*Note: My knowledge of yin and yang comes almost entirely from
pop culture's appropriation of the taijitu symbol and a cursory reading
of a Wikipedia article on the subject, so nobody take my interpretation
of Taoist philosophy too seriously.
The
relationship between yin and yang is often described in terms of
sunlight playing over a mountain and a valley. Yin (literally the 'shady
place' or 'north slope') is the dark area occluded by the mountain's
bulk, while yang (literally the 'sunny place' or 'south slope') is the
brightly lit portion. As the sun moves across the sky, yin and yang
gradually trade places with each other, revealing what was obscured and
obscuring what was revealed.
In football,
winning and losing are the yin and the yang. There are no victories
without small dark spots of defeat; there are no losses without small
bright spots of victory. The whole of the game is both a win and a loss,
merged together; the outcomes are inseparable, and one without the
other means nothing.
During the course of the game,
the win and the loss are always present. Both forces exist on every
play, big or small; when one team has a succession of small victories,
we call it momentum.
Momentum shifts, ebbing and
flowing, like ripples in a pond. The higher the peak of the ripple, the
lower the trough. But the water moves, and the trough eventually becomes
the peak.
This is why sporting events must be timed;
whoever holds the peak when the clock stops gets the win. Otherwise the
games would never end.
Sometimes one team beats another
so soundly that it is impossible to imagine the losing team ever
capturing a win. But over the last few weeks, Notre Dame's wins have
looked so similar to its losses--and its losses have been so close to
its wins--that the whole season seems to be ebbing and flowing like the
curves of a taijitu--the black-and-white symbol we recognize as
representing the yin and the yang.
The Yin: ND 21 - Oklahoma 35
Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, and passive [...].
Shadows
fell at the very beginning of this game. Two turnovers within the first
two series isn't something you can do and expect to beat a team like
Oklahoma. Even so, there were plenty of spots of daylight moving over
our proverbial mountain. We didn't look defeated, even after going down
14-0 so early in the game. In fact, our offense looked very in control
of itself on its fourth possession, putting together a 10-play, 80-yard
scoring drive that chewed five minutes off the clock. We rushed for 220
yards--our highest number all season. George Atkinson III had a massive
80-yard breakaway TD run (which I personally think serves as its own
advertising campaign for why Notre Dame should try to run more sweeps
instead of running up the middle from the SHOTGUN all the
time--seriously, can we not snap the ball from under center? Have we
seen the O-line open up any holes large enough to justify that much
downhill running?). Tarean Folston's big almost-TD run was ALSO up the
sideline to the left (you see? You SEE?), and Troy Niklas made another
one of his, "Oh hey! A tight end! Where have you been all season?!"
grabs.
Our defense made several huge stops against the
Sooners, the likes of which we haven't seen since last season. Oklahoma
only went 5 of 14 on third-down conversions. They did score on three
out of four trips to the red zone--but two of those were field goals,
and one was the result of a turnover.
Our defense is steadily improving. You can see things beginning to settle in. Flashes of brilliance have started to emerge.
But
three turnovers is too many against a team like Oklahoma, and our
defense is not yet good enough to stop a good offense at will. In the
third quarter, after our offense put together a 75-yard scoring drive to
make the score 28-21, it seemed as though the game was within reach.
But Oklahoma responded immediately, chewing up 75 yards of their own for
a TD and capping off the scoring drive with 2-point conversion.
We were not over-matched--not really--but as in the Michigan game, we fell behind too early and couldn't get out of the shadows.
Interlude: The voices in the box
Listening
to the great sports broadcasters of the past is like listening to a
form of art. Like great jazz musicians, the commentators must improvise
to riff off the action on the field, fusing all the passion of a
die-hard fan with an intricate know-how of the game in order to recreate
for the listener an echo, a mirror, a snapshot of the game; to give
them with a clearer lens through which to view the action on the field.
Such
art does not exist in TV broadcasting. Instead of navigating the game
with the smooth ebb and flow of a jazz artist, today's voices in the
booth function more like hack musicians who were taught how to play a
few bars of ragtime once, and now they sit down every week and play the
same thing in a different key and hope nobody notices.
TV
commentators aren't really paid to be experts, anymore--just to know
more than the casual fan. They're not even paid to care.
And
that's television's big mistake. In pandering to a national audience,
they've eliminated the one element absolutely crucial for success in any
art form: PASSION. The ability to show that you give care.
By
far, the TV commentators I despise the least are the ones who cover the
Olympics--because they're allowed to show bias. The 1980 U.S. Olympic
Hockey team's victory over the Soviet Union would not have been dubbed
the "Miracle On Ice" if it weren't for Al Michaels's ebullient cry of,
"Do you believe in miracles? YES!" as the clock ticked down to zero. He
was allowed to cheer for the team; he was allowed to let his passions
take over. He knew darn well that he was sharing this victory with other
Americans, and that his voice would not, for example, be broadcast in
the Soviet Union, where you can be damn sure no one was standing around
calling that game a "miracle."
