The post Florida State 18, Notre Dame 14: A Quick Recap appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

It Was Over When …
Andrew Luck hit Coby Fleener for a 55 yard TD pass with 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter. It was Luck’s 4th TD of the game.

Turning Point
TJ Jones slipping on a slip screen on 3rd and 4 with just over a 3 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. Jones had a ton of field and blockers in front of him. It was set-up to be a huge gain for the Irish.

Three Good Stats

• 8 for 92 receiving yards — The offense was abysmal last night but playing in his 2nd to last game in an Irish uniform, Floyd did the best he good to provide some O. He continued his stellar blocking and scored the first TD of the night for the Irish.
• 28 points allowed — Giving up 28 points in never ideal but keeping a Stanford team that had scored 30 points in 13 straight games and allowing only 7 points in the second half was an excellent effort by the D. If they had any help at all from the offense, this could have been a different game
• 2 Turnovers Forced — Bob Diaco’s defense isn’t designed to generate many turnovers. But last night the D tried its best to keep the Irish in the game. Darius Fleming picked off Luck in the first half, and the D forced a 2nd quarter fumble. Unfortunately, the O squandered both opportunities.

Three Bad Stats

• 57 rushing yards — I’d blame most of that abysmal number on the offensive line. They were overwhelmed by Stanford’s D-Line all night. Constantly getting blown off the LOS, there was very little running room for any of the backs. Additionally, since in CFB, sacks are considered loss of rushing yards, all the sacks given up last night effected this number.
• 3 turnovers — After last night, we are currently 116th in the country in TO margin. Not much more can be said at this point. Just horrendous ball security.
• 10 penalties — Some of the false starts were ticky-tack but having 10 penalties on the road against a top 5 opponent is probably not the best formula for an upset.

Three Stars

• Michael Floyd — In his last regular season game for the Irish, Floyd put together another stellar outing finishing with 8 catches for 92 yards and a TD.
• Andrew Hendrix — Coming in for good to start the 2nd half, Hendrix provided a spark for the team leading the Irish on 2 scoring drives. He made some mistakes, took some bad sacks and threw a tipped INT but Hendrix showed a good deal of promise and brought another dynamic to BK’s offense with his running.
• The Defense — This game was lost by the offense. Despite being put in horrible situations by the offense all night, the D play admirably to keep the game close and allowed the Irish to have some hope of coming back in the 2nd half.

Housekeeping:

• While in no way an excuse for our play, Stanford’s field was horrific last night. One of the worst fields I’ve seen ND play on in the past couple of seasons.
• Floyd broke Golden Tate’s single season catch mark of 94 catches. He finished the regular season with 95.
• Theo Riddick played some RB last night finishing with 4 carries. It will be interesting to see what happens in the offseason with Riddick.
• Fleming’s INT was the 2nd of his career.
• Ben Turk’s season long improvement was evident last night. He finished with av average of 42 yards on 6 punts, dropping 1 inside the 20 and was 6″ from having one downed inside the 5.

Next Week:
The regular season is finished. The Irish will wait around to see what bowl games selects them. Most observers believe it will be the Champs Sports Bowl. Speaking of that bowl, they have an awesome twitter account that you should definitely follow. (@ChampsSportsBwl)

The post Stanford 28, Notre Dame 14: A Quick Recap appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

It Was Over When …
Roby Toma recovered Boston College fairly abysmal onside attempt. The Irish were able to run all but 15 seconds off the clock before punting back the ball back to BC for one final play.

Turning Point
Jonas Gray’s knee injury. Usually this is positive instance but Jonas’ injury seemed to deflate the team. It also altered the play calling and game plan for the rest of the game.

