The 0-4 start rattles at South Bend

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- USC fans are either licking their lips in delight or bemoaning the sudden disappearance of a once great-and-mighty rival.

Notre Dame is in the midst of an 0-4 season start, which has never happened in a history that goes back to 1897 and includes the coaching regimes of Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, Dan Devine and Lou Holtz, each of whom won at least one national championship -- Leahy four and Rockne three. Before Rockne took over in 1918, the worst Irish record in 21 years was 5-4.

It isn’t so much the 0-4 record, as how it has come to pass.

Last week, when Notre Dame recovered a fumble early against Michigan State and scored on an eight-yard run, those were the first offensive points by the Irish this season. They had lost their first three games 33-3, 31-10 and 38-0.

So there is trouble in River City and this river city is at the South Bend of the St. Joe.

Notre Dame has been big and fat and successful for so long in football that this current fall from grace has all the haters loving it.

The Fighting Irish have become the Fretting Irish. The mosaic on the library wall that peeks over the north end of the stadium and was known as “Touchdown Jesus” is now “Field Goal Jesus.”

The school that once had Four Horsemen now has a couple of plow ponies. Fans plead for a first down for the Gipper. A story going around here these days is that Holtz is moving back to South Bend because he wants to get as far away from college football as possible.

To mark the Irish nose dive, the L.A. Times brought back, after 13 years, Steve Harvey’s Bottom Ten feature. Harvey quickly, and happily, made the Irish No. 1, a spot they are certain to hold this week. He calls them the Fighting Rash.

The man at the helm of the sinking ship is Charlie Weis, who is in his third year after going 9-3 and 10-3 his first two. That’s why Notre Dame’s current 0-4 -- with a real shot at 0-8 with Purdue, UCLA, Boston College and USC up next -- is such a stunner.

Weis came from the New England Patriots, where he was offensive coordinator and had Tom Brady as his quarterback. When he arrived at Notre Dame, he had Brady Quinn as his quarterback. While sometimes it takes a village, with Weis it apparently takes a Brady bunch.

To his credit, Weis appears to be keeping an even keel. In the 31-14 loss to Michigan State, he found positives -- which there were -- and purported to still have a tight grip on a team that is either underachieving or undertalented. Or both.

“My job, my responsibility, is to get this team to improve,” he said.

“I do know that one of two things could have happened. They could have thrown in the towel, or they could have come out slugging.”

Weis said the 17-14 score at halftime indicated a team that came out slugging. Apparently, in the second half, they were all punched out. That, presumably, will be addressed by Weis.

“I’m not a pat-you-on-the-back-and-tell-you-things-are-gonna-be-all-right kind of guy,” he said.

Notre Dame is a school of great expectations and tradition, and Weis, as an alum, knows the pressure of that.

Things have to be perfect here, and they were on this past college football Saturday -- except the school’s lousy team.

Amid 73 degrees, 38% humidity and blue skies, the attendance was 80,795. It was the 194th consecutive sellout in Notre Dame Stadium, going back to Thanksgiving of 1973, when they had a few empty seats. Since 1966, or just after leather helmets, Notre Dame has sold out 242 of 243 games.

Yet Michigan State’s victory was its sixth consecutive on Irish turf, the first team to do that.

The pull of the past came earlier Saturday when Notre Dame unveiled a bronze statue of Parseghian being carried off the field after the 1971 Cotton Bowl. The project was headed by Peter Schivarelli, who played little but was one of those carrying Parseghian off the field that day. Schivarelli is the longtime manager of the rock band Chicago, and at halftime the Irish marching band played several of the band’s songs.

Parseghian, 84, responded to a series of hyperbolic tributes by telling the gathered crowd that, after hearing all that praise, he too was interested in what he had to say.

During the game’s first timeout, the Irish paraded out several members of their 1947 national championship team. One of them was Johnny Lujack.

In the press box, they found a viewing spot for a seriously ill Pete Duranko. A former star fullback of the 1960s who went on to play defense in the pros, Duranko has ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. He has a breathing tube and is in a wheelchair, yet he greeted old friends like a person without a care.

In the second row in the end zone, 77-year-old Joe Shullo, a retired bake-goods salesman from suburban Akron, Ohio, sat with his wife an hour before the game and soaked in the scene. He called himself a normal fan, adding that he has only one room in his house dedicated to Irish memorabilia.

Notre Dame fans, especially the alums who write the big checks, have the patience of a slop-house waitress. The pats on the back and the checks keep coming, win or tie.

They know that Weis was given a 10-year extension last year, but they also assume there is a buyout clause there somewhere.

Now that the Rose Bowl is a longshot, Weis’ job is to show enough improvement to curtail that kind of talk. His first two years indicate he is up to that.

The lost season could be found, of course, with the unimaginable: A victory over the current gods of the game, the No. 1-ranked Trojans, who come here Oct. 20. They, of course, will be favored by 30 and probably will win by more.

But there did seem to be some heavy watering and fertilizing on the Notre Dame stadium field after the game Saturday, and men were raking in ankle-deep grass.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.