Welcome to this episode of the shamrock. I'm Pete Sampson, joined as always by Matt Fortuna. Special guest today, Aaron Suttles, Alabama Beat Writer for The Athletic. Pretty good, comprehensive, deep dive into the Crimson Tide program, good, bad, and indifferent. Obviously, a lot of good, not much bad, mild amount of indifferent. But Matt, I guess as we sort of worn around the possibility of Notre Dame and Alabama and,

you know, could there be an upset, could they're not.

Now that I'm back at my house and no longer in the South Bend Regional Airport's Business Center,

I can't say that I've really changed my opinion from the first one, that this feels like

a hell of a mountain for Notre Dame to climb on January 1.

I think that's a fair opinion.

It's an accurate opinion.

I would say I understand it.

So again, I don't say this to criticize, but I've just never seen a team in the seven-year playoff era where, and again, they're the only team to ever get in coming off a loss, but I've just never seen a team, a fan base, everyone just so down and dejected. Like, what are we even doing this for? And I know the people in the locker room probably don't think that way.

They better not think that way.

But there's just so little hype and momentum around this game right now

for a game with national championship implications that I just scratched my head a little bit.

I mean, I just can't.

I mean, maybe Oklahoma last year as they went into play that really good LSU team and we saw what happened.

But the lack of excitement is just, it scares me a little.

I don't know.

I mean, it wasn't anywhere near this level last year going into the Georgia game, but there was a sense of like, oh, God, what an NERDame get itself into going into Athens in the middle of regular season.

You know, they haven't looked that good so far, blah, blah, blah.

Louisville ran the ball on them.

And last I checked, they had the ball in Georgia territory with a chance to win the game on the last drive.

Is that Georgia team, this Alabama team?

No, but I just think we, all of us need to

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