Having had the opportunity to attend every Notre Dame home game over the last four years, I've had the privilege to see a lot of great players come through its hallowed grounds.  Braylon Edwards, Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, Paul Posluszny and Matt Ryan (72 million?!  Really!?!), among many others, have tried their luck against the Irish, and it gave Notre Dame fans a lot of really entertaining (but mostly soul-crushing) games.  In chronological order, the best and worst of Notre Dame Stadium over the last four years.

Best Wins

September 11, 2004 vs. Michigan: Haaaave you met Darius?

Coming off a horribly embarrassing opening night loss to Matt Payne and the BYU Cougars, the 7th-ranked Wolverines were going to be quite the test for the young Irish, led by sophomore signal-caller Brady Quinn.  After a woeful ground performance in Provo, Ty Willingham made one of the best decisions of his Irish tenure, unleashing freshman running back Darius Walker onto the world with a series of sweeps and tosses that Michigan had little success countering.  After trailing 9-0 at the half, the Irish exploded for 28 second half points, led by D-Walk's 115 yards and 2 touchdowns.  Matt Shelton also started his magical season with a bang, hauling in a 46-yard bomb that first put the Irish on the board.  This would, without question, be the highlight of the 2004 season.

November 5, 2005 vs. Tennessee: Zibby Climbs Rocky Top

Seen as the last major roadblock separating the two-loss Irish from a BCS bowl, the Volunteers were looking for revenge after the inexplicable Notre Dame win in Neyland the season previous.  Quinn stormed the Irish out to a 21-3 lead with a couple of touchdown throws to Maurice Stovall and Anthony Fasano, but Rocky Top came back to tie the game at 21 in the third.  Realizing the gravity of the situation, the home team poured on twenty fourth quarter points to win 41-21.  This was also the game where Tom Zbikowski cemented his legacy for the next season and a half, returning a punt and an interception for touchdowns.

September 9, 2006 vs. Penn State: The Excellence of Execution

Other than maybe the road dissections of Pitt and Purdue in his first season, this was the finest performance put on by a Charlie Weis team.  I remember looking up at the scoreboard and marveling at the fact we were beating a highly regarded, defending Big Ten and Orange Bowl champ Penn State team 41-3.  How did the Irish get there?  A beautiful game by Quinn and John Carlson, and an absolutely miserable game by Anthony Morelli, who squandered a great effort by Tony Hunt, whose 6.2 yards per carry average didn't do the Nittany Lions much good once they trailed by 38 points in the third quarter.  Thanks to their victory in State College last September, Penn State fans have finally stopped whining that faking a punt and going for it on fourth down - in the third quarter! - was piling it on.

October 21, 2006 vs. UCLA: Shark Attack

Much like my surprise at seemingly waking up to see that the Irish were up 38 points against Penn State, the student section also found itself shaking out of a fall break malaise to realize "Holy crap, we're about to lose to UCLA."   Thankfully, Karl Dorrell never met a game he couldn't mismanage, leading to one of single most memorable plays in modern Irish history.  Quinn busted out a mind-melting pump fake and Jeff Samardjiza could not be caught, leading to one of the simplest, most bad-ass touchdown celebrations ever and keeping Notre Dame in the national title hunt until their loss in the regular season finale at Southern Cal.  Enjoy:

November 17th, 2007 vs. Duke: Four More Years

Although the Irish had already established they wouldn't go winless during the 2007 season (thanks again, Karl!), they only had one last chance to send the Class of 2008 out with a home victory.  Morale was rather low after back-to-back home losses to the service academies, but the crowd managed to get into it ever-so-slightly as the Irish rode Robert Hughes, two second quarter touchdown tosses from Jimmy Clausen and some serious Blue Devil ineptitude to a 28-7 victory.  We also managed to get a pretty good "Overrated" chant started and my friend Pocz and I stalked Craig Sager - who was not a centaur - at halftime.  Not a bad way to go out.

