The last time South Florida visited Notre Dame, the Bulls were double-digit underdogs led by the son of a former Irish head coach — fitting parallels leading into Saturday’s game at Notre Dame Stadium, where a 25.5-point underdog with an offensive coordinator named Charlie Weis Jr. will look to do the impossible again.
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In other words, USF hopes lightning strikes twice. Just like it did on Sept. 3, 2011.
The Bulls, then in their second year under Skip Holtz — son of Lou — were 10-point underdogs. The Irish, in their second year under coach Brian Kelly, entered as the AP preseason No. 16 team, with BCS bowl dreams on their minds.
Then five turnovers, two weather delays, one quarterback switch and a five-hour, 59-minute game happened, throwing everything on its head in South Bend, Ind., in the wake of a 23-20 upset.
“You can’t start winning until you stop losing,” Kelly said afterward. “And the things that we did today out there obviously go to the heart of how you lose football games.”
“I didn’t want to make this about me,” Skip Holtz said then. “But it was an emotional moment for me.”
“Today was probably the most strange game probably anybody has ever been a part of,” Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees said after the loss.
Fortunately for all, the radar looks clearer for this Saturday, with temperatures in the 60s and sunshine all around. And this will be the second game of 2020 for both the Bulls and the Irish, the matchup having come together quickly after Notre Dame’s original Sept. 19 opponent, Western Michigan, had its season get postponed in the Mid-American Conference.
Jeff Scott is a first-year head coach. Kelly, meanwhile, overcame the frustrations of that USF game — and much of his first two seasons with the Irish — to make it to Year 11.
Still, seeing USF and Notre Dame on this week’s slate is enough to stimulate flashbacks among the last outing’s participants, even all these years later.
“As soon as they put that on the schedule, it was a full-on trigger,” former Notre Dame right guard Mike Golic Jr. says today. “One of my least favorite memories, and unfortunately through my first three years at Notre Dame, whether it was Tulsa, UConn or Syracuse, we had a couple hellscapes.”
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For Notre Dame, re-living that loss may be just that — a hellscape, even if the USF loss, and so much of the misery of that 2011 season, laid the groundwork for the program’s best days in two decades. For USF, that win was euphoric — and not at all indicative of what was to come, considering the program won just seven more games in the ensuing two seasons, resulting in Holtz’s dismissal.
For one special day, though, Holtz and USF reigned supreme. And the seeds for that moment, it turns out, were planted on the bus ride to the stadium.
The buses took off from Michigan City, the way they do for every visiting team to Notre Dame Stadium. A helicopter followed USF’s 40-mile path to game day from above. Mark Snyder, the Bulls’ defensive coordinator, sat up front next to Holtz. When the Bulls arrived to campus, they were pulled over by campus police, flummoxing all aboard.
“Our strength coach gets off the bus, like, ‘What’s going on? What are y’all doing?’ ” Snyder says now. “And here comes like a truck or sirens or something, and Notre Dame drives by us. All their buses blow by us.
“We’re on the same route to the stadium. We thought the helicopter was following us. Obviously it was following Notre Dame. And the police pull us over — four buses, five buses, however many we had — the leprechaun comes by, doing whatever he does, and then you see the Notre Dame bus. I saw BK in the front seat, as they passed us. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? They’re pulling us over to let Notre Dame go by?’”
Finally, the USF buses received the all-clear to proceed toward the stadium. As the first bus pulled up, nobody moved, waiting for a cue from the still-seated head coach.
Once Holtz rose, he let out a primal scream: AHHHHHHH!
“And the door opens and f—–’ there we go off the bus into the locker room,” Snyder says, laughing. “Yessir, that started the whole thing. I’m like, Well, I think our guys will be ready to play.”
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Then the actual game started.
Kelly’s offense, in its second year, with a familiar starting quarterback in Dayne Crist, looked like everything it was hyped up to be. A 31-yard completion on the first play of the game. A 26-yard pass two plays later. On and on it went, going 79 yards in just seven plays, the Irish attack on its way to making past coach Charlie Weis and his “schematic advantage” nothing but a distant memory.
