Print Edition of The Observer for Monday, September 17, 2018

Notre dame 22, Vanderbilt 17 | monday, September 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

Surviving, not thriving Irish move to 3-0, but struggle to close out game against Commodores in 22-17 win

MICHELLE MEHELAS | The Observer

Irish junior running back Tony Jones Jr. sprints up the field during Notre Dame’s 22-17 win over Vanderbilt on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium. In his first start of the season, Jones finished with 118 yards rushing and 56 yards receiving, accounting for over 45 percent of total yardage for the Irish offense, which struggled to produce in the second half.

Notre Dame isn’t a heavyweight, at least not yet Joe Everett Sports Editor

As the famous line from “Rocky” goes: “It ain’t about how hard you can hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

After another closer-thanexpected game played out in the form of Notre Dame’s 22-17 win over Vanderbilt, I’m not exactly sure how to think about this Notre Dame football team, but I think comparing it to a boxer would be apt.

This game should serve as a reality-check for fans. Notre Dame (3-0) is not a great team.

Let me say that again: Notre Dame is not a great team.

At least not yet.

Right now, this is what Notre Dame is: tough, battle-tested, gritty — use any blue-collar superlative you want. This team is not a flashy, heavyweight boxer like Alabama or Clemson see EVERETT PAGE 3

By RYAN KOLAKOWSKI Sports Writer

Following the lead of head coach Derek Mason, Vanderbilt hardly looked worried about coming into South Bend and taking on No. 8 Notre Dame.

Dysfunctional offense and undisciplined defense from the Irish (3-0) kept the Commodores (2-1) within striking distance all day, but Notre Dame was able to keep Vanderbilt at bay and seal a 22-17 victory.

The Irish elected to receive the opening kickoff after winning the coin toss, and the offense reeled off a 74-yard drive before stalling on the doorstep of the Vanderbilt goal line.

A defensive pass interference penalty gave the Irish first-andgoal on the Vanderbilt 2-yard line, but Notre Dame struggled to punch the ball into the end zone.

After two failed runs, a false start and an incomplete pass, junior kicker Justin Yoon kicked a 26yard field goal to cap the drive and give the Irish an early 3-0 lead.

The Irish defense allowed 41 yards on Vanderbilt’s opening drive but eventually forced a punt that pinned senior quarterback

Brandon Wimbush and the Notre Dame offense to their own 6-yard line. Wimbush orchestrated a long drive to return to the Vanderbilt red zone and, on third down, Wimbush called his own number and scurried 12 yards for an Irish touchdown and a 10-0 lead.

“I think we did what we wanted to do,” Wimbush said in his postgame press conference. “We started strong. We started fast, and I think we finished strong.”

The Irish held on to their 10-0 lead until midway through the second quarter. Notre Dame started a drive at their own 35-yard line, and junior running back Tony Jones Jr. rushed 20 yards into Vanderbilt territory, and a Commodore penalty moved the Irish all the way to the 30-yard line. Another Jones rush carried the Irish into the red zone for the third time.

Following a short Brandon Wimbush rush, two incomplete passes forced the Irish to kick another field goal in the red zone.

Yoon converted on the 33-yard attempt, giving the Irish a 13-0 advantage.

Following the Irish field goal, Vanderbilt put together its first sustained drive of the

afternoon. Threatening to score, Commodores senior quarterback Kyle Shurmur connected with junior wide receiver Donaven Tennyson near the goal line. Irish junior defensive back Troy Pride Jr. met Tennyson at the 1-yard line, and junior safety Alohi Gilman entered the scene and stripped Tennyson of the ball. The fumble was batted into the end zone where Irish junior defensive back Julian Love recovered the ball for a touchback, promptly ending the dangerous Vanderbilt drive.

“I love the aggression of our safeties on that play,” Love said.

“Troy did a great job to keep him out of the end zone. … You have all four members of the secondary in that play working … and that’s huge for us.”

Gilman was pleased with the forced fumble, which echoed a similar goal line turnover forced by senior Irish safety Shaun Crawford against Michigan State a year ago.

“I was channeling my inner Shaun,” he said. “Shaun’s my idol.”

Following the turnover, the Irish marched down the field, but their offense stalled in field goal see SLUGGISH PAGE 3

Tony Jones Jr. sees increased role for Irish offense

By ALEX BENDER Sports Writer

In a game that saw Notre Dame grind things out against a tough SEC defense in Vanderbilt, one of the bright spots on the day came from junior running back Tony Jones Jr. From as early as the first drive for the Irish (3-0), Jones was able to establish a presence in the run game, something the coaches stayed committed to by giving him 17 carries which he was able to turn into 118 rushing yards.

After seeing just 44 carries last season, Jones’ heavier usage Saturday came as a pleasant surprise for him as it allowed for more of a rhythm in his play.

“I feel like I’m in high school again,” Jones said. “Getting a lot of carries …to be honest I would say that I’m a rhythm back and I need five-plus carries to get going and keep going.”

Much of the success Jones had see JONES PAGE 2

2

Insider

The observer | monday, September 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

Jones Continued from page 1

on the day was due to a strong performance by the Notre Dame offensive line, which provided a strong push up front all day, something Jones acknowledged after the game.

“They were great. They learned from their mistakes last week and our whole team executed very well in the run game, better than last week,” Jones said. “Coach [Kelly] wanted them to work harder and fire off the ball more, and I guess they did that.”

While Jones got the start on Saturday, it was sophomore hybrid back Jafar Armstrong who had started the previous two games.

The combined efforts of the two backs in addition to the running ability of senior quarterback Brandon Wimbush is something Jones felt set the offense up for success in their attack.

“I would say that me and Jafar are really good running backs.

I wouldn’t worry about who’s starting,” Jones said. “[Brandon]

spreads out the defense more and keeps them on their heels a bit, so that was good.”

After seeing the offense struggle to execute against Ball State the week before, Saturday’s performance against the Commodores (2-1) was encouraging for head coach Brian Kelly, who noted his team’s rushing successes after the game.

“Again, we had a tough week last week, and I think a lot of it fell on me, and I did a poor job preparing our football team. You know, there was a lot of movement, a lot of stunting, things that I wish that I did a better job. That’s behind us.

We got back to what we do in terms of our preparation for our football team. And I was confident that we would come out and be the group that I believe we can be,” Kelly said.

“We’re far from where we need to be as an offensive line, as an offensive group, as I mentioned earlier.

But we’re capable of running the football with some effectiveness. “ ... And the other thing that you’re seeing is a maturation of both running backs. We saw some things today, and I’m sure you all

were observant of it as well, was we were running today light much better, we saw our cuts, we were fitting much better. That’s why I say, we’re three games into this. But we had two really good opponents that have tested us, I think you’re going to start to see that there’s much more of a confidence level starting to emerge with that group that they can be effective all year.”

Besides picking up his first 100yard rushing performance of his collegiate career, Jones also found himself involved in the passing game, leading the team in receiving yards with two receptions for 56 yards. Kelly recognized an opportunity to utilize Jones in this fashion by implementing the wheel route against the defense Vanderbilt was presenting.

“Lot of manned coverage, so we’re getting the wheel, drive, big combination,” Kelly said.

“So if you do a good job defending him, then we’re creating space on the drive route coming back, so they’re really easy complements for us versus man coverage.”

The receiving role out of the backfield has typically been Armstrong’s so far this season, so when Jones was called upon Saturday, he saw it as an opportunity to again emphasize the strength the Irish have in the backfield in an offense that is still changing every week — looking to find what works for them and what doesn’t.

“Jafar is fast and he’s physical, and I’m fast and physical, so you can pick your poison,” Jones said. “Sometimes we switch off.

It doesn’t matter. … Brandon is looking at me now. I tell him before the play like ‘B look, B look’, or something like that.”

The Irish now sit at 3-0 on the season after three-straight one-possession games at home.

Certainly not everything has been figured out yet on both sides of the ball, but the team does believe it is getting there, and Tony Jones Jr. is showing early on that he can help contribute in this offense. After Saturday’s performance, he now has 224 yards on 39 carries with a pair of rushing touchdowns. His role appears

to be increasing, and with it will come a clearer picture as to the identity of the offense. The team now prepares for its first road test of the season when they head to Winston-Salem, North Carolina for a matchup against Wake Forest. With unanswered questions about the team and concerns about the weather as the Irish head to the East Coast during hurricane season, it would be easy for distractions to pop up for the Irish. For Jones, however, those other things don’t matter as much. He’s just happy to be hopping on a plane and traveling with his team next weekend.

“To be honest I just like flights, so I’m ready to leave up out of here and get on a flight,” Jones said. “It’ll be good to get some team bonding.”

Jones saw his number called upon more often on Saturday.

He’ll hope to produce similar results when called upon again in the coming weeks.

Contact Alex Bender at abender@nd.edu

ZACHARY YIM | The Observer

Irish graduate student tight end Nic Weishar celebrates his fourth-quarter touchdown grab during Notre Dame’s 22-17 win over Vanderbilt on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium.

As a senior last year, Weisher caught nine passes for 52 yards and two touchdowns, and over the offseason was named to the Wuerffel Trophy Watch List for the second-straight year.

Play of the game

player of the game

Irish recover fumble in end zone to end commodores drive

Notre Dame Running back tony jones jr.

With just over five minutes left in the first half and the Irish up 13-0, Kyle Shurmur and the Commodores drove into Notre Dame’s half looking to get on the board. On first down from the 21-yard line, Shurmer fired a strike to Donaven Tennyson near the end zone. But Irish safety Alohi Gilman stripped the ball before it crossed the goal line, and after a wild scramble it was recovered by Julian Love in the end zone to kill the drive and the momentum.

After two relatively quiet performances, the junior got the start over freshman Jafar Armstrong and came out firing on Saturday, finishing the game with 118 yards on 17 carries, almost half of his total volume from last season. Jones also led the Irish with 56 receiving yards, including a big 32-yard grab early in the fourth quarter that helped set up an Irish touchdown and Notre Dame’s final points of the day.

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Volume 53, Issue 21 | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

ND researchers mobilize as Florence hits Tropical Depression Florence strikes East Coast, prompts professors to coordinate data gathering efforts

By KELLI SMITH Associate News Editor

Hurricane Florence struck the East Coast on Friday, bringing damage to North and South Carolina with record flooding and region-wide catastrophe.

