Rockne's Roundtable

What a season, what a team, what a journey, what a satisfying joy it has been to witness the last 13 weeks. Everything that can be said and written about this season has already been written and said. This has been one for the ages. One we will all be talking about decades from now. I believe each of us have shared every emotion possible witnessing it: surprise, angst, euphoria, panic, and rapture. What the last 13 weeks did, in essence, was set the banquet table. A table that has SO much now on it to partake of, it's almost tempting fate to gaze upon it. What a 13th win would bring to so many is worth a brief glimpse to ponder.

Forget about needing it to validate relevance for a team, a coach, or a program. The last 12 games have already accomplished that. Notre Dame is college football, and the dawn is breaking on yet another of it's golden eras. The last of which ended some 19 years ago. Anyone with any college football common sense can see that this is no "lightning in a bottle" 2005 or "smoke and mirrors" 2002 campaigns. No, 2012 has set up for the long haul a sustained success by a team full of toughness & strength led by coaches of tactics & strategy. The identity has been forged, and the recruiting by this staff shows the country it will have staying power.

Yes, the tangible spoils of winning a 13th game are glorious and grand. The aforementioned crystal football that signifies to all who see it that you were greater than anyone else that year. If you've been inside the Gug, you already know the one that rests there from 1988 has room to slide over for a friend. The 13th win would bring a 13th ring to a jewelry case that even Tiffany would envy. And to think of the space Hammes (and Pimpi) will need to clear it's floor for all of it's new merchandise that we will need to help them move in celebration.

For it's coach, what a 13th win would mean. Brian Kelly is 60 minutes away from becoming legend. At a school where you are measured by nothing more than National Championships, he is a mere 4 quarters away from iconic status. He is one win away from a becoming immortalized with a Jerry McKenna statue at the South Gate of Notre Dame Stadium. He is that close to forever joining the club of Rockne, Leahy, Parseghian, Devine and Holtz- the greatest pantheon of coaches at the greatest school in the history of college football.

All of that and more. More tangible rewards than any of us can fathom are set on that banquet table of January 7th, 2013. And if that were all there was, it would be satisfying and it would be enough. But what entices me, what excites me the most about that table are the spoils you cannot see. The rewards and benefits that cannot be measured...only felt.

What a 13th win would bring that is the most desired by men and women here about my age is the opportunity that, if we are honest, each of us wondered over the last 19 years if we would every have again. For most of us remember what it was like to share those spoils, the feeling of not only playing like a champion, but being a national champion with our Dad's and Grandparents and loved ones. But deep down doubted if we would ever hire an athletic director with the vision to hire a coach who could recruit & develop the talent it takes like Corrigan and Holtz again.

You see, I am just a little selfish. I know I have more days behind me than I have ahead of me. For the reason I want to see Notre Dame win it's13th game isn't because the Gug needs another crystal football, or another diamond ring for a case, or another statue for a stadium. I want this badly because there is another generation of young men and women who love this school and this football program that have NEVER, IN THEIR LIFE known the intangible feeling inside your heart and soul to experience being on top. I've never experienced that with my wife, my son and my daughter. I want them to have what I had in 1977 & 1988, to feel what I felt then. To be able to pass along to their kids what I am passing along and sharing with mine. This university has always been about immeasurables, a spirit that never says die, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. And a 13th win renews it all for another generation to follow.

Here's to that 13th win...here is to the Once and Future King...Notre Dame.

GO IRISH!!!