mm42
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- Jul 25, 2002
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[Skip down to the next brackets if you don't want the travelogue]
I picked up my Dad in Huntsville and we drove up to South Bend Friday. We went out to the Emporium on the East Race for seafood dinner. Pretty good place.
We stayed at the Marriott South Bend. It's a nice place to stay because it's right next door to the College Football Hall of Fame, and there are also lots of restaurants in the area.
Saturday we spent most of the morning at the Hall of Fame. It's a nice museum and well worth a visit for fans. I could have stayed longer but my Dad had had enough after about 3 hours. Lunch and then we walked up to the Notre Dame campus. A number of people told us not to walk from downtown South Bend to campus, but it was really a reasonable walk, although not much to look at until Notre Dame Avenue. (My Dad is 72, but walks about 6 miles a day, so it was nothing out of the ordinary for him.) The weather was beautiful, mid-70's when we left, and barely a cloud in the sky.
Once we got to campus we visited the Grotto, the Basilica, the Dome, and the Bookstore. We bought a program, and I yanked the poster out of it and gave it to the first ND kid I saw, since I didn't want to carry it around. We had seen everything we wanted to see so we found a shade tree to hang out and people watch until the game. We didn't see a lot of do-it-yourself tailgating going on, much more buying from vendors going on, but maybe the tailgating happens in parking lots we didn't see. Notre Dame fans were polite and cordial, but not openly friendly like Auburn or Clemson fans, who will invite you to their tailgate if you walk by.
On into the stadium and up to our seats, we were in section 132, row 12, which is directly behind the student section. The Notre Dame student section is very impressive. They have a lot of organized cheers and they stand for the whole game, and - most impressively - they stayed for the whole game even though they were losing badly. They also all wore matching shirts, which made them look more imposing. A few other Tech fans were sitting right close to us, including a pair of Tech coeds who drew some interested from the younger Irish guys around us. The Notre Dame fans were polite and we didn't get any bad reactions to cheering for our team.
[WARNING: Actual football content]
For those who didn't see the game, Notre Dame played very badly. The GT defense had a good, solid game and the GT offensive line was pretty dominant, but I would say the #1 cause of the lopsided result was poor play and poor coaching by the Irish.
Charlie Weis is regarded as an offensive genius by many, so I won't question that status, but I will suggest that maybe his ego got the better of him in planning this game. He apparently looked at the success Clemson and West Virginia had against our defense last year, and thought he could duplicate it by mimicking their spread option offenses with Jones at QB. The problem with this philosophy is that WVU and Clemson were successful because of big, strong veteran offensive lines and very talented backfields, not because of offensive scheme. The GT defense was very successful against Clemson's spread option in 2005 when the personnel were less seasoned. Similarly, with only a few weeks to prepare and having to focus on more than one offensive scheme, the Notre Dame spread option was almost completely ineffective, and Jones was punished by the GT blitz and ended up giving up 2 fumbles as a result.
GT squandered a lot of opportunities to score in the first half, settling for 4 field goal attempts (1 was blocked) when they drove (usually from good field position) into ND territory. Twice 1st-and-goal from the ten ended with a FG. The running game was going well for GT, but Taylor Bennett was very inconsistent at QB.
Late in the 2nd half, Weis pulled Jones and abandoned his spread option for a more conventional offense led by Sharpley at QB. Sharpley was 10-13 for 92 yards, but this performance has been widely misinterpreted by the popular press. He was also sacked 7 times for -58 yards, so when you put it together 19 passing attempts netted a total of 34 yards. This is the whole point of Tenuta's defensive scheme, and focusing on the high completion percentage when the QB was able to get the ball off misses the point. The ND offensive line was fairly inept at picking up the blitz, and GT players were frequently in the backfield and on the QB untouched.
GT continued to run well, frequently shifting to a direct snap to Choice as they had done in the first half. Weis said in his post-game press conference that they had practiced against the direct snap, but a couple of the players later said in interviews that they were unfamiliar with the formations used.
Overall GT had 265 yards rushing to ND's minus-8 (that's including all the sacks, as the NCAA official stats do, which is silly - in fact the sacks should be counted against the passing yards as the NFL does, in which case ND would have had 60-70 rushing yards).
The 3 points and 122 yards for ND were record lows for Weis, and the 33-3 score was the worst opening loss in ND history. Again, I think these are much more indicative of poor play by ND than of dominant play by GT.
[End football content]
The ND students stayed for the whole game (as mentioned previously), and also the vast majority of ND fans stayed until well after the result was decided, though probably 10-15% filed out when ND punted with about 2:30 to go.
As we left the stadium, many ND fans stopped to shake hands and offer congratulations. I always responded with "Thanks, and good luck the rest of the year." The crowd is MUCH more civil than a lot of places I have been as a visitor, such as Alabama, Georgia, or Tennessee. A group of Notre Dame fans stopped me and asked me to take their picture, only noticing my GT hat and shirt as they were posing. They got a good laugh out of that, and one of them said. "No wonder you are so happy!"
The only blemish in behavior for ND fans came as we were walking back to South Bend, and a couple of yahoos yelled at us as they passed in cars, one offering "Georgia Tech, F**k You!" and the other too drunk to understand although he said something about "f**king country ... a**holes".
All in all, ND is a great place to visit and to see a game.
