Smoke from a Distant Fire-ND/USC Prelude to a Preview

What this game couldn’t have been viewed at had Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White not abruptly ousted head coach Tyrone Willingham is having BCS implications. The Irish are not only the BCS team on paper they have been in the past, but new HC Charlie Weis has them playing like a BCS team on the field. The numbers don’t lie (i.e. Brady Quinn’s 2005 13/3/156.35 marks), the 2005 Irish campaign has thus far looked like the opening scene of a BCS novel. But USC is a road block, Tennessee is as well, but it’s the Jeweled Shillelagh that ND faithful have been talking about since Weis’ arrival in South Bend.
USC has been as expected, explosive. Like a Danielle Steele novel, there has been drama, passion and deception filled with large doses of prowess and destruction (note I’m not talking about sexual anecdotes). Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and Lendale White are not exactly names that Tom Zbikowski and Mike Richardson like to go to bed thinking about. But those names along with the rest of the USC offensive arsenal are a tall task that Zbikowski, Richardson and the Irish Defensive Company will have to diminish if ND is going to keep skipping down the Golden Road that has BCS implications. While this game might mean the difference to many of the Irish being 5-1 or 4-2, a win could help define the beginning of the Weis era in South Bend and the legendary Carroll/Weis battles of the future.
Join the Sports Reporters as we take an inside-the-lines look at the Shillelagh battle that is on the horizon in South Bend.