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Bob Davie Notre Dame

2000 Notre Dame: A Major Bowl Bid Shrouded By The Shadows

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The first three years of the Bob Davie era at Notre Dame hadn’t gone well, and they hit a low point in 1999 with the program’s first losing season in fourteen years. Davie turned things around immediately and answered with his best season in South Bend. But even though the 2000 Notre Dame football team made a major bowl game, the warning signs continued to abound.

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Notre Dame was ranked #23 to start the year and opened at home with #25 Texas A&M, where Davie had built his reputation as a defensive coordinator before taking the same position in South Bend. Davie’s defense did the job, holding the Aggies to 60 rushing yards, while a balanced running game of their own spread the ball around and produced 194 yards on the ground. Notre Dame won it 24-10.

One week later was the kind of game that has historically defined Notre Dame—a visit from the #1 team in the country. The Nebraska Cornhuskers were coming in. What happened turned out to be a colossal embarrassment.

We aren’t talking about what happened on the field. Davie’s team acquitted themselves well. While they didn’t have a passing game, quarterback Arnaz Battle ran for 107 yards and the Irish took the Cornhuskers into overtime before losing 27-24. What happened in the stands was a different story.

Nebraska was allotted 5,000 tickets for the game. By the time kickoff arrived, the Cornhusker Faithful numbered about 30,000 in the stands, turning the ground trod by Rockne, Parseghian and Holtz into an Indiana-based version of Lincoln. Notre Dame officials made no attempt to hide their embarrassment.

ESPN commentator Lee Corso has said over the years that if you want to know if a head coach is in trouble, start by looking at the attendance. The willingness of so many Notre Dame fans to sell their tickets before such a prestige game told you Davie was in trouble.

In an attempt to find some offense, Davie turned to Gary Godsey at quarterback. He went 14/25 for 158 yards in the following week’s home game with Purdue. It was enough to keep the Irish in the game with the Drew Brees-led team that would end up in the Rose Bowl. Notre Dame trailed 21-20 late, but Shane Walton picked off a Brees pass and it set up a last-play field goal for a thrilling 23-21 win.

The problems resurfaced in a trip to Michigan State, in their first year since the departure of Nick Saban to LSU. Godsey completed four passes for 20 yards, the Irish lost 27-21 and Davie again tried a new quarterback. The next man up was freshman Matt Lovecchio.

This time, the change stuck. Lovecchio played well enough to at least make the pass a viable option and Notre Dame began to steadily churn out wins. They beat mediocre Stanford 20-14, and then scored 87 points in consecutive wins against Navy and at West Virginia. A 34-3 thrashing of a good Air Force squad moved the Irish to #11 in the polls.

Wins were coming and a major bowl bid was in the works, but one couldn’t help but notice that Notre Dame was being outgained yardage-wise in every game except the wins over A&M and Navy. Perhaps that was the reason for the fan skepticism.

Notre Dame broke that pattern in consecutive wins over Boston College and Rutgers. The Irish dominated BC on the ground, with running back Tony Fischer going for 196 yards, Terrance Howard chipping in 84 and Lovecchio running for 73 more. Notre Dame won that game 28-16 and the trip to Rutgers ended with a 45-17 win.

The chance at a big bowl bid was now squarely in ND’s hands. They needed to win at USC. Irish fans had seen other seasons come to tough ends in Los Angeles—notably 1980, when they lost their chance at the national championship and two years later, another push for a major bowl spot crashed and burned in this spot. But this USC team was dragging a 5-6 record in and Notre Dame won decisively, 38-21 and closed the regular season ranked #10 in the polls.

A bid to the Fiesta Bowl was the reward and Oregon State was the opponent. The name might not have been marquee, but the Beavers were under the direction of head coach Dennis Erickson, who won national titles at Miami in 1989 and 1991. The speed of this Oregon State team was evident from the outset and they had future NFL players at wideout, with Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmanzadeh. A 29-point avalanche in the second quarter led to a 41-9 Oregon State rout.

The legacy of the 2000 Notre Dame football team is, first and foremost, that it was the high point of the Davie era with the major bowl invite. But the attendance fiasco, the unimpressive wins and the bowl humiliation to a program with no pedigree—and that hasn’t been back to a big bowl game since—all foreshadowed the end for Davie. It was an end that was just a year away.

The 1999 Notre Dame Football Roller-Coaster Crashes At The End

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To the objective observer, the 1999 Notre Dame football season was about as exciting as a year could get, with multiple significant games going down to the wire. To the Irish faithful, it could only be seen as discouraging though—1999 went into the books as the first losing season in South Bend since 1985.

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Notre Dame had played well in 1998, in the second year under head coach Bob Davie. No one was necessarily expecting “third-year magic” from Davie—the Notre Dame phenomena that had seen Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Lou Holtz all win national titles in their third year, and would later see Brian Kelly reach a national championship game in his third season—but there was reason to be optimistic.

