Irish Blogger Gathering: Wherein We Talk To Ourselves and Doubt Ourselves

I suppose it's about time we stop reading everyone else's answers to our quiz and rip off the best ones answer the quiz ourselves.

1. Given the stat-lines of Brian Kelly’s first Blue and Gold Sprint Spring Game, it seems obvious to me that the media will be shark-feeding from now until the first game of the 2010 season over our new-found “quarterback controversy.” I mean, didjya see MONTANA SON of MONTANA throw those TD PASSES!? HE LOOKED JUST LIKE MONTANA! So let’s all do the responsible thing as “Notre Dame Blogs: Protectors of the Realm” and come to full agreeance about this so-called controversy and put it to rest right now: Nate Montana should be the starter, right?

   Totally. Not! (Whoa, flashback to that awkward period of my life called "the first half.") Ahem. Anyway, yeah, no. And, actually, as far as future telling goes, I suck. It appears, a full 4 days after the Blue and Gold Game, that nearly none of the mainstream DERP media took the clever bait laid down by Brian Kelly and MONTANA SON of MONTANA! But we are thrilled to find that the idea that young Montana, who we shall henceforth never mention is THE SON OF MONTANA, could be 1 play away from being the starting QB at Notre Dame in 2010 is far less disagreeable than it was just 30 days ago. The kid may not have a ton of experience, and perhaps he doesn't have a chance to become arguable they greatest quarterback to play professional football, but if ND ever needs to call on him in the heat of a game, we're now confident that he'll handle the pressure like a champ. Or at least he'll handle it competently. I can't seem to find the source of the numbers, but I remember among the stream of info passing through the intertubes as the game was wrapping up was a tidbit that Montana, in the Blue and Gold Game, had completed 9 more passes than he'd completed in his entire (though abridged) high school career. (Apologies if we're completely misremembering this number, and thanks if anyone can dig up the source/real info.)

2. One of the over-arching themes of the 2010 Spring session of Notre Dame football was that Brian Kelly has been spending a lot of time trying to change the overall attitude of the Notre Dame team. To quote Kelly, “What I want them talking about is, ‘It’s me that gets that first national championship,’ not ‘I want to be the No. 1 draft pick.’ That’s what we’re reshaping.” Do you think that unexpectedly long wait-time this weekend for Golden Tate and Jimmy Clausen to receive that magical phone call from some NFL team will go noticed by any of the Irish footballers who, until this weekend, weren’t getting the message from Kelly? Was there anything this spring that you noticed that made you think that most of the team was already on board the Good Ship Greater Good and that the transformation in that regard was complete?

   I did note the multiple comments by current players via Twitter that they thought the fall of Clausen in the 2010 draft would prove to be a great mistake for many NFL teams, so I'm positive that the boys took note. What lessons they may have taken from that is anyone's guess. But if they take even a moment to notice that guys who played for mid-majors and Rutgers (!) were drafted in the 1st round, multiple times, before 2 of the most talented players Notre Dame has had on the field in the last 15 years, then I've got to think there's at least some chance that these student athletes can figure out that to NFL decision makers, a history of winning matters a hell of a lot when it comes to picking players.

3. A fair number of players made a pretty good splash in Spring Ball and in the Blue & Gold Game. Name one you didn’t notice belly flopping into the big pool of opportunity and explain why that disappoints you. Or, if you really want to be creative, explain why you’re glad that particular player didn’t win any belly flop competitions.

   Kerry Neal. And I'm extremely disappointed. Do an internet search of news from the last couple of months looking for the kid, and you'll see he gets mentioned constantly, but I've not seen even the slightest blip or fluff piece mentioning that he's "switched a light on" for lack of a better way to put it. And the reason I'm disappointed is because I remember how thrilled the kid was to be recruited by Notre Dame, and his freshman season seemed to portend a story of relatively unexpected greatness. But at this point, it's like his freshman year was an unexpectedly great preview that made the actual movie look way better than it really is. My hope, of course, is that the new coaching and the new-new system will lead to an upward swing that could only be calculated with fancy math, but at this point his tackles-per-game statistics have essentially remained flat at 1.67 in 2007, 1.92 in 2008, and 2.08 in 2009. And we couldn't help but notice Dayne Crist (he of the 1.5 knees variety of our species) run a bootleg right around his contain in the B&G Game Highlight Video. Here's hoping that the kid we became so excited about during his recruitment and freshman year has the sort of senior year about which movies are made.

4. Pick one quotation from Spring Ball sourced by an Irish coach and parse the living hell out of it.

   In preparing the media for his first Blue and Gold Game, Brian Kelly was quoted,

   “You will probably leave going, ‘Wow, our defense didn’t get the kind of progress we were hoping,’ ” Kelly said Wednesday. “This is going to be set up for offense from that standpoint. We want to get out there and show some exciting football.”

   Now, y'all know me. You know how intelligent and good looking and rational I am, and I don't mean to let you down after having set certain expectations, but whoa. Defensive football isn't exciting? Brian Kelly doesn't get a massive adrenaline rush out of seeing a solid run of 3-and-Out series? Does this worry anybody? Can you not see in these few words a clear path to 8-4 mediocrity enveloped in a lot of talk about offensive firepower?Oh gawd!

   [/Cassandra the Notre Dame Fan]

5. Select one stat from the 2009 season that either troubled you greatly or made you brag to all your coworkers who cheered for teams with sucky comparable stats, and explain why that particular stat will be vastly improved or ruined in 2010 based on what you’ve seen in the spring.

   Seemingly, we harp on it every year. Notre Dame hasn't had any home-run rushing gains in about half a decade. Last year, the longest rushing gain was 37 yards by Robert Hughes against Washington. A nice gain, to be sure, but if you look at the top rushers in the country, year in and year out, the average long gain among the top 25 is typically in the high 40s or even 50s. In the spring game, Cierre Wood had gains of 38 and 44 yards. ND's plight in the game of home-run rushing gains ends in 2010, or I'm going to freak the hell out.

6. Bonus: Stick figures, collage, stolen work, hotlinked photo, professionally edited photoshopping, whatever… give us a visual that best represents everything you’ve seen from spring college football, Irish and/or otherwise, in 2010.

   This photo, provided to us this weekend by fellow Loyal Son NWohioND, says everything about Spring College Football that needs to be said. Oh sure, Nebraska nearly annually fills 80k people in their stadium for their spring game, and Florida probably had a national telecast of their game, but Notre Dame just put about 25k butts in cold seats on a lousy, rainy, South Bend day (it doesn't get much worse) to check out the happenings of an essentially rigged game (see Kelly quote I parsed above) between 2 halves of a squad that's won 16 games in the last 3 seasons. This happened while most pro baseball teams may still have a chance at the playoffs, and while the NBA and the NHL started their playoffs, and while the NFL was setting records for viewers of a draft. This country has a love affair with college football that knows no bounds and no season.