Perspective Piece: Notre Dame-Georgia Tech

Some football games lend themselves to a grand, sweeping and poetic scene-setter, such as Notre Dame's epic clash with USC last season. How could you not dress that game up in glorified phrasings Grantland Rice could have created?

Other football games lend themselves to a clever bit of packaging and imagery, such as the Cal-Tennessee game on September 2. "The Cruelty Bowl" is a perfect way to sum up the stakes and tensions involved in that duel.

But while sportswriters have words in their arsenals and clever tricks up their sleeves, there are some occasions when you don't need to look very far for a simple concept that immediately and completely captures the essence of the contest that is about to unfold. Indeed, there are some college football games in this world that don't need cleverness or poetry. These kinds of games can be placed in perfect perspective with a focus on a simple yet hugely significant reality that has all the subtlety of a huge smack in the face.

This Notre Dame-Georgia Tech clash in Atlanta is one such game. It doesn't need a lengthy or flowery write-up, or a complex package of metaphors and similes. It just needs the obvious, and nothing more.

Notre Dame Football is hell-bent on having a big season. The energy and expectations in South Bend are through the roof. Brady Quinn, the Heisman contender extraordinaire, is more popular than Bono and Paul McCartney combined... or at least it seems that way. Charlie Weis is worshipped with almost as much fervor as Touchdown Jesus himself. The words "national championship" fill the preseason air in Indiana's Catholic enclave. Needless to say, a win in the heart of the Protestant Southeast is an essential for 2006 to fulfill Notre Dame's expectations.

Georgia Tech's time is now. The Yellow Jackets sulked, pouted and whined their way through the Emerald Bowl in rainy San Francisco last December, showing their disinterest in a postseason game and thereby disgracing themselves. The Jackets obviously felt they deserved a better bowl bid, telegraphing the fact that the Tech program feels it's above certain bowl games. The disinterested performance (if one can even call that loss to Utah a performance) indicated that Georgia Tech thinks it was insulted by the invitation to the City by the Bay. Never mind the fact that Tech failed to win its ACC division, let alone the league, last season: the Jackets acted as though they're part of college football royalty, the upper crust of the sport.

Well, well, Chan Gailey and Company. Now you have a chance to play college football royalty in prime-time with Brent Musburger calling your game. You have a chance to begin what could be a big-time season that will land your team in a big-time bowl. Put up or shut the hell up (and gratefully accept whatever bowl bid you get).

See how simple this game is to frame?

And as for the outcome, it will be decided in a similarly simple fashion.

Plainly put, an old football truism tells you all you need to know about this contest: "It's not about the Xs and Os, but the Jimmies and Joes."

Yes, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that in spotlight games such as this one, Notre Dame usually plays the role of football-pulling Lucy, and Georgia Tech plays the role of the land-on-your-back loser, Charlie Brown.

Expect a solid performance from Quinn and his Notre Dame mates. What you see is pretty much what you're going to get with the Irish, who have established a clear identity under Weis.

It's Georgia Tech--mentally, emotionally, spiritually--that's the wild card in this game. Every Yellow Jacket must sell out and max out. Tech will need good strategy (and on defense, they're likely to get it from stud defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta), but that strategy won't mean anything if the Yellow Jackets can't get maximum effort and concentration up and down their roster. If Tech wants to become the Rambling Wreck once again, creating some serious psychological wreckage for the Golden Domers is a must. And if that's to happen, Tech needs to play like an elite program, especially between the ears.

Georgia Tech usually loses these kinds of games--there's no other way to put it. Chan Gailey's boys don't make that handful of "get over the hump" plays in statement games against the Georgias, Florida States and (furthermore) the NC States of the world. Now, with Notre Dame coming into town to open up the season, the Jackets will have another chance to (finally!) remake and reshape their current reputation, which is that of a decent but hardly spectacular middle-of-the-road program. A win could lift Tech to the proverbial "next level," but another dismal performance in a prime-time spotlight will put Georgia Tech's fans in another emotional strait-Jacket for yet another season.

It's time for Notre Dame to uphold its reputation in a spotlight game such as this one. It's time for Georgia Tech to put up or shut up and win this kind of contest. How the Jackets respond to the moment will determine just how competitive this intriguing matchup will be. The reality of this game is that simple.