During his senior season at Concord De La Salle High School last fall, quarterback Nate Montana didn't exactly set the world on fire. He was the third-stringer, and he finished the season 12-of-19 for 166 yards and one touchdown passing, plus 33 yards on 17 carries running.

But when your dad is Joe Montana, maybe the greatest quarterback ever to play the game, people look at you and see potential. So 30 years after Joe Montana's senior season at Notre Dame, Nate Montana is following in his footsteps and will be a walk-on for the Fighting Irish. Joe says there was no pressure on his end:

"In the end I told him, 'Look, don't go to school for me, don't go to school for mom, you got to do what you got to do and go to the school you'll be happiest at if football doesn't work out,'" Joe Montana says, "and he chose Notre Dame."

Although some Notre Dame fans will be excited just to see the name "Montana" on the roster, it's certainly not realistic to think that Nate can be the kind of player his father was, and it's probably not even realistic to think Nate will play in anything more than mop-up duty. Then again, Joe Montana came to South Bend as the seventh-string quarterback. Things turned out OK for him.

Interesting YouTube video here. It's a four minute interview with apple-massaging Notre Dame "Assistant Head Coach" Jon Tenuta. Corwin Brown is Notre Dame's de jure defensive coordinator, but listening to Tenuta it's hard to tell who is the D.C. and who is the underling.

The Detroit Free-Press gets points for due diligence on this article, which is about a shoddy homemade video on YouTube. The home movie shows a surly Charlie Weis delivering a speech at the pre-game luncheon before the spring game. In front of a handful of fans and donors, Charlie cracked candidly about his feelings for that lovely academic institution in Ann Arbor:

"And then we'll listen to Michigan have all their excuses as they come running in and saying how they have a new coaching staff and there's changes. To hell with Michigan!" (exclamation mark is [sic] -Ed.)

The exclamation mark, in my opinion, comes from the overactive imagination of the article's author. A viewing of the video (the quote in question is at the 1:10 mark... be warned, though, it's a really obnoxious video) will convince every rational person with a cursory understanding of what counts as an "exclamation" that the more commonplace period is a more appropriate punctuation mark for the transcription.

Weis' remarks come from a long tradition of Notre Dame and Michigan trading damnations upon one another. Most famously, Bo Schembechler was known to quip "To Hell With Notre Dame" to anyone who asked him about scheduling the Irish, the Big 10's relationship to Notre Dame, or if he wanted syrup with his pancakes.

In related news, Hell has politely refused to accept Michigan, as doing so would drastically drop property values throughout the area.

When the Big East was reconfigured a few years back, the conference was able to persuade their non-football member Notre Dame to commit to playing more Big East teams in football. To that end, the Irish have a six year home-and-home series with Pitt starting this season, they agreed to play UConn and they also set up a six year series with Rutgers.

Pitt is actually one of their most played opponents in the Irish history (5th behind Navy, USC, Purdue and Michigan State), so that wasn't a surprise. The UConn series required the Huskies to essentially go to neutral fields for their home games by making the games at NFL stadiums in the Northeast.

Rutgers is presently expanding their seating capacity to 55,000 at a cost of over $100 million. The expansion would be completed for the 2009 season. The year the Notre Dame series was to begin was in 2010. Notre Dame, however, was insisting that the Rutgers home games take place at the new NFL stadium at the Meadowlands. Rutgers, unlike UConn, wouldn't accept leaving their own facility so the series is now off.

Rutgers entered into discussions about a possible long-term series with Notre Dame, but at the end of the day both schools could not agree about the site of the games," [Athletic Director Bob] Mulcahy said in a statement issued by the school. "We feel Rutgers' home games should be played on-campus at Rutgers Stadium."

Unlike UConn coach Randy Edsall, Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano had no interest in surrendering true home field advantage just to play Notre Dame.

Proving that politicians can be bat-crap crazy fans even in the Northeast, the Connecticut legislature gave its approval for UConn to play Notre Dame in a six game home-and-home series starting in 2011, over the objections of Rep. Michael Christ.

Why did they even get involved in whether the football team could schedule a series with Notre Dame? It wasn't about religion. As usual, it was about the money. The way the series with Notre Dame was established, none of UConn's "home" games would take place in Connecticut.

The UConn "home" games would take place in NFL stadiums in Massachusetts, New York (if built) and New Jersey. None of the games would take place in the Connecticut taxpayer subsidized $91.2 million home stadium built in East Hartford. No economic benefit to the state or the local service industries.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

ABOVE: Spartan Stadium in East Lansing hosted the 1966 Game of the Century.

