The glorious legacy of Notre Dame football history is no secret. Neither are the program’s current struggles, at least relative to the expectations of a traditional national power. That’s what makes Lou Holtz’s tenure in South Bend, from 1986-96, stand out. The Last Golden Age is a season-by-season narrative on each year of the Holtz era.
A program that rose to prominence in 1913 when they upset Army and introduced the forward pass, and produced legends with names like Rockne, Leahy and Parseghian, had its last real era of success when Holtz was at the helm. But The Last Golden Age is not a title that’s meant as prophecy or prediction.
I don’t believe that Notre Dame football won’t ever rise again. Alabama has gone through hard times. So has Southern Cal. Those two programs are now the most recent national dynasties in the early 21st century. It’s well possible Notre Dame could enjoy a similar revival. But for now, as a historical point of fact, Holtz’s era was the last time Notre Dame was golden on the football field and The Last Golden Age is intended to celebrate it and preserve it.
The format of this book is that of a collection of blog posts. Each season recounted exists on TheSportsNotebook.com as a separate article. They’ve been sequenced and edited to eliminate redundancy. All eleven seasons of the Holtz era are recounted. I’ve also included two important articles that serve as prologue—Holtz’s 1978 Orange Bowl win as head coach of Arkansas that put him on the national stage and paved the way to South Bend. And the 1985 season at Notre Dame that ended Gerry Faust’s tenure and officially brought in the Holtz era.
The Last Golden Age is a great way to stir the memories of a great era in Notre Dame football. It’s all here—from the epic Catholics vs. Convicts battles with Miami, to capturing the 1988 national championship over West Virginia, to the season-opening battles with Michigan, to dramatic games with USC, Florida State, Penn State, Texas and many more.
The Lou Holtz era had begun in South Bend ten years earlier, and the 1996 Notre Dame football would be Holtz’s last hurrah on campus. It would prove to an up-and-down year that looked poised for an appropriate finish—in a major bowl game—before the rug was ripped out from under the team at the very end.
Notre Dame came into the 1996 season off a year that had been good—they won nine games and made the Orange Bowl in 1995—but nor it had it been great. The Irish had been out of the national title picture early and ultimately lost the bowl showdown with Florida State.
It had been 1993 since Holtz had produced a truly outstanding team, and with quarterback Ron Powlus entering his third year as starter in 1996, this team had the usual high expectations of the era, ranked sixth in preseason polls.
Notre Dame made a rare Thursday night appearance to open the season at lowly Vanderbilt, and it quickly became apparent that expecting greatness from this team would be to ask too much. The Irish struggled to a 14-7 win over and were dropped to #9 in the polls.
There was a brief time of hope, when Notre Dame thrashed Purdue and then won a big game on the road at sixth-ranked Texas. After trailing 14-3 early and 24-17 late, the Irish rallied with ten points in the final three minutes. Autry Denson, the back who would rush for over 1,100 yards by season’s end, scored with 2:54 left. Then the defense held, Powlus got the ball back on his own 43-yard line and led a drive for a last-play 39-yard field goal by Jim Sanson.
Notre Dame had outrushed Texas 292-135, giving hope that the traditional power ground attack by Holtz could find its rhythm. But those hopes were quickly dashed one week later in a home game with Ohio State.
The Buckeyes dominated the trenches on both sides of the ball. Notre Dame ran for only 44 yards, while Ohio State running back Pepe Pearson went for 173. Powlus went 13/30 for 154 yards. The Irish trailed 29-16 and there was a brief moment of hope, when Denson brought a punt back 90 yards for a touchdown. But the return was called back for holding, and the game ended a 13-point defeat that didn’t seem that close.
Notre Dame slipped out of the Top 10 and was ranked #11 when they blew out a ranked opponent in Washington, 54-20. It was the kind of offensive explosiveness that the Irish would show just often enough to tease in this season. But one week later, any lingering hopes of a title run took their death blow. Powlus lost four fumbles against Air Force, the final one in overtime and the Falcons pulled a 20-17 upset.
