The view from Section 11

I am an expert on bad football.

Notre Dame is bad.

Even from section 11 in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday night, about 60 rows up there in the southwest corner of the old stadium, that much was all too plain: Notre Dame is really bad.

It's not just that USC is really good, with far too many athletes and way too much speed. The outcome of the game -- which I went to for fun, with a 16-year-old junior in high school who's looking at colleges, the two of us guests at a first-rate USC tailgate and the game -- was never in doubt. The only issue, as the game went along, was whether Notre Dame was ever going to get a first down.

That's bad.

And for Notre Dame, that's completely preposterous and wholly unacceptable.

For college football, that's completely unacceptable, too. The college football landscape is better when Notre Dame is better. Like it or not, that's fact.  

We can all like it or not. But it's fact. And that's why anyone who cares about college football should want Notre Dame to excel each and every year.

I'm not saying Notre Dame ought to go 12-0 every year. That would be insufferable. But Notre Dame ought to be a legitimate contender each and every season. There's no excuse.

Disclaimer: No one at NBC, the television network that carries Notre Dame games, is making me write this.

Disclaimer No. 2: I went to Northwestern. As a fan, I have less than zero affection for Notre Dame football. 

My freshman year in Evanston, the very first football game I ever went to at Dyche Stadium, as it was then called, Notre Dame drilled the Wildcats, 48-0. (1992: ND, 42-7. 1994: ND, 42-15. Etc., until 1995, when Northwestern beat Notre Dame en route to the Rose Bowl, the last time the two schools played -- take that, Irish).

During my four years at Northwestern, the Wildcats won three games. Not three wins per year. Three wins overall. Thus my college years served me well in understanding, truly understanding, a lack of physical talent combined with bad schemes plus unimaginative coaching -- all the ingredients on display when watching a bad football team.

All of that was there to be seen Saturday night in the Coliseum. USC won, 38-3. Brutal.

Frankly, I expected better. Last year, I covered the Notre Dame-UCLA game, a 20-6 Irish win, Notre Dame's first victory after an 0-5 start. Notre Dame was bad, UCLA was worse (topic for another day: how is it that UCLA can't recruit a quarterback? I mean, how is that possible?). Obviously, Notre Dame has more wins this season than last. Doesn't matter. Sitting there in the stands Saturday night, I didn't see any significant improvement in this year's Notre Dame team over the squad I saw last year.

Indeed, I saw decline, and that decline can be measured in two particular Saturday night stats:

One is Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen's line: 11 of 22 for 41 yards and two interceptions.

That's bad, especially for a young man who has considerable talent.

The other is the plain fact that Notre Dame couldn't even get a first down until the last play of the third quarter.

That's not just bad, that's awful, and that's inexcusable.

Something's got to change. I think we all know what it is.

The Northwestern fan in me would love to see Charlie Weis stay on.

The college football fan in me says Notre Dame must be better. Like, as soon as possible.