The storm was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical depression, but the damage being left in its wake persists: thousands are trapped by rising floodwaters, hundreds of thousands of homes are without power and the death toll reached 18 Sunday.

For a group of professors, that damage is a siren call.

Andrew Kennedy, a coastal science and engineering professor, is one of a group of faculty members in the Department

of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) who collect data about natural disasters. Often, this involves deploying to the affected area or partnering with teams already in the region to conduct research.

“With our partners in North Carolina, we have put out 10 water level gauges on the North Carolina barrier Islands on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week,” Kennedy said in an email. “[With the gauges], we will have good records of water levels and some wave information near buildings, which is needed for helping designs. However, we will not have this information until we pick up the gauges and see FLORENCE PAGE 3

Photo Courtesy of Tracy Kijewski-Correa

Andrew Kennedy surveys a demolished beach in the Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria hit in 2017.

The professor is part of a group that conducts research on natural disasters to evaluate infrastructure.

Saint Mary’s appoints interim vice president Observer Staff Report

Saint Mary’s President Jan Cervelli announced in a press release Friday that current director of multicultural services and student involvement Gloria Jenkins will serve as interim vice president

of student affairs following Karen Johnson’s departure.

President Cervelli announced Johnson’s resignation from her position as vice president of student affairs earlier this month.

“Gloria has been at Saint Mary’s since 2015 and has done a fantastic

job creating an inclusive and supportive environment for our students,” Cervelli said in an email.

“I can think of no one whose background, commitment and personality are better suited for this see VP PAGE 4

Election observer

BridgeND crosses divide, facilitates discussion

By TOM NAATZ Associate News Editor

Editor’s note: Throughout the 2018 midterm election season, The Observer will sit down with various student organizations and professors to discuss political engagement and issues particularly pertinent to students.

In this second installment, BridgeND discusses its efforts to overcome the partisan divide on campus.

news PAGE 3

In an era of political polarization and bitter partisan disputes, BridgeND is seeking to overcome these divisions. The club gathers for weekly meetings to discuss current political topics in an effort to encourage students to understand positions and arguments with which they don’t necessarily agree.

“We’re trying to bridge the partisan divide on campus,” senior Sarah Brown, president of BridgeND, said. “What that

viewpoint PAGE 7

means is that we’re basically a political discussion club for people of all different political ideologies.

Firebrand leftists and firebrand conservatives are invited, people in the middle who are moderates and don’t have a political home are invited. Wherever you’re at on the spectrum on any issue, come and share your ideas and discuss whatever we’re discussing that week.” see VOTE PAGE 3

Scene PAGE 8

Kroc Institute aids Colombian peace agreement

By ALEXANDRA PARK News Writer

Notre Dame prides itself on being a research institution and one of its research projects is having a direct, real-time impact on international peace affairs.

The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies has been using its research on peace accords to work with the nation of Colombia to monitor and track the implementation of its peace accord throughout the country.

The Colombia Final Agreement Peace Accord was approved and passed in November 2016 by the Colombian government under President Juan Manuel Santos.

This followed a ceasefire signed earlier that year by the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the largest guerrilla rebel group in Colombia. The accord ended Latin America’s longestrunning insurgency and was deemed worthy of a Nobel Peace

nd volleyball PAGE 16

Prize.

The Kroc Institute’s part in this event is outlined in the Colombia Final Agreement Peace Accord itself, which states the institute is to “design the methodology for identifying the progress of the agreements” and “provide the technical support for the follow-up, verification and monitoring of the implementation of the agreements.”

Playing such a direct role in the peace agreement puts the Kroc Institute’s researchers in a unique position — though they are neutral academics, they have a responsibility toward an entire nation that uses their research to directly implement peace in a country torn apart by internal conflicts since the mid-1960s.

“This is really historic, this project,” David Cortright, director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) Project, said. “First time it’s ever been done, and it could be a model.

If it works well, it could be a model see PEACE PAGE 4

nd m soccer PAGE 16

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TODAY

The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

Question of the Day: ndsmcobserver.com

What is something you think everyone should do at least once in their life?

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“Hike the Alps.”

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MICHELLE MEHELAS | The Observer

Four U.S. Air Force cadets are honored at Notre Dame Stadium during the Notre Dame–Vanderbilt game Saturday. These cadets, who flew A-10 Thunderbolts over the field prior to the game, are members of the 163rd Fighter Squadron known as “Blacksnakes.”

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ndsmcobserver.com | monday, september 17, 2018 | The Observer

3

Big Belle, Little Belle links College students

By JORDAN COCKRUM Saint Mary’s Editor

Many Saint Mary’s first-years approached Le Mans Green on Reveal Day Sunday afternoon to find juniors holding up signs, each brightly decorated with the name of a different first year.

While Saint Mary’s may not have Greek life, the Big Belle Little Belle program enables students to foster similar bonds between students.

Students gathered to celebrate the reveal of their match for the upcoming year.

“We walked out of Le Mans, and all of the Big Belles had big signs with our names on them,” first year Lea Hall, a participant in the program, said. “I found my big,

Florence Continued from page 1

download the data.”

This isn’t the first time professors deployed to an area struck by natural disaster to gather onthe-ground data. It’s been done for “a bunch of storms” in the past, Kennedy said.

“We used to have a program where we would have a helicopter fly along the coast before the storm and lower gauges that we found afterwards using divers,” he said. “But that program ended a while ago, and since then we have only been placing gauges

Abby, holding my name and as I walked up she handed me a little present. We then did a scavenger hunt and it was just a fun time.”

The Big Belle Little Belle program connects juniors and first-years based on a number of factors. Committee co-chair junior Moira LeMay said in an email the club based their matching off both an event and questionnaire responses.

“We had a social event that allowed the juniors and first-years to talk to each other so that everyone had a sense of knowing at least someone in the program,” LeMay said. “Then, we sent out a questionnaire to the members to further the pairing process.”

While both factors weighed into matching decisions, LeMay

said the committee placed a larger emphasis on the results of the social events. Following the event, everyone received a half-sheet to record their thoughts.

“When it came time to put twoand-two together, we catered toward the littles’ preferences,” LeMay said. “If they didn’t have a preference, then we went with who seemed to be a good fit for what the little had answered on the questionnaire.”

A social event leading up to the pairing process was a change from the previous year, LeMay said. While in the past students were matched solely off questionnaire answers, the event allowed students to get a sense of preferences prior to being paired.

“This year we incorporated an

event prior to Reveal Day,” LeMay said. “That way, the committee had a better sense of who would be good matches together. We also brought in catering to give the new pairs something to do besides meet and leave.”

LeMay said Sunday’s reveal acted as a positive indicator for the year to come.

“The committee overall was impressed with the turnout and participation from the club members,” LeMay said. “It met all expectations, and provided us a good gauge of how the year will follow.”

The program’s goals for the year are to promote a relationship of reciprocal growth, LeMay said.

“I look forward to seeing how these mentorships grow into

friendships,” she said. “As a committee, we hope that our matches will learn from one another,” LeMay said.

Hall said she looks forward to the community and sisterhood to be gained through her participation in Big Belle Little Belle.

“As a freshman, even though I have sophomores, juniors and seniors in my classes, I don’t get to really focus on a friendship with people other than freshman,” Hall said. “I would have rushed for a sorority this year, but Saint Mary’s doesn’t have this opportunity because there are only girls.

I love the sorority feel and closeness of the girls in this club.”

on land to investigate conditions around built-up areas.”

As of Sunday, rain accumulation reached 40 inches in southern North Carolina and 20 inches in northern South Carolina and western North Carolina, according to the National Hurricane Center, and is also affecting parts of Virginia and other New England states.

Given the severity of the storm, research can’t be conducted until before or after the disaster hits, Kennedy said, which means deployment teams must wait before collecting much of the research.

“It is not certain what will happen after Florence clears up,”

Kennedy said. “We will likely send a team down in concert with other people and assess the damage and how that related to the conditions during Florence.”

The team will likely be led by Tracy Kijewski-Correa, Kennedy said, who is the director of the Structural Extreme Events Reconnaissance (StEER) Network, a National Science Foundation initiative created this year.

Kijewski-Correa said StEER is a new network involving a “volunteer corps” composed entirely of members from in or around the community affected by the storm. The team will travel to the

afflicted region in a coordinated manner to gather on-the-ground research, she said.

“Our job is to get on the ground fast, as fast as safely possible, and use mobile apps to collect as much data as we can using a team that’s in the field as well as a larger team that remains at their universities processing the data that they’re feeding in on off their phones,” Kijewski-Correa said.

Using wind simulations, storm surge measurements, aerial data and social media, KijewskiCorrea said the StEER team has been working already to identify key neighborhoods particularly struck by Florence for on-the-ground teams. The aim is to create a “sheet map” of a concentration of damage across the affected area — one that can help other research teams or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

“I’m literally corresponding with professionals in South Carolina and North Carolina who are locked up in their homes right now,” Kijewski-Correa said. “But we can get on the ground with our mobile app almost instantly once the rain subsides, and they can start feeding data into the second wave that will probably fly in from universities that are further away from the zone.”

Virtual assessment teams work on the “backside” of the operation, Kijewski-Correa said, which involves processing the data from on-the-ground researchers and adding additional information to assist in the process.

“Most of the information that you need you have to be upclose front to observe,” KijewskiCorrea said. “The reality is you cannot forensically kind of understand what happened unless someone gets close enough, either with a drone, a set of laser scanners or physically with a mobile camera to be able to take those images. You can’t really see them unless you have someone get there.”

Notre Dame’s performance during the hurricane season last year warranted a contract distinguishing the University as the “coordinating node” for the

network, Kijewski-Correa said.

This new role will change the manner by which the storm’s damage is assessed.

“If we do a really good job as the leaders, we’re empowering other researchers to get out there and collect the data rather than us having to chase every disaster, which is really hard,” she said.

“We deployed people for I think all three hurricanes last year, and that’s a lot of missing class, a lot of physical and emotional burden on those people.”

While about three Notre Dame professors regularly deployed for natural disasters, the goal now is to take everything learned over the last 10 years and build it into a system encouraging others closer to the target zone to engage in research, Kijewski-Correa said.

