On the first home game day every year, all of the students and fans put “The Shirt” onto their back to show their pride in the team. This year, the shirt reads “the tradition continues.” What is the tradition? So many answers come to mind: touchdown push ups, the Notre Dame Fight Song, the Alma Mater sung at the end. But, is “the tradition” really just losing to bad teams at home?
Winning against Texas A&M had inflated the team’s egos. They walked into the NIU game thinking that the game was won for them before they even laced up their shoes. Because of this, we have suffered a loss that makes us the laughing stock of all college football.
The sad part — this is nothing new for the University.
Notre Dame has dealt with a whole slew of shame in the time since our last national championship in 1988. Many people thought that this year would be our rise back into a place of glory, but it is ending all the same.
Since Marcus Freeman has started as head coach in 2022, Notre Dame has suffered nine losses. Not all of the losses can be accredited to unknown and unranked teams. Two of those losses were at the hands of Ohio State. The loss to Ohio State last year went up until the last second, with the people in the stands biting their nails until their fingers bled. Yes, the loss was a result of a mistake by Freeman, but the quality of the team made it difficult to hold it against him.
The same can not be said for our losses against teams like Marshall, Stanford and NIU. To make matters worse, all of these games were lost at home. Two of which were the home openers. For a place that is enshrined in tradition and mystique, it seems pretty easy for teams to come in and beat us.
The team held the Aggies to a total of 246 yards, but let the Huskies get 388 yards on our own turf. Our offense was able to get 356 yards against Texas A&M, but fell to a mere 286 yards against this unranked team. It was not that NIU had the game of their life, it was that (once again) we played down to another team’s level instead of performing our best.
Getting booed off of your own field, by your own fans at halftime should be evidence enough that it is your own fault.
To be fair, Notre Dame is a school of tradition. So naturally, this is not exclusive to Freeman. The tradition goes back to losses such as Brian Kelly’s humiliation against Tulsa in 2010. Kelly then went on to lose the 2011 home opener to South Florida. Even when Kelly gained more experience at Notre Dame, it was the same story. In 2016, Notre Dame fans packed the stadium to watch him lead us to a loss against Duke.
Before Kelly and Freeman there was Charlie Weiss in 2009. He followed tradition and ended his career at home with an embarrassing loss to UConn.
Or even further back to Lou Holtz’s final season, when he suffered a loss to Air Force at home in 1996. These are not even the only embarrassing losses that can be listed.
Many people believe that this loss, and many others, belong to head coach Marcus Freeman. Even though I don’t believe that he holds this burden on his own, I would be remiss to disagree. If you are better known for your appearance rather than for your success as a coach, you should step foot in a modeling studio and get out of the football stadium.
The problem may not be Freeman, but a pervasive problem in Notre Dame football.
Notre Dame Football is able to win at Texas A&M, the most hostile environment in college football, but can not seal the deal against a mid-major team at home. A loss like this should be unacceptable, and it should be an astounding upset. But nobody, including Notre Dame fans, are actually surprised by this outcome because we are used to losing at home.
People like Stephen A. Smith claim that Notre Dame should now be considered irrelevant in college football because they never compete when they are expected to. It has become a sort of toxic relationship that I can not leave and I can not help but defend. Trying to find some sort of way to say that even though we have embarrassing losses, we are still the best. But, it is hard to find an argument when we lost to a team that has never beaten a top 10 team in it’s programs history.
Notre Dame football, I love you and I have defended you against these accusations, but I am done (that is, at least until our next win).
