the page. Good for him. That's as it should be.]
Because of the loss, the AP poll dropped ND to number 4, and moved Florida State back up to number 1 and Nebraska to number 2. Therefore ND never got to play in the Orange Bowl for the NCAA championship. Instead the Irish played in the Cotton Bowl where they beat Texas A & M to finish the season 11-1. Florida State beat Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, so they also finished 11-1. The final AP poll gave Florida State the national championship title. The ND fans cried bloody murder. How could the AP rank FSU over ND when they both finished 11-1 and ND had won in the head-to-head matchup? The answer was twofold. First, the FSU loss was to a much better team (ND) than the ND loss (BC). Secondly, the voters loved the Noles' head coach, folksie Bobby Bowden who, to that point at age 64, had never won a national title. They also loved Lou, a young pup at the tender age of 56, but he had already coached two national championship squads including one at ND.
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Twenty-seven years after the heartbreaking trap game described above, the Irish, fresh off the huge win against Clemson, face another potential trap game tomorrow. And wouldn't you know, the opponent is once again the Boston College Eagles. This time the game is on the opponents' campus in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Notre Dame is a two touchdown favorite, but you can bet the coaches are telling them all about that '93 debacle. The Irish coaches will also warn the team that beating Clemson last Saturday won't mean a thing if they don't take care of business tomorrow. Beating number 2 ranked ND would make the BC season and probably send them to a good bowl game.
Here are some side bars to keep in mind during tomorrow's game.
The Notre Dame fan base has a somewhat weird outlook on Boston College. Contrary to what many outsiders believe -- partly due to the gridiron meetings being labeled "The Holy Wars" -- the Irish faithful generally do not look upon BC as a main rival. That designation is reserved for Southern Cal (especially among older alums) and Michigan. It is often said, "Southern Cal is our arch rival; Michigan is our enemy." The level of animosity toward BC does not quite rise (or if you prefer, sink) to that level. Still, there is no love lost between the two schools. An old Notre Dame joke: What do the initials "BC" stand for? Backup college. (Explanation: many BC students applied to ND but were not admitted.)
Whatever aversion resides between ND and BC fans probably originated from one or two sources. One of course goes back to that 1993 upset which arguably cost ND a national title. It wasn't just the loss itself but the Eagles players and fans' reaction. The old mantra "when you lose say little, when you win say less" has allegedly fallen on deaf ears at BC. One year following a BC win in Notre Dame Stadium, some Eagles players dug up the turf to take back to Boston as a trophy. One of them, sad to say, was linebacker Chris Hovan who was a first round draft choice by the Vikings in 2000.
The other source stems from BC's desertion of the Big East Conference in 2004 to join the Atlantic Coast Conference. At that time Notre Dame was a member of the Big East for almost all varsity sports except football. Since BC was a charter member of the Big East going back to 1979, its jumping ship to go to a rival conference was seen by many as an act of betrayal. To this day, ND fans like to call Boston College "Fredo," the Corleone brother in The Godfather who betrayed his family.
One final nugget of intrigue. The starting quarterback for Boston College is Phil Jurkovec, a red shirt sophomore. When Phil played high school football in Pittsburgh, he was one of the very top QB prospects in the country. He turned down many scholarship offers to attend Notre Dame. After sitting out (aka red shirting) his freshman year, he was thought to have a decent chance of being ND's starting QB his sophomore year. But, he could not beat out the incumbent starter Ian Book. This decision by the Notre Dame coaches was not popular with at least half of the Irish fans, many of whom do not consider head coach Brian Kelly to be a good developer of quarterbacks. When Phil saw the writing on the wall last year, he transferred to BC, and the Eagles are mighty happy to have him. Even those of us who are die hard Irish fans hope Phil has a good game tomorrow -- in a losing effort, of course.
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