“We are virtually leading [others] and orchestrating their movements and staying kind of like what we call a ‘war-room’ above the battlefield so that you can see what all your people on the ground are doing and position them well rather than being so deep in it without cell communication that you can’t really beat,” she said.

The data gathered often helps researchers learn what needs to be changed in infrastructure and building designs, KijewskiCorrea said, which can be a decade-long cycle to implement after a major disaster. She said this is known as the “major learning loop,” an element of structural engineering that is essential to keep people safe.

“The only way that all of the construction practices and building codes that keep all of your families safe are ever validated is for people to do exactly what we do because we cannot build your house and then subject it to all that nature can do at full-scale,” Kijewski-Correa said.

“We can’t simulate the kinds of things that the hurricane does in a lab, you actually have to see what it really does because it’s so complex and so large-scale you have to see that on the ground.”

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4

NEWS

The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

Vote Continued from page 1

At every meeting, BridgeND members and attendees discuss a different political issue.

Recent meeting topics included the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court justice and a discussion of free speech at Notre Dame in the context of Observer articles.

The group also focuses on divisive issues facing the Notre Dame community, such as the debate over contraception coverage that took place at the University last year.

While politics is the focus of BridgeND, the club hopes to attract more than just political science majors. All students, regardless of their political knowledge or major, are invited to attend the group’s meetings, sophomore and BridgeND vice president Kevin Gallagher said.

“We’re really trying to expand to other majors. We want kids who are interested in politics but not necessarily have to be studying it,” Gallagher said.

In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, Brown said, BridgeND saw an increase in interest from the campus community. However, Brown also said she noticed the increase in interest dropped as it became harder to talk about politics in the more polarized environment.

“There was definitely an uptick directly after the election,” Brown said. “A bunch of people started coming. But after, I think, there was a bit of a drag directly after the election because it’s so hard to talk about politics and I think people are getting back into it as we gain space from the election, because I think it’s become less and less polarized.

I feel like the midterms don’t carry as much polarization and weight and anger behind them that the 2016 elections did, so I think people are much more willing to come out and talk about them.”

Regarding involvement in the 2018 midterm elections, Brown said BridgeND has some plans to get students involved in the campaign process. For instance, the club hopes to provide opportunities for students to volunteer on local campaigns.

The group is also putting an emphasis on registering students to vote and making sure

VP Continued from page 1

interim position at this time.”

Jenkins will begin working in the new role Oct. 1.

“Gloria’s expertise will further advance our efforts to develop and implement highquality, student-centered approaches to support success in the non-academic dimensions of the Saint Mary’s

students know the process for getting an absentee ballot so they can vote even when they are at school.

“We have a couple of things in the works,” Brown said. “We do want to give people the option to work on Democratic and Republican campaigns if they want to — maybe just doing a day of action for each of the campaigns on either side. We also are doing tabling — partnering with NDVotes and student government — to register voters, ’cause a lot of people don’t know how to get an absentee ballot when they need to get an absentee ballot and so accidentally don’t vote.

So we’re making all that information as available as possible in the student centers. We’re doing an election watch, partnering with NDVotes and student government.”

On the whole, though politics may have become polarized, Gallagher and Brown both said divisions may not be as intractable as they seem and members of the club will be able to reach an understanding with each other, even if they don’t agree.

“I think a lot of people are level-headed,” Gallagher said.

“Even when people have really strong opinions that are completely the opposite of someone else’s, it takes a special type of person to be able to sit down and have that empathy, to be able to try to understand why they have that perspective. We try to attract those types of people.”

Brown cited a debate on abortion as an example of when BridgeND members were able to hold a civil conversation about a heated topic and reach a greater understanding of opposing positions.

“A lot of times people realize they’re coming from the same basic ideas,” Brown said.

“We had, last year, a debate on abortion. A bunch of people sat at a table. Everyone who said they were pro-choice said they were pro-choice because they believed in human dignity, and everyone who said they were pro-life said they were pro-life because they believed in human dignity. They were able to respect the place everyone was coming from, even if they disagreed with the end result.”

Contact Tom Naatz at tnaatz@nd.edu

experience, which are so essential to our holistic approach to education,” Cervelli said in the release. “I am extremely grateful to Gloria for taking on the interim role as we conduct a national search for a new vice president for student affairs.”

The College will organize a search committee to help find the next vice president of student affairs this fall, the release said.

Peace Continued from page 1

for peace accords in the future with an objective academic monitoring system.”

The current Kroc Institute PAM team is divided between seven members based at Notre Dame’s main campus and about 30 people based in Colombia who work with over 300 Colombian partners. Both parts of the team work collaboratively to monitor the progress of peace implementation throughout the nation. Every month, findings are summarized in reports presented to the International Accompaniment, an NGO the PAM project is a part of and the Colombian government, including the offices of the presidency and vice presidency.

Implementation progress is measured from a zero to three scale, with zero being no implementation and three being successful implementation. After a thorough reading of the 310 pages of the accord, the PAM team identified 578 measurable stipulations, or concrete, actionable items.

Each of those items is ranked on a monthly basis using the scale and is included in the reports.

The earliest form of this kind of research was the Peace Accords Matrix database, the brainchild of John Darby, a former professor at the Kroc Institute. Darby, who taught comparative ethnic conflict, wanted a systematic way to compare what provisions worked well in certain peace processes.

He enlisted the help of his students to gather and organize data to be used in a possible database of comparative peace accords, and the effort eventually grew into a project he presented at a research conference in 2003 under the name “Peace Accords Matrix database.”

Following this launching of the PAM database, a researcher named Madhav Joshi joined the Kroc Institute in 2010 and restarted the PAM project by writing a codebook to identify provisions being negotiated in the peace accords being studied. Joshi hypothesized that the implementation of provisions, rather than the provisions themselves, were the driving force for peace-building success in the host country, and fundamentally changed the PAM project to focus on implementation.

“The animal that we created is very different from the animal John Darby envisioned back then,” Joshi, who is now the current associate director of the PAM Project, said.

Joined by Jason Quinn, PAM’s current principal researcher, in 2012, Joshi continued to produce research to empirically examine his hypothesis.

“We are the only database that examines different provisions being negotiated in comparative peace accords, and to what extent those provisions were implemented within 10 years’ time,” Joshi said. “We are still the only database. And we have all this information available in qualitative and quantitative form on our website, so it is publicly accessible.”

With a growing research

presence, the two began facilitating peace processes in other countries. Mediators and negotiators from around the world began asking Joshi and Quinn about best practices for implementing peace accords.

The PAM project’s partnership with Colombia, called the Colombia Barometer project, came about through two men whose work directly connected Colombia and Notre Dame.

Years before the signing of the ceasefire in 2016, John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus of International Peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute, and Francisco Diez, PAM’s Latin American Representative, had done extensive research and peace-related work in Colombia. The two were able to bring the PAM team’s work to the attention of the mediators working on the development of the Colombian peace treaty, as well as other people involved in the peace process.

By the time the ceasefire was signed in 2016, the Kroc Institute had already been providing consistent, implementation-focused mediation support in Colombia for years. That involvement led to the Kroc Institute’s key role in the peace agreement.

“We were the only project in the world that measured implementation,” Quinn said. “So when they got ready to sign their agreement, we were in the perfect spot. We were the only ones that did implementation, they already knew us and they already liked us. So we proposed the idea of monitoring the whole agreement, which [was] something that [had] never been done before.”

For Colombia, the partnership promised an innovative peace agreement that could use regularly updated academic research to actively assess efficiency and even make improvements to the implementation process. For the Kroc Institute, it offered the chance to monitor a peace agreement’s implementation in real time, on a monthly basis from start to finish, Elise Ditta, a research associate for the PAM project, said. It also afforded the unprecedented opportunity for the PAM project to have a team in the country of study with direct access to everyone in charge of implementing the accord.

One important contribution made by the PAM team happened just a few months after the ceasefire was signed. In October 2016, an initial version of the accord was voted down by less than a one percent margin in a public referendum. Without an alternative plan, Santos turned to the PAM team for advice on how to proceed with the accord, Joshi said.

“We examined different peace processes around the world and how parties found a way to reconcile their differences when there was significant opposition to the negotiated peace accord,” Joshi said. “So they went back to that negotiation table in Havana, [Cuba], the FARC and the government and some of the key opposing actors. …

They identified key issues … and instead of going to the referendum again, [in keeping with] our advice,

they went to Congress.”

The final version of the accord was passed by the Colombian government a few months later in November.

Another contribution the PAM team made was a list of stipulations that would be easier to implement. As a result, the government has started working on those items at a higher rate.

“I think having somebody who knocks on your door every month and asks, ‘How are you doing on these 10 commitments?’ probably motivates people to act,” Ditta said.

The most recent major development in the PAM project occurred two weeks ago, when the PAM team based in South Bend made a group trip to Bogotá, Colombia from Sept. 4 to Sept. 9. A major objective for the trip was meeting with members of the government under Iván Duque Márquez, the new Colombian president who was elected in the summer.

“Since our role is so related to interacting with the government and other actors in Colombia, a large part of the trip was to talk and strategize about, ‘What’s our project going to look like with the new presidential administration?’”

Ditta said. “[It was] strategic planning at both the political level and the operational level.”

Having this conversation was important because Márquez was part of the opposition that voted against the initial version of the peace accord, Carolina Serrano Idrovo, a research associate on the PAM team, said.

The strategic planning involves figuring out what types of reports the new administration wants, what other products they might need and who is willing to support their mission.

“We need to know, ‘Who are our current allies in government?’”

Joshi said. “We need to nurture our relations to suggest the relevance of this project.”

In addition to those conversations, Joshi, Quinn and Diez met with Rodrigo Rivera Salazar, the new High Commissioner for Peace to discuss ongoing negotiations with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), another rebel group still at war with the government.

“That fact [that the new administration] is still interested in having people from the Kroc Institute come, give advice and understanding to the situation is, I think, very positive,” Serrano said.

The successful implementation of the peace treaty would be a huge milestone for Colombia, Quinn said, but it is also an exciting academic prospect for the Kroc Institute.

“The singer of the Colombia Barometer project is the dataset,” Quinn said. “Once the Colombia process is over in a few years … the data set will live on. Right now, there is no detailed data set on the implementation of everything in a peace agreement. … In the future, students and academics can use the data to help negotiate and implement successful peace agreements.”

