SOUTH BEND, Ind. – You can admit you saw that coming.
Really.
Maybe you didn’t foresee a game where Notre Dame cleared the 51-point over/under all by itself and pantsed its opponent before a bead of sweat could even form. But, assuredly, you imagined a never-in-doubt victory and nothing like a 2011 South Florida redux. Because it’s what you’ve come to expect in these games.
Notre Dame has spent the last three-plus seasons dismantling the opponents it is supposed to beat without much trouble, further distancing itself from those annoying early 2010s losses or Houdini acts in games where it was a prohibitive favorite.
Saturday’s 52-0 handling of South Florida was the 26th straight Notre Dame win over an unranked team, the second-longest active streak in the country behind only Alabama. It was their 20th straight home victory.
Take a moment to contrast this day with Sept. 3, 2011, when Notre Dame doubled USF’s yardage but still lost to a Bulls team that went 5-7 and won a singular conference game in the old Big East. In a game where Notre Dame was seen as an 18-wheeler and USF a sedan, the Irish drove off the road instead of barreling through something inferiorly built.
The 2011 loss was the first game of Brian Kelly’s second season, when a team that still lacked confidence in itself let a couple early mistakes snowball into one of the stranger losses in team history. It came one year after a deflating home loss to Tulsa. Two paycheck game defeats in two years will get the shovels ready to start digging graves.
These days, those shovels are in a shed gathering dust while a team that feels upset-proof finds ways to do its job while running into only the occasional white-knuckler against an opponent it should handle, even if they’re not perfect in doing so.