The Irish opened at #18 in the polls with a senior quarterback in Jarious Jackson that two years of starting and three years of significant playing time under his belt. They rolled Kansas in the opener and then went to seventh-ranked Michigan. Jackson threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Jabari Holloway with four minutes left, and with a 22-19 lead, things were looking good.

It was year Notre Dame’s season started to unravel. Michigan, led by Tom Brady at quarterback, drove down and scored with 1:38 left to take a 26-22. Jackson led one more rally from the Irish, but they ran out of time on the Wolverine 12-yard line.

More heartbreak followed at Purdue, ranked 20th and quarterbacked by Drew Brees. Notre Dame led 10-0 early, 16-14 at the half and still clung to a 23-22 lead in the fourth quarter. Brees led two drives for field goals to give the Boilermakers a five-point lead, but Jackson again led the Irish to the doorstep of a comeback.

With the ball on the one-yard line, the team’s leading rusher, Tony Driver, was stopped. Notre Dame took their final timeout. But even after the timeout, there was a miscommunicating on the offensive line, resulting in a sack on the ensuing play. The clock ran out and Notre Dame fell out of the Top 25.

A return home didn’t help. Michigan State was waiting, and Nick Saban had the best team of his tenure in East Lansing, the one that would go 9-2 and get Saban the LSU job. The Spartans handled the Irish 23-13.

After a week off, the schedule didn’t get easier. Oklahoma was coming to town and rookie head coach Bob Stoops had the Sooners playing well. His quarterback, Josh Heupel was prolific, and the Sooners were just one year away from a national title that would finally put this proud program back on the national stage, a place they’ve more or less stayed ever since.

OU led 30-14 early in the second half and it looked over. Then, the Irish began to rally and turn their season back in the right direction.

Jackson hit Holloway for one touchdown and an interception set up another, cutting the lead to two points before the third quarter was out. In the fourth quarter, Jackson made a big 23-year scramble that keyed another touchdown drive and the Notre Dame defense held firm. The 34-30 win stopped the bleeding.

Notre Dame then played two mediocre Pac-10 teams at home, Arizona State and USC. The Irish blasted the Sun Devils 48-17. Then Davie’s team again showed its mettle, rallying from 21 points down to beat USC 25-24. A little luck of the Irish didn’t hurt either—with 2:40 left, Jackson fumbled the ball into the end zone where Holloway recovered it for the winning score.

Another nailbiter came in a home date with Navy at the end of October. Trailing 24-21, Notre Dame faced a 4th-and-9 with 1:37 left. They converted the first down, literally making it by about a centimeter. The Irish won that game 28-24.

The 1997 season had seen Notre Dame start poorly, be left for dead, but rally and get to bowl eligibility. They were now 5-3 and needed to split their remaining four games (the rules then required teams to finish over .500 to make a bowl) to do it.

But the schedule turned tougher and Notre Dame’s season had one more plot twist left in. They went to Tennessee, the defending national champion and Fiesta Bowl-bound this year. The Vols smoked the Irish 38-14.

Up next was a trip to Pittsburgh. The Panthers would narrowly miss a bowl, but were fired up to play their final home game in the old “bowl”, the stadium shaped like a bowl whose top rows were at ground level. When the ND defense was gashed for 158 yards rushing, and a 10-10 halftime tie turned into a 37-27 loss, you got the feeling it was the only bowl the Irish were going to visit in 1999.

There was still a chance to win the last two. Boston College came to South Bend, but this was a good Eagles team, one that was 8-2 coming into the game. They led 31-23 in the fourth quarter. Notre Dame got into the end zone, but couldn’t get the two-point conversion. Then their last chance ended with an interception.

One more final dose of salt went on the wound at Stanford over Thanksgiving weekend. The Cardinal were Rose Bowl-bound and had a future Notre Dame coach in Ty Willingham on the sideline. A 37-30 loss sent the Irish to a 5-7 finish.

It was all very entertaining, but the pressure was now on Davie. The third-year magic had become a third-year curse and he needed to prove he could take the Irish back to a major bowl game. At least the darkness of the 1999 season was to be followed the dawn of better days in 2000.

1998 Notre Dame Football: Some Early Hope For The Bob Davie Era

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The Bob Davie era at Notre Dame had gotten off to a middling start in 1997, with a strong regular season finish mitigated by a poor start and a bad bowl game. The 1998 Notre Dame football season was much more positive, getting started with a signature upset and steady consistency throughout the year.

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Notre Dame opened the season at home with Michigan. This season-opening game between the rivals wasn’t new, but Michigan’s status was—the Wolverines were the defending national champions for the first time in the modern era. They also had a quarterback who would develop a certain renown in future years, one by the name of Tom Brady.

