Category: Notre Dame Almanac

Listen: ’93 Notre Dame Star Shares Lou Holtz Motivational Stories

In this time of there being no games to react to we checked in on Pete and discussed what it’s like have teenage kids at a time like this and got a couple of Lou Holtz stories out of him (those come towards the end of the interview).

If you’re at all familiar with the 1993 Notre Dame football team, the name Pete Bercich means something to you. He returned an interception for a touchdown on the first play of that season, and, well, didn’t intercept a Glen Foley pass late in the Boston College game later that year.

Pete played in the NFL for the Minnesota Vikings and now does their radio broadcasts each fall. The radio show, I work on as a producer each weekday, “The McNeil and Parkins Show” on 670 The Score in Chicago, has established a pretty good relationship with Pete over the years. In this time of having no games to react to, we checked in on Pete and discussed what it’s like have teenage kids at a time like this and also drew a couple of Lou Holtz stories out of him (those come toward the end of the interview).

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Lou knew how to put on a happy face for the camera, but he’s also clearly not a guy you’d want to tick off. Fun stuff from a fun guest and a helluva football mind.

Notre Dame quarterbacks through the years

Not the best but who is your favorite ND quarterback of all-time?

In the long history of Notre Dame football its difficult to come up with a favorite all-time quarterback.  Sure, the likes of [autotag]Paul Hornung[/autotag], [autotag]Joe Montana[/autotag], [autotag]Joe Theismann[/autotag], and [autotag]Brady Quinn[/autotag] all achieved great things in blue and gold but so many others reached great heights as well.

Then there were others that didn’t go on to get drafted into the NFL but led successful Notre Dame squads in their own right like [autotag]Kevin McDougal[/autotag], [autotag]Tony Rice[/autotag], and [autotag]Everett Golson[/autotag].

Who is your favorite quarterback in the history of Notre Dame football?

Who do you think was the best?

And who is your favorite one-hit-wonder?

A day after [autotag]Tyler Buchner[/autotag] announced he was entering the transfer portal, here is a look back at photos of several Notre Dame quarterbacks over the years.

College Football News ranks all-time programs

Which college football program really is the GOAT?

What college football program is the greatest of all-time?

Plenty of Notre Dame fans that visited Fighting Irish Wire assuredly just said “Notre Dame” to themselves while anyone reading from the south probably uttered a “Bama” or “Roll Tide.”

Pete Fiutak of College Football News recently went through all of the Associated Press polls (dating to the 1930s) and used them as a guide to rank the top college football programs ever.

Neither Notre Dame or Alabama wound up atop the list. Neither did Ohio State nor Michigan. So who did?

Fiutak compiled the ratings for the best programs all-time by a very simple formula. He took all of the AP final rankings and used a simple scoring system: the AP national champion each season received 25 points, the No. 2 team 24, No. 3 23, and so on down to the bottom.

Here is how the top 10 ended up:

Former Notre Dame Athletic Director Gene Corrigan Dead at Age 91

Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

One of my favorite things that has happened since I took over managing Fighting Irish Wire back in October is that things you thought you were aware of or hip to get magnified ten-fold.

That could be assistant coaches being hired or fired, recruiting information or simply something from the history of Notre Dame.

I’ll be honest here (I always am but that’s a way to transition myself out of my comfort zone a bit):

I had no idea who Gene Corrigan was until his death at 91 years old was announced Saturday.

Some quick research helped me discover he wasn’t just the former commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, but was Notre Dame’s athletic director from 1981 to 1987.

That made me realize that hey, Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

I had no idea that Corrigan had three children graduate from the University of Notre Dame, or that one of them, Kevin, had been the lacrosse coach at Notre Dame since 1998.

It’s fascinating to read about a man who graduated from Duke in 1952 then got his start in coaching by leading the basketball, soccer and lacrosse teams of Washington and Lee in 1955.

From there he took a job at the University of Virginia where he spent time again coaching a variety of sports before becoming athletic director at Washington and Lee.

That led him again to Virginia where he was athletic director for a decade before a decade before he took the Notre Dame A-D job, replacing the legendary Edward “Moose” Krause.

I also didn’t know until reading Eric Hansen’s piece Saturday that Lou Holtz was anything but a knockout hire at his time and had been coming off a 6-5 season at Minnesota at the time of his hiring.

Corrigan would go on to commission the ACC after leaving Notre Dame in 1987 through 1995 when he became president of the NCAA.

Corrigan clearly lived an incredible life and oversaw the Notre Dame athletic department at an incredibly fascinating time.

Even if I didn’t know anything about him a day ago, he impact on Notre Dame athletics is clearly without end.

All the best to those who knew him and if you’re like me and didn’t even know of him until now, here’s to hoping you also learned a bit about his important legacy to Notre Dame and college sports.

Notre Dame-Boston College: Jerome Bettis on ’93 upset

Would Bettis have made a difference in the end result that day?

Legendary Notre Dame and NFL running back [autotag]Jerome Bettis[/autotag] wasn’t a part of the memorable 1993 Fighting Irish football team.  Yeah, the one that was ranked No. 1 before being upset by Boston College in the final game of the regular season.  That doesn’t mean that the stunning upset didn’t bother the Pro Football Hall of Famer then, or now, though.