The season was in danger of slipping away, but a two-loss Notre Dame team could still make a major bowl game. They took a week off and then went to Ireland to play the Shamrock Classic against Navy. This was a good Navy team, one that would go 9-2 in the regular season. The Irish dropped 54 points on the Middies and won easily.
It spurred an offensive outburst. Notre Dame scored 170 points in sweeping three games against Boston College, Pitt and Rutgers. While none of these teams had winning records, the points explosion at least underscored how much progress Notre Dame had made since sputtering against Vanderbilt.
All that was left was to go to Los Angeles and defeat USC, and the Irish would likely be chosen for one of the major bowl games. The Trojans were 5-6 coming into the game and Holtz was 9-0-1 against one the school’s biggest rivals. When Notre Dame, leading 14-12, scored an early fourth quarter touchdown, it looked like they were heading back to college football’s biggest stage.
Then, in the blink of an eye, it came undone and immediately after the fourth quarter touchdown. Sanson missed the extra point, keeping the score at 20-12. USC drove 67 yards for a touchdown, and converted the two-point play to tie the game. 1996 was the first year of overtime in college football and that’s where we were headed. USC scored a touchdown on their possession then stopped Notre Dame and the Irish season—and the Holtz era was stunningly over.
Of course it didn’t have to be over, but Notre Dame declined the chance to play in a minor bowl game. Holtz stepped down, amid rumors he was either being directly forced out or, at the very least, leaving because he no longer had a good relationship with the athletic department.
Holtz would later coach South Carolina, rebuild that program from the ashes and hand it over to Steve Spurrier. Time heals all wounds, and as Holtz became an ESPN studio analyst, his affection for Notre Dame is very obvious. But while the coach recovered from the sad ending to 1996, the school has not. Going into the 2020 season, the Irish have yet to win a major bowl game in the post-Holtz era.
The 1995 Notre Dame football team overcame a lot of adversity. They were coming off one of the worst seasons of the Lou Holtz era in 1994. They opened ’95 with a loss that looked a lot worse at the time than it really turned out to be. Even their coach was on the injured list for a while. Yet somehow, the Irish made it back to a major bowl game.
Notre Dame was ranked ninth in the nation, a testament to the respect the program had since Holtz had come aboard in 1986 and returned ND to the New Year’s Day stage a year later. Because the previous year had been miserable, the defensive talent was still not the stuff of the national elite and there were questions about whether hyped junior quarterback Ron Powlus would ever fulfill the “can’t miss” tag he had been unfortunately tagged with.
If nothing else, the schedule was aligned to allow for a quick 3-0 start. The school’s fabled rivalry with Michigan was off the docket for a couple years and replaced by a game with Ohio State, one that would take place towards the end of September. Notre Dame began the year with Northwestern, Purdue and Vanderbilt, none of whom had been competitive in recent years.
Then Northwestern came into South Bend on September 2 and stunned the nation. Linebacker and future head coach Pat Fitzgerald led a defense that collared the Irish. Powlus was sacked four times. Northwestern led 17-9 late in the game, when Notre Dame scored and had an opportunity to tie it with 6:16 left.
But on the two-point try, Powlus tripped over an offensive lineman’s foot and the game stayed 17-15. Notre Dame reached their own 44-yard line with four minutes to play, but were stuffed on a 4th-and-2. Ballgame and shock waves were going through the Irish program.
It turns out this was going to be a magical year for Northwestern. They won the Big Ten title outright, a turn of events even more stunning than the single-game magic in South Bend. If someone could have known that in the late afternoon and early evening of September 2, it would have soothed some Irish pride. But the immediate aftermath was that Northwestern didn’t even break the rankings, while Notre Dame barely hung on to a spot at #25. The result was seen as being far more about the Irish than the Wildcats.
Notre Dame beat Purdue, and then in the week leading up to the Vanderbilt game, it was revealed that Holtz would have to go in for spinal tap surgery. The 58-year-old coach was supposed to miss three games—it turns out, he would only miss the Vandy game, an easy 41-0 win, and be in the press box thereafter, but it was more piece of adversity in an opening schedule segment that was anything but the easy 3-0 that had been forecast.
