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What They’re Saying: Alabama 31, Notre Dame Fighting Irish 14

A look at what the media is saying after Notre Dame’s season-ending 31-14 loss against Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Rose Bowl.

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Alabama Crimson Tide football senior running back Najee Harris leaps over Notre Dame Fighting Irish football fifth-year senior quarterback Nick McCloud
Alabama had no problem rushing the football against Notre Dame. (AP)

Patrick Engel, BlueandGold.com: Notre Dame And An Existence At An Impasse

ARLINGTON, Texas – The way he answered some of inquiries, Brian Kelly must have trudged to a podium somewhere in depths of AT&T Stadium feeling like an anvil rested upon his back.

Notre Dame’s coach understood what was coming, and that he wouldn’t like it.

Notre Dame was publicly denied again in its quest to reach college football’s rarest air, this time a 31-14 loss to Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinals. The Crimson Tide were once again a bugaboo. The Irish once again came up short of where they want to be. Fuel for The Narrative. Kelly wasted no time weighing in.

“I guess everybody needs to continue to carry this narrative that Notre Dame is not good enough,” Kelly said. “Look at the scores of the games Alabama has played all year, and I think we need to start to change the narrative a little bit.”

Asked how his program can tighten the score, Kelly shook his head, sighed and let out a momentary laugh of incredulity.

“I really don't want to continue to go down this path,” he continued. "We're going to keep getting here, OK? And we're going to keep banging at it.”

“These questions keep coming up like we have to reinvent ourselves.”

No, Notre Dame doesn’t need a full-scale reboot. And the Irish are not alone in succumbing to Alabama’s or Clemson’s unmatched skill level. But two things – two areas of residence, really – can be true at once.

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Bill Bender, Sporting News: Notre Dame isn't a fraud, and that's the real College Football Playoff problem

If it's not Notre Dame, then who is it?

Answer that question before launching the obligatory round of Irish criticism that is sure to come after the latest playoff failure.

No. 1 Alabama routed No. 4 Notre Dame 31-14 in the relocated Rose Bowl Game at AT&T Stadium on Friday. The Irish own a combined record of 0-7 in BCS bowls and College Football Playoff semifinals.

Notre Dame (10-2) still looks a long way from its first national championship since 1988. A unique 2020 season in which the Irish finished unbeaten in the regular season through a one-year lease as an ACC conference member ended in the same uncomfortable territory: double-barrel losses to Clemson (10-2) in the ACC championship game and Alabama (12-0) in the College Football Playoff semifinal.

Target Notre Dame as a big-game fraud if that's your thing. The Crimson Tide beat Notre Dame 42-14 in the 2013 BCS championship game, and the Tigers beat the Irish 30-3 in the Cotton Bowl semifinal in 2018. Those are high-visibility losses on the sport's biggest stage. Notre Dame remains one of the most polarizing brands in the sport, and the easiest one to tag as overrated.

The same tag could apply for any program not named Alabama, Clemson or Ohio State. That's the problem: The Crimson Tide, Tigers and Buckeyes have combined for a 109-8 record since 2018.

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Pat Forde, Sports Illustrated: Notre Dame Comes Up Empty Again, but No One Was Beating Alabama in This Rose Bowl

ARLINGTON, Texas — Yes, Notre Dame took another big-game whipping. But you know what? So would everyone else.

Everyone except maybe Clemson or Ohio State—and whoever wins that College Football Playoff semifinal better strap it up come Jan. 11, or they may be the next Alabama blowout victim. The 2020 Crimson Tide threshing machine could be so powerful that nobody stands a chance against it.

The first three possessions of this transplanted playoff game were a jaw-dropping display by the Alabama offense—this might have been a counterfeit Rose Bowl, but the Tide are for real. They scored 21 points on 18 plays, ripping through the Fighting Irish with lethal speed and precise execution. This was Najee Harris flying, DeVonta Smith sprinting, Mac Jones distributing—and Notre Dame chasing. And never catching.