“The first play of the game I rotated my safety weak, again taking away Michael Floyd,” Snyder says. “I didn’t double him; I just had personnel there in the flat. And he swing screens to the tailback to the field and it went (31) yards and I’m like, ‘Holy … Here we go.’ And then they were marching down the field. They did a good job. And then we hit the goal line and we put our goal-line personnel in. He put his personnel in.”
That Notre Dame personnel included linebackers Carlo Calabrese and Steve Filer, along with defensive lineman Ethan Johnson, part of the Irish’s jumbo package. Jonas Gray took the handoff from Crist, USF safety Jerrell Young jarred the ball loose and off the rails this game went.
Snyder: Kayvon Webster picked it up and went 96 for a touchdown. People still send me the video of me running down the stands with him. He blew right me. So we got a little confidence going there. We settled in.
Andrew Hendrix (Notre Dame reserve QB): That was pretty jaw-dropping, because everything starts the way you draw it up. You have all your scripted plays and you’re moving the ball down the field, and obviously if we score there we probably win. And then all of a sudden that happens and it’s pretty deflating.
Golic: Everyone was a little bit stunned, because the momentum of a new season, new expectations, and in an instant everything kind of flips on you. It was that cold reality that, All right, football is insane, and all the hopes we had in the offseason don’t matter once we kick off.
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Chuck Martin (Notre Dame safeties coach): Usually when things happen like that, it goes that way (the jumbo formation). They usually go away in a hurry, that’s how that works.
Kapron Lewis-Moore (Notre Dame defensive end): We did a little jumbo package. I know the defensive players, just so you know, we knew we weren’t getting the ball. We were just in there to block.
The tone, in many ways, was set. Three drives later, with USF having already kicked two field goals and with Notre Dame’s offense finally threatening to score, Crist was picked off by DeDe Lattimore in the end zone. With the Irish set to get the ball back three drives later, Theo Riddick muffed a punt, which Victor Marc recovered for USF at the Irish 20. The Bulls settled for a field goal and a 16-0 lead, which ended up being the halftime score.
“Theo’s first day as a punt returner,” Martin says. “In my four years, I would argue is as good as any football player I coached at Notre Dame, and we coached a lot of good ones during my four years. It was his first day back there and he — I think we lost two of them, right?”
Yes, although he recovered one of them.
Still, the turnovers — and the long day — were only just beginning for the home team.
Thanks to lightning, halftime ran two hours, 10 minutes long. Irish fans in the stands were soaked and miserable. Irish fans elsewhere went as far as to demand a quarterback change, which sounded hyperbolic until it wasn’t.
Notre Dame players relished the opportunity to recharge. USF, naturally, wanted to keep momentum going.
Golic: We needed a full reset. Guys were getting changed out, fresh pads. After two and a half hours, your warm-up doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. It’s a little microcosm of what everyone went through sports-wise this summer. Like the NBA shutting down midseason, nothing you did before matters.
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Dan Fox (Notre Dame linebacker): Even at halftime, I just felt like we were gonna win. I don’t know what it was. I knew that we had more talent. We just had to put it together. It was a matter of time, and I feel like time ran out.
Snyder: We were scattered all over the place. We were in the tunnel. I sat back with the defense. The grounds crew, you know how they get the lawn mowers and all that stuff? They had a couch back there, an old beat-up couch. I sat on the couch. They had a lounge chair. Players are on the floor, players are in the locker room, players are down the hallway. It wasn’t the best of conditions. And we’re eating pizza, Domino’s pizza.
Hendrix: You hate to say this, but it’s one of those games that starts so poorly, and you never wanna say they wanna be there more than you do, but them beating Notre Dame is way better than us beating USF, as bad as that sounds. Then the lightning and storms happen, you go to halftime, you don’t know if it’s gonna be called.
Martin: I forgot about the two lightning delays. That was awful. Glad you brought that up. Glad you called me.
When play finally resumed, the Irish defense forced a three-and-out. Then, Rees came out with the offense to start the second half, a role that he would not relinquish the rest of the season.
Surprising? Not if you knew Kelly.
Snyder: Not really, because I had a few people tell me to be ready for Tommy.