September 23 saw Notre Dame host Texas. These two schools had played twice in Cotton Bowl games that settled national championships, the Longhorns winning in 1970 and the Irish in 1977. The ‘Horns were ranked 13th in the nation and were bound for the title of the old Southwest Conference (a league whose best teams, led by Texas, would merge with the Big Eight and create the Big 12 one year later).
There were 933 yards of combined total offense in this one. Notre Dame made a big play early, when Emmett Mosley returned a punt 64 yards for a touchdown and a 10-0 lead. Texas quarterback James Brown threw for 326 yards and four touchdowns, and had his team ahead 21-17 in the third quarter.
Then the Irish offense unloaded. Powlus finished with 273 yards passing. Derrick Mayes, the game-breaking receiver that was the offense’s best player in 1995, caught six passes for 146 yards. A ground game led by running backs Randy Kinder and Autry Denson, along with fullback Marc Edwards, produced 249 yards. Notre Dame scored 38 points in the last quarter and a half and won the game 55-27.
The polls moved the Irish back to #15 and now an even bigger test awaited one week later. Notre Dame was going to Ohio State. The Buckeyes were undefeated and this was the best team Columbus had seen since their last Rose Bowl team in 1984. National title talk was in the air for Ohio State.
Notre Dame was ready to play though, and led 20-14 early in the third quarter. Kinder ran for 143 yards and three touchdowns on the afternoon. But mistakes were Notre Dame’s undoing in a rapid-fire series of events in the second half.
Moseley muffed a punt and the Buckeyes turned it into a quick touchdown. Powlus, after hitting Mayes with a 56-yard pass to get the Irish threatening, immediately overthrew Mayes and the ball was intercepted. Ohio State receiver Terry Glenn caught a simple 12-yard hook and turned it into an 82-yard touchdown pass. Notre Dame got the ball back and fumbled, resulting in another quick Ohio State touchdown.
The speed of this Ohio State turnaround is legendary for this writer and his immediate social circle. We were all helping a friend move that day, and had the game on in the background. Notre Dame was ahead when we decided to knock it off for the day and drive to a nearby sports bar.
Those of us from out of town briefly got lost. By the time we walked in, the 20-14 game we had left had turned into 35-20. Being logical sports fans, we blame the friend who got us lost for costing the Irish their last bid for a national title. The game ended 45-26.
Any glimmering hopes of a national championship were gone, and the season itself was in jeopardy. Two of the next three games would be against the teams that would share the Pac-10 title, a road game in Washington and a home date with USC.
Notre Dame answered the bell in Seattle a week after the Ohio State loss, and in a close game, it was Washington who made the key mistakes this time, as the Irish won 29-21. After a narrow escape at Army, all of South Bend got ready for the rivalry battle with Southern Cal, ranked #5 in the country and undefeated.
What took place was the best football game the Irish played in three years. Denson ran for 95 yards, Edwards ran for 82, and Holtz kept an aggressive Trojan defense off balance with screen passes. USC turned it over four times. This was a good Trojan team that had Keyshawn Johnson at receiver and would ultimately beat Northwestern in the Rose Bowl. Notre Dame made USC look silly on this day, winning 38-10 and moving up to #12 in the rankings.
The win over Southern Cal set the stage for victories over Boston College, Navy and Air Force, as the Irish first won their battle for the soul of the Catholic Church, and then took down the U.S. military. The downside? Powlus broke his arm in the Navy game, and would not be available for the Orange Bowl date the team earned.
Notre Dame was up to #6 nationally and they matched up with Florida State. Two years earlier, these teams played an epic 1 vs. 2 battle won by the Irish. The prior year, the Seminoles got revenge. Notre Dame played well in the rubber match, but not quite well enough.
Tom Krug was in for Powlus, and he hit Mayes on a 39-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter. In the third quarter, Krug again went over the top to Mayes for 33 yards and a touchdown. Notre Dame led 26-14.
But Florida State quarterback Danny Kanell threw four touchdown passes on the night and two of them came in the fourth quarter. The Seminoles rallied to win 31-26 and end the Irish season on a disappointing note.
