They were Marshall

 You want to quote Matthew McConaughey here. Come on, you do, right?

You want to quote that requisite movie pregame speech, the one he made playing Jack Lengyel in "We Are Marshall". All that stuff about the bigger, stronger, better opponent, and rising from the ashes, and laying their hearts on the line? It's perfect, right?

Because it's Sunday morning now and the scoreboard still reads Marshall 26, Notre Dame 21, a reverse "Rudy" if ever there was one. If you're Notre Dame and you're ranked eighth in the nation and you're at home in that vault of lore called Notre Dame Stadium, you don't lose to Marshall.  You don't lose to a movie script.

Hell, no. If you're Notre Dame, you write the movie scripts. What must Rockne 'n' them be thinking?

"That Notre Dame could use a quarterback?" you're saying now.

Well, yes. There's that. Between Tyler Buchner and Drew Pyne, the Irish have about three-quarters of one. And that's a problem.

Another problem: If you're Notre Dame, you don't get bullied up front by Marshall. 

But they did, and Buchner threw a couple picks, including a pick-six that pretty much sealed it for the Thundering Herd. And then Pyne came on and threw another in a mere six attempts, and that was that.

Bring on the hindsight crowd, who this morning are all saying they told us Notre Dame shouldn't have gone with emotion and hired a guy with no head coaching experience. And that Marcus Freeman is Gerry Faust 2.0 -- great person; in over his head. And that Jack Swarbrick should have promised Brian Kelly the Golden Dome to keep him in South Bend.

This of course ignores the fact Kelly didn't want to be there anymore. And that he practically sprinted to his car and laid down rubber peeling out of the Gug parking lot back in December.

What the Blob thinks is Marcus Freeman has made the kind of history no one wants to see at a place where they cling to history like a barnacle to a frigate, and that's not good. If you count the bowl game the Irish lost after Kelly bailed, Freeman is the first coach in the school's history to start his tenure 0-3. Saying the bowl game counts as a separate piece because Freeman was merely the interim then is just splitting hairs.

However.

However, it's way too early to start second-guessing Freeman's elevation. A couple of wins will quiet that drumbeat, and there are wins to be had up ahead. If there is a body of evidence that Freeman's over his skis here, it's not yet conclusive.

Besides, it's not like he's Jimbo Fisher down there at Texas A&M.

Who lost to Appalachian State yesterday, after everyone got all excited (and Nick Saban got jealous) about Jimbo's killer recruiting class.

Appalachian State!

Why, no one's made a movie about them.

So there's that, Domers.