Notre Dame vs. Louisiana State

One of the major sports news stories in recent weeks has been Texas
Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight's quest to become the winningest
coach in the history of major college basketball. As it stands, Knight
is tied with Dean Smith and his next victory will make him the first
major college coach to win as many as 880 games. Through the years
Knight has earned his fair share of critics, as well as fans, but he
has always seemed to have a degree of historical perspective about the
game of basketball, and the profession of coaching in general. It is
interesting to note, then, that Knight has been quoted in the past as
saying that he never saw a better coach anywhere than the great Ara
Parseghian.

Previous emails have discussed Parseghian's strong suits, particularly
his ability to place talented athletes into the positions in which
their skills would allow them to shine most brightly. Parseghian was a
masterful tactician as well, however, and frequently left opposing
coaches flummoxed with his game calling. One such game was one of the
biggest in Parseghian's amazing career at Notre Dame, the 1973 Sugar
Bowl.

Played on December 31, 1973 on the slippery artificial turf at old
Tulane Stadium, that year's Sugar Bowl staged a contest between #1
Alabama and #3 Notre Dame. With the national championship potentially
at stake for both teams, Parseghian and legendary Alabama coach Paul
"Bear" Bryant dug in for a titanic clash.

The game was hard-fought throughout, but the Irish game plan seemed to
keep the Crimson Tide off balance throughout the night. Irish return
man Al Hunter took a second quarter kickoff back 93 yards for a
touchdown, powering Notre Dame to a 14-10 halftime lead. After the
teams traded touchdowns in the third quarter, the Irish still led 21-17
going into the final period. Early in the fourth, Alabama HB Mike
Stock converted a 25-yard TD pass to backup QB Richard Todd, giving the
Tide a 23-21 lead. Their kicker missed the critical point after
touchdown, however, leaving N.D. trailing only by two points.

On the very next drive, the Irish converted a field goal to reclaim the
lead, 24-23, the sixth time the teams had traded the lead in the game.
On the following series, Alabama was forced to punt, but their punter
Greg Gantt boomed nearly a 70-yard punt to pin the Irish on their own
two-yard line late in the game. With the ball, the Irish gained eight
yards on their first two plays, leaving them third and two for a first
down and, presumably, a victory. On third down, however, a false start
was called, pushing the ball back five yards, giving the Irish a
prickly third and long on their own five-yard line.

At this point conventional wisdom would have dictated that the Irish
run the ball to set up a punt and then hope that the defense could hold
off the Tide offense. Instead, Parseghian called a brilliant pass
play. On a play-action pass designed to go to TE Dave Casper, Irish QB
Tom Clements hit a wide open WR Robin Weber for a 36-yard play with
2:12 remaining. The completion remains to this day one of the most
famous plays in N.D. football history. Near midfield, the Irish were
able to run off the remaining time on the clock and claim victory.

After the game, Parseghian stated that the penalty on the play previous
to Clements's famous pass was actually a blessing in disguise,
admitting that the Irish would have run the ball on third and short.
Bryant said that the Tide never even considered that the Irish would
throw from their own five-yard line on third and long, and he praised
Parseghian's perspicacity. As a result of N.D.'s hard fought victory,
they won the 1973 national championship, Parseghian's second in ten
seasons as Irish head coach.

Thirty-three years later, that 24-23 victory in the 1973 Sugar Bowl
still stands as one of N.D.'s defining victories. This week, the Irish
look to notch another defining victory as this year's group of seniors
looks to end the program's record eight game bowl losing streak. In
the program's fourth-ever trip to the Sugar Bowl, the Irish will find
on the opposing sideline a formidable foe in the #4 ranked Louisiana
State Tigers, a team that features one of the nation's great defenses,
as well as an offense led by QB JaMarcus Russell.

Notre Dame and Louisiana State have an interesting history on the
gridiron. The series started in 1970, when the #2 Irish hosted the #7
Tigers and won a defensive battle, 3-0. Since then the schools have
played eight additional times. Overall, the Irish hold a 5-4-0 record
in games played between the schools. More often than not, games in
this series have been close, with the winning team only having a
10-point margin of victory historically. In 1997, the Irish traveled
to #15 LSU and won, 24-6. Later that same season, the teams met again
in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport. The Tigers exacted revenge in
that game, winning 27-9 in front a partisan crowd of Tiger fans.

