BOL Round Table

Considering the magnitude of the matchup, and how Notre Dame really hasn't been in the spotlight for quite some time, we're going to try something a little different.

In the 24 days leading up to the game (yes, it's only 25 days away now), we're going to give you a chance to learn some of Notre Dame's history and traditions. Some days the Daily Dose of Notre Dame will be pretty short, other days it will be pretty long. But if you read it each day you won't be sitting there during the game broadcast wondering what the announcers are talking about.

It'll also give you plenty of ammunition, if you know what I mean.

So here's Day 1, Notre Dame's version of Joe Namath:

1. Joe Cool

“Joe was born to be a quarterback,” Joe Montana’s high school coach Jeff Petrucci said. He wasn’t particularly tall, certainly wasn’t fast and didn’t have a particularly strong arm. Yet when you factor in his pro career with the San Francisco 49ers, winning four Super Bowls and becoming the only player in NFL history to win three Super Bowl MVP awards, some believe he’s the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.

Actually, Frank Carideo (1928–1930) and Johnny Lujack (1943, 1946–1947), who played for Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy, respectively, are known to Notre Dame historians as the best quarterbacks who ever took the field for the Fighting Irish as both were two-year unanimous All-Americans. Lujack won a Heisman (Carideo don’t have an opportunity, the award didn’t exist yet), and both led the Irish to back-to-back national titles.

Montana didn’t win a Heisman and he didn’t make All-American, though he did win a national title as a junior in 1977.

At Notre Dame, Montana was known as the Comeback Kid. He started three games as a sophomore in 1975 for first-year Irish coach Dan Devine, then missed the 1976 season with an injury. When the 1977 season opened, he was No. 3 on the depth chart, and the Irish was already 1–1 before Devine inserted him into a game. Notre Dame was trailing Purdue 24–14 when Montana came off the bench with 11 minutes remaining and led the Irish to 17 points, throwing for 154 yards in the 31–24 win.

Montana pulled off the greatest comeback win in Notre Dame history in the 1979 Cotton Bowl, a.k.a. the Chicken Soup Game. Played in an ice storm, Montana missed most of the third quarter with hypothermia when he was administered a dose of chicken soup to bring his body temperature up to normal. The Irish trailed the Cougars 34–12 midway through the fourth quarter when the Irish rallied for 23 unanswered points. Montana ran for a touchdown, threw for another and also connected on a pair of two-point conversion passes, including one with no time left on the clock, for the 35–34 victory in the last game of his college career.