Two particular Charlie Weis calls are worth mentioning from Saturday night's game, if only because they show that Coach Weis isn't some little wuss who happened to inherit a football team (See: Gainley, Chan; Coker, Larry and whoever the hell coached Nevada Friday night).  The first was Brady Quinn's quarterback draw for the half-closing score.  Had Brady been stopped short, no points for the Irish, as we were out of timeouts and the clock was quickly winding down.  Still, nobody on Tech was expecting it - it worked! - and Brady probably had an option with KaMichael Hall or Phillip Wheeler were chilling between him and the promised land.  I know it confused/impressed Bob Davie, so I'm taking that as a good thing.

The other call that I one hundred percent agree with was going for it on fourth and short right around midfield.  The one pigskin mantra my father always taught me was that "if you can't get a yard, you don't deserve to win the game."  Well, this was half a yard to escape Bobby Dodd Stadium intact when our offensive line had found their groove against the Jackets front seven.  Maybe Brady gets stopped on his sneak and the next play is a bomb to Calvin, but maybe we punt it and the next play is a bomb to Calvin.  I'd rather push on 4th down more often than not, especially considering A) We've got a pretty good offensive line, B) A great playcaller and C) Our field-goal kicking appears to leave much to be desired.  After a slow start, I think the coaching and playcalling got significantly better as the night went on.

  On my old site, I did a little preseason rundown on why Penn State fans are absolutely insane.  One Ohio State fan on NDNation compared them to a grandmother talking about her only grandchild, which seems rather accurate.  After some rough times with BlackShoeDiaries' Mike, we've realized that it's just a fervent love of our teams that drove us to harsh words.  We've reconciled, and Mike was kind enough to answer some questions for us about Saturday's game which will be posted sometime tomorrow, most likely.  

Still, the crazed Penn State fans can still he found all across the web.  It's hard to take a website seriously whose grammar, punctuation and general format looks as bad as this, but I find it silly to compare the relative merits of South Bend and State College.  State College is much more of a college town, to be sure, but it's not like you're in Miami or Austin: you're still in central Pennsylvania, which is fine if you want to shoot an episode of The Office, but not so hot for anything else save eight home games a year.  I also want to direct you all to this site, whose permalinks don't really work, but just spend some time perusing and your ire will surely be raised.

Obviously, there are crazed, uninformed ND fans across cyberspace as well, but there just seem to be less-informed, more crazed Nittany fans there as well.

I was getting kind of scared of this year's Trojan team - the additions of Patrick Turner and a maturing defense, as described by Pat Forde here - but I'll be interested to see how they respond to Zac Taylor and Nebraska without their most experienced defensive back.  Josh Pinkard tore his ACL Saturday evening against Arkansas, although how much of an effect this will have I'm unsure, since there are probably a stable of high school All-Americans ready to step in and replaced him.

In another USC/ND-related note, the Irish women's soccer team defeated the Trojans Friday night in the two teams first ever meeting 2-0.  They then went on and defeated fellow number-one (there are a lot of soccer polls, I guess) Santa Clara, outscoring the Broncos 3-0 in the second half for a 3-1 victory.  Here's hoping we need to put a couple of number ones on top of Grace by the time autumn ends.

I'll be stepping out of the office on Thursday in order to drive home and attend the NFL season opener between the Dolphins and Steelers.  Despite my Western PA upbringing, I bleed orange and teal, so I'll be sitting in section 111 rocking out my orange Daunte Culpepper jersey.  Things maybe a little slow around here Thursday, as Rob makes final adjustments to the Dillon Hall Pep Rally and I get beer spilt on me my angry Steeler fans, but fear not, as we'll have the first weekend of home Notre Dame football action completely covered for you over the weekend.

Due to the late nature of the games Monday, your final MaxwellPundit results will be released this afternoon.  Normally, expect them by lunch, but blame the treatise on terrible offense read by Miami and Florida State on delaying things today.