Contact Alexandra Park at apark@nd.edu

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The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

Inside Column

LeBron is a sports icon Zachary Yim

What’s up with wages?

Nothing, and that’s a problem (not a puzzle)

Photographer

Daniel Graff

LeBron James is the greatest face of a sport, ever. If I were to choose a sports idol to idealize, Lebron is everything I would want.

Now, I’m a Sacramento Kings fan, and I don’t really know what winning is like or what the playoffs even really look like anymore. Basketball games that have implications usually mean losing to get into the lottery (Marvin Bagley please don’t bust), if we even have our own pick. But watching LeBron James, from the age of 16, live up to and exceed every expectation to become one of best, if not the greatest, NBA players of all time, has been nothing short of unbelievable.

It’s not just on the court. LeBron’s average of about 27 points, seven rebounds and seven assists over his career is nothing to scoff at and neither is his three championships or his comeback in the 2016 NBA Finals over the 73-win Golden State Warriors. Neither is his knack for defense, for which he should have won defensive player of the year over Marc Gasol in 2012 Neither should his insane passing and vision or his athleticism be overlooked. He has proven critics wrong over his “clutchness” and, though his 3-5 record in finals isn’t great, his eight straight finals appearances in a row are insane.

Most people don’t remember finals without LeBron in them. Despite Jordan’s 6-0 finals record, people forget his earlier years where he struggled without another star on the team. It’s better to lose in the finals than in the first round (which LeBron has never done).

What sets LeBron apart from former faces of the NBA, notably Kobe and Jordan, is his life off the court. LeBron married his high school sweetheart. He’s never had a scandal, except maybe the “taking my talents to South Beach” episode. Even the profits from that event went to charity. LeBron has, time and time again, shown himself to be a great father, compassionate on and off the court and a role model in terms of a leader on and off the court (maybe too much on the court, insert LeGM and LeCoach jokes go here).

As an advocate for social issues and against President Trump, Lebron has never faltered.

Compared to Kobe with sexual assault issues and Jordan with his gambling issues, LeBron is pristine. Kevin Durant, who most likely would be the next leader of the NBA, has had his off-court issues with social media.

As an NBA fan, I’m spoiled. For every Lebron, there is a Michael Beasley, a Michael Carter-Williams and an Anthony Bennett.

There are far more busts than Hall of Fame players, obviously. But faces of the NBA, rarely have as a clean of a record as LeBron.

Lebron has been the villain and the hero.

He has rarely played bad basketball and has made the NBA exciting. It’s sad that he’s a Laker now, but I’ll never stop rooting for LeBron.

Contact Zachary Yim at zyim@nd.edu The views expressed in the Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Just Wages

Increasing inequality is a pressing problem requiring serious research and vigorous debate as we strive for policies that improve people’s opportunities and outcomes. One direct way to tackle this challenge is to confront the problem of pay, especially in the United States, where our public culture has long correlated hard work with personal worth and our public policies have wedded social benefits to employment via tax credits, health care insurance and pensions.

In three columns collectively titled “Just Wages,” I’ll address some problems and promises associated with pay in the contemporary U.S. “Just Wages” carries a double meaning here.

First, the focus will be solely on wages. Though the challenge posed by inequality is complicated and often seems intractable, we can go a long way toward solving it by simply enlarging people’s paychecks. How we go about that leads to the second meaning, because arguing to raise wages invites disputes over defining whether and when any given wage is just. My aim here is to begin a fruitful conversation on “just wages.”

The numbers are shocking. Within the United States, the average household income for the top 10 percent was about $313,000 in 2015, nearly ten times the $34,000 for the remaining 90 percent. That gulf has been growing for decades, with the top one percent now capturing 22 percent of all income, more than doubling their portion since the 1950s. Meanwhile, CEOs of major corporations now make 361 times what their typical workers earn (in 1980 it was less less than 50 times more).

I can already hear these alarming figures being argued away by my conservative and libertarian-leaning friends. Don’t contrast Americans of different incomes, they argue, as that only leads to class envy of the successful. Instead, measure households over time, because as long as their own incomes are growing, Americans don’t care how rich their bosses are. A rising tide lifts all boats — canoe and cruise ship alike.

The problem is that most Americans who don’t own a yacht have been drowning. For the past four decades, real median wages in the US have been flat, as a typical worker in 2016 took home only one percent more in weekly pay than one in 1979.

Even worse, those in the bottom 10 percent actually took home five percent less. You would think that such a foundational fact — four decades of flat and even declining wages — might shape public discussion of the economy. Sadly, though, that is not the case.

For those in charge at our nation’s capital, the health of the economy is measured instead by crude figures like GDP (gross domestic product) and the unemployment rate, which are regularly updated, religiously analyzed and relentlessly repeated. If the former is up and the latter is down, we’re assured, then the economy is doing well. As President Trump recently tweeted, “In many ways this is the greatest economy in the HISTORY of America and the best time EVER to look for a job!”

The unemployment rate is indeed at its lowest level in nearly two decades, a good thing no doubt, but that tells us nothing about the nature of the jobs being created, including how

much they pay. And the government’s own numbers provide more sobering news: for the vast majority of American workers, real wages actually declined over the past year. If it’s the best time to look for a job, it’s apparently not the best time to earn a living from a job.

Fortunately, many in the media have been raising the issue of non-raising wages. Unfortunately, the responses from many mainstream policymakers and academics suggest widespread bafflement at this seeming violation of the iron law of supply and demand. As the Washington Post reported, “The fall in those wages has alarmed some economists, who say paychecks should be getting fatter at a time when unemployment is low and businesses are hiring.” Similarly, a Chicago Tribune headline summarizes the collective bewilderment: “Weak pay growth puzzles Fed chief, just like everyone else.”

I’m not puzzled by the flatness of wages despite our tight labor markets, because wages have been stagnant for decades as the unemployment has risen and fallen repeatedly. Instead, I’m perplexed by the way many economic experts cling to abstract theories of how markets are supposed to work in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. “This is odd and remarkable,” one economist told the press, while another described the persistence of flat wages as “one of the big economic questions of our time.” Surely the bigger question is why so many economists find a forty-year phenomenon such a “mystery,” as Federal Reserve Board chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly termed it.

To be fair, many economists from across the political spectrum have been offering theories for the flat wage phenomenon, but too many give explanations that, frankly, fall flat, such as that low productivity growth is preventing employers from raising pay (in recent decades wages haven’t risen in years of high productivity growth either), or that employers must be compensating workers via non-wage benefits, even if they admit to not having data showing that. It often seems like the evidence is forced to fit the theory, rather than the theory chosen that best explains the evidence.

The fact is that wages are a function of not only markets and policies, but also the wider cultural norms and values that inform those policies and markets. Over the past forty years, as economic transformations ushered in greater individual insecurity and increasing societal inequality, our elected officials, policymakers and academic experts apparently developed an economic amnesia regarding how to implement — and apparently even imagine — structures and systems to promote widespread prosperity. It wasn’t that long ago when Americans confidently embraced that challenge, which is something I’ll address in my next column.

Professor Daniel Graff teaches courses on labor, race, gender, and politics in the Department of History. He also directs the Higgins Labor Program at the Center for Social Concerns, where he co-convenes the Just Wage Working Group, a research collaborative investigating what makes any given wage just or unjust. He can be reached at dgraff@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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The contemporary illusion of American democracy Andrew Lischke Yeah, It’s An Act in Progress(ivism)

Normally, I would refuse to start an argument by posing a question riddled with oversimplification and abstraction to which a fundamental answer is nearly universally accepted.

Anything that fits these characteristics is generally a cliché (and I don’t like cliches). With that being said, though, my refusal only exists in normalcy. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we are no longer operating within normalcy. With all this talk about “the erosion of democratic norms” and “dangerous assaults on American democracy” and the “potential for a constitutional crisis,” perhaps such an oversimplified, yet fundamental, question is a reasonable place to start.

So, here it goes: what is democracy? What is this lofty ideal, this complicated Athenian principle, this fragile American norm, condensed into reality from the precipitate of the minds of America’s founding fathers and mothers? I’m not privileged with infinite space in this column to methodologically develop a comprehensive definition of democracy. So, in an interest of spatial conservation, I’ll provide my conclusion.

Democracy is government of the people, institutionalized by power equally distributed amongst the people, for the utilitarian good of the people. Many argue that America is the perfect manifestation of this definition. They defend their understanding with tropes and cliches (the belief in everyone’s capacity to hold office, the idea of one vote for one person, the rejection of policies that advantage a select few and disadvantage the majority, etc.)

Let me be the first to tell you, if you haven’t already heard by now, that none of these tropes and cliches subsist in contemporary American society. Democracy in America is no longer reality — it’s simply an illusion.

Let’s first look at the claim America is a democratic government of the people. This claim, at its base, is that American offices are held by average Americans. This is no longer the case. Perhaps this was true long ago when the political sphere

was not a livelihood. In the 1800s, Americans would work to subsist economically in the day (plant some seeds, physically abuse a slave or two, print the newspaper, etc.) then reside over town hall meetings in the evening. In this system, the average American electorate (the average white, American man) would participate in politics nearly as an extracurricular. Now, however, this is no longer the case. Political institutions and offices have become careers.

Who cares if political office holders are now their own class of Americans? The answer is probably very few people. But, that’s the point — everyone should. A politician no longer holds office due to a genuine desire to act in the interest of Americans. A politician today holds office to secure their livelihood. Political office is no longer a medium for effective change but rather a medium for economic security of the official. This is obviously problematic. But wait, there’s more.

The entire notion of “one person, one voice, one vote” is debatably false. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision swiftly ensured the destruction of that norm. Now, corporations are treated with a voice (much louder and more pronounced) than the average American. Even the idea of individual, large political contributors is problematic. Now, the political choices that the American electorate has are limited to choices pre-vetted by these big donors and corporations. And don’t even get me started on voter suppression campaigns and gerrymandering — anything that makes it harder to vote or minimizes a person’s electorate power is an automatic challenge to the notion of “one person, one voice, one vote”.

Politicians being supported by “big money” interests obviously presents a problem for the notion that American democracy is aimed at the good of American citizens. What is truly good for American citizens rarely makes it past primary elections. The American electorate is limited to a choice of what is truly good for these donors and corporations.