Worst Losses

October 2, 2004 vs. Purdue: Choo-Chooooo

After the opening loss to BYU, the Irish reeled off three straight wins, setting up an in-state showdown with then-Heisman candidate Kyle Orton and undefeated Purdue.  The Irish defense performed admirably for a while, but a first quarter kick return after the score was tied at 3 opened the floodgates for the Boilermakers to score 41 points. . . through three quarters.  Lord knows how many points the Orton-to-Stubblefield connection could have put up on the woeful Irish secondary that day had they kept the pedal to the floor the entire game.  The highlight was, without a doubt, the 97-yard catch by Taylor Stubblefield where he was so clear to run down the sideline that he actually pumped his arm like a train engineer.  Love it:

October 23, 2004 vs. Boston College: Ty Punts From The Thirty

This is probably the clearest example I can give of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."  Notre Dame led 20-7 at halftime and 23-17 with under three minutes to go, despite rushing for only 104 yards, throwing two interceptions and missing an extra point.  All of these follies were not enough for Ty, though, who upped the antics to the level of the absurd by punting from the thirty on fourth and five in the fourth quarter.  While others may want to blame Ty's firing on his love of golfing, lack of recruiting or race, I'll just point right here, thanks.

November 13, 2004 vs. Pittsburgh: Palko Bombs Away

Without looking, I would guess that Tyler Palko threw for 973 yards and 14 touchdowns against Notre Dame on Senior Day 2004.  As it turns out, those numbers are a little high, as he only went for 334 and five touchdowns in the 41-38 Panther win.  Putting this game here may be a little much, as it was a highly entertaining game (four lead changes in the fourth quarter alone) and it most likely led to Ty's firing (as if the two other home games from 2004 on this list weren't enough to seal that fate).   D.J. Fitzpatrick nailed a 45-yard field goal with just over a minute left to tie the game, but Rick Minter's Kent Bear's defense surprisingly couldn't hold Palko, who set up the game winning field goal with a second left on the clock.  Another highlight from this game was the cavalcade of pass interference calls against Notre Dame, some rather blatant and others just blatantly wrong.  Matt Shelton also had 3 catches for 128 yards.  I miss him.

September 16, 2006 vs. Michigan: Yakety Sax

Total and abject humiliation at the hands of the Wolverines, which spawned the legends of Alan Branch and Lamarr Woodley while giving Michigan fans the inspiration to set all Notre Dame blunders against them to "Yakety Sax," something Irish fans should not be upset with because this game was sort of hilarious from an objective view.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, including Weis' idiotic refusal to go to the spread, no-huddle - the only offense that had worked against Michigan in '05 or the first half of this game - at the start of the second half.  If you watched this game back-to-back with the Penn State game from seven days prior, you wouldn't think it was the same team playing, let alone the same team playing on consecutive weeks.  Negative points to the crowd, which was not hyped up at all and didn't help matters any once the Winged Helmets started rolling.

November 3rd, 2007 vs. Navy: The Streak Ends

You could put a lot of home games from the 2007 season on here, as the total beatdowns by Georgia Tech, Southern Cal and Air Force were all humiliating, but I'm going to put this one because of the long-term historical meaning and the fact the entire crowd was actually into it and hadn't left at halftime.  The final score was 46-44 in three overtimes, with the final play a microcosm of the entire season: Travis Thomas sucking really badly as the offensive line got no push, leading to a bevy of text messages from friends that included various levels of capital letters and exclamation points asking "Travis Thomas?!?  REALLY?!  TRAVIS THOMAS?!".  This also featured another one of Weis' dumbest decisions, as he turned down a potential game-winning field goal attempt as time ran low and gave really, really dumb reasoning for it.  The Irish defense did a good job of containing super solider prototype Reggie Campbell until overtime, at which point no one could stop him.  Of course, we also got this play out of the game, which was awesome despite the fact it eventually led to the Irish loss:

You'll notice two games from 2005 missing here, the losses to Michigan State and Southern Cal.  It's not because I forgot about them, didn't think they qualified or had Tom Wilkinson erase them from my brain like in Eternal Sunshine, but because I want to spend some time on them because they were two of the best/worst games of my college career from the most entertaining season of my four years at Notre Dame.  Look for that on Tuesday, unless it's rainy on Memorial Day and I have too much time on my hands.