Three Good Stats

• 161 rushing yards — On a day when Tommy definitely didn’t have his best stuff and run blocking wasn’t as good as it’s been, ND still churned out 161 yards on 40 carries. With a struggling offense and a defense playing extremely well, ND still ate up clock and finished the game with a 6.5 minute edge in time of possession
• 100% FG percentage — Getting off his slow start (due to his being jinxed by DMQ), Ruffer connected on all 3 of his FG tries. Having attended ND during the last year of TY and 3 years of CW, it’s just nice to have a reliable kicker and rarely have to worry about field goal attempts.
• 47.% completion percentage/4.5 YPA — Those are the passing stats of Chase Rettig. I know he missed some open receivers and hasn’t played that well this year, but it is still impressive numbers to hold an opposing QB to. As anyone watching the games realized, the defense was not the problem. BC had 2 drives the entire game.

Three Bad Stats

• 16 points — This was a bad BC team. There was no way that the Irish should have been held to only 16 points. Some of this is due to the solid punting job by BC as ND has abysmal field position during the entire first half, but a majority of it was just lack of execution. A couple of ill-timed penalties killed the few promising drives that ND was putting together.
• 43% available years — Per Jay on TPG (link) we gained 43% of available yards on Saturday. That was our 2nd worst performance of the year besides Southern Cal. That is just not good at all. Saturday was just an ugly offensive performance.
• 0 Holding Calls for BC — I know this will sound homery and whiny but man, what does Aaron Lynch need to do get a holding call called against the OL blocking him. Check out 1:20 of this video (link) for an egregious one. Another one was the 2nd BC touchdown. Lynch is just mugged on every pass rush and is getting nothing from the refs. /rant over

Three Stars

• Jonas Gray– Just wanted to highlight Jonas for his outstanding season and even his play on Saturday. His knee injury just isn’t fair.
• David Ruffer — as stated above, 3 FG’s helped ND pull out the victory when the offense just wasn’t getting the job done.
• Jamoris Slaughter — Had two bone crushing hits (even if the second was negated by penalty) and was all over the field, playing out of position as the hybrid linebacker/safety.

Housekeeping:

• Jonas’ knee injury is expected to end his season.
• Cierre finished the game with 94 rushing yards, giving him 1,001. He is ND’s first 1000+ yard rusher since Darius Walker in 2006.
• While subjective, Manti definitely looked much healthier on Saturday than he did against Maryland which is important if ND has any chance at beating Stanford on Saturday night
• ND debuted at #22 in the latest BCS poll.
• 16, 35, 13, 15, 10, 19, 24, 14, 17 14, 14: The points surrendered by the starting defense this season. While not flashy or turnover producing, Diaco’s defense just doesn’t give up a lot of points. Stanford comes in having scored 30+ points in every game but 1 dating back to the beginning of the 2010 season. So something will have to give on Saturday night.

Next Week:
The Irish head out west to take on Stanford in the final game of the season. Staford is ranked #4 in the BCS and they open as 7 point favorites.This is the first game all year that the Irish aren’t favored.

The post Notre Dame 16, Boston College 14: A Quick Recap appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Yours truly is the host this week…and away we go:

• Having actually seen the uniforms in the wild on Saturday night, what are your final thoughts regarding them? Does Ronald Darby stating that he liked them change your views on trying out the different uniforms for the “Shamrock Series”?
• While I technically was at the game in person on Saturday, those of you who follow me on twitter know what kind of shape I was in. Anyway, having watched the game on my DVR, the helmet did not look nearly as bad as the initial photo tweeted out. That said, if we never see the helmet again, I’d be okay with that.
  To answer the second question, I don’t mind trying out different uniforms at the Shamrock Series neutral sites. As DMQ has ranted multiple times this past week and half, the execution of the uniforms would hopefully be better in the future.
• Manti is clearly hobbled right now. Re-watching the game on Sunday, I barely noticed him on the field and I rarely remember Mayock or Hammonds calling his name. I believe Kelly stated in his Sunday teleconference that Manti was did not play most of the 3rd or 4th quarters. If you are BK, do you sit Manti on Saturday?
• I wrote this before BK stated during his Tuesday press conference that Manti was feeling much better after sitting most of the 2nd half against Maryland. Anyway, if I’m BK, I’m resting Manti as much as feasible this week. Manti should not be the difference between ND winning or losing this weekend and if he is, we have much bigger issues than some of us realized.
• Weâ€ve seen Tommy Rees play deep into blowouts against Navy, Air Force and Maryland with Hendrix only getting a significant number of snaps in the Air Force game. Rees is only a sophomore but it seems most Irish fans take it as a foregone conclusion that Golson or Hendrix will pass Tommy going into the 2012 season. So do you agree with the use, or lack thereof, of Hendrix so far this season? Do you accept the thought that this is Rees†last year as starter?
• I definitely would like to see Hendrix get more snaps even during non-blowouts. He definitely adds wrinkles to the offense that opponents have to account for. But, I too am guilty of forgetting Rees is a sophomore and assuming this is his ceiling. Tommy is 6th on the all-time passing TDs mark, he’s in the top-40 in passing efficiency in the country and should finish the season with 3,000 yards passing. So, I can see where Kelly wnats to get Tommy as much experience as possible, even in blowouts. Kelly has shown no qualms rotating players at other positions so fear of playing younger players definitely isn’t an issue to him.
• Tommy Rees needs 608 yards for 3000 passing yards on the season. Cierre Wood is 93 yards short while Jonas Gray is 270 yards short of 1000 rushing yards. Michael Floyd is 78 yards shy of 1000 receiving yards for the season. Despite SubwayDomerâ€s insistence that bowl stats count, predict final numbers for all 4 players before the bowl. Do they all hit the milestones?
• Tommy Rees – 2,900 yards
• Cierre Wood – 1,100 yards
• Jonas Gray – 950 yards
• Michael Floyd – 1,050 yards
• So I don’t think they’ll all make it before the game. The Irish’s performance against Boston College should make or break each players hitting the milestones. All 4 of them should hit the marks during the bowl game.
• Notre Dame opens up as a 24.5 favorite for Saturdayâ€s game and this is clearly the worst Boston College team in recent memory. That said, BC absolutely loves to play spoiler when it comes to Notre Dame and this game will be the last chance for something good to happen this season. Given those two thoughts, does the margin of victory matter to you on Saturday?
• The Irish have shown the ability to blow out bad teams this year as Biscuit wrote about earlier this week. (link) This is one of the worst BC teams in awhile. So, I’d definitely be disappointed in a close win, I wouldn’t lament it as the end of the world or hold it up as some general failing of the team. On the other hand, this is BC…the Irish need to stomp them.

• Bonus Question:

  On a scale of 1-10, how much does Keith Arnold look like Jay Cutler? (Link to photo for reference)

A 9 at worst. I’d probably say a 10

OneFootDown has responded: Link
So has GameDay40: Link
SubwayDomer responded via Podcast Link
Frank at UHND chimed in Link
Keith Arnold over at Inside the Irish finally answered. For some reason, he seems particularly angry with me. Link

And, one late addition: Lisa over at the Shamrock Head blogs responds to her first set of IBG questions. Link

Feel free to submit your own answers to the questions in our Sideline Forum. Link

The post Irish Blogger Gathering: BC Week appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Here is a quick look back at some of the highlights of Saturday night blowout of Maryland…

It Was Over When …
Lo Wood picked off a Danny O’Brian pass and returned it 57 yards for the TD. With the Irish having just scored on back to back possessions, Wood’s TD put ND up 38-7. The game was over probably much earlier but this was the exclamation point that ended any hope for Maryland.

Turning Point
Jonas Gray darted through a nice hole on 4th and 1 to score a TD with 30 seconds left in the first half. With the Irish getting the ball to start the 2nd half and Maryland showing no sign of stopping the Irish offense, a 24-7 lead going into halftime was huge.

Three Good Stats

• 212 rushing yards — Maryland came into the game with one of the worst rushing D’s in the country and the Irish took advantage of it. Jonas and Cierre combined for 39 carries and 235 yards. It was a strong showing by the Irish offense. ND just missed having two 100 yard rushers for the first time since 2002.
• 78.9% completion percentage — Tommy Rees followed up one of his worst passing performances with one of his best. He finished the night 30-38 for 296 yards and most importantly, 0 ints. At least 3 of the incompletions were drops so it was a very efficient night. Tommy’s pass to Floyd was one of his best throws of the season.
• 0 turnovers — For the first time since the Air Force game, the Irish played a turnover free game.