All this and more (there are many other issues including but not limited to the electoral college, the disproportionate representation of the senate and the increasing power of

executive bureaucracy) adds up to a democratic institution which ceases to be truly democratic.

Instead of a government of the people, America has a government of the class of career politicians. Instead of the institutionalization of equal power distributed amongst all citizens, America has institutionalized the inflated power of corporations and elites and the deflated power of the average citizen. Instead of government for the utilitarian good of the people, we have a government for the utilitarian good of corporations and elites. In reality, our democracy is an illusion of democracy. It no longer exists.

But, just because something no longer exists (or never existed) doesn’t mean it can’t be reclaimed (or claimed in the first place). So, what needs to happen to establish true democracy in America? We need term limits for all political office holders. We need to repeal the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. We need to abolish private donations to political campaigns in favor for publicly funded campaigns. We need to revitalize grassroots politics and subsequently abolish our two predominant political parties. We need to abolish disproportionate representation (including the Senate and Electoral College).

With these steps and many more commonsense measures, America can recapture its democracy. Only so much of this can be achieved through political reform, though. It’s up to us, the American electorate, to recapture what’s left of our dying democracy. We need to start prioritizing political rights.

We need to pressure politicians to implement common sense campaign reform. Without drastic social reform and the political reform which will accompany it, our government will continue to exist as a democratic illusion. It’s entirely up to us.

Drew is an award-winning alcohol evangelist, recovering coffee addict, finger drumming enthusiast and big-time social justice guy. He loves receiving both fan and hate mail — send it his way at alischke@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

In defense of immorality Joe Nolan Inversions

When I was in high school, I had a sort of sexual revolution. For the first time in my life, doubt creeped into my mind about the religion I grew up with — maybe it’s all a lie. I had been a very chaste boy, but then chastity seemed arbitrary. The consequences do not need to be explicated in print. As happens with sexual experimentation, I learned.

Today I have a deeper appreciation of human sexuality and a more firm faith in God than that boy in an alternate universe who, fearing doubt’s insecurity and experiments’ inevitable punishment, clung to his hand-me-down tradition.

In the 1960s Marxists, feminists and minimalists rallied together to deconstruct the modernist fortress of universal formalism — the theory that underneath all the cultural shades and associations attached to art is the pure sound of line and color that everyone can appreciate, if they’re sensitive enough. They overthrew this formalism like a liberated underclass breaking free from the strictures of power… or, as Jed Perl’s “The Universal Eye” suggests, maybe more like a high schooler rebelling against a parent-imposed morality.

Perl’s fresh look at the art world before the anti-formalist revolution urges a revaluation of the celebrated coup d’état.

The anti-formalists, of course, champion the individual — marginalized perspectives, non-western approaches — who is purportedly steamrolled by a privileged method of viewing art. Perl points out the devastating photographic negative: silencing the objective aspect of art can only ‘save’ some individuals by censuring others. Perl’s middle-way approach — a sort of “both-and” for the subjective and objective elements of art — recovers spicy, heterodox formalists buried by postmodernity’s privileged historical narrative. Who

knew that an idealistic American expatriate like Ezra Pound could be an innovative formalist? Or that art’s objectivity was a given for a free-thinking lesbian like Vernon Lee? The anti-formalists, by their own protest, have excluded lesbians and political refugees. Has the 1960s norm-busting spirit really freed art, Perl asks, or merely changed the chains?

With Perl’s balanced reminder of the beauty inherent to form, identity-art’s messianic aspirations seem no more than the form of the new, if invisible, tyranny. If form does not speak, in some sense, objectively, then it is no more than a method of packaging. The form-content connection vital to art loses its luster, reified into a rationalized, though utterly dull, economy of delivery. We’ve heard this speech before.

Conservative political thinkers use yesterday’s morals to question the entire project of liberal democracy. Religious leaders call for “Benedict Options” to recover a metaphysical openness impossible in today’s cities. An entire aesthetic resurrects the glory of thick beards, honest mason jars and repurposed wood, while an ascendant superpower culls new life from an autocratic Orthodoxy of the past.

Humanity today stands shivering in the cold, unwarmed by a trustworthy tradition or worldview. Some stand boldly naked, but many reach to the past for insulation. The cries for tradition, the anxieties over contemporary rootlessness — these are not wrong, but they do not know why they are right. If these arguments succeed in restoring a little warmth for a dangerously exposed humanity, it is by pulling into sleeves of dead skin.

We have heard this speech before, and we are not convinced. Art’s formal libertinism is not merely an overcorrection of formal rigidity. Artists like Adrian Piper are responding even to the reasonable Vernon Lees and the Ezra Pounds. The reign of political art owes not to some inexplicable deafness to form. We cannot just chalk it up

to “these bewildering times.” It is a specific philosophical method undergirding Western culture that has required us to take off the dead skin of formalism. It is the absence of a reasonable objective framework (and the detritus of so many deconstructed frameworks) that has raised Piper’s cynicism as the boldly authentic voice of a generation, otherwise harried by the lulling coos of fraudulent, but safe, claims to objectivity.

Let the archaeologists of past ages damn today’s culture as aesthetically challenged or morally depraved. They may be right. But the authentic, questioning culture perseveres.

It refuses to fold, refuses to blindly take on the comforting yoke it does not understand. For better or worse, our culture has staked all its worth on “why?” No matter the pathos, neo-formalist artists will never grip the art world like Piper has. No matter how loud the trembling traditionalists sound the warning bell, we will not give up our project until all has been laid clear and distinct. No matter how unnatural and inconvenient this questioning is, it must be done.

In those regrettable years of adolescence, if I had stunted the course of my questioning because my dad scolded my promiscuity, I never would have learned the true meaning of chastity. I needed to be scolded, for sure. But to never ask why is to live under the low roof of pale proverbs we only half believe. For those interested in truth, we must doubt and experiment until the truth hits us in the face. But for those more interested in acting correctly than understanding what makes it correct, they can try to get comfortable with sad phrases like “modest is hottest.”

Joe Nolan is a struggling writer. If you have an extra meal swipe, please contact him at jnolan6@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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JOSEPH HAN | The Observer

The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

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JOSEPH HAN | The Observer

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DAILY

The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

Crossword | Will Shortz

Horoscope | Eugenia Last Happy Birthday: Travel, educational pursuits and getting in touch with who you are and what you want to do with the rest of your life should be priorities this year. Don’t let emotional baggage stand between you and your dreams.

Let go of the past, and head into the future with optimism and a sense of adventure. Personal gain is within reach. Your numbers are 7, 18, 20, 24, 35, 37, 42.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Don’t stop moving. You will do your best if you don’t have idle time to overanalyze what’s going on around you. Stay focused on your responsibilities and taking care of unfinished business. Avoid a run-in with a friend or relative.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): It’s up to you to assess your situation and make an adjustment if you aren’t happy with the way things are going. Take control and open up a dialogue with whoever is going to be affected by the action you take.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Emotions will surface if you feel you can’t trust someone. Don’t hesitate to take a step back from someone you have doubts about or who is showing signs of disinterest. Your intuition is working on your behalf; follow the signs.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Social events will open up a window of opportunity. Get out and meet and greet people who are doing things you want to pursue. Gather information, share your thoughts and begin the transformation required to follow your dream.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Be careful who you share information with. Not everyone will respect your privacy. Listen and observe what others do and say, and you’ll gain far more insight into how to proceed. Don’t take on more than you can handle.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Don’t let an emotional situation at home get you down. Look for the positive in whatever comes your way, and you’ll find a way to benefit. Personal improvements will make you feel good, and socializing will boost your confidence.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Make changes at home. Clear a space for a project you want to start or take time out to visit a friend or relatives you find comforting. A little encouragement will make a difference to the way you approach a pending problem.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Let the past be your guide to deciphering what’s going on in your personal life. If a situation appears to be unstable or untrustworthy, open up a discussion that will encourage whoever is involved to resolve matters once and for all.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Emotional situations will surface if you or someone you are dealing with isn’t being upfront about feelings, intentions and plans for the future. Ask pertinent questions, and own up to what you really want to see happen.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Make alterations that will improve your living space. The changes you institute should be conducive to making not only you happy, but also someone you love. A personal contract will put your mind at ease. Romance is encouraged.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Take a moment to consider what you can do to help someone without going into debt or being compromised emotionally, mentally or physically. What you do has to be a safe solution for you as well as for everyone else involved.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): An emotional question will weigh heavily on an important relationship if you or the other person cannot answer honestly.

It’s important to share your feelings, find out where you stand and make an adjustment to improve your life.

Birthday Baby: You are demonstrative, visionary and particular. You are reflective and demanding.

WINGin’ it | OLIVIA WANG & BAILEE EGAN

Sudoku | The Mepham Group

Jumble | David Hoyt and Jeff knurek

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Sports Authority

nfl | Saints 21, browns 18

Phillies’ collapse has a charm Peter Baltes Sports Writer

History holds many examples of tragic, unpleasant collapses. There was the global economy in 1929 and 2008. There was the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940. And, yes, there was the self-esteem of Jason Segel’s character towards the midpoint of 2011’s groundbreaking film The Muppets. All were certainly calamitous — perhaps the two former more so than the latter.

Chalk up what’s happened to the Philadelphia Phillies this past month-and-a-half as yet another such collapse.

On Sunday, August 5, the Phillies defeated the division rival Miami Marlins 5-3. The victory was Philadelphia’s second of the three-game series. The Phillies led the NL East Division by a gameand-a-half, and were tied for second place in the National League standings as a whole, trailing the Cubs by only one game.

A team that many had dismissed as too young and inexperienced appeared to have climbed into contention. They had made it past the All-Star break and still appeared to be thriving.

Since Sunday, August 5, the Phillies have won only one series. Their once-proud record has slipped to a paltry few games above .500, and a playoff appearance now seems very much out of the question. In a convoluted way, Philadelphia has ended up just about where most pundits and analysts placed them at the beginning of the year.

Full disclosure: I’m a Phillies fan. In spite of the near-constant losing as of late, I’ve continued following them closely. However, I don’t think that’s entirely linked to my being a fan of them, and it’s certainly not linked to me thinking they have any chance of coming back.