Fox: I just knew from Kelly’s past, like at Cincinnati, he wasn’t afraid to have two quarterbacks. He was playing a bunch of guys. I don’t think there was an announcement. I just think it happened. I wasn’t surprised. That’s not a knock on Dayne Crist, but I knew how BK operated in terms of performance. You have to perform.
Golic: I think knowing how much ball Tommy had played the first time Dayne had gotten hurt, I think everyone kind of understood. It had been a close (camp) competition. Personally, I was bummed for Dayne because I knew the amount of work he put in coming back from injury.
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Hendrix: Tommy had ended the (2010) season so well that we just needed something, anything. I think he almost threw for 300 yards (296).
As smooth as the offense looked under Rees, mistakes still plagued the Irish. David Ruffer missed a 30-yard field goal attempt late in the third quarter that could have cut the USF lead to 16-10. The two teams exchanged touchdown drives to make it 23-13. After a Rees rush to open the Irish’s penultimate drive with 4:03 left, the teams were sent to the locker room again, with this lightning delay lasting 43 minutes in real time and an eternity for a Notre Dame team that knew it would need a miracle to avoid one of the most disappointing opening performances in school history.
Instead, on the first play out of the break, Rees was picked off by Young, who had now forced the first and fifth turnovers of the game.
A Rees touchdown pass to Floyd with 21 seconds added some window dressing, but USF recovered the Irish’s last-ditch onside kick attempt.
“It’s hard to do and lose by three,” Martin says. “I’ve probably been in a minus-five turnover game, but it wasn’t a three-point game. It was probably a 30-point game.”
The final carnage: A 23-20 USF win, despite Notre Dame outgaining the Bulls 508-254. Four Irish fumbles, two of which USF recovered. Three interceptions from two Irish quarterbacks. Two lightning delays tallying two hours, 53 minutes.
Notre Dame went 2-for-6 in the red zone. USF went 3-for-3.
“Some games come down to one play,” Martin says. “That game came down to like 27 things had to go wrong for us to lose, and it seems like they all went wrong.”
“I saw my parents after the game and my dad was soaked,” Fox says, “and he just looked at me and he was like, ‘That sucked.’”
The 2011 opener ended up serving as a microcosm of the Irish’s season — and something of a pivot point for Notre Dame football under Kelly. Five more turnovers ruined another 500-yard outing the following week at Michigan, leading to a 0-2 start. Notre Dame, which ended up having two players drafted in the first round the following spring (Floyd and Harrison Smith), finished 8-5. In retrospect, that record is fairly impressive, given that the program finished 118th (out of 120) nationally in turnover margin.
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The flat finish to 2011 that ended with a loss to Florida State in the Champs Sports Bowl, coupled with fatigue from the hype around yet another coach promising to restore the Irish to glory, left Notre Dame out of the following season’s preseason AP Top 25 poll.
Hendrix: There was the vibe that we couldn’t get out of our own way. At that time, I really feel like the culture was different than it is now. Now it has more of a relaxed vibe, more confidence probably. Coach Kelly came in and the program was in shambles at that point. So there was so much we needed to fix. And at that point we really hadn’t had any of the success we thought we’d have. I think Coach Kelly felt that pressure, too. Everyone was so uptight just waiting to get the monkey off our back.
Martin: You’ve got to have some scars on you that, you get to the point you know how to win those games. And we certainly at that point, Game 1 of Year 2, we weren’t battle tested enough.
Fox: Every inch matters. Every little thing matters. A turnover on the 1-yard line is the difference in a game that’s only one play. One play can change the whole course of your season if you lose early in a season, especially at Notre Dame with no conference championship to play for — well I guess this year they do, which is weird — but it forced us to know every single play.
Lewis-Moore: I remember how the next year, that was our whole thing, you had to win close games. You’ve been through it. You know what it feels like. You’ve been in that moment before. I feel like anything in life, experience is the best teacher.
With a penchant for winning close games — five of which were decided by one possession or fewer — Notre Dame ran the regular season table the next season, going from unranked to No. 1 before falling to Alabama in the national title game. Kelly and the Irish have operated on a higher plane ever since.
It may have taken a game that still sparks visceral reactions to help get them there.
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“When the game was over, I don’t even think I showered,” Snyder says. “I was already soaking wet.”
(Photo: J. Meric / Getty Images)
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