Animal's Blog

Game of the Century and Good Night, and Good Luck

Saturday's matchup between Notre Dame and USC was billed as the game of century. USC was #1 and brought a 27 game winning streak into Notre Dame stadium. Notre Dame was #9 and resurgent under Charlie Weis. Rarely has a game ever lived up to the hype, but this game not only lived up to the hype, it exceeded it. The game went back and forth and Brady Quinn certainly made a pitch for the Heisman trophy. The game showed showed just how good Reggie Bush is. You could literally hear the 80,000 people that packed in Notre Dame stadium gasp every time he touched the ball and with good reason. He scored three touchdowns and was just electric with the football. When Brady Quinn ran the ball in from 5 yards out with 1:58 left, the Notre Dame faithful exploded and victory seemed within reach. But on a fourth down play with 1:34 left, Matt Leinart audibled at the line of scrimmage (no small feat considering the volume of the fans) and connected on a huge pass for 30+ yards, bringing USC within the 10 yard line. On a subsequent play Leinart ran left and went into the air to try and score, but was met short of the goal line by Notre Dame defenders. As he was on the ground the clock ran out and Notre Dame stadium erupted as fans and players rushed the field. But then all hell broke loose as the officials met and determined that while Leinart had been tackled short of the goal line, the ball had been knocked loose by a Notre Dame tackler and knocked out of bounds. The clock should have stopped when the ball was out of bounds. The officials rightly put 0:07 back on the clock and Leinart ran the ball in on the next play thus giving USC a victory in what could go down as one of the greatest college football games ever played. The game was so hard fought and so close that Notre Dame stayed at #9 in the rankings this week. The past three years USC has blown Notre Dame out, but this year Notre Dame had the game won within the last two minutes. Notre Dame football is back.

On another note, everyone should see the new George Clooney movie Good Night, and Good Luck. The movie stars David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow and is the story of Murrow challenging Joe McCarthy at the peak of of McCarthy's power. While the movie and the actors are wonderful, it is most poignant because of how much the message translates today. What a difference 50 years doesn't make. McCarthy would charge people that questioned his authority as being communist. Unfortunately, not much has changed today, except if you question President Bush and his underlings you aren't called communist, you are called unpatriotic. We live in a country that reelected a president because he scared us into believing that we were going to be attacked and that only he could protect us. We now live in a culture of fear, something that Joe McCarthy exploited and now President Bush has exploited. Who will be this generation's Edward Murrow? Who will challenge President Bush to instead of exploiting our fear, exploit our will to sacrifice and our will to help?

posted by JR @ 8:12 PM