Irish build a bridge to 2011, by knocking 'Canes back to square one

Notre Dame 33, Miami 17. Bowl games are rarely the launching points they're made out to be, but you don't have to strain tonight to hear the early strains of hosannas for Notre Dame's prospects in 2011. Even assuming human pogo stick Michael Floyd leaves early for the draft after shredding the nation's No. 2 pass defense for 106 yards and two touchdown catches, the Irish return 16 starters from an outfit that was left for dead at the end of October.

Instead, they rallied from back-to-back humiliations at the hands of Navy and Tulsa and a season-ending injury to their starting quarterback to earn ND's first win over a ranked team since 2006 against Utah, and then to snap an eight-game skid against USC with a rain-soaked comeback in the L.A. Coliseum. Now the Irish have thoroughly trounced a fellow traveler in underachievement to hit the offseason on a four-game win streak – achieved entirely with a pedestrian true freshman quarterback who isn't even expected to hold on to the job next year – and the optimism is back in force as the curtain falls on the first season under Brian Kelly. If by some miracle Floyd doesn't throw his name into the draft, the expectations could back into the "BCS or Bust" territory that slowly ate Kelly's predecessors alive. That's about as good an end to a roller coaster debut as you could ask for.

Miami, obviously, is not in that place. In fact, the 'Canes enter 2011 under the same cloud that followed Notre Dame into 2010. The season ends in an utter implosion, a three-game losing streak capped by an embarrassing no-show in the first half of the bowl game. There's a new head coach, a new staff, a new attitude, etc. And the up-and-coming talent that defined the potential of the old regime seems destined to be frozen out in the transition, largely untapped.

Exhibit A: Jacory Harris. The home-grown quarterback wasn't the highest-rated player of the hyped class of 2008, but his ascension to the starting job at the end of his true freshman year and sizzling start as a sophomore quickly made him the face of that group, and of the entire team under coach Randy Shannon. Last year, en route to a 9-4, top-20 finish, that was a good thing: Harris was firmly entrenched as an up-and-coming leader with the chance to take the offense to another level as an upperclassman.

Today, it was a disaster, and Harris was the walking embodiment of the collapse of that potential. He took 13 snaps in a little over a quarter's worth of action, served up three interceptions on seven passes and was relegated to bench for good with Notre Dame sitting on an already insurmountable 21-0 lead. And "for good" doesn't just apply to today: The bubbling quarterback controversy that followed Harris' concussion at Virginia in October was definitively resolved in favor of freshman Stephen Morris, who shook off an early interception to take the offense to a pair of late touchdowns. It wasn't a passing of the torch so much as a desperate search for a surviving spark amid the ashes.

Harris is the face of the collapse, but he isn't alone. This season was supposed to be the "leap year" for the now-veteran '08 class, the year they fulfilled their destiny as the restorers of The U to its former, swaggery glory; for a more grown-up team, all of those familiar excuses – youth, rebuilding, the schedule  – wouldn't excuse a sideways step after progress in their first two seasons under Shannon. Instead, it was a wholesale regression, to exactly the point – 7-6, barely above .500 – that Shannon found them when he took over for Larry Coker in 2006.

So the cycle begins anew for Al Golden. He'll have a new, promising up-and-comer of his own at quarterback, under a new offensive coordinator. He'll focus on changing the complacent culture, especially in recruiting. He'll have a grace period. And if he's lucky, he'll end a rocky debut with a kick down the stretch and the kind of flourish Notre Dame put on its season this afternoon. But the optimism is going to have be earned all over again.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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