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joined as always have a mat for tunit today a special guest you'll probably recognize them from the

sideline report from scott's stadium on on saturday night who is definitely more appropriately

dressed than matter i for the conditions um tom lugin bill from espn a bc tom thanks for uh

hopping on the podcast with us um yeah mostly i just i want to start with just sort of the experience

on saturday night i think it was the first time you would called a notre dame game um or you know

been sideline for a nondon game what would you sort of take out of that experience and sort of interacting and being around the program? Well, if you remember, the actual other one that I did was Hurricane Matthew on the road against NC State. So you guys were noting about my sideline. I don't know. I don't know how I blocked that out. I'm not sure how I could ever forget that game. I know. So you noticed my sideline attire, and I've learned my lesson. I can tell you, and on that night back, or it wasn't even at night, but it was so dark, it seemed like it was a night. It was a noon kick. On that day, that was the day that Gortex was defeated, Truly defeated on that particular day.

So I knew it was going to be a little bit cool on the sideline,

more a nice warm coat list.

I think that it was one of those environments where the road team was very, very quickly

able to take the environment out.

You know, you guys were standing back in that corner when I was visiting with you. And that student section that was filling in on the grassy knoll was really rambunctious, really loud. Notre Dame was able to stay out of that area. They didn't get backed up inside their own five. They didn't get backed up inside their own tan continually. So they controlled the crowd, took the crowd out of it.

And then as you guys noticed, as the game started to get away from Virginia,

people just started dispersing out of the stadium.

And it really almost became a little bit more like a scrimmage atmosphere

where Notre Dame could control all of the elements.

Tom, what were your impressions of this team up close? I mean, I think, you know, everyone do. There's a reason the line kept growing when Brendan Armstrong was out, Notre Dame was going to be the heavily favored team. But at least for me and Pete, I mean, we're there on the sideline pregame. We see Myron talking about Lamos out, Drew Whiteout, we're like, shoot,

they're down four captains. This isn't the deepest defense in the world. Maybe this will be more of a game than we thought it would be, and it obviously wasn't. Yeah, you know, they caught Virginia. And actually, Brian Kelly in our postgame interview, he stated that, you know, he goes, we didn't get a chance to catch Virginia with their best player on the field. He acknowledged it. He was right.

And that changed everything. It really. He goes, we didn't get a chance to catch Virginia with their best player on the field.

He acknowledged it.

He was right.

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