Blue & Gold Illustrated: 2019 Notre Dame Football Preview
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36 ✦ BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED 2019 FOOTBALL PREVIEW • SEC powers such as Auburn, Tennessee and LSU had 53, 47 and 45 years between national titles. • The school with the most college foot- ball victories ever, Michigan, had to wait 49 years from 1948 until 1997 just to split one. • Two of the 2019 preseason consensus top three also have had to bide their time for a while: Clemson had 35 years between na- tional titles (1981 and 2016), while Georgia has not captured one since 1980, going on 39 years now. Unfortunately, taking solace in the knowl- edge that other champions experienced such prolonged spells can be small consolation. Has the Fighting Irish football program become akin to that proverbial 60-year-old man who still wears his high school letter- man jacket and bores family and friends with his constant tales of past exploits? Perceived Impediments For the cynic or skeptic, there are at least four factors that preclude Notre Dame from winning it all again in football. THE SOUTHERN SHIFT The SEC didn't even begin integration until the late 1960s/early 1970s. Since 1998, or when college football tweaked its bowl format system, 19 of the 21 national champions are deemed warm- weather schools, with Ohio State the excep- tion in 2002 and 2014. Over the past 35 years or so, heretofore so-so football operations such as Miami, Florida State, Florida, Clemson and Georgia have come more to the forefront. The Midwest and Northeast corridors used to be a main power base in recruiting, but the demographics are now far more attractive in the Sun Belt or warmer areas. During the 2019 recruiting cycles, the Rivals top 100 featured 80 players from SEC or warm-weather area states, including 27 of the top 30, and speed is especially considered more prevalent there. To many of the premier southern pros- pects, remaining in provincial football- power quarters rather than embarking on the road less traveled often is more appealing. Contrast that with Notre Dame's 1973 and 1977 national champions, where 20 and 19 of the 22 starters on offense or defense were from "Big Ten states" or the Northeast, the strongest base areas for Fighting Irish recruiting efforts. Fast forward to 2012 when the Irish team was spearheaded on defense by linebacker Manti Te'o (Hawai'i); linemen Stephon Tu- itt (Georgia), Louis Nix III (Florida) and Kapron Lewis-Moore (Texas); and safety Zeke Motta (Florida). That would not have been the case 30 years earlier. Great players can still be found and signed in past base areas, but more than ever Notre Dame is mining SEC and other warm-weather areas. That makes Notre Dame a tougher sell than in the past, which leads s to … TOP-FIVE RECRUITING CLASSES Under head coach Brian Kelly, Notre Dame has recruited well, finishing 11th, 13th, 13th, 11th and 14th in the Rivals national rankings from 2015-19. When a school can do that consistently, it can generally put itself among the top 10 programs with strong development. However, consider that in the five-year cycle Knute Rockne's debut season as Notre Dame's head coach in 1918 was memo- rable for the wrong reasons. His team won only half its games, finishing 3-1-2, and the entire month of October was cancelled while the Spanish Influenza epidemic ravaged the nation. A year later, though, Rockne's unit captured the school's first officially recog- nized NCAA football championship — from the National Championship Founda- tion and Parke H. Davis — with a 9-0 ledger that featured crucial road victories over nemesis Nebraska (14-9) and the always respected men of Army (12-9). The Notre Dame roster was filled with future College Football Hall of Fame talent led by the incomparable halfback George Gipp. The junior rushed for 729 yards and 6.9 yards per carry, while also competing 41 of 72 passes (56.9 percent) for 727 yards and picking off three passes on defense. "The Gipper" would die shortly after another unbeaten campaign his senior year. His best friend and fellow Michigan native, starting left end Bernie Kirk, transferred to Michigan after the 1919 season — and died in an automobile accident in 1922. Other famed figures on that 1919 title team included: • Guards Heartley "Hunk" Anderson and Maurice "Clipper" Smith are both in the College Football Hall of Fame. Anderson made the 1920s NFL All-Decade team with the Chicago Bears, succeeded Rockne as head coach at Notre Dame in 1931 and won an NFL title in 1943 as head coach of the Bears. Smith also would earn prominence as the head coach at Santa Clara and Villanova. • Center George Trafton joined Anderson on the 1920s All-Decade NFL team and later was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. • Right end/All-American Eddie Anderson was enshrined into the College Foot- ball Hall of Fame following a coaching career during which he won 201 games. • Also later earning prestige as head coaches were linemen Lawrence "Buck" Shaw — whose Philadelphia Eagles defeated Vince Lombardi's future Green Bay dynasty to capture the 1960 NFL championship — and Edward "Slip" Madigan, whose work at St. Mary's earned him induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1974. • End Roger Kiley was appointed by President John F. Kennedy as United States Circuit Judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh District in 1961. — Lou Somogyi Star halfback George Gipp helped second-year head coach Knute Rockne's Fighting Irish capture the school's first officially rec- ognized NCAA football championship in 1919, which started a run of 13 titles over 70 years for an average of one every 5.4 years. PHOTO COURTESY FIGHTING IRISH MEDIA 100-Year Anniversary