Disappointing or not, the 1995 Notre Dame football team showed some grit. It certainly wasn’t the best team of the Holtz era, but it was pretty good and they reached a major bowl game in spite of a tough schedule. And they should they could handle adversity along the way.
Notre Dame football was on a high coming into the fall of 1994. The program had reached a major bowl game under head coach Lou Holtz every year since 1987, had a national title in 1988 and in 1993 they finished #2 in the final polls—behind only a team they had beaten head-to-head in Florida State.
The 1994 Notre Dame football team was ranked #2 in the nation to start the year, and had one of the country’s most highly touted quarterbacks in sophomore Ron Powlus. Unfortunately, all this only served to add the disappointment that would build up as the fall went on.
Notre Dame opened the season with a Saturday night game in Soldier Field against Northwestern. It looked like all would again be well with the world—Powlus went 18/24 for 291 yards and threw four touchdown passes. ABC play-by-play man Brent Musberger went over the top, asking “how many Heismans can he win? Two, three?”
It was the 1990s equivalent of LeBron James’ infamous 2010 pep rally when he said “Not two…Not three…Not four…” in response to a question of how many titles he would win. The words would haunt Powlus and unlike James, the quarterback hadn’t even brought it on himself.
Powlus’ first home start came the following week againstMichigan. He didn’t play a great game—15/27 for 187 yards, but when he hit Derrick Mayes for a touchdown pass that put Notre Dame up 24-23 with 52 seconds left, it looked like a moment add to the legend. And at that point, the 1994 Notre Dame football season started coming apart.
Michigan rallied for a 42-yard-field goal on the final play and a 26-24 win. Notre Dame was able to respond with consecutive wins over Michigan State, Purdue and Stanford, though all three were headed for sub-.500 seasons. A trip to Boston College was supposed to bring revenge and instead brought down humiliation.
Boston College’s 41-39 stunner in South Bend the prior November had cost the Irish an undisputed national title. This one wouldn’t come down to the final play. The Eagles ran a fake field goal early in the second quarter was to get a 7-3 lead. They sacked Powlus four times and forced him into a miserable 5/21 for 50 yards performance. BC running back Justice Hunter finished with 147 yards and Notre Dame took it on the chin, 30-11.
The loss sent the Irish down to #17 in the rankings and a week later they fell out of the rankings completely with a 21-14 home loss to BYU.
Not only had Notre Dame lost three games, but none of them were to teams headed for particularly noteworthy seasons. Michigan would have an uncharacteristic year and lose four games. BC would do the same, while BYU finished the year with three losses. All were good teams to be sure, but Notre Dame was completely off the national radar without having played a single outstanding team.
Holtz had three weeks to get his team ready for an outstanding opponent—a rematch with Florida State, this one in Tallahassee awaited. The Irish beat up on Navy 58-29 and the surrounding weeks off before going south.
The defense had started to show leaks in the latter part of the 1993 season, and those leaks were sinking the ship in 1994. There were no All-Americans on either side of the ball for this Notre Dame team, but the crisis of defensive talent was most obvious.
Florida State, as expected, moved the ball up and down the field on November 12. To Notre Dame’s credit, they hung in and made key red zone stops, giving themselves a chance. It still wasn’t enough, and the Irish lost 23-16.
Notre Dame got their best win of the year the following week over 8-4 Air Force, hanging 42 points on the board, even if the defense did allow 30. The record now at 6-4, there was a lot of talk about where the Irish might go bowling.
There were rumors of the Sun Bowl, but the ND hierarchy was not interested. They were interested in a major bowl and unbelievably—even given Notre Dame’s considerable prestige—they were being enabled in this interest. Both the Cotton and Fiesta were in play.
Holtz took his team west to face USC, with the Trojans having completed a year that saw them finish second in the Pac-10. Notre Dame played well, led 17-10 with five minutes to go and was lined up for a field goal that would clinch it. It was fitting for this rough year that USC blocked the field goal and ran it all the way back for a touchdown. This was still two years prior to the institution of overtime, and the game ended 17-17.
