The view from South Bend was at least as ugly as it must have looked on TV

That was certainly worth driving 220 miles each way, paying 60 bucks for a ticket, another hundred for a hotel, 10 bucks to park in some guy's yard a mile off campus, and getting a blister on my foot from walking probably 7 or 8 miles yesterday.

On second thought... no, it didn't. And what I saw of Sparty's game on TV in the JACC lot (some guy had his Directv setup hooked up to a small generator with a ~27" high def flat screen in the back of the truck, much better than having an aggee sturgeon re-wire the TV and using an old power cord (with one end stuck in someone's pocket) for an antenna) wasn't encouraging for next week. A couple of observations from the stands:

1: The OL can't block. Maybe UM has some great DL (and they probably do), but this has been a recurring theme for about 8 years, with a slight reprieve last year. Even then, much of the success had to do with Quinn finding a little bit of space in which to move about 1-2 steps to make a guy miss, re-set his feet and hit someone with a pass.

2: Quinn isn't sharp. Hasn't been all year so far, other than a couple really nice throws to the TE against PSU last week and the closing drive of the first half the last two weeks. Maybe now that he's considered to be an overrated flop instead of a surefire Heisman winner, he'll loosen up a little, relax, and make the throws he made all last year.

3: The receivers are still dropping passes when they actually get there. This seemed to start in the Fiesta bowl last year, and is starting to become a really annoying pattern.

As an aside, I know what the ESPN angle is going to be all week: "This is just like Ty Willingham's second year..."

Which, if ND happens to lose 5-6 more games, it will be. I don't see that happening. Maybe 2-3. Besides which, unlike Ty's second year, we actually have a halfway decent recruiting class forming (including future 32-time heisman winner "Jivetime" Jimmy Clausen). And, unlike that team, despite getting blown out, it still appeared that there was some small chance of winning even into the late 3rd quarter (if we'd just stop screwing up, which didn't happen).

This year, I'm still pretty optimistic for a nice season, I can actually picture this team winning out, which would be nice. Next year... well, we're going to field a team with I believe 9 seniors, about 15-16 juniors, and 53 underclassmen. (see the above note about poor recruiting after Ty's first year- next year's junior class had about 6 members when Ty was put out to pasture, and Charlie was hamstrung to an extent in recruiting by having other responsibilities right up until signing day).