Notre Dame Has Must-Win Game at Boston College

A must-win game, loosely speaking, is a game that helps if you win, but can be disastrous if you lose.  A rebuilding Notre Dame team with question marks hanging over its head has such a game against Boston College in Chestnut Hill.  And Boston College, in recent decades, has turned into a bitter rivalry and the Eagles usually hand the Irish a dogfight.

Coming off last year’s 4-8 debacle, Notre Dame teeters at 1-1 after a strong win over unranked Temple and a somewhat anemic, excruciating 1-point loss to a Georgia team barely in the top-15.

As with last year’s early skid, and other snowballing moments during the Brian Kelly tenure, momentum is everything, along with the need to take care of business with the win-loss bottom line.

There would be a world of a difference between 1-2 and 2-1 as Notre Dame then heads on to what promises to be a wild primetime tilt against rival Michigan State in Spartan Stadium, followed by a match-up against a resurgent Miami of Ohio.  And, courtesy of the ACC, will Notre Dame have yet another hurricane game in the Carolinas when they head to Chapel Hill to face the Tar Heels?

Despite a downturn of their own last year, the Spartans still managed to beat Notre Dame, and are still a strong national program that went to the college football playoff two years ago.  Miami of Ohio, in addition to going to a bowl last year, is coached by former Brian Kelly assistant Chuck Martin, who matched Brian Kelly’s two small college national championships as a head coach at Grand Valley State.  Time will tell, whether Chuck Martin will pose the same threat to Brian Kelly as, by comparison, Mike Brey poses to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski in basketball. At the very least, Chuck Martin will not be intimidated by either Notre Dame or Brian Kelly, and will have strong familiarity with Brian Kelly’s past systems and tendencies.

Even if Notre Dame plays well, if they cannot get past Boston College, a 1-2 record could easily snowball to 1-3 after the trip to East Lansing, and Miami of Ohio could turn into Brian Kelly’s Waterloo, a pivotal moment at about the same time in the season when, by comparison, last year, LSU fired a 2-2 Les Miles.

There are multiple wild cards at work with Notre Dame vs. Boston College.

The Catholic connection is not as big an issue as some observers might think, especially since both institutions have been criticized by actual devout Catholics for not being faithful enough to the Faith, or being unduly secularized in various respects.

However, the series, in recent decades, turned into a sometimes-bitter, hard-fought rivalry where one can often “throw out the records” and expect a dogfight.  (Of course, this year, both teams have the same record at 1-1, although they followed different paths to get there.)

The intensity of the rivalry dates back to the 1990s when, after Notre Dame humiliated a top-10 Boston College team with a massive blowout, Boston College returned the favor the following year by knocking a Lou Holtz-coached Notre Dame team out of what could have been a consensus national championship.  In Tyrone Willingham’s first season, the Eagles handed Notre Dame their first loss on a fluke play, after Notre Dame had beaten Florida State in Tallahassee (although Notre Dame continued the skid with a loss at Southern Cal).  A few years ago, a close, low-scoring nature of a Notre Dame win over Boston College knocked Notre Dame out of playoff consideration (although Notre Dame then followed up with a close loss at Stanford).

Even though the teams have not necessarily played every year, and even though many games have been close, the sporadic series also has produced winning streaks, for Boston College and then for Notre Dame.

In the past, some commentators would claim that a number of Boston College players might have preferred to play for Notre Dame, and therefore had something to prove.  In any event, apparently the game looms very, very large on Boston College’s radar.

While Boston College is not as big a rival for Notre Dame as, for example, Southern Cal, Notre Dame certainly has to be conscious of the history involved and the solid threat posed by the Eagles, a power conference team from the ACC with strong foundations, talented players, great coaches and a history of success, including a bowl win this past season over a B1G/Big Ten opponent.

And the game, of course, is on Boston College’s home turf in Chestnut Hill.  Notre Dame did luck out with having made travel plans to get there early, in part because the game was originally set for a noon start.

If Notre Dame can survive, a 2-1 record could help provide some insurance heading into Michigan State and Miami of Ohio.  Even a loss in East Lansing would leave Notre Dame at .500, and they could then buckle down to try to survive Miami of Ohio.

But if Notre Dame limps home at 1-2, with a loss over an unranked opponent, it maximizes perceptions of the potential to drop to 1-3, with a loss to Miami of Ohio a real possibility, and raising questions about Brian Kelly’s future.

A half-century ago, Notre Dame was innovative when they went with an interim coach status for Hugh Devore, a factor that, as the story goes, contributed to them drawing interest from, and landing, Ara Parseghian.

In more recent years, Notre Dame floundered a bit trying to go with the idea of firing a coach in late-November or early-December, then hire a replacement in one or two weeks.  Meanwhile, a variety of programs have gone with mid-season firings, mid-season switches to interim-coach arrangements, or other innovations like long-term coach-in-waiting arrangements.

If Notre Dame does end up needing a change at head coach, questions will start to arise about whether Notre Dame will need to do something mid-season, if they start sliding again to 1-3 or 2-3.

Also on the horizon is what seems like an almost perverse insistence by the ACC to schedule Notre Dame in the Carolinas during hurricane season every year.  The ACC has Notre Dame playing North Carolina in Chapel at almost the same time that Notre Dame had competitive but disastrous losses at Clemson and N.C. State amidst hurricane weather or something similar.  So do not look for much relief on the horizon after the Boston College-Michigan State-Miami of Ohio gauntlet.

And ranked teams like Southern Cal, Miami of Florida and Stanford still await the Irish later in the year.

One curious twist for Notre Dame, a paradox of sorts, is that, with the program rebuilding after the 4-8 catastrophe, and Brian Kelly trying to survive in his job, it’s actually, arguably, the middling games that count the most this year, not the biggest games.  If Notre Dame can beat the ranked teams, as they almost did with Georgia, that certainly would help.  Yet losses to those teams would doom neither their overall record or Brian Kelly’s survivability.  However, failing to take care of business against teams they can beat more readily would be more of a black eye, and would also start tilting the accumulated bottom line with the win-loss record.

It does not help when some of those teams Notre Dame can handle have a big asterisk next to them, starting with Boston College being a bitter rival who always handles Notre Dame a dogfight, and one that is hosting on their home turf.