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Notre Dame YouTube: The Eulogy Remembered

By Joshua Vowles

Sep 26, 2015; South Bend, IN, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish players walk through the student section before warming up against the Massachusetts Minutemen at Notre Dame Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 26, 2015; South Bend, IN, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish players walk through the student section before warming up against the Massachusetts Minutemen at Notre Dame Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports /
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This is better for Notre Dame than any hype video ever made.

YouTube is loaded with videos and this post will be the first in an ongoing series this offseason to take a look at some of them, discuss them, and perhaps learn some things from them. We start with an ending. This is the so called, “Notre Dame Football Eulogy” that was written by Wright Thompson and narrated by Roberta Solomon for ESPN.

I remember when this first aired on ESPN. I remember the shock and real anger that I felt. I remember when after the piece aired and it went back to the set to Chris Fowler, Fowler was almost speechless and he looked a little sheepish. After all, this wasn’t some shtick from Mark May or some other known “Notre Dame hater,” or obnoxious talking head. No, this was from a highly respected journalist and college football fan that respects the game, the history, and the past.

In fact, after a little while, I gave what Thompson said some serious thought. Surely from an outsiders point of view, if they were able to lose most of the bias, someone would see that most of what Thompson wrote in that short yet dangerously sharp piece was almost right.

Just as Rick Reilly did in the summer of 2012, Thompson used what was recently known (or in better terms, suggested) and wrote what seemed correct. What Thompson and Wright both failed to think about- or even remember from the most basic history lessons of life, is that as long as the system (in this case college football) continues, any player as powerful as what Notre Dame was and is, should never be discounted and left for dead. Reilly found that out swiftly and very publicly, while Thompson never got nearly as much angst.

What this video, which was made in 2011 after Brian Kelly’s first season, should represent in 2016 is that Notre Dame still has a long road ahead of itself if it wants to get back to being a true national power in football. 2012 showed that this program still has the ability to do so, but it failed to capitalize on that momentum.

This is what we as fans want. We want this program back on top 1988-1993 style when it was feared by almost every other program in the country. It’s working its way back to that, but at a much slower pace than any of would like.

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