Any game which matches the #1-ranked team against the #2-ranked team will almost inevitably be called a 'Game of the Century.' It seems like there's a GotC every three to five years or so. But the 1966 game between Notre Dame and Michigan State was among the very few that actually managed to live up to their billing, and it's a sign of this game's signficance that it's still controversial forty-two years later.

This was a #1 v. #2 game, but it was not so clear which team was #1 and which was #2. The Spartans and the Irish were both ranked #1 in one poll and #2 in the other. Coach Duffy Daugherty's Spartans were the defending national champions. Neither team had lost. To to it all off, it was the last game of the season for the Spartans, and they knew it. Big Ten rules of the time prevented any team from playing in back-to-back Rose Bowls, and from playing in any bowl other than The Grandaddy of Them All. Notre Dame had one game left against Southern Cal, but that would be it for them as well. The Irish didn't accept any bowl bids until 1969.

So, with the two teams so evenly matched, something had to give. Right?

John 'Doc' Hussey, a longtime journalist in New Hampshire, died Friday at the age of 65.

Among many other items in a notable career, he broke the story that forced Notre Dame to ditch football coach George O'Leary just days after hiring him.

Hussey provided the Union Leader with one of its biggest scoops when he detected something was amiss in the public-relations biography of University of New Hampshire graduate George O'Leary, named head football coach at the University of Notre Dame.

Seeking to do a local-angle story on the new head of the world's most storied college football program, Hussey spoke with several players and the man who coached the UNH football team at the time O'Leary was said to have earned three varsity letters. None of the men remembered O'Leary playing football.

Hussey shared his information with colleague Jim Fennell, whose reporting ultimately revealed that O'Leary had falsified his resume, and the coach -- since named head coach at the University of Central Florida -- was forced to step down at Notre Dame. The Union Leader's coverage of the story earned numerous awards and national acclaim.

He may not have been a big player in national college football media, but his fact-checking thoroughly tarnished O'Leary's otherwise solid reputation and Notre Dame's football program has yet to settle on a reliable coach since.

Interesting find in Olin Buchanan's Mailbag this week at Rivals.com: a trend has emerged in college football whereby teams winning a title ending in any year ending in an 8 experience a long, painful championship drought.

Recent victims: Notre Dame has not won a title since 1988. USC waited until 2003 after claiming the 1978 crown. Ohio State endured a more than 30-year wait between their 1968 and 2002 crowns. Scary stuff here.

Everyone wants a championship, but maybe it's a devil's bargain in reaching for this year's title?

Other victims of years ending in "8":

TCU was named the Associated Press national champion in 1938 – the third year of the poll – and even though players such as Bob Lilly and LaDainian Tomlinson have since come through Fort Worth, the Horned Frogs have not won another crown.

Michigan won in 1948 and did not win another national title until 1997, and that one was split with Nebraska. The '58 champion was LSU, which waited 45 years before celebrating another national championship.

Ok so maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing for TCU to win a championship this year. They've waited long enough, maybe another drought is worth the price of ending the current agony.

One dilemma currently facing the Big East football conference is that it only has eight members. Which means that each team has seven conference games. And depending on the year, each team has either three or four home conference games. Given the 12 game schedule of college football, that means that Big East teams have to play five non-conference games.

From time to time Big East coaches address this issue in the media like Randy Edsall did recently.

"It would be just so much more viable and more equitable to everybody in the conference if we all had four home games each year," Edsall said Thursday. "So that's why it's our hope as football coaches, to get to where we have at least another team in the league."

There are several teams that are brought up each year as possible additions like East Carolina, Memphis, Navy, etc. But none of those teams really inspires excitement in me, and I would guess in the rest of the Big East. For his part, Big East commissioner Michael Tranghese is opposed to anyone other than Notre Dame joining the football side of the conference.

League commissioner Michael Tranghese has said if the Irish would like to talk about becoming a football member, he'd certainly take the phone call. But otherwise, the league is not pursuing expansion, spokesman John Paquette said Thursday.

I don't know that there could be a bigger pipe dream than Notre Dame joining the Big East for all sports. I suppose world peace would rank up there. Or if Rich Rodriguez has any hopes of being welcomed back in West Virginia again.

...at least that's the implication from his latest move, or lack thereof:

Former Texas A&M defensive coordinator Bob Davie has declined an invitation to reprise that role with the Aggies, according to a source on campus.

Hey, I'm with him. Davie gets to lounge around in the offseason while college coaches are beating their heads in day after day, sleeping on the floor in their office and only contacting their families when, delirious from lack of rest, they accidentally hit the wrong button on their cell phone. Much better to be Bob Davie, Guy Who Gets Paid To Say "Footbaw" A Lot.

This is actually a bit of a blow for the A&M program. Though Davie's stint as Notre Dame's head coach didn't go well, he was a successful and well-regarded defensive coordinator over the course of a decade.