Three Bad Stats

• 2 drops — This is nitpicky but Floyd had two drops during the game. We just beat a team 45-21 with the final 7 points of for MD coming in garbage time. There aren’t too many bad stats
• 3 sacks — For the first time since the Pitt game, the Irish O-Line surrendered a couple of sacks. Two of them were coverage sacks and/or Tommy holding the ball too long. The O-line has been outstanding all year so I’m not going to worry about too much about them.
• 14 2nd half points — With a bunch of key defenders nursing injuries, Brian Kelly and the Irish coaches rotated in several back-ups throughout the 2nd half. The back-ups did not perform as well as the starters yielding two TDs in the 4th quarter. The first TD still had several starters in but the 2nd one was entirely on the back-ups. This is something that has happened throughout the year anytime the 2nd-string D has gone into the game. It’s nice that they are getting some good experience but it would be even better if they could continue the strong play of the starting D.

Three Stars

• Jonas Gray/Cierre Wood — Another strong game. Rinse/repeat.
• Roby Toma — stepping in for a injured Theo Riddick, to the eternal delight of MQ, Toma played an outstanding game. He finished the game with 7 catches for 73 yards. He also had a couple of big blocks on bubble screens. Toma has a feel for playing in the slot and it showed on Saturday night. It will be nice to see if he continue his performance going forward
• Lo Wood — Though the Int was more a result of a bad pass than anything else, Wood played an overall good game. Robert Blanton was in and out of the line-up with a stinger and I didn’t see too many bad plays by Wood. Since Gray & Blanton are graduating this year, strong performance like this one will help Wood going forward next season.

Housekeeping:

• Wood’s INT was the first of his career. It was also the first pick six for ND since Darrin Walls’ against Army in last year’s “Shamrock Series” game.
• As noted earlier, Notre Dame finished 1 yard short of having two 100 yard rushers since the 2002 game against Stanford.
• Ethan Johnson returned for the first time since injuring his ankle against Purdue. ND was constantly rotating DL but it was nice to see him return. EJ getting healthy will be key for the game against Stanford.

Next Week:
The Irish return home for the final home game of the season against Boston College. They open up as 24.5 point favorites.

The post Notre Dame 45, Maryland 21: A Quick Recap appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Here is a quick look back at some of the highlights of Saturday night closer than we’d hoped win over Wake Forest

It Was Over When …
Jonas Gray surged forward on a 2nd effort to just barely get a first down on 3rd and 1. The first down allowed ND run out the clock in victory formation. It came at the end of a drive that killed the final 5+ minutes of the game, a majority of the yards coming on the ground.

Turning Point
Pick 1 of 2. Either Stephon Tuitt’s sack when Wake had 1st and Goal on the 9 or Darius Fleming causing a fumble inside the 10 which ND recovered. One stopped a long Wake drive and the other came after a long interception return by Wake.

Three Good Stats

• 38 carries – With Tommy having one of his more inaccurate games as an ND quarterback, Brian Kelly leaned on his OL and running game in the 3rd and 4th quarter to put the game away. The Irish finished with 175 yards on the ground.
• 0 — 0 sacks allowed. The O Line still hasn’t given up a sack since the 3rd quarter of the Pitt game. I know ND runs a ton of quick passes but that’s still an impressive achievement.
• 0 2nd half points — After a very sluggish start, giving up 10 points on the first two drives, the D stiffened in the 2nd half yielding no points to Wake. With injuries keeping Ethan & KLM from playing at all and with Lynch and Te’o getting hobble during the game, it was an impressive performance by the short-handed D. There is still room for improvement but 0 points is 0 points.

Three Bad Stats

• 2 — 2 more turnovers for Tommy Rees. Both came on plays were Tommy had other receivers open. And on the 2nd one, the main receiver, Floyd, was open but Tommy lofted up an ugly pass that was picked off and returned back onto the Irish side of the field.
• 7.2 YPA — Brian Kelly’s offense generally has a number of short passes which will keep the YPA down for a QB. But on Saturday night, Tommy had multiple receivers open on deep routes that he just flat out missed. If ND hopes to have any shot against Stanford in a couple of weeks, Tommy has to improve on this. Some of the passes on Saturday were no where close to the intended receiver.
• 118 — ND is currently dead last in the NCAA in turnover margin. That’s just bad.

Three Stars

• Jonas Gray/Cierre Wood — With Tommy struggling all game, especially in the 2nd half, Gray and Wood ran the ball extremely well. THey finished with 179 yards on 33 carries. Both have been outstanding all season.
• Stephon Tuitt & Aaron Lynch — Forced to be starters due to injuries, both have held up well all season. They combined for 2 important sacks but even more impressively, held up well against the run.
• Mike Golic Jr — Forced into the line-up due to Braxton Cave’s injury in the first half, Golic performed admirably. There was very little drop off in run blocking and even more importantly, no errant snaps. Wake has a very good NT and I barely heard his name all night.

Housekeeping:

• Coach Kelly announced on his Sunday afternoon teleconference that Te’o injured the same ankle that he’s been battling all season and was set back a couple of weeks in his recovery. Lynch should be okay next week and Cave’s injury (a foot sprain, I think) looked much better today than last night.
• The Irish are bowl eligible. While not a major accomplishment or something that needs to be celebrated wildly, it’s nice for it to be official.
• Ethan Johnson sat out another week with his ankle injury.

Next Week:
The Irish travel to Washington DC to play Maryland in the 3rd annual “neutral” site game. It will be aired Saturday night on NBC.

The post Notre Dame 24, Wake Forest 17: A Quick Recap appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

It Was Over When …

Jonas Gray and Michael Floyd scored within 2 minutes of each other to put the Irish up 28-7 midway through the 2nd quarter. With the way the entire team was playing, the 21 point lead felt more than comfortable.

Turning Point
After another fumble on a swing pass to a RB led to a Navy TD, Tommy Rees connected with Michael Floyd for a 56 yard TD pass on the first play of the ensuing drive.

Three Good Stats

• 56 points — With 56 points against Navy and 59 early in the season against Air Force, Notre Dame has multiple 50 point games in on season for the first time since 1996
• 0 — 0 sacks allowed. The O Line hasn’t given up a sack since the 3rd quarter of the Pitt game. I know ND runs a ton of quick passes but that’s still an impressive acheivement.
• 196 yard/ 3.9 YPC — Navy game into the game averaging 300+ rushing yards per game and had shredded Bob Diaco’s defense last year. The Irish held them way under their season averages and the starting D only gave up 1 TD, which was on a short field after a turnover. An impressive turn-around for the D.

Three Bad Stats

• 2 — 2 more turnovers for Tommy Rees. Both led to Navy’s two TDs. As Irish fans have lamented all season, the turnovers need to be cut down if we have any hope of winning out and finishing 9-3.
• ∞ – approximately the amount time more than necessary that NBC, via Tom Hammond, Mike Mayock and Alex Flanagan, spent talking about the non-story story of BK calling out his seniors. Just a unnecessary amount of time waster during the telecast.
• 0 — 0 snaps for Andrew Hendrix. While this didn’t annoy me as much as it did other fans, it would have been nice for Hendrix to have seen some meaningful snaps during the game. Putting Dayne in with the 2nd string at the end of the game was fine. I’d rather Hendrix have gotten some snaps earlier in the game. Not a huge deal but there weren’t too many negatives from the game

Three Stars

• Jonas Gray — Entering the season, Jonas Gray had 0 rushing TDs. He now has 8 after totaling 3 on Saturday. Jonas is looking the best he’s ever looked at ND. He actually lowered his YPC to 8 but is within striking distance of George Gipp’s single season record.
• The entire DL – Darius Fleming, Prince Shembo, Stephon Tuitt, Louis Nix and the rest played an outstanding game. They controlled the LOS, occupied blockers and totally shut down the FB dive part of the option.
• Manti Te’o — Apparently he’s been battling a sprained ankle all season but Te’o looked the best he has all season on Saturday. Bouncing back from a poor performance last weekend against USC, Te’o was all over the field finishing with 13 tackles with 3 TFL.

