In so far as I
follow a college football team (DePaul didn’t have one), it would be
Northwestern for all the pretentious reasons.
I like the idea of wanting to compete in the Big 10 without cheating or
turning standards into a joke. Notre
Dame stopped being like that a long time ago.
For as long as I can remember, Notre Dame football fans have wanted to
win in the worst way. Now, that’s
exactly how they’re losing.
How Current
Irish coach (though probably not for long) Brian Kelly embodies the school’s
purported values is beyond me. His team
finished 4-8 with a loss to USC yesterday; two Notre Dame players roughed up a
Trojan player as he lay on the ground after a play. Shades of Rudy, there. Earlier in the week, the NCAA stripped the football
program of 21 victories from the 2012 and 2013 seasons for academic violations
stemming from unauthorized help a student athletic trainer gave to several
players. As to Kelly’s responsibility for
the actions of an underling, he said it’s “Zero. None.
Absolutely none.” Oh, and let’s
not forget the arrests of six Notre Dame players stemming from off-the-field
incidents this summer.
Assuming that
Kelly isn’t long for the sidelines, I wonder what the school will do next. Too bad ex-coach Ara Parseghian is 93. He knew how to win and keep it honest, maybe
because he coached at Northwestern first.
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