Disappointment. That’s what it is more than anything else.
Notre Dame entered the Cotton Bowl as 13 point underdogs, so going in the idea of losing isn’t exactly farfetched. But, if you’ve watched them all year, as most of us have, we know what their best game is. We know what they are capable of doing. And that wasn’t it.
The problem is, I could sub out the words “Cotton Bowl” above and insert the Orange Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl and the rest would still be true. For the third time in the Kelly era, Notre Dame brought a very good team to a major bowl game and left looking like an 8-4 club.