Final score: Alabama 31, Notre Dame 14. What seemed inevitable before the game became inevitable shortly after kickoff.

Alabama needed seven plays to go 79 yards for its first touchdown, never once facing a third down and only twice having a second down. Its next possession was a 97-yard slash through the Irish in just five plays, highlighted by Harris hurdling Notre Dame cornerback Nick McCloud on a 53-yard run.“That’s what he does on the regular,” Smith said of Harris.


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Mike Goolsby, BlueandGold.com: Breaking Down Notre Dame's Loss Against Alabama

“This game, as a fan watching on the couch, was like watching the worst movie ever. You go into it knowing the outcome, and you know it was going to be terrible because you have seen it before. I don’t think Notre Dame embarrassed themselves today, and it didn’t seem like Bama was that juiced up. It didn’t look like they tried that hard, really. They took a professional approach to the game, but it didn’t look like they were ‘up’ for this game. Notre Dame had its opportunities to capitalize at times and it did not. From Alabama, it could have been a slight lack of motivation with some confidence they were going to win or something like that.

“We did not see Notre Dame match the level of competition or exceed the level of competition this year. We only saw Notre Dame exceed its opponent’s level of competition once and that was in the first go around with Clemson. Yes, there is a talent gap and we all knew that and it became evident today. I’m sure there are some takeaways after you look at the film, and yes, the defense played well in terms of limiting the amount of points Alabama scored, but we still did not do anything outside of ourselves in order to pull off the upset and we did not do that today. Great season, but overall, there is still a lot left to be desired.”

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Dennis Dodd, CBS Sports: Notre Dame retooled to keep up with Alabama while the Tide were modernizing to dominate college football

This is the way Brian Kelly wanted it, remember? Away from the "ashes of tradition" (his words) at a Rose Bowl played indoors and 1,400 miles east of Pasadena, California. Notre Dame's coach lobbied for parents and friends and fans to be able to watch what the No. 4 Fighting Irish had become.

On Friday night, they certainly saw a program that has retooled, remade, reshaped and improved itself. Notre Dame has, in fact, caught up to Alabama.

That would be the Alabama of 2012.

That Alabama team nuked Notre Dame back to the Stone Age in the 2013 BCS Championship Game. That Tide team beat the Irish so bad (42-14), the result sent Kelly back to the film room and recruiting sites to build a northern Indiana version of Nick Saban's bully ball.

It worked to a point. Eight years later, Notre Dame and Kelly emerged from the facility in this troubled season with some certainty amid the chaos. To even the untrained eye, the Irish had become a version of the Tide: beefier, more ground-based and better defensively.

One problem: While Notre Dame was retooling itself, Alabama was revolutionizing the game.

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Dan Wolken, USA Today: Sorry college football but Alabama at its best simply seems untouchable

ARLINGTON, Texas -- There is rarely a single moment in a football game that so perfectly captures the difference between the two teams on the field, a snapshot image that so completely describes what one team is doing to an entire sport.

When Alabama running back Najee Harris ski-ramped off the turf at AT&T Stadium in the first quarter Friday, hurdling clear over the head of a Notre Dame cornerback on his way to another big gain, another quick score, another Alabama performance that made a hard game look laughably easy, there was only one conclusion to draw.

Nobody else in college football can fly this high.

By now, there is nothing unusual or surprising about another Alabama trip to the national championship game on Jan. 11 in South Florida. After the Crimson Tide’s 31-14 win over Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff semifinals, Alabama will be there for the eighth time in 14 years under Nick Saban.

But what this version of Alabama is doing and how they’re doing it? Not normal; not normal at all.

It wasn’t enough for Nick Saban to lord over college football for more than a decade. He’s gone and hacked the sport, broken the matrix and reached nirvana with a team whose best may be the best there has ever been.

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