Welcome to the latest episode of the shamrock. I'm Pete Sampson, joined by Matt Fortuna, our Notre Dame Alabama preview edition of the podcast.

We've got special guest, Chip Long, coming up in a minute here, former Notre Dame Alabama preview edition of the podcast. We've got special guest, Chip Long,

coming up in a minute here, former Notre Dame offense quarter now at Tulane, played against Alabama this year, is very knowledgeable of the Crimson Tide program in Nick Saban.

I think you'll have a, it'll be a fairly enlightening interview on some of the things to look for on Friday and then also sort of his time at Notre Dame.

But Matt, I guess, is we're pretty much done with media access for Notre Dame this week and Alabama.

Have you changed your personal tenor of this game at all in the last 72 hours?

Not really.

It was good to hear from people inside the Goog because they live a very isolated existence,

especially right now, as they should.

If they were listening to this podcast and others like it, why even show up, right?

Like, I mean, to hear different players over the past couple days give their takes on the underdog status was interesting. I mean, you have Kyron Williams saying like, you know, we've been underdogs our life, blah, blah, blah, like, you know, we got that chip on our shoulder. And then you've got Liam Eichenberg was like, dude, Alabama get blown out the last time they were in the title game, which probably didn't go over so well on social media, but what does. So it's been interesting to hear the differing perspectives. Good to hear from coordinators. We haven't gotten to speak to publicly all year. And look, the more times Jeremiah Ouso Karamoa can talk, the better because that guy's a quote machine. He's awesome.

Yeah, no, he is very much like he will be endorsing Dosekis when he's in the NFL.

Yeah, I was, you know, you mentioned the social media part. Clark Lee was up on Tuesday and described Devontas Smith as a football player. Like, and apparently people weren't up in arms about this.

And I'm just like, guys, have we all turned into Clemson here?

Are we all being offended by every single little thing?

Because, you know, certainly the way Clark was describing as he meant, Devante Smith is the platonic ideal of a football player.

Not, he is only a guy out there in shoulder pads and a helmet.

But it's, I don't know, getting into this more, it's, I mean, the challenge is the same.

I don't, I definitely have covered big games where I feel differently at the end of the week than I do at the beginning of the week.

I think for this one, I feel pretty much the same today as I did when the bowl announcements came out.

This is a hell of a mountain for Notre Dame to climb.

And the ascent necessary has not lessened at all since they came out.

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