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Notre Dame didn’t just lose to Florida State that day, it got humiliated.
The Seminoles scored early, they scored late and they scored a bunch in
the middle. Notre Dame on the other hand, didn’t score at all. The final
score was 37-0 and now the Fighting Irish would have to win their last
four games just to be bowl eligible.
The loss was humiliating. Notre Dame hadn’t been shut out at home in
25 years. One hundred and fifty games. The Irish had suffered only one
worse defeat in the history of the school.
Yet as the final seconds ticked away and the Notre Dame players began
to trudge off the field, Darius and his parents saw something that moved
them deeply. The entire Notre Dame team walked in front of the student
section, which was still completely full, and received a standing ovation.
After losing by 37 points.
The players saluted the student body by holding their helmets high in
the air. And all together – students, fans and players – began chanting, “We
are ND!”
“You would’ve thought they had just won,” LaVerne said. “It was just
amazing.”
“It was impressive,” Jimmy added. “I mean most fans across the country,
if a school gets beat on a regular basis or gets beat like that, they’re
booing and everything. And at Notre Dame, they were doing just the opposite.”
Jimmy immediately reflected on the family’s first trip of the season.
“We went to Auburn and saw USC hammer Auburn, and fans were booing
and throwing stuff,” he said. “Oh man, I thought their guys were going
to be in danger coming off the field.”
At Notre Dame, he half expected to see bouquets of roses thrown to the
players after the game.
When Willingham finished explaining the loss to the media and answering
questions about why his team had been blown out yet again, he went
back to his office to greet his top running back recruit.
“I didn’t know what he would be like,” Darius said. “I didn’t know what
kind of mood he would be in and what he would say – I mean, what do
you say to a recruit after a loss like that?”
Willingham was matter-of-fact in the meeting. He told Darius how much he was wanted in South Bend, how much he was needed.
“It would change the game around if we got a player like you,”
Willingham told the 18-year-old.
The Walkers stayed the night in South Bend and then drove back to
Lawrenceville the next day. The hours and hours on the road gave them
plenty of time to reflect on what they had just seen.
“We all kind of expressed our views,” Darius said. “What we liked,
what we didn’t like, how the team looked. And you know, my dad is talking
about the offensive line and defensive line, he’s talking football. And
my mom is talking about how she loved the classrooms and stuff like that,
so I was just getting it from all sides.”
It was pretty clear how much Darius and his parents had enjoyed the
trip. From the tradition to the campus to the No. 7 jersey to the standing
ovation, Darius had been “blown away.”
Even the 37-0 pounding the Fighting Irish received didn’t seem to affect
him.
“Yeah, I guess you could say I was disappointed in the way the game
turned out,” he said. “But we were just so excited about everything else. It
was kind of null and void with the game, you know what I mean? You
can’t be happy with the loss, but the campus really tripped me out. It’s just
like a museum, you’re just looking around with your mouth open the
whole time saying, ‘Wow.’”
Despite the loss, Darius saw bright things in the future for Notre Dame’s
football program.
“They’ve got a lot of freshmen playing right now,” he said. “In a few
years those freshmen will have all that experience and they’ll be back on
the rise gain. Then they have a great coach, and it doesn’t hurt to have a
spectacular coach.”
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