VIEW FROM THE MIDWEST: SEPTEMBER 20, 2007

Winless Michigan Puts Notre Dame to Shame (and 0-3)

By Paul Smith / smith@collegeblitz.com

The Chicago Sun-Times' Friday game preview headline said it all: Notre Shame vs. Michigone.

So there they were, trudging onto the storied Michigan Stadium turf, and who among us was ready to find out the last time the Wolverines lost three in a row in The Big House?

Wouldn't happen, Michigan tailback and Heisman Trophy mentionee Mike Hart insisted.

"I guarantee we'll win," he'd said to an attentive media right after Michigan got schooled by Oregon, 39-7, the previous Saturday.

It may not have been Joe Namath sitting in a cabana chair at a sexy South Beach motel guaranteeing the New York Jets' seismic Super Bowl III upset of the haughty Baltimore Colts. Nah, it was a whizzed-off kid letting off a little understandable steam after his team had taken it in the shorts two straight weeks, the first to a I-AA team, the second by a Pac-10 powerhouse.

Even most of the Notre Dame community was in at least a semi-forgiving mood. Like they had a choice... Michigone-but-found 38, NotreDarned zip. So yes, some media did scramble for the history books to find out a few things.

1. The last time N.D. opened a season 0-3? Oops, not so far back. It was Bob Davie's infamous final year, 2001, where the Fighting Irish finished 5-7. But... This kind of 0-3 — two field goals, one touchdown, courtesy of an interception return, 100 points in three games to 13. Never. You flip back through Davie...back through the mostly unsuccessful Gerry Faust years, past the '70s, late '60s, to Hugh Devore/Joe Kuharich who combined for the only losing five-year run in Notre Dame history (19-30 in 1959-63, just before Ara Parseghian resurrected the program)...
2. Nope. The 2001 start was pretty bad, a 27-10 loss at Nebraska, 17-10 at home to Michigan State, then 24-3 at Texas A & M. That was the only other time Notre Dame opened 0-3 in its awesome history. 3. But this...this had even the most seasoned Notre Dame observers scouring their vocabularies to describe the nadir unfolding before them.

"This," WGN radio sports-talk host Jim Memelo, a 35-year Fighting Irish watcher said, "is the worst Notre Dame team I've ever seen."

Give Michigan its full props. This effort -- 187 yards by the talkative Hart, good for two touchdowns and a dominant offense that produced 289 rushing yards -- was a nice first step back from the edge of a precipitous drop for the Wolverines, who face a much sterner test in Penn State Saturday, U-M's fourth straight home game. In the process, he passed Tyrone Wheatley and moved to No. 3 on Michigan's all-time rushing list, with 4,184 career yards, behind only Jamie Morris and Anthony Thomas.

"When I guaranteed the victory," Hart told The Ann Arbor News' U-M beat writer John Heuser, "it was no disrespect toward Notre Dame at all. "(It was) to fire myself up, fire this team up. I have great respect for Notre Dame..."

Right about now, he might be a minority of one. U-M quarterback Chad Henne had been knocked out of most of the second half of the Oregon game and, like the Irish with highly-touted Jimmy Clausen, the Wolverines were forced to go to a freshman Q.B. — Ryan Mallett.

"When you have a guy (Hart) who has been here four years and you hand it off to him 35 times, it takes a lot of pressure off you," Mallett told Heuser. "The coaches told me all week, 'You don't have to make all the plays, there's guys around you.' "That helped me out. Mike's a great player. The offensive line opened up great holes for him all day. That's what we want."

The results depended on your perspective, of course. Michigan at will and Mallett, not particularly flashy, did hit Greg Matthews (26 yards) and Adrian Arrington (5) for second quarter touchdowns and Mario Manningham for a 13-yard score late in the third. But his passing numbers -- 7-of-16, for 90 total yards, get buried behind the Wolverines' relentless running game. Not likely to draw rave reviews from the Notre Dame coaching staff.

"We will not be watching tapes," third-year Irish coach Charlie Weis said to the South Bend Tribune's Jeff Carroll. "We will not be having meetings (Sunday). We will be practicing." People are accusing Weis of bungling this season from the start ... and before. But the cold reality is Weis, even in his third year, still had mostly a roster of former coach Ty Willingham's players.

Not to finger-point, but the reality is this: There is an unwritten ethic in the college game when scholarship offers are made to high school juniors, and apparently, Willingham had done just that for a few, it tends to tie up the new coach's efforts in the first couple of years. Withdrawing an offer, the conventional wisdom goes, can tend to tick off the coaching staff and administrators at the young prospect's school and shut down future recruiting opportunities there. So Weis's first real recruiting year is 2007-2008 and respected scouting gurus like Tom Lemming, Phil Grosz and others are singing the Irish's praise to the skies. By all reports, Notre Dame is having a top five recruiting experience this year.

Basically, before the season, when Weis wore that basset-hound look at press conferences, there is little doubt he knew this year would be a trainwreck.

With 3-0 Michigan State, which will be spoiling for revenge after last year's very tough loss to the Irish, playing nasty defense for rookie coach Mark Dantonio, those dark clouds over South Bend aren't likely to move this week.

Throw in visits to unbeaten Purdue, then U.C.L.A., followed by a home game against what is emerging as the Atlantic Coast Conference's best team, Boston College, and then No. 1 U.S.C. and an 0-8 start looks to be a near certainty.

"Three games in," Weis told Carroll, "the team is headed in the wrong direction. And when the team's headed in the wrong direction, the only way I know is to come out swinging. Obviously I'm embarrassed by that performance out there."

For Michigan, Saturday wasn't necessarily a full vindication of the Wolverines' pre-season No. 5 ranking. But after being booed off the field the previous week, you can be sure the U-M players will bring a much different mindset to their league opener this Saturday against the 3-0 Nittany Lions. But for Notre Dame, the trick is to somehow try and suck it up and gain some self-respect against that mountain range of superior personnel. The South Bend Tribune's Carroll calls it a "reboot." Weis hints it's a second start for fall practice. Call it "in-season practice."

"I think this is the only thing we really can do," linebacker Anthony Vernaglia told Carroll. "We've tried grab-bagging on offense, tried different coverages on defense. All you can do is start from the beginning and go back to work and hopefully the next product that comes out is better than the product we started with."

For both schools, it is uncharted territory. But at least Michigan has a roughly-drawn map for the near future.