Our recollections of the past are inevitably intertwined with our own experiences. So, when I say USC at Notre Dame -- played 20 years ago Wednesday, with the final scheduled Trojans-Irish clash scheduled fro Saturday -- is the best regular season game of my lifetime, understand there are some Member Berries attached. I remember it like it was yesterday, largely because of the circumstances with which I consumed the game: finishing SAT prep as a senior in high school, logging on to ESPN.com to see the score, and then endangering myself and those unfortunate enough to share the road with me as I made the nominal 15-minute drive home in 10 to catch the fourth quarter. You see kids, there was, of course, no such thing as pulling up YouTube TV on your iPhone back then. We did have color TV, though.
So, you're free to disagree if 2005 USC-Notre Dame is the best regular season college football game of your lifetime, but I think it's inarguable that it was the best regular season game of the 2000s. Consider the circumstances:
-- USC was in the midst of its march toward a third straight AP national championship. Los Angeles didn't have an NFL team at the time, much less two, so USC was the de facto pro team of Los Angeles. Pete Carroll, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart were as big as anyone in the NFL at that time. Everyone on the USC roster was a star, though. Dominique Byrd: tight end or 1980s All-NBA player. Dwayne Jarrett and Steve Smith seemed like future 10-year NFL All-Pro receivers. Darnell Bing, in his tinted visor, was the coolest safety since Ed Reed. LenDale White was Emmitt Smith mixed with Jerome Bettis.
-- Notre Dame, perpetually waking up the echoes, didn't lack for star power, either. The Irish began the year unranked under first-year head coach Charlie Weis, but entered the USC game ranked No. 9. They would undoubtedly shoot up to No. 2 or No. 3 if they could do the unthinkable by beating the unbeatable. Brady Quinn was viewed as a worthy adversary to Leinart. The Irish also had a 2-sport star in wide receiver/pitcher Jeff Samardzija, plus boxer-turned-safety/punt returner Tom Zbikowski. Zbikowski hadn't been reincarnated off the Irish's 1928 roster, it only seemed like it.
-- In the BCS era, this was a de facto semifinal game. No. 2 Texas had already survived its trip to the Midwest by beating Ohio State in September, so now it was USC's turn. With half a season still to play, it seemed like the winner still somehow advanced directly to the Rose Bowl to face the Longhorns for the national title.
And then there was the game. Oh, the game. USC scored first, then Notre Dame answered. USC scored again, then Notre Dame again answered. When Zbikowski took a punt back to put Notre Dame up 21-14 in the second quarter, it seemed like USC trailed for the first time in three years.
USC wouldn't lead again until the 5-minute mark of the fourth quarter, but then Notre Dame executed a masterful 8-play, 87-yard touchdown drive, capped by a 5-yard Quinn keeper where he streeeetched the ball across the goal line. That touchdown would've been iconic, if not for what came after.
Everyone remembers the Bush Push, but that play obscures the 4th-and-9 strike on a go route to Jarrett from Leinart for 61 yards. It's hard to imagine there ever being more pressure to perform on any particular play in a regular season contest in American sports, and Leinart dropped it in a bucket like it was the first period of a Tuesday practice. Those guys earned their stature in American sports at that time.
There are a million other details that stand out about this game. Tom Hammond, NBC's announcer, exuberant as he realized he was documenting college football history in real time. For that matter, so, too, did the seemingly 5,000 people that stood inches from the sideline on the foot-long Notre Dame Stadium grass. When you add in that the game took place in the part of autumn here the game begins in daylight and ends under the lights, it was just picture perfect college football.
For my money, one regular season game each decade stands above the rest.
I'll defer to others for the 1980s and before, but the 1990s gave us No. 1 Florida State at No. 2 Notre Dame in 1993, a game so big it got a fledgling program known as College GameDay to go on the road for the first time. In the age before a standalone championship game, winning a national title was about positioning yourself as the No. 1 team entering bowl season.
The 2000s, clearly, belonged to this game.
The 2010s gave us the Kick Six. Like this one, No. 1 Alabama at No. 4 Auburn in 2013 was a stone-cold classic before its iconic ending. I think the biggest regular season game of the 2020s already happened, when No. 3 Michigan outlasted No. 2 Ohio State to end the 2023 regular season. Nowadays, the 2013 Alabama-Auburn and 2023 Ohio State-Michigan losers might just gear up for an immediate rematch in their respective conference title games. And if not, the loser is certainly going to the 12-team Playoff.
Each of those iconic games were products of their times. And in a product of our time, USC and Notre Dame are not scheduled to meet again after Saturday's clash. Future football-mad teenagers will not speed home to catch the end of can't-miss regular-season college football. That's partially because, thanks to technology, they no longer need to; and partially because with each passing year, changes to the sport give them fewer reasons to.