I usually don’t write about sports. But from time to time, something which is happening in sports has broader implications for society in general than it does in the sports world.
Like many people, I have been following the unfolding disaster of Notre Dame’s 2007 football season, if anything that produces a final score can really be called a disaster. Notre Dame has lost their first four games, and I believe there is a real possibility they may not win a football game this fall, not even in November, when their schedule is less demanding than it is in September and October.
Just for perspective, it’s worth noting that Ara Parseghian, who coached at Notre Dame from 1964 through 1974 only lost three games during his first three seasons. Notre Dame’s 1966 team gave up 38 points all season, the same number Michigan scored against them in this year’s September 15 game. The 1966 team shut out six of their ten opponents, including a 51-0 win against USC and a 38-0 win against Oklahoma. Parseghian wasn’t just a good coach, he was terrific. Knute Rockne himself probably couldn’t have done any better.
Yet, near the end of his coaching career, Ara Parseghian’s star began to fade. The 1974 game at USC, in which the Trojans scored 7 touchdowns in the second half, wasn’t just a game; it was a statement that USC’s recruiting base was now better than Notre Dame’s, and it was an indication of Irish miseries yet to come. Ara Parseghian was still a great coach and Notre Dame was still really good in those days, but things were beginning to unravel.
Lots of people hate Notre Dame and love to see them struggle. But for me, Notre Dame athletics, and football in particular, is part of the tapestry of America. It’s supposed to be successful most of the time.
We’re very far away from 1966 now, and what’s happening this fall shouldn’t be a big surprise to us. Notre Dame has been going to bowl games in recent years, but they’ve been soundly and consistently thrashed in them. The current state of affairs has been gradually developing for a long time. There hasn’t actually been a decade in which Notre Dame was the dominant national team since the 1940s, yet somehow people seemed not to notice until this fall. There isn’t going to be a new batch of national championships and Heisman trophy winners in South Bend for the foreseeable future, if ever.
Integration allowed black athletes to stay in the south, instead of going to the midwest. Ivy League schools lost their division one status 25 years ago.
Many universities decided to compromise academics in order to become football and basketball factories, and Notre Dame thought they could have it both ways and be successful in both. It can’t be done anymore. Generally, great universities are lousy football schools and great football schools are lousy universities.
Beyond that, there has been a demographic shift in the United States, toward the south and both coasts and away from the midwest. Part of what’s happening at Notre Dame is also happening at Michigan, at Wisconsin and even at Ohio State, which is why the Buckeyes finished a distant second in last year’s national championship game.
Notre Dame’s glory days are as gone as the Studebaker. Furthermore, as the auto industry continues to flounder and more and more manufacturing jobs disappear, the midwest is becoming the new south. Big labor is now little labor, and the big ten is becoming the little ten, or perhaps the little eleven. South Bend is the capital of the new south, and its population has been declining since 1960. We may soon wake up in a nation where Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are as impoverished as Mississippi has been traditionally, and that’s why this is not just a football story. The University of Michigan may not be as far down the path to desolation as Notre Dame, but they’re on the same path.
The new reality is that Notre Dame is now the equivalent of Duke, Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Rice, and firing the coach won’t fix the problem, just as firing his predecessors didn’t fix the problem. Notre Dame will have many better seasons than this one, but the real glory days are over, probably forever. There will be a lot of pressure on the university to become another LSU, but I hope Notre Dame will choose instead to continue to be a great university, because they have a real chance to be successful at that.
We should all be unhappy about Notre Dame’s decline, because it’s part of our nation’s decline. Business isn’t just moving south, it’s moving offshore, and that affects all of us. Notre Dame is trying to wake up the echoes of a fading past, and so are we all. Take a moment and wish them well.
