All season, Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish had no trouble seeing exactly where they stood.
They could look at the scoreboard, where game after game, 12 in all, they were better than everybody else.
They could look at the rankings, where they climbed from an 8-5 team a year ago that began this season unranked to No. 1 entering Monday night’s BCS Championship Game.
This morning, they also know exactly where they stand, and it’s not as pretty a picture as the scoreboards and rankings had been telling them.
“First of all, it sets a bar for your entire program,” coach Brian Kelly said of the 42-14 shellacking absorbed at the hands of second-ranked Alabama at Sun Life Stadium. “We all now know what we have to do to move from where we are, which is a 12-0 football team, pretty darned good football team, but not good enough.”
It was so obvious that Notre Dame didn’t measure up Monday night that when Kelly was asked at halftime on national TV what it would take to fix things, a typically mundane soundbite opportunity turned brutally frank.
“Maybe Alabama doesn’t come back in the second half,” Kelly said.
Oh, but the Tide did, responding to Notre Dame’s best shot to that point when Alabama’s Ha Ha Clinton-Dix intercepted an Everett Golson pass on the first series of the third quarter. Ten plays and 97 yards later, Alabama was back in the end zone, up 35-0.
Game, set, outmatched.
While obviously disappointed, Kelly couldn’t help but acknowledge the steps made by the Irish this season — steps that must now be continued without seniors such as linebacker and Heisman finalist Manti Te’o, tight end Tyler Eifert, running back Theo Riddick and offensive tackle Zack Martin.
“I couldn’t be more proud of especially my seniors,” said Kelly, who completed his third season with the Irish. “What they have done in a very short period of time to help elevate our program back into the spotlight, competing for a national championship, can never be repaid.
“Now it’s up to those that return to take it one more step, and we saw that that step needs to happen. We were beat today by a better football team. I don’t know if they were 21 points, 28, 35 (better), but they beat us today, and we’ve got another step that we have to take in the development of our program.”
All along, Kelly had said the first couple of minutes would be key. So too the battle in the trenches. He was correct on both counts, with Alabama jumping to a 14-0 lead before Notre Dame had run its fourth offensive play. Alabama’s offensive line cleared the way for Eddie Lacy to rush for 140 yards and a touchdown as part of the Tide’s 529-yard offensive total.
The onslaught was such that in the opening seconds of the second quarter, Kelly opted to go for it on fourth-and-5 from the Alabama 39 while trailing 21-0. Golson’s deep pass to TJ Jones fell incomplete.
“I certainly did not feel at that point we could give the ball back to Alabama,” Kelly said. “So just a sense and a feeling that we needed to convert there. If we were going to get back in the game, we had to take a shot right there.”
There was no jump-starting the Irish’s bid for a perfect season Monday night. It’s clear what Kelly’s approach will be now that the off-season is upon him.
“Measure yourselves against that,” he said, will be his message to returning players. That’s if any message needs to be delivered at all. Kelly wondered if the Crimson Tide may have hammered home the point as well as any pep talk he could conjure up.
“It’s a great, great opportunity that we had here,” he said. “It’s disappointing we lost the football game, but it’s going to make my job very easy when it comes to talking to players about how you win a national championship.”
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