Regardless of the city, there’s just a certain captivating quality in watching a baseball team fall apart at the seams (no pun intended).

Because Major League Baseball has a 162-game regular season, there’s plenty of time for complex story arcs.

While leagues like the NHL and NBA might have a season that occupies more physical time than the MLB season, they contain significantly fewer games. In baseball, there’s less downtime for the media to dwell on the outcomes of individual games or make predictions for the

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future. Teams play almost every given day from May through at least September.

More so than in any other professional sport, the narrative of a baseball team’s season is dictated by what happens on the field, and not so much what happens off the field.

When a team’s fortunes go south, it seems to happen in slow motion. Sure, there’s plenty of games, but the games themselves move slowly. The result of each individual game means relatively little on its own, but the eventual weight of 20 losses in 30 games in the MLB feels so much heavier than, say, a team recording four losses in six games during the NFL season.

It’s the way the losses seem to avalanche that really makes it hard to ignore a serious collapse in baseball. A few losses occur here and there at the beginning; no one takes much notice. Games are cheap. A team that’s already doing well shouldn’t worry too much about losing a few games. But then there’s a moment when all the pieces come together, when a collapse becomes clearly apparent.

It’s when you’re sitting in the 400-level in a light drizzle and you watch the cellardwelling Mets obliterate your pitching staff by scoring 24 runs.

The fact that they’re so difficult to see at first just makes the team’s structural failure appear all the more pronounced once everyone is fully aware of it.

There’s something charming in watching a team maintain its same routine despite all signs pointing to a season falling apart. Batters stoically maintain the same warm-up ritual as they go one for thirty-one at the plate. Pitchers quietly keep winding up in the same exact motion over and over again with the same facial expression, even as they give up eight earned runs.

There are still the obligatory mascot races go on with the same pomp and fanfare. The 19th century etiquette and attitudes that never seem to change, the whole “this is fine” attitude that seems to permeate teams regardless of circumstances. The absurd futility of it all is simply captivating. In a way, it’s comical.

But, It still sucks when it’s your team.

Contact Peter Baltes at pbaltes@nd.edu The views expressed in this Sports Authority are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Saints narrowly prolong Browns’ winless streak Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints needed less than 10 minutes to obliterate what looked like a milestone victory for the seemingly cursed Cleveland Browns.

Wil Lutz kicked a 44-yard field goal with 21 seconds left, Cleveland kicker Zane Gonzalez pushed the second of his two missed field goals wide right in the final seconds, and the Saints held on for a 21-18 victory that extended the Browns’ winless streak to 19 games.

“These are games that we find we find our identity a little bit,” Brees said, alluding to New Orleans’ inability to score more than three points until the first of Michael Thomas’ two touchdown catches with 8:41 to go. “These are games that, hey, you didn’t have your best stuff, but you found a way.”

With the help of another Cleveland collapse.

Gonzalez also missed two extra points, one week after

his potential winning field goal was blocked in a seasonopening tie with Pittsburgh.

His final miss came from 52 yards.

“It snowballed,” Gonzalez said, acknowledging the psychological effect of earlier misses that he hooked left before pushing his final kick the other way. “I was overcompensating. I get paid to make those kicks and I have to make them.”

Gonzalez’s tough day represented only a portion of Cleveland’s implosion. Defensive back Derrick Kindred’s illegal contact penalty on what would have been a third-down sack extended New Orleans’ first touchdown drive, which ended with Thomas’ 2-yard catch and cut Cleveland’s lead to 12-10.

With just less than five minutes left, Saints safety Marcus Williams intercepted Tyrod Taylor in Cleveland territory on a pass Taylor threw back over the middle as he was rolling to his right.

“You never want to throw late down the middle,” Taylor

said. “That’s something I need to be better at. That play was not good for us. You can’t put your team in that situation.”

The turnover led to New Orleans’ second TD on a 5-yard fade to Thomas, who said he was determined to make up for his fumble earlier in the game. Thomas outjumped two defenders to make the catch.

“Enough was enough,” Thomas said. “I needed to respond and help my teammates, and that’s what I did.

And I still owe them.”

Brees finished 28 for 35 for 243 yards and two TDs for New Orleans (1-1). Thomas caught 12 passes for 89 yards.

Taylor was 22 of 30 for 246 yards, one TD and one interception. Jarvis Landry had five catches for 69 yards, and Carlos Hyde scored on a 1-yard TD run.

It wasn’t enough for the Browns (0-1-1), who were very close to starting 2-0.

“It’s tough, but we got a lot of football left to play,” Landry said.

nfl | jaguars 31, patriots 20

Bortles throws four TDs, leads Jaguars over Patriots Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Blake Bortles threw four touchdown passes, three in the first half, and the Jacksonville Jaguars beat Tom Brady and the New England Patriots 3120 Sunday in a rematch of last season’s AFC championship game.

Bortles connected with Donte Moncrief, Keelan Cole and Austin Seferian-Jenkins for scores in the first 30 minutes, the second time he’s done that in his NFL career. Bortles completed 29 of 45 passes for 377 yards, with the four TDs and an interception. It was the best game of his five-year career.

It was the Jaguars’ first win over Brady. They entered the game 0-8 against the Patriots quarterback.

The Patriots (1-1) trailed 24-3 in the third quarter before finally showing signs of life. But Dante Fowler, returning from a one-game suspension, stripped Brady for one

game-changing play, and second-year receiver Dede Westbrook added another to seal the victory.

Westbrook took a short pass on a crossing route, made one defender miss and then outran another down the sideline for a 61-yard score. He got a key block from Cole.

Cole finished with seven receptions for 117 yards and a score. He made a spectacular, one-handed catch on Jacksonville’s second drive and beat Eric Rowe for a 24yard touchdown three plays later.

Jacksonville led 14-0 at that point, but unlike the game eight months ago — which had much more at stake, of course — coach Doug Marrone didn’t sit on the lead.

The Jaguars (2-0) kept throwing even with an 11-point lead in the final minutes of the game. They now have their best start since 2006.

Marrone was widely criticized for getting conservative in the title game. The Patriots

trailed 20-10 in the fourth quarter of that one before rallying to win 24-20 and get to the Super Bowl.

Brady never looked comfortable in the rematch. He completed 24 of 35 passes for 235 yards and two touchdowns, both to Chris Hogan. He was sacked twice.

No Fournette The Jaguars improved to 4-0 in two seasons without running back Leonard Fournette.

Fournette sat out while recovering from a sore right hamstring he tweaked in the season opener at the New York Giants.

T.J. Yeldon started in his place and ran 10 times for 58 yards.

Ground gains Patriots rookie Sony Michel, a first-round draft pick from Georgia, carried 10 times for 33 yards in his NFL debut.

Michel is expected to give New England some much-needed help in its running attack.

The Observer accepts classifieds every business day from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Notre Dame office, 024 South Dining Hall. Deadline for next-day classifieds is 3 p.m. All classifieds must be prepaid. The charge is 5 cents per character per day, including all spaces. The Observer reserves the right to edit all classifieds for content without issuing refunds.

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Volleyball Continued from page 16

After getting out to an early 8-4 lead the Irish never looked back as they took the third set, 25-19 — Michigan’s first set loss of the season.

The Irish carried their momentum into the fourth set as they once again jumped out to an early lead. But this time the Wolverines would come back to tie things up at 12 all before ultimately taking both the set and the match 25-19.

Junior Jemma Yeadon let the team in kills with 15 and added 11 digs and two blocks for a double-double. Freshmen Charley Niego and Sydney Bent both finished with their first career double-double’s while also both setting career highs for kills in a match. Niego had 13 kills and added 14 digs to go along with two blocks. With Bent also finished with 13 kills, 12 digs, 3 assists and 2 blocks.

Senior Ryann Dejarld contribution of 20 digs allowed her to surpass 2,000 digs for her in her career. The most in program history.

Notre Dame will look to get back into the win column when they begin conference play this Friday as the travel to Chapel Hill to take on North Carolina at 6:30 p.m.

ANNIE SMIERCIAK | The Observer

Irish freshman outside hitter Charlie Niego, left, spikes the ball during Notre Dame’s 3-1 loss to Michigan on Sunday at Purcell Pavilion. Niego recorded 14 digs and 13 kills for the Irish in the match, good for her first career double-double. She has a total of 84 digs and 85 kills this season.

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The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

M Soccer Continued from page 16

is work on some things that we don’t get to train whenever we’re playing two games a week. It gave us a chance to have some teaching sessions that we wouldn’t have had,” Riley said. “Again, while we always want to play and compete, the postponement of the Virginia game gave us an opportunity for another couple of days of training to work on things that we wanted to [train for] that we might not have [done] if we played the Virginia game.”

The Spartans are a well-oiled machine, fifth in the nation in scoring offense, with an average of 2.67 goals per game.

Michigan State also ranks first in the nation in assists per game with 3.83. Riley acknowledged Michigan State is a good, balanced team.

“I think [Michigan State are] a pretty balanced team,” he said. “They’ve got good players going forward, they got a couple of good attacking players, and they’re a smart defensive team. They’re not going to try and beat themselves by mistake so, we’re going to have to play well. They’re a balanced, veteran team, that plays well on both sides of the ball.”

The Irish have only trailed once so far this season (against Indiana last week), and have had more rest than the Spartans, and lead the all-time series against Michigan State 17-7-6. Furthermore, Riley said the Irish are very good

Sports

at pressing their opponents and are a dangerous team in transition.

“I think our pressing is quite good, so [Michigan State will] want to figure out the weaknesses in our pressing,” Riley said. “They want to deal with us in transition, I think we’re a dynamic team when we win the ball and get forward quickly. And then I think we try to be a very good team in the flanks so, they’ll try to make sure they’re solid, defensively, in those areas.”

While the Irish are ranked top-10 in the United Coaches Poll, coach Riley said the poll that’s most important to the team is the NCAA Men’s Soccer RPI ranking. These current early non-RPI polls aren’t of much concern to the team, Riley said.

“With this group, they’ve been in and around the top-10, top-20, most of their career,” he “They really understand that at the end of the day, the ranking we really concern ourselves about is the RPI. That hasn’t been officially released yet. It’s always nice to be recognized and ranked in the top-10 but, I think the team has matured to realize those are great things and we’d rather be ranked than not ranked but, we’re more concerned about getting results and the RPI ranking as that gets released.”

