Maybe not rivals but a real history

Published 3:17 pm Tuesday, January 2, 2018

<p class="p1">ORLANDO, Fla. —  It would be a reach, perhaps, to call LSU and Notre Dame real rivals.</p><p class="p1"> But, of course, nothing actually seems real here in Orlando, where the shadow of Disney World and the other amusement parks seem to have turned a whole city into a sterile knockoff imitation of some vague reality.</p><p class="p1">It’s hard to tell here sometimes where the contrived thrill rides end and the routine cab rides begin.</p><p class="p1">Stay a few days and you’re constantly wondering if this or that is genuine or something hammered out yesterday to appear old and storied.</p><p class="p1">So LSU-Notre Dame works pretty well for today’s Citrus Bowl.</p><p class="p1">Need a quick blood rivalry?</p><p class="p1">No problem. Call the famed “imagineers” at Disney — the jobs other sweat shops called engineers. They’ll whip something up, something that looks believable enough to get through the day.</p><p class="p1">Fighting Irish?</p><p class="p1">Every other street corner on International Drive seems to have a “Ye Ol’ Irish Pub” or a “Paddy O’Douls” or some sort of “Smacky McCallisters.”</p><p class="p1">LSU?</p><p class="p1">Half the restaurants seem to be promoting that they invented “genuine Cajun cuisine” even if they don’t speak the language.</p><p class="p1">Maybe they were all built overnight and sprinkled with pixie dust just for the bowl game. You never know.</p><p class="p1">But, actually, it wasn’t that tough to imagine LSU and Notre Dame as something special enough for New Years Day bowl fare.</p><p class="p1"> For two schools with little in common and a long way apart, they do seem to have bumped into each often enough to have a real history.</p><p class="p1">Being famously bayou born and bred — nothing manufactured about his Cajun accent -or familiarity with  a good cochon — Ed Orgeron sometimes seems as much LSU’s historian as the head coach in his dream job.</p><p class="p1">“I remember growing up watching LSU and Notre Dame play,” he remembered, particularly the 1971 game that kind of cemented Tiger Stadium’s reputation as one of this earth’s hell holes for visiting teams.</p><p class="p1">The Irish had beaten the Tigers 3-0 the previous year in South Bend, a game still gets under the craw of old-time Tigers for the pass interference call that set up the game’s only points.</p><p class="p1">Two years earlier one of Charlie McClendon’s best Tiger teams sat home during the bowl season with a 9-1 record — the Cotton Bowl invitation LSU thought it had secured disappeared with Notre Dame ended its long-standing bowl boycott and snatched it instead.</p><p class="p1">So, yeah, like most down on the back bayou of LaRose, the 10-year-old Orgeron was Cajun-psyched when the Irish arrived for what at the time was a rare nationally televised night game.</p><p class="p1">The Tigers whipped up on the Irish 28-8.</p><p class="p1">“I remember growing up watching Notre Dame and LSU play. Great football games,” Orgeron recalled of the those first two LSU-Notre Dame games. “Defensive battles, a lot of goal-line stands. In everybody’s house in south Louisiana, Notre Dame games would play every Sunday morning. You became familiar with Notre Dame football, like an icon nationally.”</p><p class="p1">Orgeron had no idea at the time just how familiar he would become with what is officially known as The University of Notre Dame du lac.</p><p class="p1">The Tigers and Irish have played 11 times and today will be the fourth bowl game.</p><p class="p1">But Orgeron’s career almost seems intertwined with Touchdown Jesus.</p><p class="p1">While on the staffs of Miami and Southern Cal, he butted that broad forehead with Notre Dame 14 times.</p><p class="p1">And talk about jumping right into the fire.</p><p class="p1">“My first game was Catholics vs. Convicts, 1988,” he said.</p><p class="p1">That was when Miami was in its brashest heyday, flaunting its outlaw image defiantly in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus. The game’s friction was worthy of its own ESPN 30-30 special.</p><p class="p1">“I remember that tunnel (at Notre Dame Stadium) vividly and I remember the game …”</p><p class="p1">Notre Dame won 31-30.</p><p class="p1">“And I remember the next game and they came down to the Orange Bowl and we beat them. Now that was a rivalry.”</p><p class="p1">Rivalry? He was just getting warmed up.</p><p class="p1">Six years later he showed up on Southern Cal’s staff, which with Notre Dame has staged the cross-country version of Alabama-Auburn since 1926.</p><p class="p1">“At USC (it) was the same thing. USC-Notre Dame,” Orgeron said. “That was <em>the</em> game.”</p><p class="p1">LSU isn’t quite there yet on the Notre Dame rivalry scale, although no SEC school has played the Irish more and there’s talk of renewing the series sometime next decade.</p><p class="p1">“We’re similar in a lot of ways,” Orgeron said. “Very physical programs, storied, rich tradition. A lot of great coaches have coached at both LSU and Notre Dame. A lot of championships.”</p><p class="p1">Orgeron is 0-1 against the Irish as a head coach, losing the 2013 game as Southern Cal’s interim head coach.</p><p class="p1">Blood rivalry or not, it’s a score he opens to even today.</p><p class="p2"> </p>