And one reason why they won’t
Once the National Championship game was set between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Ohio State Buckeyes, it didn’t take long for anyone and everyone with any type of voice to start drowning the internet in one take after another about this game. There’s nothing abnormal about that — this is the national championship after all, and it’s the first year of the 12 team playoff. But man… the number of different opinions still felt overwhelming.
But here’s the thing… no matter how wild or disingenuous some of the takes might have been, I had a hard time not seeing a lot of truth in all of them. Maybe that’s a result of now having 15 games in the books, and seeing pretty much everything we can possibly see. Because of that, I’m willing to accept a number of different reasons why the Irish will win and why they won’t.
You probably have heard the phrase, “the spirit is willing but the body was not” at some time in your life. So, that’s what I have for you today.
WHY NOTRE DAME WILL WIN
This Irish team is a team of destiny. Sometimes it’s easy in the preseason to circle a “team of destiny,” and other times it takes weeks of results for that to materialize. With Notre Dame, you can mark it on a calendar, and then see if it all plays out. So far, it’s all played out almost perfectly to now.
- The 3rd year of the Marcus Freeman era. Lou Holtz, Dan Devine, Ara Parsegian, and Frank Leahy all won national championships in their third year.
- It’s the 100 year anniversary of Notre Dame’s first “claimed” national championship. Part of the celebration this year was a game against Army to commemorate the game played in 1924 that did so much to put Notre Dame on the map.
- This has been a “made for television” season and that absolutely includes the Northern Illinois loss.
- The culture shift in college football, and the first year of the 12 team playoff.
When you add all of these things up, it’s hard to dismiss them as just some random thing. There are forces at work here, and through it all, it pushes the Irish toward a national championship.
The spirit is willing.
WHY NOTRE DAME WILL LOSE
There just isn’t enough left in the tank. There’s a fun saying that Notre Dame fans have embraced over the years — NEXT MAN UP. That particular saying and practice was put to the test early and often this year for Notre Dame.
One injury after another has punched Notre Dame in the stomach, and yet they have fought through it all to be in the National Championship game. A refresher of some of the names:
- RB Gi’Bran Payne
- OL Charles Jagusah
- OL Ashton Craig
- OL Rocco Spindler
- DE Jordan Botelho
- DE Boubacar Traore
- CB Benjamin Morrison
- DT Rylie Mills
- OL Anthonie Knapp
Those are just some of the names lost to the Irish this year. Notre Dame also had defensive tackle Jason Onye leave the team for personal reasons early in the season. It’s been such a long season that we saw Chalres Jagusah suffer a season-ending injury at the starter at LT in August — only to return as the starter now that Anthonie Knapp’s season is over after starting 15 games straight.
Notre Dame has shown great depth and flexed its muscles with development, but with so much riding on one game against the best team in the country — it might all be too much. We saw Notre Dame looked gassed and get physically dominated in the first half against Penn State. Somehow the Irish were able to overcome and get better in the second half, but I wonder if it would be too much against Ohio State.
The body fails.