Good tidings to you. We're coming to you from our super-secret New Year's location (New York) to briefly touch on the Top 10 things we'll remember from 2007 -- that we witnessed -- at The Journal Gazette. So in honor of New York and the return of Ball State grad David Letterman to the television airwaves, we give you our Top 10 in reverse order. Most of these will be Notre Dame, but we've covered some other stuff, too:
10. The Junior High Kid Runs Off The Field: Chad Hall came to Notre Dame in November a talented, yet undersized, player from Air Force. He dashed up the tunnel with Notre Dame Stadium fans cheering his name. Air Force knocked off the Irish football team and made the blonde-haired Georgia kid the unlikely star. Plus, seeing NBC television reporter Alex Flanagan tower over the guy who just torched Notre Dame left an impression.
9. Leprechaun Leap: It had been a long, trying season for Trevor Laws, Tom Zbikowski and John Carlson. So after Notre Dame beat also-ran Duke at home in the season finale, seeing the three seniors leap into the crowd, Green Bay style, to celebrate with fans is about the only positive memory we'll take from this football season.
8. Don't Get On The Bus: Demetrius Jones' departure from Notre Dame's football team came at a bizarre time -- right as the team was boarding a bus for Michigan. It set off a week of he said, they said reactions which helped define the catastrophic beginning to Notre Dame's year.
7. The Kid Finds His Groove, Part I: Seeing a player mature in the span of a single game is something you see every so often. For basketball player Ryan Ayers, it came in one season-saving shot against Villanova from the left baseline. Ayers gave the Irish a boost in that game and propelled them to the NCAA Tournament.
6. Dario! Dario!: At the rain-shortened Indianapolis 500, we spent a good portion of the delay hunting around Tony Kanaan's garage, because it seemed as if he would be the winner. We watched as the rain lifted, the track dried and Dario Franchitti ended up coming from behind to win. Plus, the sight of a barefoot and very wet Ashley Judd running onto the track to meet her husband isn't something you soon forget.
5. And They'll Call Him 'The Minnesota Magician:' While in St. Paul, Minn., for a wedding earlier this month, we took in future Notre Dame wide receiver Michael Floyd playing some basketball. Easily the best athlete on the floor -- read more about Floyd in our paper on Signing Day in February -- one moment showed why Notre Dame fans will love Floyd for the next three or four years. In a mostly silent bandbox of a gym, Floyd faked out his defender at the three-point line. He rose up about eight feet from the basket and tried to one-hand tomahawk dunk, with the ball at least 11 feet in the air. He missed the dunk but woke up the crowd. Very rarely in notebooks do we make note of something with multiple stars, denoting an important or spectacular play. We had four around the athleticism on this one. Basketball coach Mike Brey should look into signing him up. If not, Notre Dame has a talented athlete coming in. And we're hoping the nickname we're trying to coin sticks.
4. The Kid Finds His Groove, Part II: At the end of the game, Georgetown's radio announcer raised his arms in the air and said more than 10 times, 'Hoyas win! Hoyas win!' The eventual Final Four team almost lost in the Big East semifinals because of one Notre Dame player -- Tory Jackson. Thrust into the starting role at midseason, Jackson became a star by the postseason as he scored 20 points -- including seven straight late in the second half --to will his team into the game. That and an incredible circus-style layup that made SportsCenter's Top 10 plays that night.
3. Weis Knows There's A Ways To Go: In the bowels of the Louisiana Superdome after Notre Dame lost to LSU in the Sugar Bowl, Weis talked with a small group of reporters about the season. In the conversation, he admitted his team was a nice team, but not yet an elite one. At that point, he couldn't have predicted what was to come this season, but as the year wore on that conversation stayed with us in our heads as the Irish would need to return to the Brady Quinn level first before reaching elite status.
2. "The Spoke:" Wherever Mike Brey goes, he quickly becomes a media and fan favorite. His easy going style during games and in press conferences endears him to fans and his quotability and accessibility makes him a media favorite. Even though Brey and the Irish lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to Winthrop, Brey talked about marching in the Spokane St. Patrick's Day Parade and started calling the eastern Washington city "The Spoke." We loved it, too, as it had some of the most hospitable people we've met in our travels. Every year has one great road trip. In 2007, this was Spokane.
And...our top moment from 2007:
1. The Streak Is Dead. The Streak Is Dead: Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada bounded up the same Notre Dame Stadium tunnel as Chad Hall wearing the same grin. But for Navy's quarterback and the rest of the Midshipmen, it was history. The 46-44 triple overtime win gave Navy its first win over the Irish since 1963 and lead Kaheaku-Enhada, the affable Navy quarterback, to start yelling "We rewrote history." In talking with friends earlier this month, we reflected that in our three seasons on the beat, we saw two games we can tell our grandkids about. First was Notre Dame-USC in 2005 -- where beyond the game we found ourselves standing between Robert Kraft and Andy Reid for the last five minutes -- and second was Navy-Notre Dame, 2007. No matter your feelings for Notre Dame, what Navy did was one for history.
Those were ours. What were yours? E-mail us at [email protected] or drop comments in the box below and we'll run some of the best ones in our next Mailbag.
Thanks for reading in 2007. Keep it up in 2008, where we hope to add more to what we do here at Insights and most of all have a Happy, Healthy and safe New Year.
-By Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette