Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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OF AN UPSET ANATOMY T over the decades have generally followed the same formula BY LOU SOMOGYI Notre Dame's stunning wins In other words, they had the Sooners right where they wanted them. Although Notre Dame's over- his Oct. 27, a 7-0 team Notre Dame entered the cauldron at Oklahoma as an 11-point un- derdog. all winning tradition in college football is second to none, it also has established a reputa- tion as perhaps the greatest un- derdog program in the country. Part of it is because Notre Dame followed by the 35-13 win at Army in 1913. ranks first all time in football victo- ries over No. 1 teams in the Associated Press poll (eight) — and that doesn't even include snapping Oklahoma's NCAA record 47-game winning streak in 1957 when the Sooners were ranked No. 2 and were a three-touchdown fa- vorite. Nor does it include upsetting Alabama in the 1975 Orange Bowl (13- 11) when the Crimson Tide was No. 1 in the UPI poll. The first epic upset in Notre Dame annals was 11-3 at Michigan in 1909, most notably the 18-13 victory at Ohio State in 1935 that was voted the great- est college football game in the first 100 years of football (1869-1969). Because Notre Dame became such a powerhouse under head coach Frank Leahy (1941-43, 1946-53), the Irish really couldn't "upset" anyone, and the same held true under Ara Parseghian (1964-74) during the regular season. The mother of all what-tho'-the- There were several more after that, is the Irish had lost 34-6 the week before to Michigan State, while Okla- homa romped to a 39-14 win at Mis- souri. Thus the Sooners made the cover of Sports Illustrated as "unbeat- able." The 7-0 Notre Dame victory that day helped begin a "secret sauce" formula for upsets that continued at Norman 55 years later: odds upsets took place in the afore- mentioned 1957 game at Oklahoma. What made it particularly stunning