Normal doesn't work for Notre Dame football and that's quite OK for the 2024 season

Normal doesn’t work for Notre Dame football and that’s quite OK for the 2024 season

Posted by Admin January 18, 2025 Football

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ATLANTA – Embrace the abnormal.

It’s everywhere in this College Football Playoff and it’s awesome.

Everything abnormal about this Notre Dame football postseason — another playoff game in another city on another non-Saturday — feels so normal.

Normal like when Notre Dame played the first College Football Playoff game on a Friday at home last month against Indiana. Normal like when Notre Dame had to wait an extra day because of terrorism before winning its biggest January game since 1993, earlier this month in New Orleans.

Normal like how Notre Dame erased a season-high 10-point deficit to beat Penn State in South Florida nine days ago. Normal, like Monday, when seemingly unstoppable Ohio State (13-2) and 60 minutes stand between Notre Dame (14-1) and its first national championship since 1988.

Maybe by kickoff, Earth will return to its axis and everything about this one will feel normal. For now, up is down and left is right and in is out and nothing about college football truly makes sense. The Irish are one win from their first national championship in 36 seasons.

This team. This season. Make sense of that one for a program that wasn’t supposed to be this good for this long in this postseason.

Abnormal. All of it.

A postseason like no other has been turned on its head by a team that lost at home this season to Northern Illinois. Because of that, nothing quite makes sense. Not even the day of the week, which brings us to the Saturday shenanigans of media day at the CFP national championship game.

There, on the floor of the Georgia World Congress Center, Irish defensive tackle Gabriel Rubio was asked the easiest question offered. What day of the week is it?

“I have to think about that,” Rubio said. “I think it’s Saturday.”

See, abnormal is normal. Saturday no longer has a college football feel. Not this deep into January. All the games, all the days, all the teams that were here and are gone again all run together for all involved. Another flight, another hotel, another itinerary. Another team. Another town. What time is the bus? Practice? Dinner? Lights out?

It sometimes feels like it might never end. Until it ends. There’s nothing normal about any of it.

“(Shoot), being around something like this, you can’t make anything normal out of it,” Rubio said. “You’ve just got to go inside yourself and remain calm about it. Ease your way through it and take it one step at a time. Let’s get this done so I can focus on the game.

“This is it.”

Wideout Beaux Collins has pondered plenty this postseason. He caught a key touchdown from Riley Leonard against Georgia. He tweaked his calf the following week against Penn State. On Monday, he’ll run out on the field as a college player for the last time. That right there is enough to fog his head for days.

“It’s one of a kind, for sure,” Collins said. “Just keep the main thing, the main thing, man. We’re here to play a game at the end of the day. Keep it for what it is, have our mind on the main issue.”

The rest gets too heavy to think about, so Collins has shelved all of that “last’ stuff. Doesn’t want to dwell on it. Insists that he won’t think about it, but he knows in the back of his mind that he will. Late at night before Monday, his thoughts will drift. He’ll think of all the hours that he’s put it in on the football field, all that time and effort and energy and realize that 60 minutes are all he has left.

He’ll climb the steps to one of the team buses Monday afternoon bound for Mercedes-Benz Stadium knowing that the next time he does it — postgame — his college career will be over. He can’t possibly make that seem normal, so he’ll trick himself into thinking that it’s normal. Everything about Monday, the scope of the game, the opponent, the stakes, all will fit into another game box.

“It’s crazy,” Collins said. “You have to kind of have to put that aside and have fun. I can’t think about it too much, because then I’ll be all over the place.”

Collins could take a page from fellow wideout Jayden Harrison, who also will play his last game Monday. To Harrison, the Marshall transfer, that Monday is a big one matters little. He put no added stock in a game against Ohio State. To him it may as well be against Miami (Ohio) or Stanford.

This one’s a big one because it’s the next one. That’s it.

“It just feels like we’re going into another game,” Harrison said. “We’ve played every game like a playoff game since NIU. We still have a job to do. We’re still in the moment.”

Monday is moment No. 14 for Notre Dame. Thirteen have come and 13 have gone with Irish wins. One more moment remains. The biggest one. The toughest one.

The most abnormal one.

Notre Dame plays Monday for a national championship. The more you write it, the more you read it, the more real it is. Rubio may have set it best as to how these Irish will approach opportunity.

They’re at the table. It’s time to bet. Time to go all in. One. More. Time.

“It’s all,” Rubio said, “got to ride on this hand.”

Monday means the end of a road that for Notre Dame started in January 2024 with winter conditioning. This has been the path for one full calendar year. There is no practice next week. No weight session or film or meetings. Nothing. When this one’s done, it’s done.

“There’s no next,” middle linebacker Drayk Bowen said. “Make sure there are no regrets. Leave it all out on the field.”

That Monday is the biggest game that Notre Dame has played since 2012, that Monday might be the biggest win for Notre Dame since 1988 factors little into the pre-game plan of safety Adon Suhler. Only after Monday is done will Shuler pause and reflect. Only then may it hit him.

Until then, it might be a game that matters to a whole lot of people for many reasons, but until it’s played, it’s just another game.

“I’ll realize afterward, ‘Wow, I just played in a national championship,’” Shuler said. “Right now, it’s a regular game.”

Not a normal one. Not this one.

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com