Now unranked Notre Dame shows how to lose games that you should not lose

If any sports fan wonders how a team can lose a game that they have no business losing, look no further than South Bend, Indiana where the Notre Dame Fighting Irish were giving the rest of college football a crash course.

On paper, there should have been no thinkable way for the Irish to lose their game against Michigan. They came into the game ranked #18, while Michigan was unranked. The Irish are coming off a season where they won their first bowl game since 1993. Granted, it was only the Hawaii Bowl, but when you haven't won a bowl game in 15 years, a win is a win. In contrast, the Wolverines were coming off a miserable season in which they went just 3-9.

If we look at the two teams from a player standpoint, Notre Dame wins this game easily. Notre Dame has Jimmy Clausen at quarterback. Clausen, a junior in his third year starting for the Irish, is thought of as one of the best quarterbacks in the country, and there are rumors that he could enter the NFL Draft after this year if he performs up to expectations. On the other sideline, Michigan has unproven freshman quarterback Tate Forcier as their starter. Advantage: Notre Dame

The announcers for this game constantly mentioned how Notre Dame's offensive line was much bigger and stronger than Michigan's front seven. They mentioned how wide receivers Michael Floyd and Golden Tate could do anything they wanted to against Michigan's embattled secondary. They told us what we could see on the television. Every time Notre Dame wanted to move the ball down the field they could and did, and Michigan did not have an answer defensively.

Throughout the game Notre Dame proved to us these very points. Down 14-3 early, Notre Dame scored the next 17 points to take the lead 20-14. Then, down 31-20 in the 4th quarter, Notre Dame rallied one more time to take the lead 34-31 with just over 2 minutes left in the game. These facts should be comforting to the Irish faithful. They fought back twice from 11 down to take the lead, something that Irish teams from years gone by would never have done. And yet, they found a way to lose the game.

How they lost that game was the worst way to lose a game. I've been in my share of locker rooms and I can tell you for a fact that losing a game the way Notre Dame lost frustrates you so much more than losing to a better team by a ton of points. You don't want to lose those games either, but if you go out and get dominated in all facets of the game by a team who is bigger, stronger, faster, and all around better than you are, all you can do is tip your cap to them and realize that you got beaten by a better team.

The problem for Notre Dame is that they were the better team for all the reasons I mentioned above. Losing to Michigan on Saturday was nothing short of inexcusable. I do not want to take anything away from Michigan here. They played a great game. Tate Forcier stepped up in a big game, just his second game at the collegiate level, and opened a lot of people's eyes. He showed everyone that he is the future of Michigan football. And at the end of the game, with the clock running down, they came together as a team and won the football game. They were rewarded for winning this game by getting themselves into the top 25.

But I want to make one thing absolutely clear: Michigan did not beat Notre Dame as much as Notre Dame beat themselves. You can go back to the very opening drive of the game. Notre Dame marches down the field. Michigan's defense keeps them out of the end zone, which leaves the Irish with a 28 yard field goal attempt. High school kickers can make field goals from 28 yards out. Chris Mahoski, the kicker on our state championship winning high school team in 2004, would have made that kick. In big games against your rival it is important not to give points away. The Irish could have scored 7 on that opening drive, or at the very least 3, but instead walk off the field with no points.

Scoring first, having that momentum on your side is big in games like this one, and instead of Notre Dame scoring first, Michigan scored first. And then when Notre Dame got a field goal to make it 7-3, the best kickoff coverage team in the nation in 2008 gave up a touchdown on the following kickoff. Michigan 14 Notre Dame 3.

These were not the only incidents where Notre Dame blew opportunities to put more points on the board than they ultimately did. Armando Allen caught a screen pass in the 2nd quarter and took it all the way for a touchdown--except that he stepped out of bounds before getting there. Instead of 7 points, the Irish have to settle for a field goal.

In tennis there is a statistic called "unforced errors." Logic would tell you that the player with the least unforced errors typically wins the match. The same thing happened during this game. The lone touchdown of the third quarter was scored by Michigan and caused by an Irish fumble in the backfield, giving Michigan excellent field position. It is hard to win if you turn the ball over.

Perhaps the biggest error the Irish made was in all of the penalties they accumulated. Notre Dame was penalized 9 times for 75 yards. Charlie Weis said at halftime that all the penalties were really hurting the team but it did not stop them from committing costly ones in the second half. One of them was a 72 yard pass play that was called back because of holding. It is hard to win when you commit that many penalties.

Lastly, it looks like Charlie Weis himself did them in. His play calling on the final Irish possession was questionable at best. You have the ball and the lead late in the game---time to run the clock out. But that's not how Charlie was going to play it. After running the ball once, he called two pass plays, that both ended up incomplete, allowing Michigan to save its final 2 timeouts and stopping the clock at the same time. Looks like those timeouts came in handy when Michigan scored the game winning touchdown with 11 seconds remaining.

There is an old adage in sports that says that good teams find a way to win games that they shouldn't and bad teams find a way to lose games that they shouldn't. On Saturday, Notre Dame proved that while they might be better than they have been, they still have a long way to go to become a good team.