Riley said the team is still finding itself, but by the end of September or early October, Irish fans can expect to see the best the team can offer.

CONNERY McFADDEN | The Observer

Contact Charlie Ortega-Guifarro at cortegag@nd.edu

Irish senior defender Felicien Dumas tries to juke a defender during Notre Dame’s 2-1 loss to Indiana on Tuesday at Alumni Stadium. Dumas is responsible for half of the team’s eight assists so far this season.

CONNERY McFADDEN | The Observer

Irish senior forward Ian Aschieris leaps to head the ball during Notre Dame’s 2-1 overtime loss to Indiana on Tuesday at Alumni Stadium. Aschieris recorded his first career goal during a 2-0 victory over Dartmouth on Sept. 2. The No. 8 Irish will face another difficult test when No. 4 Michigan State comes to South Bend on Monday.

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ndsmcobserver.com | monday, september 17, 2018 | The Observer

XC Continued from page 16

EMMA FARNAN | The Observer

Irish senior Rachel DaDamio competes in the championship 5,000-meter race at the National Catholic Invitational at Burke Golf Course on Friday. DaDamio finished fourth, behind three of her teammates.

Everett Continued from page 16

improving or growing worse and a team and as a program.

That measurement will come in the form of the Joe Piane Invitational in two weeks on the same course where the Irish mowed down the competition this Friday — only with much better and nationally ranked competition by their side this time around.

The Joe Piane Invitational attracts many of the top teams from around the country every year such as Colorado, New Mexico, Air Force and Southern Utah, and that reality usually results in Notre Dame getting more or less run over on its home course. Last year, the women finished 13th while the men came in 17th. The year before, the women finished eighth while the men finished 25th. Back in 2012?

The men’s team finished third while the women’s team finished second. Even in 2015 the women’s team finished fifth with then-star freshman Anna Rohrer joining Irish cross-country legend Molly Seidel.

This is all to say that the Irish haven’t been seriously competitive at the Joe

Piane Invitational in quite a few years as the program has been unable to sustain that level of success on the national stage. If new head coach Matt Sparks wants to build this program back into the national powerhouse it once was, then the team will have to start showing up at the big-time meets and beating nationally-ranked teams in preparation for ACCs and Nationals at the end of the season.

But perhaps I’ve made a false start and jumped the gun. One doesn’t simply build a national powerhouse overnight, just as one can’t become a great distance runner overnight. It takes time, practice and patience.

And, to be fair, there were a lot of positive signs to take away from Notre Dame’s performance at the National Catholic Invitational. On the women’s side, Annie Heffernan led the way to her third straight victory at the National Catholic, and she was followed by two freshmen in second and third place — Jacqueline Gaughan and Elana Denner.

Together with senior Rachel DaDamio’s fourth place finish and the eventual return of star senior Anna Rohrer — who did not compete at the National Catholic

Heffernan who is now a threetime champion. We knew coming, in with the womens team being nationally ranked that we were in a good position to succeed” The top five Irish runners all placed in the top ten.

Senior Annie Heffernan led the Irish women in the 5,000 meter race, coming in first overall with a time of 17:24, marking her third straight victory at the meet. Freshmen Jacqueline Gaughan and Elana Denner were close behind in second and third with times of 17:27 and 17:28 respectively. Senior Rachel DaDamio placed fourth with a time of 17:38 and sophomore Annasophia Keller rounded out the Irish top five, coming in at eighth place with a time of 17:58. Freshman Kelli Reagan and sophomore Claudia Magnussen placed in the top-15 for the Irish as well, and sophomore Erin Sullivan finished first in the Open Race.

On the men’s side, the Irish took first as well, reclaiming their top spot after disappointing results in previous years. Sparks praised the team for rebounding from last year.

“We struggled in this race for the last couple years but came out with a new intensity,” Sparks said. “The seniors stepped up and raced like the

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veterans we expected them to be. The freshmen, one of the top recruiting classes in the country, stepped up … and adjusted well. For many of them this was their first collegiate race”.

The five scoring runners for the men all placed in the top10. Senior Anthony Williams came in first for Notre Dame and second overall in the 8,000 meter race, recording a time of 24:47. Junor Kevin Salvano followed up at third, clocking in at 24:56. Sophomore Yared Nuguse placed fourth at 25:02, sophomore Andrew Alexander came in sixth with a time of 25:05 and junior Tyler Keslin came in fifth for the Irish and 10th overall, finishing with a time of 25:15.

Freshman Zach Kreft, sophomore Brian Griffith, junior Dustin Macuiba and sophomore Vince Zona all placed in the top-20 for the Irish as well.

Coach Sparks lauded the team as a whole for their energy and response to difficulty and unfavorable weather.

“We had depth, others stepped up and filled those leadership roles, with people being sick and with the heat,” Sparks said.

The Irish look to continue their success when they compete at their next meet, again at Burke Golf Course, on Friday, Sept. 28, where they will host the Joe Piane invitational.

Contact Michael Everett at meverett@nd.edu

Invitational — the Irish will have a deep and talented group of runners that will be scoring at meets, with sophomore Annasophia Keller continuously pushing that group to be the best it can be. If they can stay healthy, Friday’s near-perfect-score performance is a great indicator of things to come.

On the men’s side, they finally have the combination of great depth and quality talent. Even with some members of the team sick, the Irish still placed four members in the top six, led by senior Anthony Williams. Even if the men’s team is still catching up to the women’s, they’re definitely trending in the right direction. The men’s team didn’t even win the National Catholic Invitational last year — narrowly edged by Dayton — so the victory is in and of itself an improvement.

So yes, Notre Dame still needs to prove itself on the biggest stage and cultivate enough confidence to compete with the best teams, but Friday’s performance was another step in that direction.

Contact Joe Everett at jeveret4@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

EMMA FARNAN | The Observer

Irish freshman Anna Fischer nears the finish line of the 5,000-meters at the National Catholic Invitational on Friday at Burke Golf Course.

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The observer | Monday, September 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

ND cross country | national catholic invitational

Irish squads grab victories hosting first event ND finishes in first place for 12thconsecutive year

Team will face first real test at Joe Piane Invitational

By MICHAEL EVERETT

Joe Everett

Sports Writer

Sports Editor

The Notre Dame men’s and women’s cross country teams competed at Burke Golf Course on Friday as they hosted catholic schools across the country for the National Catholic Invitational. Both the men and women took first place overall, with many individual top-place finishers.

The women ran a nearly perfect race, accumulating a total of 18 points from their top five runners, crowning what is now their 12th consecutive victory at the annual invite.

“On the womens team we had a lot of younger athletes step up and perform well,” head coach Matt Sparks said.

“They raced liked veterans. We had good leadership among seniors like Annie see XC PAGE 15

EMMA FARNAN | The Observer

Irish senior Annie Heffernan races at the National Catholic Invitational on Friday at Burke Golf Course.

Heffernan took first in the women’s championship 5,000-meters, and both Irish teams placed first overall.

Notre Dame heads home for top-10 matchup

By CHARLIE ORTEGAGUIFARRO

Irish lose series to No. 19 Michigan Observer Sports Staff

Sports Writer

see M SOCCER PAGE 14

see EVERETT PAGE 15

nd volleyball | Michigan 3, nd 0; michigan 3, nd 1

ND men’s soccer

Following a postponed match against Virginia, Notre Dame sets its eyes on a tough home match against Michigan State. The No. 8 Irish (3-1-1) will face a Spartan team that is 5-0-2 and ranked No. 4.

Due to the threat Hurricane Florence, Friday’s away game at Virginia was cancelled, but head coach Chad Riley stated the two schools are working on figuring out a makeup date for that game and that the date, or lack thereof, will be announced later this week.

In the meanwhile, coach Riley said that the Irish used the few extra days of training to work on things the team typically is unable to do during two-game weeks.

“Usually the day before, we’ll start doing some things geared towards Michigan State but, really what [the game’s postponement] enabled us to do

While the Irish should certainly be pleased with their performance Friday afternoon at the National Catholic Invitational, to put it in running terms, this was more of a warmup then an actual race.

Because the true test for this young Irish team under the leadership of first-year head coach Matt Sparks is coming up next.

I’m not trying to disparage the Irish winning their 12th consecutive National Catholic Invitational — it’s quite an accomplishment — but once you’ve won something 12 times in a row, it’s obvious that you need a separate measurement to truly seeing whether you’re

CONNERY McFADDEN | The Observer

Irish junior midfielder Jack Casey looks upfield to pass during Notre Dame’s 2-1 loss to Indiana on Tuesday at Alumni Stadium.

In their final game before conference play, Notre Dame took on No.19 Michigan in a home-and-home series over the weekend. Friday night’s contest in Ann Arbor, Michigan saw the Irish (6-4) jump out to an early 8-3 lead thanks, in part, to a 7-1 run. With the offense clicking Notre Dame would propel themselves to a 17-11 lead before Michigan (11-0) would call a timeout. Following the timeout the tides would turn as the Wolverines clawed their way back into the contest, going on a 14-5 run before taking the Opening set 25-22.

The second set saw some competitive back and forth action in the early going as the teams traded points. Tied at 16, the Wolverines began to pull away, going on a 9-1 run to close out the second set 25-17 and take a 2-0 set lead over the Irish.

The third set would be a mirror image of the second set, as once again both teams traded points with each other before Michigan would pull away.

The Wolverines finished off the Irish on an 11-5 run to complete the sweep and take the first match of the home and home series.

Freshmen outside hitter Charley Niego and junior outside hitter Jemma Yeadon combined for 17 kills, while senior libero Ryann Dejarld added 19 digs to go along with freshmen Setter Zoe Nunez’s 27 assists during the match.

Sunday’s contest at the Joyce Center would begin just as the opening set did on Friday with the Irish coming out hot early opening on a 7-3 run. Michigan then responded to knot things up at 9 apiece. The two teams would continue to battle it out before the Wolverines ultimately took the first set 25-20.

The second set showed each team’s competitive nature as they both continued to trade points with each other. It wasn’t until late in the second set when Michigan was able to find a way to edge out the Irish 25-23 to take the second set. see VOLLEYBALL PAGE 12

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range once again. Yoon launched a 46-yard kick through the uprights to give the Irish a 16-0 lead with 1:15 left in the first half.