The Irish trailed 13-6 at the half, but turned it on in the second half. They covered a pair of third-quarter Michigan fumbles into touchdowns and poured on 30 second-half points, en route to a 36-20 win. The victory vaulted Notre Dame from #22 in the polls all the way to #10.

What was just as impressive is the balance that Notre Dame showed offensively. They were breaking in a new quarterback. After four years of Ron Powlus behind center, the job was now Jarious Jackson’s. He’d gotten snaps under Davie the prior year and with the Powlus-to-Jackson shift, Notre Dame had gone from a pure dropback passer to a run-pass dual option threat.

Jackson threw a pair of touchdown passes in the second half assault on Michigan, and ND got two more rushing touchdowns on the ground from their steady running back Autry Denson. Now in his senior year, Denson would put together his second straight 1,000-yard campaign in South Bend.

Notre Dame had veterans on the offensive line and at linebacker, and now they had a signature victory to start the 1998 season. Maybe the glory days of the Lou Holtz era were on their way back.

Then again, maybe not. One week later Notre Dame went to Michigan State and gave back all the good will the Michigan win had built up. The Spartans led 21-0 in the first quarter and had an astonishing 42 points at halftime and ultimately won 45-23.

It needs to be pointed out that this edition of Michigan State was being coached by Nick Saban, and these same Spartans would go on the road and stun top-ranked Ohio State later in the year. Having said all that, they were still a marginal six-win team and 42 points in a half isn’t acceptable against anyone. The polls dropped ND back to #23.

The schedule didn’t get easier in the short-term. In fact, one week later it got tougher. Purdue had jumped back on the map the prior year under the new coaching of Joe Tiller and a wide-open offense. This year Tiller had his quarterback, a sophomore in Drew Brees. The Boilermakers were starting what would prove to be an eight-win year that ended in a signature bowl upset of a Kansas State team that was a play away from competing for a national championship.

Everything was set for Notre Dame to fold, but backed by the home crowd, Davie’s Irish turned their season immediately back in the right direction. In a back-and-forth game, ND trailed 30-28 when defensive back Tony Driver intercepted a pass to set up a field goal. Then Driver picked off one more pass to seal it.

Though it didn’t seem noteworthy at the time, Notre Dame had just completed a September that saw them beat Tom Brady and Drew Brees. With the schedule about to get softer, the question was if the Irish could be something that they had not been under Davie—and that’s consistent.

The answer was yes. Notre Dame played seven consecutive games against teams that finished with losing records, and were able to steadily take care of business. They won home games with Stanford, Army, Baylor and LSU. The Irish went on the road to beat Arizona State, Boston College and Navy, the latter a road-neutral game at the Washington Redskins’ Fed Ex Field.

LSU was the last of the wins and after the 39-36 shootout, Notre Dame was ranked #9 in the country. They were poised to get a major bowl bid if they could go to Los Angeles and beat a 7-4 USC team.

But the LSU win came at a cost—Jackson was injured at the end, and unable to play. The result was an impotent Notre Dame offense on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. They turned it over six times in the Coliseum and lost 10-0.

Notre Dame settled for a Gator Bowl bid to face 12th-ranked Georgia Tech. The Irish broke out the green jerseys, although doing it for a minor bowl that had no revenge implications seemed to be forcing the motivational issue. ND fell behind early, though they made the game competitive and had two chances to drive for the tying score, before losing 35-28.

The Gator Bowl matchup would prove to be ironic in that Georgia Tech coach George O’Leary was the man ultimately tapped to replace Davie following the 2001 season. O’Leary would ultimately have to step down five days after the hiring after it was revealed there were lies in his resume.

In the immediate aftermath of the game though, there was some reasonable optimism that Davie would last longer in South Bend. His team won a couple big games, overcame the inconsistency problems that had hurt them in 1997 and might have achieved greater heights if not for an untimely injury. If you were looking for some hope for the Davie era, the 1998 Notre Dame football season gave you just enough to latch onto.

1997 Notre Dame Football: A Noble Rally Turns Disaster Into Just Disappointment

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The 1997 Notre Dame football season was the first year of the post-Lou Holtz era in South Bend. The season got off to a disastrous start, before new head coach Bob Davie admirably righted the ship, but the end product couldn’t have left anyone optimistic about the future at Notre Dame.

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Davie had been defensive coordinator from 1994-96, a period in which Holtz’s teams showed slippage due primarily to faulty defenses. Whether that was Davie’s fault or pointed to issues with recruiting is a fair enough question, but it did make his elevation to head coach—a job with which he had no prior experience—a little curious. And the questions would only get louder in the first seven weeks of the 1997 college football season.

