Aloha to the Streak

Notre Dame's football team ends a long bowl-game drought

First published in The Dome, April 2009

They say it takes one day for every hour of time-zone difference to recover from a long plane trip.

Yet according to the game clock, the Irish needed just twelve minutes to adjust their internal clocks five time zones away from South Bend against a jetlag-less team eating home cooking.

At Christmas Eve’s Hawaii Bowl, the Warriors obviously forgot to mention the old wisdom to Robert Hughes, the sophomore tailback who punched in the opening touchdown. Ditto to Jimmy Clausen, whose West Coast roots perhaps eased his adjustment to HDT—Hawaii Destruction Time. The Californian’s 22-for-26 day included a 69-yard bomb to Golden Tate to the house in the second quarter.

Also forgotten was the NCAA-record bowl losing streak of nine games after Notre Dame put up 28 points—all Clausen passes, three of which went to Tate—in a span of 14:27 to all but seal the deal by the middle of the third. Both Tate’s 177 receiving yards on six catches and Clausen’s 406 passing yards and five TDs (both school records) earned the players co-MVP honors for their Hawaiian vacations.



In fact, long trips seemed the evening’s motif. Tate’s 69-yard touchdown catch was the Irish’s longest play from scrimmage of the season, and Armando Allen’s 96-yard kickoff return for a touchdown sent the game out of reach.

But the Irish had racked up more distance than Hawaii long before kickoff—better expressed in degrees of longitude than yards. In a bowl system where UCLA gets to play at its practically on-campus Rose Bowl if it wins the PAC-10, and back in its “The U” days Miami could earn the right to welcome an opponent into its backyard Orange Bowl, Notre Dame defied decades of home-advantage cards stacked against it. Before this Hawaii Bowl, schools playing a postseason game in their home stadiums had a combined 26-15 record. (That’s an even more staggering 49-24 if you include USC’s Rose Bowl contests, also de facto home games.) The Warriors had been 4-2 in bowl games at Aloha Stadium before Notre Dame dismantled them like the tree after Christmas Day.

The first score arrived on the heels of Clausen’s 2nd-and-12 bullet to Tate, who effectively became a turnstile for would-be Warrior tacklers. “When Golden gets the ball in his hands, he’s obviously dangerous,” said head coach Charlie Weis. “He makes people miss.” Five people, to be exact, as he scrambled 13 yards after the catch down to the Hawaii 5. Two snaps later Hughes took it in from two yards, and Notre Dame never trailed afterward.

On this Christmas Eve, the star in the sky was Weis, unable to pace the sidelines because of a leg injury. Instead he benefited from a bird’s-eye view in the press box, from which in the second quarter he saw a lapse in Hawaii’s normal cover-two defense. So did Clausen, who at the ND 31 hot-routed Tate to go deep down the left sideline. 69 yards later, a touchdown.

Of course, the Irish didn’t just show up at kickoff. What the pundits had deemed a problem in choosing the Hawaii Bowl over others—too soon after finals, leaving too few days to acclimate to the time difference—evaporated with the Hawaii pass defense. Weis’s crew started its Hawaii practices Dec. 20, after Friday’s finals. Five time zones, five days to prepare. A kernel of truth in every saying, no? The star in the sky led truly and planned accordingly. Weis had said that the only thing he wanted from his players for Christmas was a bowl win. The present he gave his team in return? He quipped, “A trip home.”

Home—where, celebrating their first bowl win since 1994, the Irish could take as much time as they pleased to recoup from the long flight.