But this is not
possible for national football broadcasts. Bias is only allowed for
hometown radio announcers--the last potential wielders of an art form
that has, for the most part, died from the national consciousness. (Or
rather, been brutally stabbed to death by television.)
Here's
an idea that will never happen: instead of having to listen to the
idiotic pandering of the "unbiased" commentators in the booth (who
rarely know more about the teams they're covering than the average
enthusiastic fan), why not stick two hometown announcers in the booth
together and let them duke it out? Hometown announcers don't have
training in national TV broadcasting, of course. But they do follow
their teams week in and week out; they know what they're talking about,
and more importantly, they CARE. Let them get into a knock-down,
drag-out fight over who should be beating who, or which team's getting
it worse from the refs. And here's a radical concept--why not let them
talk about the GAME? The ins and outs of the plays; why they're being
called now and why they are or aren't working and whether they fit with
the play-calling trends the coaches have been employing this year. Talk
about who missed what assignment, and whether it was the quarterback or
the receiver's fault; talk about who opened up the gaps to make a run
play happen; talk about why the hell coaches feel, EVER, that a prevent
defense late in the fourth quarter is a good idea.
It
can't possibly be any worse than the inane pandering we have to put up
with from the booth every week (let's talk about golf! let's talk about
Eminem! let's interview LeBron James! let's talk about the refs! oh
wait, is there a player injured down there? do we know who it is? nope?
okay, let's talk about the refs some more!).
In fact, the casual viewer might actually learn something about the game of football.
But I'm sure that's too much to hope for.
The Yang: ND 17 - MSU 13
Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and aggressive[...].
This
is the way to win--by being solid, focused, aggressive. By not turning
the ball over, capitalizing on your opponent's mistakes, and defending
your turf late in the game.
If you believe the talking
heads in the booth, then Notre Dame won this game because of the
referees. But I wouldn't listen to that claptrap if I were you. MSU was
penalized 10 times for 115 yards; Notre Dame was penalized 8 times for
86. If the refs are throwing flags left and right, there's nothing you
can do about it except adjust your game and stop whining.
Coach
Kelly had no way of knowing what the TV commentators were going on
about in the booth all game--but trust me, it was mostly a prolonged
discussion about how many pass-interference penalties were called
against MSU--but it was nevertheless extremely satisfying after the game
to hear Kelly say something akin to, "MSU's defense was playing man
coverage all game. They were all over us. I thought they should've
gotten more penalties."
As far as
shadows-in-the-midst-of-our-sunshine go, our offensive numbers weren't
pretty in this game. We only averaged 2.8 ypc on the ground against the
nation's top-ranked defense, and Rees completed 40% of his passes for
142 yards (less than half his total from the previous three games) and 1
TD.
On the bright side, MSU's offensive stats weren't
much better (3.2 ypc and a 50% completion rate from their QB)--and if
MSU had the best defense in the country, ours didn't look too shabby in
comparison.
However, there are still bits of the
yang that have not yet been fully realized. Our defense is probably no
slower than they were last season--but they LOOK slower, don't they?
Even when our D-line breaks into the backfield, we don't regularly come
up with a sack. Either the quarterbacks we've faced are too mobile (and
we've forgotten what having a mobile quarterback is like?), or there's
just something missing. We're not flying around the field like we used
to. We're not being aggressive. We're not taking control.
We're not ANGRY enough.
But we should be.
Interlude: Pride
I've
been thinking lately (or...as usual) about why it is we get so crazy
about football. I posited this to a former professor a few weeks ago,
and she said: "Pride."
That's all it is, really, isn't
it? The desire to win. To have bragging rights. To be able to wax
poetic in crazy blog posts about the athletic prowess of people you've
never even met. To say that our team, our school, our football players
have one-up on someone else's. On
everybody else's, if you manage to win the ultimate bragging rights.
But
why does it matter so much? It's just a game. Just a collection of wins
and losses. We've given it such attention, such prestige--such a ticket
price--that it's become a stage on which to win personal, local,
national glory. This is both to its benefit and to its detriment.
For
Notre Dame fans, so much of our pride rests in the past--on the laurels
of previous championships, previous trophies won, previous coaches who
shaped the legends that are long gone. But we insist there's something
else in our pride, too; a notion something must be different about how
we win and how we lose.