Even with the record at 6-4-1, even being unranked, Notre Dame still got the call to play in the Fiesta Bowl and against 10-1 Colorado, who had Heisman Trophy-winning Rashaan Salaam in the backfield, All-American wide receiver Michael Westbrook on the outside, and a talented dual-threat quarterback in Kordell Stewart.
It was a complete mismatch, and what makes the Fiesta Bowl’s decision even more bizarre is that Alabama was available, with only one loss. The Notre Dame-Colorado game had a predictable result—the Buffs jumped out to a 31-3 lead before the Irish made the final deceptively tolerable, at 41-24.
Even from the perspective of a Notre Dame fan, the Fiesta Bowl invite was unfortunate. If the Irish would have taken the Sun Bowl slot, they could have played a marquee opponent in Texas and had a reasonable chance to win.
Instead, Notre Dame fans were subjected to six weeks of constant griping over their bid and then three hours of on-field humiliation. College football fans lost the chance to see a good Alabama-Colorado game in the Fiesta. Nobody won except the Notre Dame athletic department.
Holtz would coach at Notre Dame for two more years and the Irish never again tested the depths of 1994. But nor did they reach the heights of the 1987-93 glory years. And save for a 2012 run to the national championship game, the program itself has never come close to those years. 1994 proved to be more than an unfortunate aberration in South Bend.
Lou Holtz arrivedat Notre Dame for the 1986 college football season, and even though the Irish finished the season 5-6, the close losses to several top teams seemed to indicate that Holtz had the program on the way back. The 1987 Notre Dame football season confirmed those indications, as the Irish reached their first major bowl game since 1980.
Tim Brown was the star of the show. The wide receiver and punt returner had a huge buildup—even by Notre Dame’s PR standards—for the Heisman Trophy in the summer leading up to the 1987 season.
It might be a stretch to say Brown as good as advertised—because no one can good enough to live up to that kind of hype. But he was as good as any realistic person can expect, again having a big year catching the ball, returning it and fulfilling the Heisman prophesies in a landslide victory.
Brown’s achievements—846 receiving yards, 144 more rushing and three punt returns brought back to the house—are even more impressive when you consider there wasn’t an elite group of talent around him. The quarterback to open the season was Terry Andrysiak, a game-manager college quarterback, not destined to go any higher. The running game had nice balance, with Mark Green leading the way. But most of the best players on the roster were still fairly young.
Notre Dame was ranked #16 to start the season and they traveled to Ann Arbor for the traditional opening game with Michigan. The Wolverines were coming off a Rose Bowl run in 1986, were ranked #9 and had the usual high expectations of the Bo Schembecler era. Notre Dame caught everyone by surprise, not so much by winning, but doing so easily. Michigan turned it over seven times, Andrysiak was an efficient 11/15 for 137 yards and Notre Dame won 26-7, moving into the Top 10 in the polls.
You could dismiss that result on the grounds that this would not prove to be a vintage Michigan team. But the team that replaced the Wolverines on top of the Big Ten was Michigan State and they were next in line to get beat on by the Irish.
A prime-time game in South Bend began when Spartan return man Blake Ezor took the opening kickoff, stepped out of the end zone, stepped back and knelt down, and ND was rewarded with a safety before a second had ticked off the clock. Brown ran two punts back for touchdowns and Notre Dame rolled to a 31-8 win over a team that would win the Rose Bowl.
Purdue and posted an easy 44-20 win, and the Irish were now fourth in the polls. Then things came undone at Pitt. The Panthers were on their way to an 8-3 season behind a big 265-pound running back, Craig “Iron Head” Heyward, who would have himself a nice NFL career. Pitt jumped out to a 27-0 lead and though Notre Dame made the final respectable, at 30-22, it was never a game.
The Irish dropped back to #11 in the rankings, but the bigger problem was that Andrysiak had broken a collarbone. It turned out this was a case of an injury just meaning an opportunity for the right backup.
Sophomore Tony Rice got the job. Rice was a runner and that meant the offense would shift strongly to the option, something Holtz already favored. The quarterback would eventually lead a national championship team in 1988 and finish fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1989. It was mid-October of 1987, when Notre Dame was still 3-1 and hoping their season wouldn’t unravel, that Rice got his career started.