ABC 57 in South Bend features “Bettis on a Bus” during their Notre Dame football pregame coverage each week this season.  This week The Bus and Allison Hayes looked back at the sting the infamous ’93 upset caused him – not because he was part of that ’93 squad, but instead because he wasn’t.

“And so the fact that I wasn’t there, they were like, man, we would have won that game. Had you been here. So guys would give me a lot of grief after that game. And it was just a rough one. But yeah, Boston College, for me has always been a good game.”
-Jerome Bettis

Personally, I wonder if Bettis could have stepped in on defense and done something about the 41 points allowed that day.  Perhaps the deficit never reaches 21-points if he was still there but it’s hard to see how much more he adds to the chances of victory when those 41 are surrendered.

You can see the full video on the ABC 57 website.

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Fighting Irish Wire Friends: The one where an all-time Notre Dame quarterback called us out

Every prank a friend by changing their listed birthday on Facebook to the current date? That’s pretty much what we did to @RickMirer and we apologize.

Technology is great, it truly is.  Until it isn’t.  Then it can be a real pain in the backside.  If you follow us on social media – and seriously, why on God’s green earth wouldn’t you (seriously – go follow us on Twitter immediately and like our Facebook page if you haven’t already), then you missed us sending a former Notre Dame quarterback birthday wishes on Wednesday night.

The only problem is that his birthday was in March. So we were either eight months late or four months early depending on your perspective.  Oh, and it wasn’t like a quarterback that played just a few games or one season or something, it was one of the best to ever do it at Notre Dame.

If you didn’t see it, here is how our interaction with Notre Dame legend and former second-overall NFL draft pick [autotag]Rick Mirer [/autotag]went last night:

Fighting Irish Wire apologizes for the endless birthday wishes and promises to find the bug in the system that keeps auto-posting that, 3.In the meantime, happy 30th anniversary to Mirer, Jerome Bettis, Reggie Brooks, and the rest of the 1992 team as the Snow Bowl was played 30 years ago earlier this week.

Even if it’s not your birthday we hope you accept our apologies and are able to enjoy one of your finest bottles of wine to forget about the ill-timed birthday messages we would have been responsible for you receiving.

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Notre Dame football knocking on door of a program scoring record

If Notre Dame scores 35 points Saturday, they’ll accomplish a program feat for just the second time in 134 football seasons.

Notre Dame’s offense has been a trial in patience for most Fighting Irish fans this fall.  A slow start that featured losses against Ohio State and Marshall saw very few signs of life from the offense while even in wins along the way, there were headaches and issues.

Yet here we are in mid-November and the Notre Dame offense is on the cusp of doing something only done once in program history.

It hasn’t always felt great but without looking do you realize Notre Dame has scored 35 or more points each of the last four games?  Now let’s not kid ourselves, special teams and defense have both played an important role in those.

However, if Notre Dame scores 35 or more points against Boston College they’ll do so for the fifth-straight game, something that has only been accomplished once in the 134 seasons of Notre Dame football.

And if they can possibly do it twice to close the year it’ll be a first in program history.  Just in reading that tweet this morning and thinking about it a little it feels perfectly symbolic of Notre Dame football in 2022: you can try to explain it but it’s probably a lot better for your mental health if you don’t.

Here is a quick summary of each time Notre Dame has scored 35 or more points in four-straight games in a single season. You’re going to want to see the names of opponents and scores from some of the 1912 and 1900 seasons.  Oh how times have changed.

Happy 10th anniversary to Notre Dame’s craziest 2012 win

Where were you for this classic at Notre Dame Stadium?

There are games you remember for being classics because they were great upsets, extremely well-played by two great teams, or for a variety of other reasons.  One of those other reasons would be because they were a great escape that your team pulled off.

That was the case 10 years ago today when Notre Dame played host to Pitt. Any big Notre Dame fan can tell you where they were for this one.  Personally, I was a few years out of college and living in my Chicago apartment where we were set to host a party that night.  My afternoon and early evening would result in me debating calling it off because Notre Dame was about to lose and I knew I’d be in a bad mood.

The Irish were 8-0, fresh off a win at Oklahoma that was supposed to expose them as a fraud, and the talk of the college football world.  Pitt on the other hand was 4-4 and in their final days as a member of the Big East.

What began as a perceived lopsided matchup ended with a game that hasn’t been forgotten a decade later and won’t be in another decade or two by Notre Dame fans.  Let’s quickly look back at just how nuts this comeback victory was.

The Eight Opponents Notre Dame Has Never Beaten

We’ve unfortunately had to add another to this list.

Notre Dame has been playing football since 1887 and now ranks in the top five all-time in victories with only Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama and Texas having more than the 918 Notre Dame has.

In all of those wins though, there are a little more than a handful of teams that the Fighting Irish have played but never walked away with a win against.

There are eight and before you scroll down, if you can name all eight (courtesy of Sports-Reference.com) your knowledge in the world of Notre Dame trivia is second to none.

 

The Eight Opponents Notre Dame Has Never Beaten

We’ve unfortunately had to add another to this list.

Notre Dame has been playing football since 1887 and now ranks in the top five all-time in victories with only Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama and Texas having more than the 918 Notre Dame has.

In all of those wins though, there are a little more than a handful of teams that the Fighting Irish have played but never walked away with a win against.

There are seven and before you scroll down, if you can name all eight (courtesy of Sports-Reference.com) you’re knowledge in the world of Notre Dame trivia is second to none.