With reports out that Notre Dame will be squaring off with South Florida on September 19, flashbacks immediately came to me from the epic disaster that was that Saturday afternoon.
I’m happy to say I’ve been able to spend countless hours in ballparks, arenas and stadiums across this entire country. I’ve seen my teams pull upsets, clinch championships and suffer plenty of heartbreaking and blowout defeats.
I’ve never been as mad leaving a game in my life as I was on September 3, 2011, though.
With reports out that Notre Dame will be squaring off with South Florida on September 19, flashbacks immediately came to me from the epic disaster that was that Saturday afternoon.
After a 1-3 and 4-5 start in 2010, Notre Dame won their final three regular season games, including their first win over USC in nearly a decade, before obliterating Miami (FL) in the Sun Bowl.
The improvement the team made that year was clear and the hype began to follow the Irish a bit as the entered the season ranked 16th overall in the nation.
To open that season South Florida came to town and pretty much everything that could wrong, went wrong for Notre Dame that day.
As Dayne Crist was about to put an exclamation point on the opening drive with a touchdown, Jonas Gray fumbled and saw Kayvon Webster run it back 96 yards for a South Florida touchdown.
Early in the second quarter the Irish were again about to get on the scoreboard when a Crist pass deflected off of the hands of TJ Jones and was intercepted in the end zone for a Bulls touchback.
Theo Riddick would get in on the action before halftime as he muffed a punt that was recovered by USF and led to a Bulls field goal and their eventual 16-0 halftime lead.
Rains and thunderstorms would come and Notre Dame would finally wake up a bit behind Tommy Rees who threw for nearly 300 yards off the bench, but five turnovers did the Domers in that afternoon and my blood still boils thinking about how dumb that loss was.
Notre Dame out-gained USF that day 508-254. For the most part they dominated.
Unfortunately that included in the turnover department where the Irish finished with five to USF’s zero.
It was a dumb loss, maddening and quickly deflated the high hopes of 2011 while the lightning delays only made matters worse.
I’ve never walked out of a stadium so mad about what I had just watched in my life. I’m glad life has changed my perspective on sports a bit since.
A week later things would only get worse as the Irish would gift Michigan a game that still makes no sense.
With Duke and South Florida to start the season this year, Notre Dame fans will see those names and remember a few awful memories from September home games in somewhat recent seasons.
Let’s hope that this time USF’s new head coach Jeff Scott is the one turning purple on the sideline, and not Brian Kelly.
If for some god-forsaken reason you’d like to re-live that 2011 contest you can do so here, courtesy of “The Vault: ND on NBC”.