With the kick, Yoon took sole possession of second place on Notre Dame’s all-time scoring list with 297 points. He is now the highest-scoring placekicker in Notre Dame history.

Vanderbilt put together a strong drive at the end of the first half, marching down to the Irish 3-yard line. Shurmur tossed a pass into the end zone that fell incomplete, and junior kicker Ryley Guay converted a 21-yard field goal to get on the board as time expired.

Through the first half of play, the Irish racked up 247 yards compared to Vanderbilt’s 180 yards.

The running game was effective as the Irish gathered 163 yards while averaging six yards per rush.

Vanderbilt received the ball to start the second half and put together another strong drive before stalling near the Irish 30-yard line.

Guay pushed his 43-yard field goal attempt left of the uprights, keeping the deficit at 13 points.

The Notre Dame offense was sluggish to begin the third quarter.

After the missed Vanderbilt field goal, the Irish were forced to punt after a 7-play drive managed only 16 yards.

Everett Continued from page 1

that’s looking to knock someone out every time — the Irish are the fighter that’s just looking to make it to bell, having laid a couple more punches than its opponent.

At least right now.

“There’s things we’ve got to work on,” Irish head coach Brain Kelly said postgame. “It’s the third game of the season. If you’re a finished product after game three, you know, you’re destined for greatness, and we’re not there yet. We’re not destined for greatness. “ … We’re still evolving. I mean, I’d like to say we’re a finished product, we’re just not.”

A quarter of the regular season has passed, and it’s pretty clear that Notre Dame is not a heavyhitter like it was last season, at least not on offense. Gone are star playmakers on the offensive line, in the backfield and in the receiving core. Last year’s team was a heavyweight hitter that liked to knock out teams early (see Temple, Boston College, Michigan State, Miami (OH), North Carolina, USC and North Carolina State).

The Irish played their best ball in the beginning and middle sections of the season, then started to crumble in November. However, what that team also started to learn was how to win hard-fought, close games (Navy and LSU come to mind immediately). That grit and that ability to just win are starting to define this 2018 campaign.

“Look, you see us early on in three games — we’re not going to beat you 52-3,” Kelly said. “We’re going to grind it out. We’re going

ndsmcobserver.com | monday, September 17, 2018 | The Observer

Vanderbilt began its drive at its own 13-yard line but quickly found itself on Notre Dame’s end of the field. Shurmur unleashed a deep pass toward the end zone, but the ball came up just short and was intercepted by Pride in the end zone and returned to the 1-yard line.

The Irish were unable to generate any offense after the turnover and was forced to punt after only three plays.

Following the Irish punt, the Commodores started their drive with strong field position at the Irish 47-yard line. Vanderbilt required only five plays to drive into the Irish end zone and cut the deficit to 16-10 at the end of the third quarter.

Following the Commodore touchdown, the Irish offense rediscovered its rhythm. Wimbush led the Irish down the field and converted a fourth down on a quarterback sneak to the Vanderbilt 2-yard line. Irish junior quarterback Ian Book capped the drive with a 2-yard touchdown pass to graduate student tight end Nic Weishar.

Facing a 12-point deficit, Shurmur led his team down the field with some help from Irish miscues. On fourth down at the Notre Dame 41-yard-line, Vanderbilt had to travel eight yards to convert. An incomplete pass from Shurmur seemed to end the Commodores’ drive, but a defensive pass-interference call on Pride gave Vanderbilt new life.

The Commodores found the end zone on an 18-yard pass from Shurmur to redshirt-junior wide receiver Jared Pinkney, cutting the deficit to 22-17 midway through the fourth quarter.

After a rare missed field goal from Yoon, Vanderbilt was back in business. Facing a fourth down at midfield, Shurmur fired a pass that fell incomplete, but a pass interference call against junior cornerback Donte Vaughn kept the drive alive for the Commodores.

Vanderbilt reached the Irish 31yard line before confronting another fourth down. Needing four yards to convert, Shurmur released a pass for junior wide receiver Kalija Lipscomb. Junior Irish defensive back Jalen Elliott followed Lipscomb the whole way and broke up the pass, effectively ending Vanderbilt’s night and sealing Notre Dame’s 22-17 victory.

“Jalen made a good play,” Gilman said. “We were drilling hard this week on what we can do to finish; finish in the fourth quarter and just finish in general. … In tough situations we were able to execute and make plays.”

Despite offensive deficiencies and defensive penalties, the Irish stepped up to make a critical stop in the fourth quarter, leaving them undefeated as they head into their matchup with Wake Forest.

to play tough, hard-nosed, bluecollared football.”

It’s not pretty football. It’s not going to earn style points. But it gets the job done, and the ability to win, in and of itself, is a skill that deserves more praise than it gets in a sport that demands so much and forgives so little.

“I’m excited — I think we’re all pumped up and very happy because we’re 3-0,” junior cornerback Julian Love said. “We’re showing our toughness and showing our grit. It’s hard to win in college football and we’re just happy that we’re doing it.”

On a day where No. 6 Wisconsin fell to BYU, No. 7 Auburn fell to No. 12 LSU and where Florida State got absolutely smacked by Syracuse, the Irish are still sitting pretty by winning ugly.

“It feels great [to be 3-0],” graduate student linebacker and captain Drue Tranquill said. “That’s the goal in college football: to win, to be 12-0 at the end of the season.

Another step towards our goal. We talk about each and every week, it’s a faceless opponent, and that’s the team that’s trying to keep us from our goal of a national championship, so we were able to get the win this week and we’ve got a tough opponent in Wake Forest next week.”

Now, Notre Dame is by no means a national title contender at its current level of play. To do that, it has to sustain the mindset of a heavyweight all the way through the fight, which Tranquill and the Irish understand.

“We haven’t finished well defensively, offensively is probably the same way ... but we gotta be able to come off the ropes in the fourth quarter and put out our

opponents,” Tranquill said. “You can’t ever take a play off in college football — the second you feel comfortable with a lead, especially here at Notre Dame when you play good teams week in and week out, they’re going to find a way to put points on the board and get back in the ball game, so just like a boxer, as the rounds go on you can’t just come off the ropes complacent, you gotta come off the ropes ready to knock your opponent out.”

So yes, Tranquill and the Irish aren’t heavyweights yet, and while that’s frustrating for many, there’s also the optimism that the Irish haven’t peaked yet. While Kelly’s teams have traditionally faltered as the season progresses, could this be a team that steadily improves and peaks at the right time?

Maybe, but one thing’s for certain: This Notre Dame team attacks adversity, and while it needs a lot of improvement, it showed a lot of improvement against Vanderbilt. Thanks to its toughness and ability to attack adversity — its ability to take a hit and keep moving forward — this Notre Dame team is still alive through three rounds.

“There were certain situations that didn’t go our way today, but we didn’t flinch — we said ‘alright, let’s bow up and let’s compete,’” Love said. “Defense, offense, special teams — we were all battling and throwing punches together.”

Scoring Summary 1

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

Total

0 10

3 6

7 0

7 6

17 22

Notre Dame 3, Vanderbilt 0 Justin Yoon 26-yard field goal

11:02

remaining Drive: 10 plays, 74 yards 3:58 elapsed

NOTRE DAME 10, Vanderbilt 0

Brandon Wimbush 12-yard run (Yoon kick)

0:58

remaining Drive: 15 plays, 94 yards, 5:21 elapsed

2

NOTRE DAME 13, vanderbilt o Yoon 33-yard field goal

7:33

remaining Drive: Six plays, 49 yards 1:10 elapsed

Notre Dame 16, Vanderbilt 0 Yoon 46-yard field goal

1:15

remaining Drive: 10 plays, 51 yards, 3:55 elapsed

Notre dame 16, vanderbilt 3 Ryley Guay 21-yard field goal

0:00

remaining Drive: Eight plays, 72 yards, 1:15 elapsed

3

Notre Dame 16, vanderbilt 10

Ke’Shawn Vaughn 3-yard run (Guay kick)

0:11

Contact Ryan Kolakowski at rkolakow@nd.edu

Contact Joe Everett at jeveret4@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

19 3

remaining Drive: Five plays, 47 yards, 2:44 elapsed

4

NOTRE DAME 22, vanderbilt 10

Nic Weishar 2-yard pass from Ian Book (two-point pass coversion failed)

11:04

remaining Drive: 11 plays, 75 yards, 4:07 elapsed

NOTRE DAME 22, Ball State 17

Jared Pinkney 18-yard pass from Kyle Shurmur (Guay kick)

7:22

remaining Drive: Nine plays, 75 yards, 3:42 elapsed

statistics

RUSHING yards

245

95

PASSING yards 135 326

total yards 380 420

Follow us on Twitter. @ObserverSports

4

Insider

The observer | monday, september 17, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com

EMMA FARNAN | The Observer

Irish junior safety Alohi Gilman lays out Vanderbilt tight end Jared Pinkney during Notre Dame’s 22-17 win over the Commodores on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium. Gilman had six tackles during the game and a crucial forced fumble late in the first half to keep Vanderbilt off the board. The junior has 22 total tackles over three games this season.

Making plays when it matters

Once again, Notre Dame went up early, pushing the lead to 16-0 over Vanderbilt in the second quarter. But after halftime, the Irish struggled to find success offensively, and the Commodores came storming back to cut the lead to 22-17 with seven minutes left in the fourth. But thanks to a some key plays defensively, including a forced fumble and an interception, the Irish held on.

MICHELLE MEHELAS | The Observer

Irish junior safety Jalen Elliott follows the ball during Notre Dame’s 22-17 win over Vanderbilt.

ZACHARY YIM | The Observer

MICHELLE MEHELAS | The Observer

Irish senior linebacker Te’von Coney attempts to pressure quarterback Kyle Shurmur during Notre Dame’s 22-17 win on Saturday.

Irish safety Jalen Elliott, right, and linebacker Drue Tranquill call out assignments on Saturday.

EMMA FARNAN | The Observer

The Irish special teams unit attempts to block a field goal during Notre Dame’s victory on Saturday.

ZACHARY YIM | The Observer

Irish junior cornerback Troy Pride Jr. celebrates his interception during Notre Dame’s 22-17 win.