Four consecutive wins got Holtz’s team moved back up to #7. Notre Dame easily beat an Air Force team that was en route to nine wins and also knocked off USC. The Trojans were Rose Bowl-bound themselves, although their push would come late and they were unranked at the time of their October visit to South Bend.
The record was now 7-1 and a visit from Alabama was next. In 1986, a visit to ‘Bama had been the only game Notre Dame did at least stay competitive in. The Irish had a score to settle with the 10th-ranked Crimson Tide and settle it they did.
After a slow first quarter, with the game tied 3-3, the Irish ground game took over. They finished the game with 348 yards rushing. Rice ran for a second-quarter touchdown and passed for one more. Notre Dame got two long touchdown runs in the fourth quarter. The game ended 37-6, Notre Dame was up to #7 in the polls and national title talk was back in the air in South Bend.
There was a long row to hoe for the national championship, but a path did exist. The #1 ranked team in the country would be the winner of the Nebraska-Oklahoma game coming up on November 21, with the Big Eight powers ranked 1-2 in the polls. Miami had the inside track for spot opposite the winner of that game in the Orange Bowl.
But…Notre Dame would get the chance to play Miami on the road. The Irish also had to play at Penn State on November 21. If Notre Dame won those two games, could they vault all the way to #2? You would certainly put them past Miami and #4 Florida State, who had lost to the Hurricanes.
The Irish would realistically, and deservingly, move past #5 UCLA, a one-loss team (and UCLA would be upset by USC in any event). Notre Dame would also push past the loser of the Nebraska-OU game, though the Orange Bowl would not have created a rematch in either case.
That left #6 Syracuse. The Orange were undefeated and would finish the regular season as such. Could ND have gone past Syracuse? My guess is the Irish probably would have. It wouldn’t have been fair—Syracuse had beaten Pitt, the one team ND had lost to—but late Notre Dame road victories over Penn State and Miami would have been hard for a voter to get past.
Here’s the problem with that scenario—it’s all well and good to talk about the marquee and political value of beating Penn State, the defending national champion on the road and then doing the same to Miami. It’s another thing to step on the field and make it happen. And that’s where Notre Dame’s 1987 story finally runs out of steam.
Notre Dame committed two key turnovers at Penn State and trailed 21-14 with four minutes left. Rice led a 70-yard drive for the tying touchdown, but the Lions sniffed out the two-point conversion and sacked the young quarterback before he began his sprint-out to the right.
The 21-20 loss in Happy Valley ended the national title dream, and then Notre Dame crashed with a thud in Miami, losing 24-0 to a team that was simply too fast and would ultimately defeat Oklahoma to win the national championship.
Notre Dame would be rewarded with a Cotton Bowl bid and in the schedule break, Brown picked up his Heisman. The Cotton Bowl had been the site of ND’s last national title in 1977 and of an epic Joe Montana comeback in 1978. It would also be where Notre Dame returned to the New Year’s stage in 1987.
The game against Texas A&M didn’t go well. The 13th-ranked Aggies had a speed advantage and they ended up routing the Irish 35-10. The three straight losses were a disappointing way to end the season. But after two straight years of sub-.500 play, Notre Dame had finally made its way back. And there bigger wins in their immediate future.
The Notre Dame football program was on some hard times in 1986. The tenure of Gerry Faust from 1981 to 1985 just hadn’t gone the way anybody hoped. The Irish had finished sub-.500 in two of those years, including 1985. They hadn’t reached a major bowl game since 1980 and hadn’t won a national title since 1977.
Lou Holtz was hired to fix all of the above. The 1986 Notre Dame football team was first go-around in South Bend and while you could clearly see the progress, there was a lot of heartbreak along the way.
Those twin themes of progress and heartbreak were on display in the opening game against Michigan on September 13. Playing in front of the home crowd, Notre Dame took leads of 7-0 and 14-7. Even when the Wolverines jumped out to a 24-14 lead, Irish quarterback Steve Beurlein rallied the offense.
