FanHouse Jimmy Clausen

FanHouse writer John Walters is living in South Bend, Ind., during one of the most pivotal seasons in Notre Dame history. Check back daily for his dispatches on the Irish.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- At 8-4 or 7-5, Notre Dame is bowl-eligible ("Hellllllo, Jacksonville!"). At 6-6, the Fighting Irish are bowl-execrable. The Irish could accept a bowl bid with that record, but would a Notre Dame reeling from four straight defeats and a likely coaching change actually do that?

The feeling here is no.

So, while much of the inquiries to players this week have concerned the seniors' final game at Notre Dame Stadium or the status of their coach, the game with Connecticut is for all intents Notre Dame's bowl-eligible bowl. Win and you'll be wearing pads in December. Lose and you limp in to Palo Alto to face the hottest team in America.
And if the Irish do go bowling, the questions become even more intriguing.

Will Charlie Weis still be the head coach?

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- South Bend is suddenly every sailor's favorite port-of-call.

Navy beat Notre Dame for the second time in as many dockings at Notre Dame Stadium, a defeat that left the Fighting Irish (6-3) and their head coach lost at sea with three games remaining. A BCS berth has been torpedoed, as has at least one Heisman candidacy. A second consecutive 7-6 season is not out of the question as inquiries about whether head coach Charlie Weis can properly inspire his team, and whether this team will be his next season, once again arise.

"We kind of felt like we had them in a perfect storm," said Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo, whose team did everything right in the sense that they did nothing wrong. "Just [Notre Dame] looking to the postseason, very, very good Pitt team coming next week, and it's us coming."

SOUTH BEND, Ind.-- Six months before Ram Vela's notorious sack of Evan Sharpley in the 2007 Navy-Notre Dame game, the Midshipmen linebacker was sacked himself ... by the Secret Service. At the White House.

Each spring the team that wins the Commander-in-Chief's trophy (the unofficial round-robin tourney between the Air Force Academy, Army and Navy) is invited to the White House for a reception. In the spring of 2007, Vela (No. 34 above) was a freshman who had not seen any varsity action the previous season.

"I hung near the back of the line as we approached the security gate," Vela, a 5-foot-9, 193-pound outside linebacker, recalled on Thursday. "I hadn't played so I didn't feel as much like I deserved to be up near the front. I was back with some of the higher-ranking officers, the Commandant and even the dean."

When Vela made it to the gate, a female agent looked him over and spoke into a radio, "He's here."

FanHouse writer John Walters is living in South Bend, Ind., during one of the most pivotal seasons in Notre Dame history. Check back daily for his dispatches on the Irish.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- When it comes to team bonding, victory is the greatest adhesive. These Irish are a tight bunch, and Charlie Weis conceded on Tuesday that "going through all those tight games at the end of the game has bonded the team even more."

The Irish have won five of their past six, and that one loss came down to one play. Or four. Or a mismanaged final 35 seconds (cue Glenn Frey's "Get Over It"). Whatever. The 6-2 record and the Alcoa "Fantastic Finishes" have certainly done more to unite this team than a trust-fall exercise. However, there is something else at work here: character at the top of the roster.

Brace yourselves, Irish fans: The quarterback, he ain't coming back.

The Double D was in the midst of a 17-hour journey between South Bend and Eugene on Thursday (perhaps I just should have driven?), so it missed Charlie Weis' post-practice presser with reporters.

One of the subjects Weis broached was what has become everyone's favorite parlor game around the Gug: Will Jimmy Clausen return for a senior season? "We're not even going to address the subject until the first week in December," my man Brian Hamilton reports Weis saying on chicagobreakingsports.com. "We've already addressed the fact that we're not going to address it. So we're just worrying about the next five games, starting with Washington State. First of all, let's see how we play. But we'll revisit it then."

Southern California, with one loss already this season, has allowed a combined 63 points the past two weeks in single-digit margin victories against unranked opponents. The Trojans are ranked No. 4 in this week's AP poll and are No. 5 in the BCS rankings. In the ranking that matters (the BCS poll) USC, whose loss came to a team with a sub-.500 record (Washington), is rated ahead of three undefeated teams and nine one-loss schools. Three of those one-loss programs (No. 9 LSU, No. 10 Oregon and No. 12 Penn State) fell to teams that are currently undefeated (respectively, Florida, Boise State and Iowa).

Am I missing something?

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 ...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- It really depends on what a Notre Dame fan wants these days, a Domer's self-satisfaction quotient. If you're thrilled to stage a startling comeback, only to lose on three straight incompletions from the USC 4, then you're settling for an existence far beneath the national titles and Heisman Trophies of yesteryear. But if you're disgusted to lose, especially when the Irish used to win such games and were given one last play after NBC and everybody else thought the game was over, then you won't like Charlie Weis' take after the 34-27 defeat.

In his world, he was proud that the FIghting Irish fought Saturday, even if the nickname connotes that the Irish are supposed to fight.

Meaning, we have crept into moral-victory territory under the Golden Dome, which is more a perpetuation of Rockne Bottom, in my mind, than any wondrous progress made by Weis in Year 5 of his wobbly $40 million project. Anyone who truly cares about Notre Dame football and what it once symbolized should have been spitting cuss words afterward, as Jimmy Clausen was. The Weis Guy? He was giving an inspirational speech that, somehow, isn't what Knute Rockne had in mind.

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SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Not again.

The clock really did read "0:00" this time. Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen trudged slowly toward his teammates who were congregating in the northwest corner of Notre Dame Stadium. Clausen, still wearing his helmet, walked alone and allowed himself a singular, soul-cleansing, emphatic expletive.

After what he had just been through, the junior quarterback can be forgiven that audible.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The list starts with Gus Dorais, who joined somebody named Knute Rockne to perfect the forward pass. From there, the honor roll of Notre Dame quarterbacks includes Heisman Trophy winners Angelo Bertelli, Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung and John Huarte.

Ever hear of Daryle Lamonica, Terry Hanratty and Joe Theismann? They also were Fighting Irish stars who evolved into eternal stars of college football history, and Jimmy Clausen will sparkle with them.

It's just that Clausen has to make it official.

There is that little game on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium, where Clausen can solidify his distinction as the nation's best quarterback along the way to pushing the Irish toward a record eighth Heisman winner overall. All he has to do is slay pesky Southern Cal by remaining a master at football miracles.