Irish Wake: What Went Wrong
UHND.com - John Romanelli '91
January 5, 2000

What an pitiful display of college athletics I just witnessed. Those players should be ashamed of themselves: juking and jiving for the cameras, showboating, piling personal foul penalty upon personal foul penalty, making a mockery of the term sportsmanship. Their coach, AD, and staff should be thoroughly embarrassed. Immature athletes once again ruining the pageantry of college football by acting stupidly when the red light came on. Even Frito-Lay execs were horrified, I’m sure.

Oh, by the way, I’m talking about Oregon State. Shame on you, Dennis Erickson. Please, next time, follow Lou Holtz’s dictum: when your players do something well, be it a TD, turnover, or whatever – act like they’ve been there before. 17 penalties for 180 yards!!! That is more yards than the Notre Dame offense generated!

OK, now I feel better. The only thing worse than watching the absolute drubbing the Irish suffered on New Years’ night was watching the idiocy from the Pacific Northwest. The uniforms may be different, but some things never change: they acted like the Miami Hurricanes circa 1990.

So what went wrong? I will work from the top, and go from there…

1. Coaching: Bob Davie miscalculated two things: OSU’s overall team speed, and ND’s overall strength. It is difficult to generate a running game when both defensive ends are in the backfield already when the ball is handed off. The ends were far too speedy to allow substantive gains to the outside. And running up the middle – you know, the first down play every time until we were losing by 30 – doesn’t work when your entire offensive line is being blown off the ball on every play.
2. QB: Matt LoVecchio played like, well, an 18 year old freshman. We all knew that the bloom had to fall off of the rose eventually, right? What happened? LoVecchio was constantly under pressure from a pocket that never lasted more than 2 seconds – so he was forced to improvise, which he is not yet able to do well. He was often forced to scramble to his left (i.e. throw against his body), which diminished his accuracy. But when the game was on the line, LoVecchio began to make mistakes – turnovers – and the game was over.
3. RB: Only Terrance Howard was able to make reasonable yardage per carry, but much of that was after the game was decided. OSU yielded nothing between the tackles, and Julius Jones and Tony Fisher (remember him?) were neutralized outside the tackles by superior speed.
4. OL: The O-line was blown off of the ball the entire game. Back to the weight room, fellas.
5. DL: Although there were a few sacks, the D-line was not able to generate enough pressure on Johnathan Smith to force him to make mistakes.
6. LB: They played reasonably well, although there were too many times that RBs were bouncing off of them to gain extra yardage.
7. S: Ron Israel may have played the best game of his career – you have to love that tackle on 4^th and goal – and Tony Driver also played well. He seemed like he was in on every tackle.
8. CB: Clifford Jefferson may have pulled a hamstring, but in reality, his getting burnt cost us the game. It was 6-0 at that point, and OSU showed no signs of getting into the end zone. Shane Walton with one arm is better than Jefferson with two – which tells you that belongs on the scout team.
9. Special teams: They played fine. But there were no big plays in a game that sorely needed them.

In conclusion, the Irish were beaten in every aspect of this football game. I am disappointed that this team could not take it to the proverbial next level. I was not impressed with the offensive game plan at all. This was a crucial game for Notre Dame to win – the next time we are 9-2 rest assured we will not be in a BCS bowl, as everyone will look to this game and say we did not belong. Virginia Tech and Nebraska showed clearly that they did belong in a BCS bowl. Because of this, we will need to be 11-0 before we ever have a shot at the $13 million jackpot again.

It would be easy to start the Bob Davie speculation all over again. The reality is this: he took ND to a BCS bowl coming off of a losing season, and he did it with a true freshman QB and his defensive captain out for the season. That deserves the plaudits he received. But on this day, ND was beaten by a better team. And they did so with class and dignity, and for that, I have a hard time being to critical of the coach.

John Romanelli, ‘91

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