Victory in Pasadena

Irish win! Irish win!
It's all I could think, hear, say and feel as we walked out of the North gate of the Rose Bowl late Saturday night.  We won.

It was a long, full day.  And while not the prettiest game in the world (what did you all expect, us to roll through a Top Tier D with 500 yards of Total O and rack up 48 points?  C'mon now, we're looking for progress and W's, not miracles all of a sudden), it was a win.  A good, solid win and one we (all) needed pretty badly.

The day started off with some sweet tailgating south of the stadium.  We got a few heckles here and there, but generally the UCLA crowd was just a crowd of decent drunk fans listening to rap on their twinny-twin-twins with a full DJ setup. Some did think that our limo made us look pretentious.  I just thought it made us look rich. 

One 'original' heckler kept giving us a "Geooooooooooooorge O'Learyyyyyyyyy" from across the way while we tailgated.  I actually enjoyed that.  But when I retorted with "Zeroooooooooo National Championshiiiiiiiiiips!" he didn't like that much.  And his response was "100!!! 100 National Championships!!!!"

Somebody tell this dude that when talking trash about football, Women's Water Polo and Badminton NC's don't count.

Anyway, a great day for tailgating.  Pure, blue skies, 80 degrees and burgers on the mini-grill.   We were ready to go.

The crowd was pretty fired up.  Though not sold out physically, all tickets (ticket brokers suck) were sold so technically it was.  It was just shy of 80,000 fans in the stadium and people get fir-ed up to play ND.   So a lot of energy and excitement prior to kickoff.  We had a pretty solid contingent of about 20,000 ND faithful I'd say.  And while we started off a little quiet, we picked up the loudness big time in the mid second quarter and rocked it from there.   At kick-off, I was fired up, and we were under way.

We all know what the first half brought. And I was okay with it. I knew we'd have a tough time with their D.  But we had a few decent drives, our D was playing well and we put up the 6 points to stay in it .

At half time I said was all we needed was a 3 and out and a quick break for a TD.  We got both.  This was a sweet, sweet image for this team. 

And the pushups began...

We held on, clawed and scraped our way to a solid win.  While clearly not pretty, I really enjoyed watching ND's confidence build as the game progressed.  The Defense especially played with confidence and aggression and you could almost feel the changes taking place within this team.  Last week WAS a turning point, and this game helped keep that momentum, regardless of stats or finesse points.  We still have work to do, but you can see the progress being made.  The potential.

One of the most fun/funny moments in the game was when the USC-Stanford score was announced.  UCLA doesn't love Notre Dame.  Nor does ND have a love affair for the Bruins.  But both sets of fans are united in their common loathing of USC.  And that showed just after the Stanford upset was announced...

Both teams cheering like they were going to pull in a W, when only one was.   But, the crowd had one thing upon which everyone could agree...