In the last game between these schools, in 1998, the Irish hosted the
Tigers at Notre Dame Stadium for the first time since 1986, winning
39-36. Irish fans will remember that Bob Davie's time management
incompetence was on display once again, as Jarious Jackson was forced
to take a safety late in the game to run out the clock. Jackson
sustained a knee injury on the play, forcing him out of the
season-ending game against Southern Cal, a game the Trojans won, 10-0.

Of interest is that this will be the third consecutive season in which
the Irish will appear in a bowl game. Notre Dame last accomplished the
feat when the Irish went to bowl games in nine consecutive seasons
between 1987 and 1995.

Other notes:

-Notre Dame has won eleven games in a season on five separate
occasions: 1973 (11-0), 1977 (11-1), 1988 (12-0), 1989 (12-1), and 1993
(11-1). Conversely, the Irish have finished with a 10-3 record only
twice: 1991 (the year in which the Irish last won the Sugar Bowl) and
2002.

-Notre Dame's record in bowl games stands at 13-14. The Irish have
lost eight consecutive bowl games, tying the NCAA record for bowl game
futility.

-Notre Dame's last bowl victory came on January 1, 1994 in the Cotton
Bowl following the 1993 season. In that game, the #4 Irish defeated #7
Texas A&M, 24-21. That victory capped an 11-1 season and a final #2
ranking for the Irish.

-Since the 1993 season, the Irish have finished only one season with a
victory in their final game. That game was 2001's 24-18 victory at
Purdue.

-The Irish have played in the Sugar Bowl on three previous occasions,
where they have garnered a 2-1 record. The victories came in the
aforementioned contest in late 1973, as well as in 1992, in which the
#18 Irish defeated the #3 Florida Gators, 39-28. Notre Dame's Sugar
Bowl loss came on January 1, 1981 in Dan Devine's final game as head
coach. The #7 Irish put up a gallant fight against eventual national
champion Georgia before the Herschel Walker-led Bulldogs prevailed,
17-10.

-Despite the illustrious histories of these two programs, Notre Dame
and Louisiana State have not played in a game in which both schools
were ranked since 1971. The schools are tied 1-1 in series games in
which both schools are ranked.

-These schools are not scheduled to meet again.

-With his 274-yard, 3-TD performance against Southern Cal, Irish QB
Brady Quinn now stands at #9 on the NCAA all-time TD passes list, and
#10 on the NCAA all-time passing yardage list.

-In the ongoing competition between Michigan and Notre Dame for college
football's all-time best winning percentage, here is where things stand:

#3 Michigan's record stands at 860-281-36 for an all-time winning
percentage of .7460. The Wolverines face #8 Southern Cal in the Rose
Bowl on New Year's Day.

#11 Notre Dame's record stands at 821-268-42 for an all-time winning
percentage of .7445. The Irish face #4 Louisiana State in the Sugar
Bowl on January 3.

Michigan's lead stands at 15/10,000ths of a point.

Brady Quinn and his classmates get one final appearance as football
players at Notre Dame in this season's Sugar Bowl. Here's hoping that
they go out as winners. The game kicks off at 8:00 E.S.T. on Fox next
Wednesday night. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Go Irish! Beat Tigers!

Big Mike

One additional note: condolences to the family of President Gerald
Ford, who passed away this week at the age of 93. A varsity football
player at Michigan, Ford was a student of Fielding Yost (no one's
perfect), and a star lineman on the gridiron. After graduating from
Michigan, he went on to serve as an assistant coach at Yale while
working on his law degree. In doing this, he turned down several
offers from professional teams. As president, he spoke at Notre Dame
in the spring of 1975 and was conferred an honorary doctorate on that
occasion. Later, after leaving the White House, he was granted an
Honorary Monogram from Notre Dame, certainly a unique privilege for a
former Michigan football player! The nation's longest-lived Chief
Executive, he was a humble servant of the American people and will be
missed.

copyright Michael D. McAllister 2006