ND summary

Great trip out to Chicago. The Berghoff is open again! Trip through North Jersey East, (Gary, Indiana) then the cornfields to South Bend. Plenty of trash talking on the Internet from the ND faithful especially the student body. Campus was very nice, got to see the Grotto and the basilica, and the bands march across campus into the stadium. Very nice people with plenty of "Hi. Welcome to Notre Dame". The game itself- UGH. First major issue- the TV timeouts. After whoring out the soul for a TV contract they let NBC dictate the entire non-flow of the game. They must really need the money out there because all they did was show commercials. Maybe they just wanted people to forget that ND actually had to PLAY the game. Second issue- ACC Refs. Oh my. After the freakshow they caused poor Bobby Bowden on Thursday night you would think they would be on their A-Game- but this was not the case. Bad calls, non- make up calls, etc. There was no flow at all in this game directly resulting from these two root causes. Both defenses were pretty solid. ND continues to struggle on the ground but BC let them hang around too long. The stats tell a different story than the actual game. BC looks dominant on paper but the penalties came at the worst times and there were way too many 15 yarders. Holding is done on every play and only the really flagrant ones should be called. But if you do start calling it you need to go both ways. Cherilus was guilty many times as has been his curse for years but there were plenty of ND scrambles where BC guys were getting their shirts pulled and there were absolutely no calls (Until the TD saving one in the 4th quarter which got plenty of mock cheers). BC was running great in the first 1/4 then got away from it until the 4th for some reason. They did not want to pass over the middle with all the screens they were running to avoid the blitz from ND. Ryan had a few great reads where he was hitting the 3rd an 4th options when given the time. Hopefully we can clean up the penalties and the kicking game because there is no way we can just give away points to VaTech on special teams. We have 10 days to get ready for the Thursday night tilt and there will be a lot on the line depending on how other teams play as well. The ACC title is right there and the Orange Bowl with it. The checkbook will stay closed for travel unless it is a good bowl game (Or Clemson tickets pop up).