First, he escaped the field. Manti Te’o, with Notre Dame staffers and police officers on his flanks, carved his way through confetti-covered turf and mobs of media and fans.
Then, as calmly as possible for a senior who’d just mightily struggled in the biggest — and last — game of his college football career, Te’o escaped the press conference. The Notre Dame linebacker with the inspiring story of perseverance in the face of devastating personal loss delivered quiet, respectful answers, talking about Monday night’s crushing 42-14 defeat in the BCS National Championship Game as “fuel” without facing down the demons of his several missed tackles.
Finally, he escaped the locker room. He answered a few more questions from reporters, covered his head with a grey hooded Notre Dame sweatshirt, declined his allotted box of Chick-fil-A and disappeared down the Sun Life Stadium tunnel.
It was the last time Te’o left a stadium as a college football player. But he’ll never escape Monday’s game.
“For me, I just use it as fuel — to be better,” Te’o said. “That’s all you can use it for. Life goes on. What are you going to take from this? Are you just going to sulk and sit back and feel sorry for yourself, or are you going to get up and do something about it? I have an opportunity to do something about it. It’s going to make me better.”
Alabama annihilated Notre Dame’s defense, which entered the game as the nation’s top unit when using points per game as the measuring stick.
Amari Cooper’s 34-yard touchdown catch was the longest touchdown allowed by Notre Dame all season. Alabama’s 265 rushing yards crushed Michigan’s 161 on Sept. 22 as the most tallied against Notre Dame’s vaunted run defense.
Notre Dame allowed two rushing touchdowns all season. Alabama matched that total — in the first half.
Opponents averaged 92.4 rushing yards a game against Notre Dame before Monday’s game. Alabama running back Eddie Lacy, the game’s Offensive MVP, ran for 95 yards and a touchdown — in the first half.
Lacy finished with 140 yards, and his running mate, freshman T.J. Yeldon, got 108 more. Even on short runs, they looked like they could’ve had more.
“Alabama was the better team,” Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said. “They ran the football well. Our strength all year has been playing physical and tackling and we did not tackle well together.”
Te’o, even with his 10 tackles, stood at the center of that disappointment. He missed key tackles on Alabama’s opening drive as the Crimson Tide rolled through 82 yards in five plays and just under three minutes.
“(Kelly) told us before the game that there are eight minutes that are very important in a game,” Te’o began, including the game’s opening two minutes. “Obviously the first two minutes of the game didn’t pan out the way we thought it would. We had a lot of opportunities, and we didn’t capitalize on them, and Alabama did.
“And so there’s nothing that we can say.”
Cooper (105 receiving yards, two touchdowns) and tight end Kevin Norwood (66 yards) consistently beat their men off the line of scrimmage and found space to the outside of Notre Dame safeties Zeke Motta and Matthias Farley.
Those big pass plays almost always came after Lacy or Yeldon had punished Notre Dame’s front seven on the ground.
Alabama took apart Notre Dame’s defense, piece by excruciating piece, and made Te’o, the Heisman Trophy runner-up, disappear.
Lacy’s touchdown, a 20-yard scamper right through the heart of Notre Dame’s defense, foreshadowed what would come. Alabama’s hulking center Barrett Jones locked up Notre Dame nose guard Louis Nix, and Alabama right guard Anthony Steen engaged Te’o.
Te’o couldn’t escape the block, and a night to remember quickly became one to forget.
“I had a lot of opportunities to make some plays and I didn’t,” he said. “I think the greatest thing is I walked off the field with no regrets. I played as hard as I could.”
Outside the locker room, deep into the night, a lone volunteer waited to hand out Chick-fil-A boxes to departing Notre Dame players as they silently walked by. Some took the food, some didn’t.
Notre Dame support staffers packed up their season into massive black boxes and rolled them toward the buses, a devastating first loss more than erasing the smiles they’d worn earlier in the night.
Around 12:40 a.m., Alabama coach Nick Saban, accompanied by Cooper and Lacy, walked by, smiling wide. Two minutes later, Kelly, dressed in a crisp-looking dark suit, left the Notre Dame locker room.
At 12:45, Te’o finally emerged. One of the last to leave the locker room, he pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his headphones and finely cropped hair. Down the tunnel he walked, escaping into the night.
