This is Irish Illustrated Insider.

I'm Tim Priester with Tim O'Malley and Pete Sampson.

It's Thursday, September 4th, 1st.

We're a little bit more than 48 hours away from number five, Notre Dame at number two, Ohio State.

The Irish are still 17.5.

Underdogs.

We've kicked this around for eight months now. Gentlemen, your thoughts as we're within a couple days of these two teams finally

doing battle in Ohio Stadium. Eight months is a good point because it sort of seems like people

can talk themselves into a lot of things over this eight month period. People come back and forth on what to expect from Ohio State's passing game to what their Ohio State's passing

game might be missing to what Notre Dame can do and can't do. And we, uh, we need to see the game

more than before, more than ever before. Other than this is easily the most hyped, anticipated

opener because I don't remember Michigan being quite like this,

right? There's just so many more elements to this with the new head coach too. I think the new head

coach is probably part of that. We used to say that Brian Kelly, even with his success late,

it was one of those things where like, ah, well, if it's not the Michigan game, people aren't

showing up as much in Notre Dame Stadium. But maybe it's the, maybe it was the big offseason

change and the distaste for the former coach. It just seems like this has been the biggest buildup

and thus longest build up, I can recall. Well, I think people know the score in college football

now. It's it's Alabama. It's Georgia. it's ohio state like those are the teams at the top

of the food chain and nondon probably gets more shots to test themselves against those programs

than you would think um based on some of the playoff appearances and the acc championship games so but

at most you're getting you know a year, once every other year.

...