Well, we managed to go out on a "positive" note, winning our last two games for the first time since 1992.  Being a glass-half-empty kind of a guy, though, I'm not as enthused about the finish as some might be (bearing in mind that it doesn't seem that anyone is exactly doing cartwheels over the finish).

As I've said before, strong finishes have not been our long suit over the last several years - the Davie, Willingham, and Weis teams seemed to just run out of gas near season's end.  This year's schedule (for which we were roundly derided pre-season) should have been an antidote to that, closing with relatively weak teams calculated to let us ride four easy victories into whatever bowl we thought we'd get into.

Instead, we only went .500 over that four-game stretch (after going .143 for the eight-game stretch that preceded it).  I'm not sure that counts as a "strong finish" in anyone's book, hence the scare quotes around "positive" in that first graf.

Once it became obvious that this season was headed toward an Amtrak-level derailment, my only hope was that we would at least show some improvement as the season progressed.  Recall that one of the reasons Kevin White gave for ashcanning Willingham was that the program did not "create the positive momentum necessary in our efforts to return the Notre Dame program to the elite level of the college football world."  Mind you, he was talking about season-to-season momentum, and the two blah seasons following Willingham's honeymoon campaign certainly bore out that assessment.

(Incidentally, as I write this it doesn't look like Charlie Weis is going anywhere, but I have yet to see the outcry of "racism" that I feared and predicted in an earlier diary.  It may be too soon to tell, but I think Willingham's record at Washington has probably dampened any such accusations.  If Willingham had been fired by ND and then proceeded to tear up the Pac-10, the racism allegation might have had legs.  As it is, Willingham has done his level best to prove that his firing was likely less about the color of his skin and more about the fact that he's just not a very good coach.  I mean, two 21-point leads blown?  He's in the basement of the Pac 10.  I think Jenkins and McCartan ought to send the guy a nice fruit basket - okay, maybe a fruitcake - at the very least, for making them look a tad bit smarter than they actually are.)

But momentum isn't limited to a trajectory over the course of several seasons.  You want to see it during a season too, by which I mean, you expect the team to be playing better at season's end than they were at the beginning.  And I have to say, I just haven't seen it this year.  True, we scored three (really four) offensive touchdowns at Stanford, which it took us what, four or five games to score at the beginning of the year?  But that was against a 3-7 team.  In fact, our final three opponents clocked in at a combined 14-22 for the year, compared to 23-13 for our first three opponents.  It's hardly a comparison, really.  And the dumb penalties and turnovers were still as prevalent as ever during the Stanford game.  Those things you expect from a young team at the beginning of a season, but they're exactly the kind of things you also expect to diminish as the players gain experience over the course of the year.  Didn't happen to any appreciable degree that I can see.

Frankly, I had great hopes for the USC game.  Really, I did.  We'd only won the one game at that point, and we weren't looking great, but there had been momentary flashes of, if not greatness, at least competence.  Plus, SC was looking vulnerable, with their near-loss at Washington and actual loss - at home no less - to Stanford.  If, I reasoned, the Irish team that played the second half at Purdue showed up for four quarters, and the SC team that lost to Stanford showed up, we might have us a ball game, if not a potential upset.  Even a close loss like the 2005 game would have been a turning point for our program, I think.

Instead, we let SC drop the worst loss on us in the history of the series, didn't put Point One on the board, and the season just went more to hell until we got to the two weakest teams on the schedule.  I don't hear a lot of people calling that positive momentum, and neither do I.

This isn't to say there weren't some bright spots to the season.  The defense generally looked good, when they weren't dog-tired from being on the field too long, and as MSNBC's Eric Hansen noted, our pass-efficiency defense scored major improvements.  Pass defense has been our Achilles heel for a long time, so that's an accomplishment.  Clausen showed he can take a hit - nay, several hits -  and with some maturity and an O-line that gives him some protection, he might develop into a good QB.

Overall, though, I'd have to say that the 2007 season disappointed in almost every conceivable fashion.  Weis has already mea-ed his culpas, although I'm interested to see whether, and how, Jenkins tries to apply lipstick to this particular pig, especially now that his "pay double to get a ticket application" policy is going into effect.  But, again, my breath I'm not holding.

I dunno.  It's been such a screwy season overall, maybe we can get everybody to agree to pull a Bobby Ewing this year - just pretend this season was all a bad dream, and get on with the college football world the way it's supposed to be, with no team in the championship game with more than one loss, and Notre Dame winning more than three.  It could work.  Although I don't volunteer to be the one who finds Charlie Weis in the shower (shudder).