(Especially a 33-3 beat down by the Jackets!)
I picked up my Dad in Huntsville and we drove up to South Bend Friday. We went out to the Emporium on the East Race for seafood dinner. Pretty good place.
We stayed at the Marriott South Bend. It's a nice place to stay because it's right next door to the College Football Hall of Fame, and there are also lots of restaurants in the area.
Saturday we spent most of the morning at the Hall of Fame. It's a nice museum and well worth a visit for fans. I could have stayed longer but my Dad had had enough after about 3 hours. Lunch and then we walked up to the Notre Dame campus. A number of people told us not to walk from downtown South Bend to campus, but it was really a reasonable walk, although not much to look at until Notre Dame Avenue. (My Dad is 72, but walks about 6 miles a day, so it was nothing out of the ordinary for him.) The weather was beautiful, mid-70's when we left, and barely a cloud in the sky.
Once we got to campus we visited the Grotto, the Basilica, the Dome, and the Bookstore. We bought a program, and I yanked the poster out of it and gave it to the first ND kid I saw, since I didn't want to carry it around. We had seen everything we wanted to see so we found a shade tree to hang out and people watch until the game. We didn't see a lot of do-it-yourself tailgating going on, much more buying from vendors going on, but maybe the tailgating happens in parking lots we didn't see. Notre Dame fans were polite and cordial, but not openly friendly like Auburn or Clemson fans, who will invite you to their tailgate if you walk by.
On into the stadium and up to our seats, we were in section 132, row 12, which is directly behind the student section. The Notre Dame student section is very impressive. They have a lot of organized cheers and they stand for the whole game, and - most impressively - they stayed for the whole game even though they were losing badly. They also all wore matching shirts, which made them look more imposing. A few other Tech fans were sitting right close to us, including a pair of Tech coeds who drew some interested from the younger Irish guys around us. The Notre Dame fans were polite and we didn't get any bad reactions to cheering for our team.
[WARNING: Actual football content]
For those who didn't see the game, Notre Dame played very badly. The GT defense had a good, solid game and the GT offensive line was pretty dominant, but I would say the #1 cause of the lopsided result was poor play and poor coaching by the Irish.
Charlie Weis is regarded as an offensive genius by many, so I won't question that status, but I will suggest that maybe his ego got the better of him in planning this game. He apparently looked at the success Clemson and West Virginia had against our defense last year, and thought he could duplicate it by mimicking their spread option offenses with Jones at QB. The problem with this philosophy is that WVU and Clemson were successful because of big, strong veteran offensive lines and very talented backfields, not because of offensive scheme. The GT defense was very successful against Clemson's spread option in 2005 when the personnel were less seasoned. Similarly, with only a few weeks to prepare and having to focus on more than one offensive scheme, the Notre Dame spread option was almost completely ineffective, and Jones was punished by the GT blitz and ended up giving up 2 fumbles as a result.
GT squandered a lot of opportunities to score in the first half, settling for 4 field goal attempts (1 was blocked) when they drove (usually from good field position) into ND territory. Twice 1st-and-goal from the ten ended with a FG. The running game was going well for GT, but Taylor Bennett was very inconsistent at QB.
Late in the 2nd half, Weis pulled Jones and abandoned his spread option for a more conventional offense led by Sharpley at QB. Sharpley was 10-13 for 92 yards, but this performance has been widely misinterpreted by the popular press. He was also sacked 7 times for -58 yards, so when you put it together 19 passing attempts netted a total of 34 yards. This is the whole point of Tenuta's defensive scheme, and focusing on the high completion percentage when the QB was able to get the ball off misses the point. The ND offensive line was fairly inept at picking up the blitz, and GT players were frequently in the backfield and on the QB untouched.
GT continued to run well, frequently shifting to a direct snap to Choice as they had done in the first half. Weis said in his post-game press conference that they had practiced against the direct snap, but a couple of the players later said in interviews that they were unfamiliar with the formations used.
Overall GT had 265 yards rushing to ND's minus-8 (that's including all the sacks, as the NCAA official stats do, which is silly - in fact the sacks should be counted against the passing yards as the NFL does, in which case ND would have had 60-70 rushing yards).
The 3 points and 122 yards for ND were record lows for Weis, and the 33-3 score was the worst opening loss in ND history. Again, I think these are much more indicative of poor play by ND than of dominant play by GT.
[End football content]
The ND students stayed for the whole game (as mentioned previously), and also the vast majority of ND fans stayed until well after the result was decided, though probably 10-15% filed out when ND punted with about 2:30 to go.
As we left the stadium, many ND fans stopped to shake hands and offer congratulations. I always responded with "Thanks, and good luck the rest of the year." The crowd is MUCH more civil than a lot of places I have been as a visitor, such as Alabama, Georgia, or Tennessee. A group of Notre Dame fans stopped me and asked me to take their picture, only noticing my GT hat and shirt as they were posing. They got a good laugh out of that, and one of them said. "No wonder you are so happy!"
The only blemish in behavior for ND fans came as we were walking back to South Bend, and a couple of yahoos yelled at us as they passed in cars, one offering "Georgia Tech, F**k You!" and the other too drunk to understand although he said something about "f**king country ... a**holes".
All in all, ND is a great place to visit and to see a game.
(Especially a 33-3 beat down by the Jackets!)
