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College Football

Notre Dame Derangement Syndrome Is Real

MIAMI GARDENS, FL - JANUARY 09: Notre Dame Fighting Irish players celebrate following the Penn State Nittany Lions versus Notre Dame Fighting Irish College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Capital One Orange Bowl on January 9, 2025, at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

We are now assured of 10 more days of Notre Dame in our faces, and ridiculously, that means another 10 days of hearing how the Irish not being tied to a conference like all the poor schools is an unfair advantage. I mean, what other program has a kicker with a chiropractor on call to come in every week and keep his bones aligned?

The kicker in question, Mitch Jeter, hit a 41-yard field goal with 12 seconds left to give the Irish a 27-24 victory in a highly disjointed game that for three quarters looked like it should have been played in a rainstorm. The chiropractor in question, Andrew Jeter, is his dad, who flew in each week to work on his son's directionally challenged leg after a hip injury. The conferences that Notre Dame are not in, the story goes, mean they don't have to share their playoff payoff with anyone else, giving them a leg up to keep Jeter's leg up.

Of course, this is moronic tribalist nonsense. Not the part about Jeter's leg, but the rest of it. Notre Dame won Thursday night not because its schedule is so much easier, or because they get to play middling schools (excepting, of course, Northern Illinois, whom nobody is talking about now), or because their kicker has a medical entourage that helps kick in with tuition, but because they made three plays that Penn State didn't, three plays you would not know about if you'd taken your eyelids at face value after three quarters and decided to go to bed instead. That's how forgettable the game was and for how long, which is why the fourth quarter and the four touchdowns it emitted in 10 minutes were the true saviors of a weeks-long format that has been largely dull blowouts.

Had this game remained one, Penn State's student body would be drunk and disorderlies this morning. Their defense had carried the day for much of the night, to the point where ESPN magpies-in-residence Sean McDonough and Greg McElroy sounded almost apologetic for what they were being asked to orate. But a 54-yard throw-and-go touchdown pass from Riley Leonard to Jaden Greathouse, highlighted by Penn State cornerback Cam Miller's smoking empty shoes, a diving interception by Christian Gray on a pass PSU quarterback Drew Allar said he was trying to throw into the ground, and Jeter's organically bionicized leg all combined to propel the Irish to their first national championship game in more than a decade, and all the grousing about them being Notre Dame ensued.

Therein lies what we are about to enjoy for the next week and change. The credit the Irish earn for saving the first of the two semifinals with an electric fourth quarter shall surely be turned into whining about their independent status by either Texas or Ohio State, both of whom pour every bit as much money into their operations as Notre Dame or Penn State do. It will end up seeming like 10 days of a Zuckerberg-Musk debate in hell—which, if we're honest, is the only place such a thing could be held.

College football is celebrating its year of untrammeled greed by making sure that it leads to even less trammeled greed next year and the year after. Eventually, there will only be one conference, with 20 teams, 16 of which will make the playoffs, and Notre Dame will be one of them. They may still have their separate deal with NBC, or whatever comes after NBC collapses under the weight of its annual payments to Dick Wolf, but it won't make any difference, no more than it does now. All teams left standing operate as divisions of the Russian army, and the blessed relief from traditionalist nincompoops arguing about Arizona State or Boise State being unfit for purpose let alone a first-round bye is being replaced by football empires whining about a different football empire. The simple solution—to just talk about the football game—is not permitted, because college football is actually about shit-talking both the previous and next opponent. It's politics, only with slightly better beer in the back of the Lexus.

But there will always be Mitch Jeter and his dad with the magic hands, a perfectly reasonable advantage that actually applies only to Jeter, and an advantage that belonged last year to South Carolina. So if you can mute everything else until the final’s Jan. 20 kickoff, you have a fighting chance to have a good time. Especially if you remember the other thing that's supposed to happen that day.

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