Notre Dame got by Georgia Tech 17-13 to open the year and went to Purdue. The Boilermakers were unranked, but wouldn’t be much longer. Joe Tiller, their new head coach, was going to turn Purdue into a perennial contender in the Big Ten for several years, and they sent a message on September 13, beating Notre Dame 28-17. The Irish left the national rankings and would never return.

The next game was at home against unranked Michigan State. The Spartans were destined for a pedestrian 7-5 season, although they had a third-year head coach in Nick Saban who turned out to be pretty good. Sparty beat the Irish decisively, 23-7.

Michigan won a share of the national championship in 1997 and had a great defense, led by future Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson. Davie’s Irish played their best game of the season to date in Ann Arbor, but it wasn’t quite enough. The offense couldn’t take advantage of three turnovers in Wolverine territory, getting no points off the mistakes and Notre Dame lost 21-14.

An 18-point loss at Stanford was even worse than it looked—the Cardinal was in the Top 20 at the time of the game, but ended the year at 5-6. Notre Dame was able to go to an average Pitt team and win 45-21, but immediately turned around at lost at home to an equally average USC team, 20-17.

The first year of the Davie era was in ashes, a 2-5 record and only one loss from being eliminated from any bowl game. Notre Dame would play 12 regular season games, but the rules of the time prohibited a 6-6 team from being eligible. There was no slack. The Irish had to win out.

It’s here that Davie deserves huge credit for keeping his team focused. They blew out a bad Boston College team at home, and then nipped a good Navy squad, 21-17. It set the stage for a trip to 11th-ranked LSU, who had already beaten Florida, the defending national champion and came into the game at 7-2.

Notre Dame surprised everyone by simply outmuscling LSU. They got a nine-yard touchdown run from Autry Denson early in the first quarter, and a six-yard scoring run from Clement Stokes late in that same quarter. In between was a field goal, as Notre Dame built a 17-0 lead. They outrushed LSU 260-121, with both backs going for 92 yards. The 24-6 win made bowl talk in South Bend realistic.

Denson’s rushing was the high point of the 1997 season, and he finished with over 1,200 yards on the ground. The problem Notre Dame had was the lack of a consistent passing game. Senior quarterback Ron Powlus was in his fourth year as a starter, and never became the great passer that had been anticipated when he arrived on campus.

Powlus had a nice completion percentage, at 61%, but he only threw nine touchdowns. And the fact he was allowed to throw just ten passes at LSU, and shared snaps with all-purpose QB Jarious Jackson, told you that Powlus’ coaches knew he wasn’t going to become “the guy.”

Notre Dame’s final home game would be on November 22 against West Virginia, who had a good running back in Amos Zeroue, and were ranked #22 in the country. Zeroue proved unstoppable, rushing for 234 yards. No back had gashed a Fighting Irish defense like this since USC’s Charles White did so in his Heisman year of 1979.

But the Irish hung in, and trailed 14-7 in the fourth quarter. Jackson then made a huge throw, connecting with Malcolm Johnson on a 45-yard pass to get the offense close, and Jackson-to-Johnson again worked on a short throw for the tying touchdown.

Zeroue chipped away at the Notre Dame defense, but WVA then tried a play-action pass that was intercepted by Ivory Covington. Now it was Powlus’ turn to deliver a big throw. On 3rd-and-5 from the Mountaineer 11, he lofted a pass to Bobby Brown in the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.

Getting seven points rather than three proved crucial, because West Virginia drove it back to the Notre Dame 26-yard-line and had time for two plays. On the first the pass into the end zone was complete, but just out of bounds. The second was picked off by Ty Goode. Notre Dame was now 6-5.

By rights, the Irish should have been home free for their bowl bid, with only a trip to play a three-win Hawaii team left. But it turned out to be a hair-raising trip to the islands.

Hawaii led this game 22-14 early in the fourth quarter. After a Notre Dame touchdown, they missed the two-point conversion, but were able to get the ball back. Facing a 3rd-and-17 on their own 44 and the clock ticking down, it looked desperate. This time, Powlus delivered—he threw a strike to Raki Nelson for 47 yards and it set up a winning field goal from Scott Cengia.

The Irish were going bowling, and the days of seeing a minor bowl game as beneath them (like 1996 for instance) were gone. They accepted the chance for a return trip to Louisiana, again to play LSU, in the Independence Bowl.

Notre Dame led 6-3 at the half, but in the rematch LSU would be the one that controlled the ground game. The Irish couldn’t stop Rondell Mealy from gaining over 200 yards, and the Tigers pulled away to a 27-9 win.

The 1997 Notre Dame football season did clearly signal the problems that lay ahead for the program, and by the high standards that exist in South Bend, would never be considered a success. But it is appropriate to admire the fighting spirit and grit that characterized this team in late October. Even when all was lost, they cared enough to keep fighting and salvage something from their season.