Amid All the Mistakes, Notre Dame's Mystique Lingers

Notre Dame sits on a chilly gray plain of a landscape, so glum it invites a suicide watch. Somehow, though, the gilt dome gleams under a weak sun, and the candlelit intercessions for football can seem as warm as they do absurd. Visitors on a big-game weekend find themselves succumbing to two emotions at once: awe for all that atmosphere and derision for its vainglorious idolatry.

Which is why it's so tempting to rejoice in the humbling of the proud institution. You would need a seance to wake up the echoes on that campus right now. The Fighting Irish are 0-5 and giving up 30 points or more every week, and neither the living nor the dead seem to be much help to the Irish. Prayerful requests for help from beyond aren't doing the job, and neither is Coach Charlie Weis. What do they have to do to get a win? Maybe servings of oxygen at training table would help.

It's the worst start to a season in school history, and it's like watching the toppling of a giant statue, the collapse of the Soviet empire or the plunging of a blue-chip company into sudden bankruptcy. Go on and enjoy their misery for a moment; all of America is loving it.

To the many dedicated Notre Dame disparagers, this merely is what the school deserves, a Newtonian backlash for years of exaggerated tradition and holier-than-thou hypocrisy. There are plenty of reasons past and present to resent the Irish, starting with the pretense that their academic and moral standards are superior. The lie was put to that three years ago, when the board of trustees fired the classy Tyrone Willingham after just three years despite a winning record. He was Notre Dame's first non-interim coach since Joe Kuharich (1959-62) not to get five years on the job, a courtesy even the hapless Gerry Faust received. Willingham, as it happens, is black. Weis, on the other hand, was awarded a 10-year contract worth $30 million to $40 million only seven games into his first season in 2005. You can draw your own conclusions about that.

Plus, you can throw in the treacle perpetuated by the cinema, from Ronald Reagan to "Rudy," and the preferential placements Notre Dame always gets in postseason bowls because of its fan base, no matter how mediocre the team.

"Notre Dame has just impressed a whole lot of people with its arrogance over the years and bringing them down is an enormously satisfying, gleeful experience for a lot of folks, and very painful for others," says Mike Oriard, an alum who played on the decorated 1968-69 teams. "A really key factor is all of those bowl games that a whole lot of football fans believed they didn't belong in."

Why is Notre Dame's folklore so irritating? A historian named Rudy Leverett once wrote this about legends: "To say that historical uncertainty is characteristic of legends is not to say that legends are merely bad history; they are not history at all, but a form of literature that usually has some, perhaps indeterminate, relationship to historical events and people. It makes no sense, therefore, to speak disproving, refuting, or debunking a legend. Since the truth of a legend is not to be found in the empirical facts of history, there is no record to set straight."

All of that said, there is something legitimately admirable going on at Notre Dame at the moment. Oddly, the Fighting Irish mystique has never been more real than it is right now. If anyone is looking for evidence of the existence of "the Notre Dame man," that somber pillar of education, strength and faith, just check the current roster. The same team that is 0-5 has, for the last four straight semesters, maintained a cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 That's the best academic performance in program history.

Winless, derided and facing upcoming games against UCLA, Boston College and Southern California, the Irish have managed to maintain their fight, and their dignity. On Saturday, despite trailing Purdue badly, they came out in the second half and put 19 points on the board, their best offensive effort of the season.

Players who might be excused for sullen avoidance instead answer questions forthrightly.

"None of us wanted to be 0-5, and none of us planned to be 0-5, but that's where we're at," senior tight end John Carlson said. "It's pretty simple. We have to continue to work."

The current Irish are not having a typical Notre Dame experience, but for once it's one that all can relate to, and sympathize with. One reason you may find the Irish losing streak enjoyable is that it helps heal the losses of your own team. Losing, as it happens, is a far more common experience than winning.

"Most athletes have memories of losing the key game rather than winning it," Oriard points out. In Oriard's case, what he remembers from his career aren't all the victories, but the wrenching 1970 Cotton Bowl against Texas. The game marked Notre Dame's return to postseason play after a 45-year, self-imposed absence. The Irish, coached by Ara Parseghian and quarterbacked by Joe Theismann, led 17-14 late in the fourth quarter. And lost. Afterward, Oriard sat in the locker room, dropped his head down and sobbed.

These days, Oriard is as close to dispassionate as an Irish football alum can be; he's the associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State and the author of several penetrating books about football, including his latest, "Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport." But even Oriard winced when he returned to South Bend, Ind., two weeks ago for the dedication of a monument to Parseghian. The ceremony was deflated by a crushing 31-14 loss to Michigan State.

While losing can be a common experience, losing regularly, every single game, is another matter. When the game was over, the current team had to face a defeat-frozen stadium. Somehow, they found a way to hold their heads up and sing the school song, in front of a host of illustrious former players.

"The experience of sports is really more about losing than winning," Oriard says. "How they deal with it, of course, is really crucial. It's what we academics like to call a 'teaching moment.' "

This weekend, the Irish can be pardoned if they take solace in their myths and past. While others joke at their expense, who could blame them if they think, "Sometime, when the team is up against it, and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one . . ."