Against USC, Irish Have the History, and That's All

The good news for Notre Dame is that while Southern Cal could wipe the Irish out at South Bend this Saturday, they will still be leading the Trojans in their 77-year series. In fact, Notre Dame (who are underdogs by three touchdown) could get clobbered every year until 2018 and still be ahead. The bad news is that this is what's likely to happen.

Notre Dame–USC was, for more than 60 years, the most important single game in college football — that is, if you define importance by influence on national rankings (the two schools have a combined 24 national championships) and television ratings. That was a long time ago; now it isn't even just another game. Actually, the Irish and Trojans did play a great game in 2005 (34–31, favor USC), which Notre Dame would have won, except for two bad calls in the closing minutes. Southern Cal has now won the last five by a cumulative score of 204–92 — that's an average of 41–18 for you Southern Cal math majors.

The last time Notre Dame won a bowl game was 1994. If you think that's not a long time, remember that by then, the memory of America's victory in Iraq was already three years old. In five of the seasons since their last bowl win, the Irish didn't even play in a bowl, and no matter what happens on Saturday, they won't be going to one this year either. In fact, they probably shouldn't have gone to any of their last nine bowls, where they have been defeated by an average of just under 18 points a game. In their last two, against LSU and Ohio State, they never even began to be competitive, losing by a total of 41 points. Over the last decade and a half, the Washington Generals have given the Harlem Globetrotters more heat.

History has passed Notre Dame by, and its fans are in more denial than people who buy movies on VHS. Some old-timers maintain that Fighting Irish dominance in football was always a myth, and that the Notre Dame football program has always slumped from time to time and had to be revived by great coaches. There is something to this. For instance, from 1959 through 1963, Notre Dame didn't have a single winning season, and won a paltry 19 of 49 games before Ara Parseghian woke up the echoes again, winning the national championship in 1966, his third season. Then there were the Gerry Faust years, 1981–85, when they were 30–26–1 — as mediocre as a KFC tailgate party — and it took Lou Holtz four years to revive the program with a national title in 1988.

After Holtz came the deluge. Bob Davie put in five years and was no better than 35–25 when Tyrone Willingham became the first black head coach of Notre Dame. He lasted just three years after going 21–16. Willingham's dismissal still rankles commentators in both print and TV. But after three years, Willingham's won-lost percentage was .567, almost the same as the man he replaced, Bob Davie. Just about everyone except a Notre Dame fan can see a pattern here. Clear-headed analysts could see it in the last three years of Holtz's tenure, when the Irish won just 23 of 35 games and lost their only two bowl games in that period.

Charlie Weis may the most qualified head coach Notre Dame has ever had. One might argue that with three Super Bowl rings as offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots, he was overqualified . But after consecutive seasons finishing 10–3 and 9–3, the 2007 Irish are 1–6 going into the Southern Cal game. If they lose and then fall to Navy in their next game on November 3 — and the Midshipmen are 4–2 through their first six games, by the way — Weis's won-lost percentage at Notre Dame will be slightly over 58%, virtually the same as his predecessors, Davie and Willingham. That's a pattern that even fans who dye their hair green can't deny.

It isn't just that Notre Dame is too small, too pious, and too academic to recruit the top-flight athletes that it needs to compete with schools such as Southern Cal, LSU, and Ohio State. What's truly scary, from the perspective of a fan of the Irish, is that Notre Dame can no longer even compete with other Catholic schools such as Boston College — who they lost to last Saturday, 27–14.

Weis (he's only 51 but looks like Rodney Dangerfield in his last movie) can recruit overtime and snag the occasional blue chipper such as quarterback Jimmy Clausen. But he can't surround him with the kind of talent that wins national titles. Disgruntled Notre Dame players have defected for other schools at record rates — sophomore guard Matt Carufel became the latest this past Monday. W ei s a nnounc ed yesterday that junior quarterback Evan Sharpley would give Notre Dame"the best chance of winning" against Southern Cal and would start ahead of Clausen, who completed only 7 of 20 passes for 60 yards with two interceptions against Boston College. The truth is, though, that starting Sharpley (who wasn't much better against BC than Clausen, 11 for 29 coming off the bench for 135 yards) is just the coach's equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. And even when they play at Notre Dame, Mary favors the team with the better quarterback.

Mr. Barra is the author of "The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear' Bryant."