Throwback Thursday: Notre Dame football’s most excruciating loss

As Notre Dame football fans, we have become accustomed to excruciating losses that derailed seasons. But for me, one stands out above the rest.

The date was October 15th, 2005 and the 9th-ranked Notre Dame football team was hosting the top-ranked USC Trojans in a game that had National Championship implications.

The atmosphere at Notre Dame was electric: College Gameday was set up on the library quad. The rivalry between Notre Dame and USC was relevant again.

The USC Trojans were at the height of their dynasty and we led by Head Coach Pete Carroll, along with Heisman candidates Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. They would be opposed by Charlie Weiss, Brady Quinn, and Darius Walker, just to name a few.

At the time, I was 14 years old and was at the peak of my Notre Dame fandom. My dad and I descended on to campus for the game.

The Irish came out in their blue jerseys for warmups and retreated to the locker room.

My seat was in the new part of the northeast corner of the stadium, which meant that the sun was in my eyes for the opening part of the game. When the Irish took the field for the game, the glare on the stadium was just so that it was difficult to realize that the Irish were, in fact, donning the famous (infamous?) green jerseys with gold numbers.

After a couple seconds of the initial “something looks different about this,” I squinted and explained, “Dad! They’re wearing GREEN.” My dad, who had eclipsed 50, hadn’t yet noticed.

Regardless, the game started and was an unreal roller coaster of emotions, especially for a 14-year-old who had invested too much of his happiness and well-being into the performance of a football team who hadn’t been very good for most of his lifetime.

I still remember the visual if about 10 major plays in the game: Tom Zbikowski’s 59-yard punt return touchdown before halftime, Reggie Bush’s 45-yard run to tie the game early in the third, and Brady Quinn’s 5-yard touchdown run where he stretched the ball to break the plane of the goal line. That score gave the Irish a 31-28 lead with a little over 2 minutes remaining.

The rest was an unfortunate ending to one of the most entertaining college football games of the 2000’s.

Leinart’s pass on 4th and 9 put the Trojans into scoring range, and then his scramble in the game’s final seconds where he fumbled the ball out of bounds at about the 3, but the refs spotted it at the 1.

And of course, there was the play for which the game was named: The Bush Push.

The Trojans won the game and ran the table for the rest of the regular season, eventually losing to Vince Young and the Texas Longhorns in the National Championship game.

Had Notre Dame won, it’s hard to see how the BCS rankings would have kept the Irish out of the title. That year, the Trojans and Longhorns were the only undefeated teams in the regular season. Penn State finished third in the BCS rankings with one loss, but they didn’t have had a win over a number one team on their resume the way Notre Dame would have had they won on that mid-October afternoon.

Notre Dame finished 6th in the BCS rankings that year, eventually going on to play Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, losing 34-20.