Taylor's Tidbits

Let Us Give Thanks…

Fri, 11/23/07

… that this year is almost over. And believe it or not, as bad as this year’s been, it could actually get worse. A loss to Stanford would be the sugarless frosting on the vegan, flourless cake that has miserably tried to substitute itself this year as Irish football. But as bad as its been, there have been a few bright spots along the way that have given me just enough hope to actually allow myself to be somewhat optimistic about next year. Somewhat. And as its 10:16pm on Thanksgiving night, I’ll briefly cover just a few of these and follow up with a season recap next week.

CURE FOR YOUTH:

This team was young, no doubt about it. I say “was” because with the amount of adversity that this raw and talented group experienced this year, I expect that they grew up in a hurry, or at least had the opportunity to. The beauty of football is that it’s so analogous to life, especially when it comes to misfortune. Never has the saying “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” been more true than when said on the football field, so let’s only hope that this trying season bears fruit in the years to come by providing these young players a point of reference from which never to return. If taken advantage of, this experience could eventually be the very thing that this 2007 Irish team so desperately needed.

TRIAL BY FIRE:

One of the knocks against Coach Weis was his inability to plan for the future by not allowing the backups to play and or practice in 2006, something very typical in professional football, but deadly on the collegiate level. Well, its safe to say that with as much turnover and flip flopping that’s gone on this year, Notre Dame will have a smattering of young players in ‘08` that will have either started or experienced significant playing time. In fact, this trend of playing young guys started early (nine freshmen played in the season opener vs. Georgia Teach), and has continued throughout the season. All in all, the Irish have started seven freshman in 2007, and even started six in the same game last week versus Duke: QB Jimmy Clausen, WR Duval Kamara, WR Golden Tate, RB Armando Allen, NT Ian Williams, OLB Kerry Neal, and OLB Brian Smith. That is unprecedented and extremely valuable experience for a group that has the potential to return Notre Dame to its rightful place as being the biggest program on the national block. That, my friends, has me somewhat excited, although Coach Weis’ ability to develop untapped potential into on-field talent has yet to be proven. He’ll have all the chance he could ever hope for next year, however.