At around 1am Irish time tonight, Notre Dame, early autumn Irish tourists and accidental advocates of the 'shakedown', will play a game of football against Boston Colleges in Alumni Stadium. Notre Dame has not lost a game this year. If they continue to not lose any games, they will undoubtedly be the national champions of American college football, a feat they have not achieved since 1988. For nearly 90 years, Notre Dame was once was one of a handful of pre-eminent powerhouses in college football, but have been spent most of two decades in a state on inexorable decline that seemed to be pointing them towards absolute irrelevance. (The names Rocket Ismail and Tony Rice only have significance to Americans over 30). It's not often you can trace the decline of a team to one particular game, or indeed, one specific moment. But in the case of Notre Dame, you can watch it over and over on youtube. It happened 19 years ago, on a late Saturday afternoon in November. They were a team on a collision course with destiny that season until Boston College visited and put them onto a trajectory of disaster.
A week previous, Notre Dame, then America's second best team, hosted the Florida State Seminoles, then America's best team. It was one of those culture wars that college football sometimes throws up. FSU were run-and-shoot, razzle-dazzle, all guns blazing. Their QB was Charlie Ward, a Heisman trophy so athletically gifted he never played a game of pro football, choosing a career in the NBA instead. Notre Dame were inheritors of a tradition of American football, though to be honest I don't remember anyone on that Notre Dame team. I do remember hating them, especially their coach Lou Holtz who seemed always on the verge of spontaneous combustion. It was the last of the so-called 'Game of the Century' college football games, games that pitted #1 against #2. A national championship seemed inevitable.
Check out the schmaltzy, sepia-drowned Bob Costas VO'ed intro to see what exactly was at stake here:
FSU travelled up to South Bend quite cocky and were beaten by a touchdown. Immortality seemed a matter of time for this ND team.
A week later, Boston College arrived in South Bend. Little was expected of the Eagles that day, even though they'd won seven in a row and were ranked #17 in the nation by US sportswriters. Unlike Florida State, they were like a clone of Notre Dame: gritty, ugly, and quite Irish. Their quarterback's name was Glenn Foley. He was a ginger. Their coach's name was Coughlin. He would later lead the New York Giants to two Super Bowls. Like Notre Dame, Boston College is a Jesuit college, and its student body is comprised by the upper crust of Irish-American society. If waspish cliques still largely govern attendance in the Harvard's and Yale's of America, places like Notre Dame, BC and Georgetown offered a sort of Irish-Catholic refuge for social climbers, future Republicans and wannabe captains of high finance. And though there was so much about similar about the colleges and the people who attended them, there was always an air of snobbery that Notre Dame people would exude in the direction of BC people, as if attendance in Notre Dame was akin to a blessing from God. This was largely because Notre Dame was better at football. I don't know how Tom Coughlin summoned the hunger for retribution that people with a chip on their shoulder feel that day - it hardly could have effected his football team - but somehow his team found themselves leading Notre Dame 38-17 with about 11 minutes left in the game.
That was when Notre Dame woke up. 10 minutes later Notre Dame had scored three touchdowns, including the last one on a fourth and four, and were up 39-38. So much for the underdogs. But then the unexpected happened. Foley brought BC down the field. They set up a 41-yard field goal attempt by a guy named Dan Gordon. We expect so little from our place kickers, especially at a college level. Glenn Foley nearly had to jump up to catch the snap. Gordon slotted it through.
There's a brilliant moment of silence when we know the kick has cleared the uprights and Tom Hammond just shouts 'GOOD!' to confirm all the shrieking in the stadium. It remains one of about seven sports plays from my youth that I can still see vividly in my mind's eye. The heart had been ripped out of Notre Dame football on their own sacred patch. It was pure trauma.
Thousands of people would go to BC just because of this one play (as thousands of others had after this one.) Football is cruel and arguably vile sport, but to me, the drama of the final drive, especially when the burden of pressure is placed entirely upon the small shoulders of the man with the big boot, makes football somewhat exceptional as an American game. I especially love the final reply of the ball hurdling over the bar against the pale early winter Indiana sky, before a sole fist rises into the camera shot as a final confirmation.
Notre Dame has not been ranked number once since and lost 11 bowl games in a row after that season. It took nearly 20 years but perhaps Notre Dame have finally exorcised the ghost of that afternoon in '93. They'll confront it head on tonight in Chestnut Hill. This BC team is unquestionably terrible and is staring into a 19 point handicap, but something ineffable gives me hope that history will roar loud again tonight.
