needed about 23 minutes of quality football tonight in Atlanta,

but needed the full 60 to offset the power of the national champion Ohio State Buckeyes,

falling 34 to 23 after putting itself in a 31 to 7 hole with a very difficult first half.

I'm Tim O'Malley with Tim Preister, Verrich, Illustrated, and John Bryce

of Football Scoop, and guys, we talked on instant analysis that you can't let Ohio State

take it to you for that long and expect things to go perfectly in the second half. I don't

even fought the good fight, but in the end, it just wasn't enough. And Ohio State, the best team

in college football won tonight. And it really wasn't even the entire first half.

I mean, Notre Dame couldn't have asked for a better tone setting drive to open the game. And that was

an 18-play drive that lapsed nearly 10 minutes of game clock. It lapsed more than 12 minutes of actual

clock time.

That was time that Ohio State's offense couldn't get on the field.

But then you're right.

The next 20 to 25 minutes of game time were debilitating for Notre Dame.

And I made the same comment you did.

Ohio State made it look so easy on its first couple of scoring drives,

and then Ohio State had a 14-0 edge in the middle eight. First time all year that Notre Dame

lost the middle eight and lost it emphatically. Yeah, Notre Dame had in their first drive,

in the 18-play drive, they had six plays that were either third or fourth down.

So they had to go to the well.

And they succeeded.

It was a tremendous drive.

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