Beurlein finished 21-for-33 with 263 yards, and led a drive for a touchdown and a field goal. But there was missed extra point in the mix and Notre Dame still trailed by a point when Beurlein got them in position for a 45-yard field goal with 17 seconds left.
John Carney was the Notre Dame kicker and had a long NFL career in front of him. He would make the Pro Bowl for the San Diego Chargers in their Super Bowl year of 1994 and lasted in the NFL until early 2010. All of which makes his rough day on this afternoon stand out even more. Carney, having already missed an extra point, now missed a chance at redemption on the final play.
Notre Dame’s 24-23 loss was crushing, but also filled with hope. Michigan had come into the game ranked #3, they had a feisty quarterback in Jim Harbaugh and were on their way to a Big Ten title. Surely, if the Irish could hang like this with the Wolverines, then a lot of wins were around the corner. The game even made the cover of Sports Illustrated, indicating Notre Dame was perceived as being back.
Those optimistic prophecies would be proven true, but it would take longer than anyone thought. Another close loss to a mediocre Michigan State team followed. Holtz got his first Notre Dame win when they blew out Purdue, but an October 4 visit to #2 Alabama didn’t go as well.
The Crimson Tide had a tough defense, and while they would eventually be exposed as less than national championship worthy, today wasn’t going to be that day. Their All-American linebacker, Cornelius Bennett hit Beurlein on a ferocious, tone-setting sack early and the Tide won 28-10.
Notre Dame came home and lost a heartbreaker to Pitt, a team en route to a 5-5-1 record. Now the Irish were down to 1-4. The next four weeks included a bye, along with easy wins over Air Force, Navy and SMU.
The first and last of these games shouldn’t be overlooked—Air Force was a consistently good team, one that Faust openly lamented about his troubles with. And SMU was an above-average team, this being a year before the NCAA leveled them with the “death penalty” shutting the program down. To drop 61 points on the Mustangs in 1986, as Beurlein’s offense did, was a significant accomplishment.
With the record now even at 4-4, Notre Dame faced three big battles. Undefeated Penn State would come to South Bend on November 15, eighth-ranked LSU awaited a week later and the season would end on Thanksgiving Saturday at #17 Southern Cal.
If the game against Michigan was a heartbreaker, the Penn State game went a step beyond that. Tim Brown, the explosive receiver and return man who was just a year away from winning the Heisman Trophy, had a 97-yard kickoff return called back. Notre Dame trailed 24-13 in the fourth quarter and against one of the country’s best defenses they rallied.
Beurlein hit Brown on a touchdown pass, their second scoring connection of the day. The two-point play was missed, but the Irish got the ball back on their own 15-yard line with 2:29 to play. Five straight completions put the ball on the Penn State 6-yard line with 1:28 left.
If we fast-forward the calendar about six weeks, the Nittany Lions would make a similar stand in almost identical fashion against Miami to win the national championship. This was the dress rehearsal. Brown was a tackled for a three-yard loss. Beurlein was sacked on second down, just as Penn State would do to Miami’s Vinny Testaverde in the upcoming Fiesta Bowl.
On third down, Beurlein found tight end Joel Williams in the end zone, but a perfectly timed hit jarred the ball loose before Williams could come down with it. The fourth down play was easily turned back and Notre Dame had its heart broken again.
One more crushing loss awaited down in the Bayou as LSU, on its way to the Sugar Bowl, survived Notre Dame by a 21-19 count. Finally, in the Los Angeles Coliseum, the worm turned.
USC appeared to running away with it, leading 30-12 in the third quarter, and that Holtz was destined to go down as the coach of the best 4-7 team in history. But Notre Dame, as they had all year, just kept fighting. Beurlein threw three touchdown passes and the lead was cut to 37-35.
The defense held the Trojans, and the ball was punted to Brown. The WR/return man’s early 1987 Heisman campaign took a big step forward when he brought it back 56 yards and set up a chip shot field goal by Carney to win it.
The 1986 Notre Dame football season might have ended at 5-6, but it was clear to all who watched how far this program had come in one year under Holtz. They lived through the heartbreak, but the progress would bear fruit one year later with a return to the major bowl stage, and in 1988 with a national championship.
