We’ve reached the end of the road, the Final Four has been determined by you, the Fighting Irish Wire viewers. The tournament was all chalk through three rounds with only one and two seeds remaining in the Elite Eight. Well, we’ve reached the Final Four and a pair of those one seeds won’t be joining us in it.
Your Elite Eight Results:
Basilica Region:
It’s one of the greatest games in all of college football history, not just Notre Dame football history so it should be no surprise whatsoever that Notre Dame’s 31-30 win over Miami in 1988 rolled its way through the Basilica Regional. The classic 1988 affair again dominated in the regional final as it knocked out the second seeded Sugar Bowl upset of Florida from the 1991 season, 95-5%.
We figured it’d be tough to slow down but we thought maybe there were some Jerome Bettis die-hards out there that would have voted for upsetting Spurrier. Nope, not the case.
Grotto Region:
In the Final Four it will be the ’88 Miami game facing a two-seed as it was the 1992 Penn State game getting by the ’89 team’s Orange Bowl upset of top-ranked Colorado, 58-42%.
Which game meant more? Beating and ruining a team’s chances at a national championship in the Orange Bowl is about as big as anything short of winning your own title – or so we thought.
There is something about doing it on your home field, in snowy conditions and all of it happening in the final home game in the career of Jerome Bettis, Reggie Brooks and Rick Mirer. Now factor in the how, a last-second comeback over a team that had won a pair of national titles themselves in the decade previous and stacked with future NFL players.
The upset in the Orange Bowl was great, but somehow South Beach just doesn’t hold a candle to a snowy November day in South Bend.
At least not in this case.
Other side of the bracket results…