Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Beyond The Breakthrough The magical 2012 campaign needs one more step T By Lou Somogyi here have been dry periods in Notre Dame���s 125-year football history, but not as extensive as the 18-year Sahara Desert-like drought from 1994-2011. During that stretch, 11 Fighting Irish seasons finished with at least five losses, including a school-record-tying five in a row from 2007-11. All 18 had a minimum of three defeats. Finally, the long-awaited breakthrough occurred in 2012 with a 12���0 record and No. 1 ranking at the end of the regular season. A 42-14 trampling at the hands of Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game temporarily recycled some recent ghosts of despair, but a little time has restored some perspective to head coach Brian Kelly and the revived Notre Dame program. ���When I stood before our team my first year, we did not have one player on our roster that had beaten a top���25 team,��� reflected Kelly a week prior to this year���s February signing date. ���Three years later, we���re playing in the national championship game with 15-plus starters coming back.��� Notre Dame seized the momentum of its renaissance campaign on the football field with a consensus topfour recruiting class featuring 23 prospects. Success has a way of begetting more success as long as complacency doesn���t infiltrate the ranks. ���We know what it looks like now relative to the national championship game ��� we have some work to do. There is no question,��� Kelly said. ���But we know where we want to go. We know that we���re capable of getting back to the national championship game.��� The journey began with winter workouts once the second semester started in mid-January. It reaches the next chapter March 20 when the first of 15 spring practices commence before concluding with the Blue-Gold Game April�� 20 in Notre Dame Stadium. The debacle against Alabama, while sobering, is not going to make Kelly and company reinvent the wheel on how to continue building the program. ���It���s easy to say when you look