FanHouse Gary Gray

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Observations and opinions on Saturday's USC-Notre Dame clash:

Sure, Notre Dame came close, but imagine how much better quarterback Matt Barkley will be 13 months from now in the Los Angeles Coliseum. By the way, listening to both Pete Carroll and Barkley speaking to the media after the game, it sounds as if the USC head coach has engineered his own Mini-Me.

Here is a portion of what Carroll had to say about Barkley, who after all did toss for 380 yards, is 5-0 as a starter and has won on the road in Columbus, Berkeley and South Bend: "Matt Barkley is really something,'' Carroll said. "The plays he's capable of making, there's no limit for him. He's just remarkable -- there's no other way to describe it. There's no one else to compare him to in our history. He's so poised, so comfortable in the arena. He has this great inner strength."

And you thought Charlie Weis had a man-crush on Jimmy Clausen ...

In the last calendar year, the Fighting Irish have done a lot of losing. Whether it's games on the field, or players on the roster. This weekend the Irish lost another player in starting cornerback Darrin Walls, but on the bright side, at least he's not transferring to another school because he doesn't get along with Charlie Weis.

While the school is saying that Walls won't be on the team this fall due to "personal reasons" they aren't saying what exactly those personal reasons are. Though, considering that we haven't seen any "Irish cornerback arrested for DUI/assault/identity theft/triple murder" type headlines in the news, we can assume he hasn't done anything illegal.

So it's probably something to do with academic issues (and according to Irish Illustrated, that's exactly what it is). Either way, Crewcut Charlie isn't all that worried.

"Fortunately, cornerback is a position of strength on our team, and this will provide opportunities for increased playing time for our corners," Weis said in a statement.

I'm not sure why Charlie is so confident in his corners, as the two likely replacements for Walls--Raeshon McNeil and Gary Gray--haven't had that much playing time. McNeil started in one game last season, and played in eleven racking up an entire 9 tackles while Gray never saw the field. Considering that the Irish defense is trying to re-invent itself this season, losing someone with Walls' experience will probably hurt more than Weis is willing to admit.