Utah Utes @ Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football Preview

It's not a game with BCS bowl implications, and it certainly got downgraded by the events of the past few weeks, but if you want to watch a truly interesting and hard-to-read football game this upcoming weekend, you couldn't do better than the collision between the Utah Utes and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

When Coach Kyle Whittingham leads his Utah youngsters between the painted white lines of the gridiron at Notre Dame Stadium, he won't know exactly how his team will respond to a distinctly uncertain situation. Notre Dame Coach Brian Kelly knows the same to be true for his team, which is reeling in ways that go beyond the football field.

Utah's challenge is confined to two basic facts, both of which are connected to the Utes' 47-7 loss to TCU on Nov. 6. The first part of that 40-point shellacking is that the Utes' main goals for the season - an unbeaten year, a BCS bowl bid, and the Mountain West Conference title - all went by the boards. The TCU tilt was a must-have, and so the simple fact that the Utes didn't win it has left them with a gaping hole in their season. Utah knows it will now be consigned to a third-tier bowl game against a mediocre opponent. All the sex appeal of a possible BCS bowl - which this program tasted at the end of the 2004 and 2008 seasons - will be enjoyed (most likely) by TCU. Utah must fight the temptation to be downcast, now that its goals have been denied in 2010.

The other challenge for Utah is similar to the one just outlined, but with an important twist. The TCU loss destroyed all of Utah's goals, but the other aspect of the loss which could creep into this Notre Dame game is that it was so thoroughly decisive. TCU raced to a 40-0 lead and genuinely humiliated the Utes in their own back yard. The stomping in Salt Lake City knocked the Utes out of BCS bowl contention and denied them a Mountain West crown, but it also poses the possibility that Utah could lose any and all self-confidence over the final few weeks of the season. Getting blasted by 40 points on home soil is a perfect way - perfectly awful, that is - to lose the belief and swagger which existed throughout Utah's 8-0 start to the 2010 campaign. Utah breathed confidence and happiness through the first two months of the season, but after receiving a thunderbolt in the gut thanks to TCU, the boys from the Great Salt Lake could be body-snatched and befuddled as they return to the gridiron against Notre Dame.

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It's interesting, then, that while Utah deals with multiple obstacles that are fundamentally psychological in nature, Notre Dame has a lot of mental hurdles to clear as well.

The Irish are still mourning the death of team videographer Declan Sullivan, a 20-year-old who died in a hydraulic lift collapse on Wednesday, Oct. 27. The Irish then lost at home to Tulsa the following Saturday, and if the sting of that 28-27 setback wasn't enough, the team also lost starting quarterback Dayne Crist for the season with an injury. Backup signal caller Tommy Rees then threw an interception in the end zone with 36 seconds left to deny Notre Dame a chance to kick a game-winning field goal. A bye week came at just the right time for this program; this is especially true for Kelly, its beleaguered coach. Some Notre Dame boosters want the first-year boss to be fired, but the university administration and Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick have held firm in their support of Kelly. Notre Dame has also not moved to fire Swarbrick, who truly deserved the blame for the Sullivan accident more than Kelly did.

Notre Dame is the team that will play this game with broken hearts and broken bones. The Irish might have been refreshed by their off week, but it remains unclear how this team will perform.

Utah and Notre Dame are both in a position where they must overcome great disappointment and a sense of emptiness (albeit on very different levels and for very different reasons). Whoever plays with more passion and cheerful vigor is likely to win on Saturday afternoon in South Bend, Indiana.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer