During my freshman year at Notre Dame, my first home football game was a real whipping of Northwestern.
The way I remember it, in the opening minutes, the Fightin’ Irish defense stopped Northwestern cold, so the Wildcats sent out their punter. One of Notre Dame’s star players, probably Ross Browner, rushed in and just missed blocking that kick.
Notre Dame quickly scored a touchdown. A few minutes later, with its offense struggling, Northwestern had to punt again. This time, Notre Dame got to the kicker an instant earlier and blocked the punt, chased down the ball and carried it in for an easy score.
And, sure enough, Northwestern had to punt a third time a few minutes later. I was sitting in about the 30th row and could hear it clearly – ThunkSnap. Browner had blocked the punt again and broken the kicker’s leg.
I had watched a lot of sports, in person and on TV, but I had never seen anything quite that gruesome.
Notre Dame ended up beating Northwestern about 60 to nothing.
The important part of the story is what happened next. As my friends and I were walking out of the stadium, we ended up behind two white-haired alumni. “We were terrible,” the one guy whined. “Did you see that second-string quarterback, No. 14? He had no idea what he was doing out there.”
The other guy replied, “We should have beaten them by 80. It’s going to be a long year.”
I come back to this story whenever I hear people complaining about any Notre Dame football team. And I hear a lot. No matter how good the team is, even after a 60-point victory, Notre Dame fans find reasons to complain.
For last Saturday’s game against Pittsburgh, I received about 30 text messages from my old college roommates during the first half. The offensive line was lazy. No. 7 – Audric Estime – wasn’t being given the ball enough. The pass receivers ran 5-yard routes when the team needed 8 yards. The coach called a dumb time-out.
The final score: Notre Dame 58, Pittsburgh 7.
I’ve had a theory about all this. As youngsters, a lot of us dreamed someday that we would be football stars. But as the years accumulate, we clearly can’t run, pass, kick or tackle well enough.
If we resemble anyone, it would be the coaches. That’s who we identify with, and that’s who we criticize the most.
It’s not just football. We have no training and are absolutely ignorant of how to run a multi-trillion-dollar economy with 380 million people, lead a military force into battle, negotiate peace with someone who doesn’t even speak our language or understand the nuances of cases that show up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
But we see ourselves as presidents, generals, secretaries of state and chief justices. Theirs are jobs we think we could easily do better.
These were insights I felt necessary to share with you. When I started writing, because I believe in details, I decided to do some fact-checking. I wanted to know if that backup quarterback’s number actually was 14.
My freshman year was 1972, so I went to the Notre Dame football archives. Just as I remembered, the season opened with a big victory against Northwestern. But the final score was just 37-0, not as dominant a win as I thought. Maybe it was because the second-team quarterback truly was terrible.
To check that, my next visit was to newspapers.com, where I read the South Bend Tribune’s account of that game. It looked like two backup quarterbacks got into the game. Cliff Brown threw two passes, both of which were incomplete, and Bill Etter went 0-for-1.
That’s when I noticed there were no touchdowns scored on blocked punts. And I saw that Northwestern’s punter averaged 37.0 yards on seven kicks. Obviously, no broken leg.
To make matters worse, I noticed the game was played in Evanston. I wasn’t even at the game.
It turns out, I was off by a year. It was In the 1973 home opener, during my sophomore year, that Notre Dame beat Northwestern, 44-0. Ross Browner’s crew just missed blocking Dave Skarin’s first punt. Browner blocked the second one, which rolled out of the end zone for a safety. Luther Bradley partially blocked the third, and Sherm Smith rolled into the punter’s leg after a fourth attempt, breaking Skarin’s leg.
That “ThunkSnap” I remember so vividly? It probably didn’t happen.
In relief of starting quarterback Tom Clements, Cliff Brown passed four times, connecting on two for 46 yards. He also had a 32-yard touchdown run called back because one of his blockers was called for clipping.
It doesn’t seem like the sort of performance that could have infuriated those two white-haired guys back in 1972, or 1973, whichever it was. If he was so bad, why did the Philadelphia Eagles draft him at the end of the year?
Also, Brown’s uniform number was 8, not 14.
Notre Dame was far from terrible in 1973. The Irish outscored their opponents, 382-89. They won all 11 of their games and were national champions.
Skarin’s life turned out OK, by the way. Another web site told me he became an orthodontist with offices in Yorkville and Naperville, Illinois. He umpires, skis and coaches punters at local schools. Browner didn’t break his leg off.
I’ve told this story maybe 50 times and now I know that about half the facts are wrong. If those two alums indeed were there, instead of complaining about Cliff Brown, they should have been saying that some lunkhead walking behind them was going to tell this preachy little story wrong for many years to come.
I’m probably wrong about presidents and the Supreme Court too.
Clearly, like No. 14, I have no idea what I am doing.