There's been some outcry over
the past week over whether the players ought to sing the alma mater
with the students after every game, win or lose. According to
this letter from Jack Swarbrick, he and
Coach Kelly sat down after the 2011 season and determined that the
players would only sing the alma mater with the students after a win.
It's been almost two years since the Irish have lost at home, so there
was confusion after the Oklahoma game; some of the players ran into the
tunnel straightaway, but others, hailed by their fellow students,
remained behind to sing the alma mater.
This is a
tradition that's only really been in place since 2006, but already we've
grown proud of it. It's an impressive sight, watching ~7,000 students
(let's face it, some of them punk out) remain in the stands after a
loss, just to sing the alma mater. Even if it's a big, big, big, big
loss. It impresses the hell out of a lot of people. And that show of
solidarity, for many, has become almost an emblem of what Notre Dame
represents: a family--a community of students and alumni and fans
predicated on something more than just a win/loss column.
Despite
our collective monomania over winning another national championship,
football is not all that Notre Dame stands for. It has never been. The
basilica is the highest point on campus for a reason, followed by the
dome and the library: religion, family, education. In that order. And on
purpose. I feel like I say this at least once per season, but the faith
and the community of Notre Dame are more important than academia.
Football doesn't even make the list.
As imperfect as
Notre Dame's execution of this ideal is, the important thing is that we
are still and always fighting to achieve it. ALL of us are fighting
against our own vices, our own weaknesses, our own setbacks, to try to
be what we want to be. Our ideal selves. And that's the important part,
really: the fight. (What would YOU fight for?)
And
that's why, during the Oklahoma game, I despaired over the last five
minutes. Not because of the points on the board--not because of the
ultimate result of the game--but because of the way we fought. Or
rather...didn't fight.
We're still lacking that
edge--that transcendent quality that makes it possible to come back
against a team when you're two scores down and there are less than five
minutes left. It's not a matter of strength and conditioning; it's all
mental. We lack a rallying point. Someone's got to step in and fire up
the troops. SOMEONE. But who?
Yin and Yang: Arizona State
Yin and yang transform each other: like an undertow in the ocean, every
advance is complemented by a retreat, and every rise transforms into a
fall.
In case you missed it, Arizona State
scored 62 points in victory over USC last weekend, which resulted in
the Trojans firing head coach Lane Kiffin. (Between you and me, though,
Kiffin is such a little piece of sewage that this cannot possibly have
been the only factor leading to his demise.) The 22nd-ranked Sun Devils
are averaging 44 points per game, led by QB Taylor Kelly (1,370 yards,
11 TDs) and coached by Todd Graham (formerly of Tulsa and Pittsburgh).
For a full run-down of ASU's (depressing? terrifying?) offensive
statistics, I recommend
this article.
But before you have a panic attack, let's consider a few things.
1)
Notre Dame has not looked over-matched in any game this season. I don't
care what sort of fancy things Arizona State's been doing with the
football--Notre Dame is not a bad team, not a slow team, not an
under-conditioned team; we're a good team suffering from an identity
crisis. Which means...
2) The breakthrough could
happen at any time. It took until the Michigan game last year for our
defense to start lighting it up. Without a Manti Te'o figure in the
backfield or an anchor like Kapron Lewis-Moore on the D-line, I don't
know who's going to be the catalyst for us. But I'm convinced that if we
get one, it'll flip some sort of switch. Things will click into place
again. A new order, a new identity will be established. And considering
how well Arizona State's been playing,
3) This could be
the game. I know it seems illogical, since this is probably the most
terrifying offense we've seen so far this season--but that's exactly it.
This is the challenge. Think of the yin-yang; the trough becomes the
peak. This is the peak we have to become in order to defeat them.
4)
Arizona State has faced two ranked teams so far this season: Wisconsin,
who they beat by 2 points, and Stanford, who they lost to by 14 points.
Notre Dame isn't as good as Stanford this year, but we're definitely on
par with Wisconsin (even if we did get booted out of the rankings this
week), and there is absolutely no reason this game should be out of
reach.
Just as long as we don't commit any egregious turnovers, we should be fine.
Also,
keep in mind that the "neutral-site" Shamrock Series games have treated
us very well thus far. This alone is no reason to go placing bets, of
course, but do keep in mind that when we played Miami(FL) last year, the
commentators were still insisting that we "lacked the team speed" to
keep up with a much-improved Hurricanes...and then we went to Soldier
Field and kicked their butts 41-3.
So I don't want to
hear it about Arizona State. Doubt the Irish all you like, but I don't
think we've seen the best of them this season, and I don't see any
reason why tomorrow can't be the defense's coming-out party--or Cam
McDaniel's homecoming party--or (however frustrating the play-calling
might be) the Reesus' next chance for ascension.
GO IRISH BEAT SUN DEVILS!
Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and aggressive
