Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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MURPHY'S LAW DAN MURPHY a runaway train to a stop, and this year started pushing it in the right di- rection. "My goal coming here was to get things back to the glory days and the way they're supposed to be," fifth- year senior center Braxston Cave said. "I feel like we've done a good job of finally doing that." Cave, a South Bend native, is prob- Slaughter, the only two fifth-year play- ers without ties to the school's past, ab- sorbed the culture quickly and became team leaders. None of the six became a star, but they understood what it meant to help bring Notre Dame back to the cusp of its past. "Coming back from Notre Dame be- Kapron Lewis-Moore and Jamoris ably one of the few players in the era that came to campus with an idea about what the glory days looked like. He's a self-described superfan. He was the guy throwing his remote control at the television when things went wrong, he says. No movie montage was going to change the culture at Notre Dame. Talented players looking for a ticket to the NFL weren't the answer either. The Irish had to find players that cared enough about the things Notre Dame stands for to trudge through the tough times while building for the future. The six fifth-year players lucky enough to hang around to enjoy the results fall into that category. Cave and wide receiver John Good- ing the worst it's ever been to being maybe the best it's ever been," Good- man said. "Maybe starting a little franchise here with a bunch of wins in a row and a bunch of good seasons in a row. It's really special to be able to be at the beginning of that and to be the ones that have built that. People remember that." The best it's ever been is a stretch. This team is a couple armfuls of hard- ware shy of making those claims in South Bend. Other renaissance men from the early 1960s and mid 1980s led similar treks back to the top of the college football mountaintop, and they were rewarded with national titles at the end of the season. But Goodman is right about one man grew up surrounded by Irish pro- paganda in northern Indiana. Safety Dan McCarthy watched his older brother, Kyle, slide down the oppo- site end of that narrative arc, from a BCS trip to the 3-9 season. Mike Golic Jr. has both ends of the spectrum in his blood. His uncle, Bob, starred on the 1977 national championship team. His father, Mike Sr., played during the down years that followed in the early 1980s. thing. Even if this year's Irish team doesn't get a shot at a crystal ball, whether by the hands of an outdated playoff system or their archrivals in Los Angeles, they will be remembered. For the first time in a long time, this senior class can say it left the program a lot better than it found it. ✦ Dan Murphy has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since August 2011. He can be reached at dmurphy@blueandgold.com