Housekeeping:

• Coach Kelly announced on his Sunday afternoon teleconference that Chase Hounshell should be fine and his shoulder injury was not as serious as initially thought
• The stadium music returned on Saturday and the selection and variety was 100X better than its debut against USC. Crazy Train was only heard once, after the game was more or less over, to solid laughter from the crowd and everyone on twitter.
• Ethan Johnson dressed but did not play. Thankfully the Irish were able to handle Navy without him which allows Johnson another week to heal from the injury suffered early against Purdue.
• For what it’s worth, I’ve heard solid rumors that “Field Turf” will be installed for the 2012 season.

  As SDI elaborated in the comments below, look to Lambeau Field for an example of what ND will be installing. It’s a hybrid system that uses real grass and synthetic fibers together.

Next Week:
Notre Dame is at Wake Forest next Saturday. The game is at 8 pm on ABC/ESPN. Notre Dame opens as a 14.5 favorite.
The game is will be airing at the same time as the 2011 version Game of the Century, LSU-Alabama. Those of you who are CFB fans and not just ND fans will need to be ready with the remote.

The post Notre Dame 56, Navy 14: A Quick Recap appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

In the two losses, most Notre Dame fans would agree that turnovers were the biggest causes of the two losses rather than general performance by the offense or defense. In fact, Football Outsiders valued the 10 turnovers against USF & UM at 55.3 equivalent points. In other words, in the two games we lost by a combined 7 points, we gave away almost 8 touchdown’s worth of points by turning the ball over.

I’ll now pause while we all commence smashing our heads against the nearest hard surface.

Anyway, the charts are back!…with one addition. I added in the average for the teams ranked 6-10. This gives a more realistic bar for ND to strive to achieve.

NOTE: The 2011 stats only have 7 weeks worth of data and are being compared against years with full seasons of data. So there can still be wild variation between week to week. The stats will be more accurate and become more reliable as more games are played and more data about each team is available. But they are interesting enough to look out now.

Offense

Quick overview: 2011 ND = very light blue and all the way to the right. Also, higher = better

As you can see, across the board, Notre Dame has been fairly exceptional on offense. The Irish have been better than not only the 6-10 mean but also the 1-10 average in ever category. Most impressive (or importantly) is the Rush O S&P+. The running game has performed about 23% better than average running game of a top 10 team. Think about the last time we could say that! Another stellar showing for the offense has been the performance on passing downs.

Passing Downs are defined as:

• second down with 8 or more yards to go
• third or fourth down with 5 or more yards to go

The Passing Down S&P+ of 177.4 is the 2nd highest of any top 10 team since 2005 and beaten only by the Cam Newton led Auburn team of last season. It’s a damn impressive stat and one of the biggest reasons ND has been successful on offense. Success on passing downs keeps drives alive which in turn keeps our defense off the field and rested.

Defense

Just sit back and look at that rush D. It’s damn impressive. That Rush D S&P+ of 189.9 means that so far, through 6 games, our rushing defense has been ~29% better than the best rushing D of top 10 teams since 2005. However, I was surprised to realize that ND is actually the 2nd ranked rush D so far during 2011 with Alabama at 241.1 (!) while LSU is 3rd at 174.4. Bob Diaco’s defense has kept up it’s strong play against the run that began in the Tulsa game last season.

On the other hand, as the S&P+ shows, the Pass D hasn’t been ideal. If I had to guess, I’d have to say that a majority of that is from our performance in Ann Arbor. Allowing 300+ yards passing to Denard Robinson given his standard performance in every other game this year severely impacted the numbers. ND’s pass D S&P+ dropped from 138.8 to 123.2 over the bye week as Denard stunk the up joint against Michigan State. Additionally and more worrisome going forward, the Passing D on Passing Downs has not been that good. Some of that could be from Diaco’s ‘Bend but don’t Break’ philosophy that allows works to prevent big plays. And the red zone defense has been extremely stout. Still, it’s an area that the Irish need to do better over the last 6 games. Improving on Passing Downs allows the D to force more 3 & outs and put our explosive offense back onto the field.

Conclusions
Statistically, Notre Dame has been one of the top 10-15 teams in the country on offense and defense. Against Purdue & Airforce, we’ve seen how good the Irish can look when cutting out the turnovers. So while this doesn’t give solace to any of us regarding the USF and Michigan losses, it should give some hope and provide some excitement about the team going forward the next 6 weeks. Then again, if we lay an egg on Saturday night (which isn’t going to happen), none of this matters and I’ll look like more of an idiot than I usually do. But hopes of a BCS game start Saturday night with our asswhooping of Southern Cal. Remember #BeatSC

All stats via of Football Outsiders. Explanations of the stats can be found there too. (Link)

The post Midseason Check-In: To BCS or Not To BCS appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Enjoy!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

The post Notre Dame – USC: The Rivalry appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Swarbrick acknowledged a hotly contested sentiment among Irish fans, commented on the energetic atmosphere, or lack thereof, of Notre Dame Stadium and encouraged the Irish student body to take matters into its own hands.

“I need your passion,” he said. “I travel around with our team, and our stadium is the quietest place we play. I want you guys on that Saturday night at least once to make USC have a false start penalty.”

Source: Observer

Apparently Swarbrick addressed the students during dinner this past week in anticipation of next weekend’s game with Southern Cal. Anyone who has been to a home game in South Bend over the past couple of seasons knows there is a lot to be desired when it comes to environment and crowd noise. Some of the issues can’t be fixed (namely lack of student body and design of the stadium). But plenty of them can be so for a variety of reasons, this really pissed me off.

First, the student section isn’t too blame. Having spend 4 years there, including the miserable 2007 season, I can attest to how loud it gets. ND has 8,000 students who stand the entire game and cheer their asses off. Blaming them for lack of crowd noise is just stupid.

Second, ND stadium can get loud. Anyone who was in the stadium in ’05 for 4th and 9 or watched/attended the Michigan game in ’88 (embedded above) knows how loud that stadium can be. And you know what the biggest difference between those games and the past couple of seasons? Notre Dame was a very good football team. When you produce teams that lose to Syracuse and UConn on Senior Day, you’re going to cause a distinct lack of noise within your stadium. Will ND ever be as loud as a night LSU game vs Alabama in Baton Rouge or the Swamp for UF-FSU? Probably not. 20,000+ students and different stadium designs will ensure that.

But the biggest reason Swarbrick bitching about the lack of noise annoys me is he is in a place of power within the athletic department and can make changes to fix some of the biggest issues.

1. Stop celebrating the various staffs and obscure department groups at the 20 yardline during TV timeouts. I know that sounds cold but it just zaps any momentum from the crowd. The music has to stop, everyone gives a polite clap while giving two shits about it at the moment.
2. Do something about the ushers. While never experiencing this myself (either I’m the worst fan or I actually sit near normal people), way too many people have complained about being told to sit down when standing during critical moments or been warned that they were cheering too loud (wtf?) for it not to be an issue. It’s frickin football game. People stand, people cheer loudly (you’d hope) and sometime people curse. None of those are reasons to eject someone from the stadium.
3. Accept that drunk fans usually equals louder and more rowdy fans so do something with Excise. (Note: I doubt Swarbrick has any power to fix this, just wanted to complain about Excise)
4. Win! Then win some more! Just keep F&$%KING winning!

None of these issues are new and have been bandied about by ND fans for a long time. Still, as the athletic director, I’d like to believe that Swarbrick would be in position to help fix some of them. We all like to think he already did a good job with number 4.

There are plenty of reasons that ND stadium is quiet. The student section is without a doubt not one of them. So don’t complain to them or implore them to get the stadium louder. They’ll be plenty loud next Saturday night and even the Saturday following that. It’s not them Jack. It’s you.

The post Gameday Atmosphere: A Rant appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.