A New Notre Dame Rally In 2020
On the eve of reaching September — when football fever truly hits full force — the University of Notre Dame is also set to resume in-person classes in stagger stages this Wednesday (Sept. 2). A full re-start of such classes is slated a week from today (Sept. 7), which begins the initial “Game Week” for the Sept. 12 home opener versus Duke.
Notre Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., in a livestreamed address to students, faculty and staff last Friday referred to it as “one of the greatest comebacks in Notre Dame history.”
The fall semester commenced Aug. 10 for 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students, but eight days later the university moved classes online after COVID-19 cases spiked. Jenkins admitted and warned that his initial thought was to send students back home for on-line learning, just as last March.
This prompted a rally in the past two weeks that included an appreciable drop in COVID-19 infections last week. Of the 632 tests performed last Thursday, only 2.4 percent (15 total) came back positive for the infection, a single-day best.
Meanwhile, the Fighting Irish football team announced it had 206 overall test of players twice last week, and only two tested positive. Two others were placed in quarantine through contact tracing.
The team has had 11 total positives out of more than 1,000 tests since it reported back to campus in June — a 99 percent negativity rate.
That is not to say the coast is now clear for a full football season or school year on campus. Without continued precautions or mandated protocol, plus a false sense of confidence, outbreaks or spikes could resume, just like an unfocused football team can be toppled by a multi-touchdown underdog.
Still, Jenkins referring to the “one of the greatest comebacks” in school history was an understood reference to the football program’s long-standing history of spectacular rallies to victory while overcoming huge odds. It can be applied to other sports as well, highlighted by the miraculous rally by the men’s basketball team versus UCLA in 1974 to end the Bruins’ NCAA-record 88-game winning streak, or the women’s basketball team overcoming four ACL-tears and winning the 2018 national title with only seven scholarship players.
The opening line to the Notre Dame Victory March that was written in 1908 is “rally sons of Notre Dame.” With the admittance of women in 1972 and the addition of women’s athletic teams, the sons has been mostly modified to “all” the past decade, but the principle remains the same.
That prompts us to review the greatest rallies by football from double-digit fourth-quarter deficits.
A New Era Of Comebacks
For 40 years, the 13-point comeback win at Ohio State in 1935, from a 13-0 deficit to an 18-13 victory remained the standard, mainly because it all took place in the final quarter.
There were two ties of note during that span: 13-13 against Great Lakes in 1942 and 14-14 versus Iowa in 1950.
The Irish trailed Great Lakes 13-0 at halftime but knotted the contest in the third quarter. Notre Dame trailed 14-0 in the first quarter versus the Hawkeyes, but again the score was tied in the third quarter. In neither game did Notre Dame trail entering the final quarter.
In 1957 at Philadelphia, Army built a 21-7 third-quarter lead that Notre Dame trimmed to 21-14 before the start of the fourth quarter. The Irish eventually won, 23-21.In 1959, Navy took a 22-14 lead into the fourth quarter before the Irish scored the last 11 points for a 25-22 victory. That eight-point deficit was the top fourth-quarter comeback by the Irish since the game at Columbus in 1935.
Only one other time did the Irish come back from as many as 13 points to win the game — 1954 at home versus Michigan State. The Spartans took a 13-0 advantage in the first 10 minutes, but by the end of the third quarter, Notre Dame had the lead and hung on for a 20-19 victory.
So when Notre Dame entered the fourth quarter on Oct. 11, 1975 at North Carolina trailing 14-0, history was not on its side. It had never won a game trailing by that much in the final 15 minutes.
But sophomore reserve quarterback Joe Montana sparked a rally for a 21-14 victory. Notre Dame’s athletics director Ed “Moose” Krause, who played for Knute Rockne, declared it “the greatest comeback in school history.”
It was merely the warm-up act for a new era in Notre Dame football history for fourth-quarter comebacks. One week later, Montana and Co. faced a 30-10 fourth-quarter deficit at Air Force before posting a 31-30 conquest — which then led Krause to amend and update his “greatest comeback ever” declaration.
The Standards
In the 44 years since 1975, Notre Dame has rallied 11 times from two-to-three touchdown deficits in the second half to win the game. These were those contests, with the asterisk denoting the deficit was in the fourth quarter:
22* — (34-12) 1979 Cotton Bowl/Houston 35-34
21 — (24-3) 1999/USC 25-24
20* — (30-10) 1975/Air Force 31-30
19 — (19-0) 2003/Washington St. 29-26 (OT)
17* — (37-20) 1986/USC 38-37
17 — (17-0) 1984/Michigan St. 24-20
16* — (37-21) 2006/Michigan St. 40-37
16 — (30-14) 1999/Oklahoma 34-30
14* — (14-0) 1975/North Carolina 21-14
14 — (17-3) 1979/South Carolina 18-17
14* — (20-6) 2012/Pitt 29-26 (three OTs)
The 1979 Cotton Bowl victory against Houston still remains the mother of all comebacks at Notre Dame.
The Irish trailed by 22 when the rally began on a blocked punt that was returned for a touchdown with 7:37 left in the contest. Notre Dame scored the game-winning touchdown when Montana found a diving Kris Haines for an eight-yard score as time elapsed. Joe Unis kicked the extra point twice because of an Irish penalty on the first one.
Under head coach Brian Kelly, the closest the Irish came to topping the standard was while trailing 34-3 at Arizona State in 2014. Notre Dame scored four consecutive touchdowns to pull within 34-31 before the Sun Devils answered to win 55-31.
The Ones That Got Away
This doesn’t even include three of the greatest comebacks in school history that still ended in defeat:
1. Nov. 20, 1993: Boston College 41, Notre Dame 39
No. 1 and 10-0 Notre Dame trailed No. 16 Boston College 38-17 after the Eagles scored a touchdown with 11:13 left in the contest. In the next 10:04, Notre Dame tallied on touchdown drives of 57, 67 and 66 yards to take a 39-38 lead at the 1:09 mark.
The Eagles responded with a 41-yard field goal as time elapsed … and Notre Dame football has never been quite the same in the last 17 years.
2. Nov. 25, 1978: USC 27, Notre Dame 25
Trailing No. 3 USC 24-6, the No. 8 Irish tallied touchdowns on consecutive fourth-quarter touchdown drives of 80, 98 and 57 yards while Montana completed l1 of his 15 passes for 196 yards on those marches.
The go-ahead TD came with just 46 seconds left, but a controversial call on an apparent fumble by USC quarterback Paul McDonald (it was ruled an incomplete pass) led to a 37-yard field goal with two seconds left.
3. Oct. 25, 2003: Boston College 27, Notre Dame 25
This was nearly a carbon copy of the ’78 USC game when the Irish fell behind by the same 24-6 score in the third quarter, rallied on special teams and the passing of freshman quarterback Brady Quinn to move ahead 25-24 (after missing the two-point conversion, just like in ’78) … and lost when the Eagles booted a 26-yard field goal with 38 seconds remaining.
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