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we've had since 1993? We are pretty loaded. We have momentum. For me, the biggest thing is we have a proven QB coming back for a second season.

We have a HC who gets it, puts in the work. We have probably the best assistants ever, although I would say six punks and Joe Moore might be the best assistants ever.

We HAVE to get this done in the next few years. Because I don't think the way things are being done is feasible for a long term. Mostly because it benefits us, and no one but us wants that haha.

I can't wait til fall...

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If #leavenodoubt and #keepthepain don't translate into 12-0, all but one or two being blowouts never in dispute, I'll be disappointed. I'm just waiting for them to come out and deliver some justice on the feckless and polluted powers behind college football. A reckoning.

It's a foolish thing to desire, much less place hope in, yet here I am.

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Because I'm getting on the train with you.

I want to embarrass teams.

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"F--- everyone who isn't us."
#Team128

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I still remember your "poet warriors" post after beating Michigan in 2002.

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"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

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We're going to have to invent some new similes for vanquished foes.

Like a folded, fiery husk of a Ford Pinto, having absorbed the colliding power of a laden Mack truck, so did KVA's open field tackle leave the battered Hurricane.

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we had such a good team it was ridiculous. And we really should have been national champions.

Under the BCS system that came along a couple of years later, the national championship game would have been ND-Colorado and we know how that turned out.

The thing in 1989 was that the schedule was absurdly difficult and losing the last game of the regular season sucked.

This year the schedule is a lot more manageable and we have a ridiculously good team.

Fwiw, odds on winning the NC: OSU +550, ND +700, Texas +750, Indiana +750, Oregon +800, UGA +850.

Ohio State is our white whale. We're gonna have to beat them.

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"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

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Even after ND won in '88, Miami was still the 800 pound gorilla of college football. They did lose Johnson for Erickson, which was really to only reason to think they might take a half a step backwards in '89. There isn't a dominant team going into 2026. There are some very good teams, but none necessarily better than ND.

Last season, ND was #2 in points per game, #2 in yards per pass attempt, and #4 in yards per rush attempt. The offense was really incredible last season. Losing Love and Price certainly hurts, but should be made up for with an elite QB in his second year and great talent around him. The defense should be better as well, and possible elite.

There were several key question marks going into 2025 (how will Ash do as DC, should Carr be starting in game 1) that just aren't there in 2026. It's hard not to be optimistic. Which of course is the reason that I'm expecting something terrible to happen. Hold me, I'm Irish!

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At night, the ice weasels come.

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the Watters fumble was a killer.

But that loss was on Monk. After the 1988 scuffle it was well known that Monk threatened Holtz. The Miami players knew it and taunted our guys. Fans throwing Ziplock bottles filled with piss.

We were the better team.

https://www.jhowell.net/cf/cf1989.htm

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"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

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Although playoffs would allow it, I suspect Marcus needs to knock off tOSU on his way to a championship

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I'm not even sure that I was this positive before the '93 season.

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in August '93 was not, "Hey, we're winning the whole fucking thing this year!" We'd just lost 4 players who were selected in the first 20 picks of the NFL draft. Lost a three-year starter at QB and our two-headed monster at RB that carried the offense in '92 (shades of 2025!). There was growing confidence about frosh prodigy Powlus in fall camp, and then came the broken collarbone and suddenly quarterback was a total mystery again just a week or two prior to the Michigan game in AA. Holtz had also developed a habit of stepping on his own dick in games he should have won, which didn't help the confidence level either.

Ultimately, the way things came together as the season unfolded was a revelation for those like me who'd arrived three years earlier expecting a championship at some point, only to be kicked square in the nuts every time it looked like we might break thru. Oh wait...

(I'm guessing that Busc was talking about the mood post-FSU rather than preseason, but it's worth revisiting the Holtz years bc those days absolutely weren't always as shiny & happy as some of the olds would like to admit.)

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1993 was a wonderful and unexpected ride other than BC, which is like the Kennedy assassination or the Challenger disaster. I know exactly where I was when it happened.

Kicking the shit out of Colorado was awesome.

My favorite game from that era is still the UF curb stomp in the Sugar Bowl.

SEC cake eaters.

The SEC forgets that it took Midwestern boys, Meyer and Saban, to learn how to play the game in the correct fashion. It wasn’t Tommy Tuberville.

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I didn't think deeply about the year I used, just remembered how close we were that year. Looking back, of course that season was saved by our QB who no one thought would do that.

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ND does better when they arent expected to do better. That was the big lesson from Holtz’s teams in the ‘90s.

Its a trap to believe ND has everything in place to win it all. Complacency kills. You’ve got to be hungry with the fight like no one believes in you but your own teammates. Us against the world.

Honestly, I think ND’s 2025 team had a really good chance to win it all.

Whenever I hear prognostications that ND is set and going to have a great season, I think “Crap, hear comes the unexpected problem that will derail reality and the high expectations for the season.”

“You arent as good as they say you are” (when they love you) and at the same time “You arent as bad as they say you are” (when they hate you).

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...but not because of sustainability issues. I bitch about Swarbrick and Bevacqua but they've been strong on program infrastructure and it is indeed sustainable.

But the erosion of Notre Dame's ability to fend for itself in a cold hard world of Big Ten Suckhole behavior continues. National championships won't solve that completely but they will sure help.

The next TV rights rounds, and related conference shuffling shenanigans, is I think 2032. We need a better position by then. Winning cures a lot of problems.

All that having been said, I agree with you. Best shape the program has been in since 93, both in terms of the long-term issues and in terms of this year's prospects.

College football has no idea what's coming. #revengetour26

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I'm not calling any shots or anything, but we're loaded on both sides of the ball and have a special QB for the first time in a while.

I also admit to being a little queasy about how the game has changed off the field, what with the bag men coming out of the shadows and everything getting more professionalized. ND and Freeman are driving a money train through the new NIL era in college football, cashing in on every opening this new sports economy is creating. I am rooting for them but fandom doesn't feel the same.

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