Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/50205
Notre Dame hasn't had an epic victory since beating Florida State in 1993 The Last Hurrah BY LOU SOMOGYI N early a generation has passed since Notre Dame's most re- cent "one for the ages" victory on the football field. That win occurred on Nov. 13, 1993, when 9-0 and No. 2 Notre Dame defeated seven-point favorite and No. 1-ranked Florida State, 31-24, in Notre Dame Stadium. During an astounding 23-year pe- riod from 1971-93, Notre Dame top- pled eight teams that were ranked No. 1 in either of the major polls. The streak began Jan. 1, 1971, when head coach Ara Parseghian's Irish ended Texas' 30-game winning streak with a 24-11 Cotton Bowl triumph and concluded when Lou Holtz's Notre 30 JANUARY 2012 Dame team defeated the Seminoles. With that conquest, Holtz and Notre Dame improved to a dizzying 16-4-1 in their last 21 games versus teams that were ranked in the Asso- ciated Press top 10 and improved to 11-2 against the AP top five. To put that into perceptive, con- sider: • Notre Dame is 7-27 against AP top-10 teams in the 18 seasons from 1994-2011. • During that same period, the Irish are 3-17 against AP top-five teams. • Notre Dame has not defeated a team ranked in the top 10 since Sept. 10, 2005, a 17-10 conquest of No. 3 Michigan. In so many ways, Nov. 13, 1993 re- mains the last hurrah for the program. GREATEST TEAM EVER? It was not a debate to many that Florida State, led by Heisman Tro- phy-winning quarterback Charlie Ward, was the best college football team in 1993. The issue was whether it was pos- sibly the greatest college football team ever. The Seminoles outscored their first nine opponents by an average of 44.3 points to 6.4. This included a 57-0 annihilation of No. 17 Clemson, a 51-0 slaughter of Georgia Tech (which had shared the national title just three years earlier) and a 28-10 whipping of No. 3 and longtime nemesis Miami. "The best college football team I've ever seen, and I've been in the game a long time," Holtz said the week of the game. BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED