Notre Dame Football and Retired Numbers Drama

The history of greats to have played football at Notre Dame is as impressive as it is any college program nationally.

Afterall, how do you think you win 11 national championships (while you could certainly claim several more), seven Heisman Trophies (another two that were robbed), or put more players in the NFL draft historically than any other school?

If the Fighting Irish football program wanted to, it could line Notre Dame Stadium by retiring the numbers of the many legends.

Here's the thing, though.

If they did it right, they'd quickly run out of numbers and start looking like fools when they un-retired them.

Notre Dame Football: Who Would Get Number Retired?

Thinking quickly, there are seven Heisman Trophy winners and those would, without a doubt, have to be retired.

Angelo Bertelli - No. 48
Johnny Lujack - No. 32
Leon Hart - No. 82
Johnny Lattner - No. 14
Paul Hornung - No. 5
John Huarte - No. 7
Tim Brown - No. 81

That already wipes you clean of seven of th numbers from 0-99 to choose from, but if Notre Dame were to retire numbers correctly, then it'd be a lot more than that.

For instance, how do you look at the career of Manti Te'o and say that he didn't deserve to have his number retired? I get it, he wore No. 5 which overlaps with Hornung, but he was the best player in college football in 2012, regardless of how the Heisman Trophy voting went.

Then if you look at national championship teams, do you honor the absolute greats from those?

Would No. 50 be put aside for Chris Zorich?

How about No. 9 for Tony Rice?

And then how could you pass retiring No. 25 for Rocket Ismail?

And if you do that, you better hang up the No. 4 for Jeremiyah Love, even if he didn't win a national title.

And we haven't even talked about some of the guys who went on to have Hall of Fame NFL careers like Montana, Bettis, or Young, either.

Or Ross Browner or Alan Page, both of which are in the conversation as the best defenders Notre Dame has ever produced.

USC Looks a Fool with Jersey Retirement News

Famed ballroom dancer and 2004 Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Matt Leinart of USC made news recently for his comments about potentially unretiring his jersey.

Leinart stated that USC has reached out to him about unretiring his jersey because some recruit wants to wear No. 11.

Leinart declined in doing so, stating that the only way he'd unretire his number is if one of his sons was going to wear it.

And for that, he's entirely in the right.

They retired it? Now they want to give it to some 18-year old kid that could be on his way to Utah State in a year? No disrespect to Utah State, but I digress.

Nick Shepkowski's Quick Thought:

In full, I'm glad this drama doesn't impact Notre Dame in any capacity.

Leinart speaking about this only shines more light on a USC staff that clearly has no care in the world for the history that made its program special.

Can you imagine if Notre Dame had the same standard to retire a number like some schools do?

Sheduer Sanders helped lead Colorado to an Alamo Bowl appearance and had his number retired by the Buffaloes.

By that, I can only assume there would be a 25' tall statue of Brady Quinn in Boulder, had he chose to play college ball at Colorado.

I don't know if it makes me old school or what, but I'm glad Notre Dame doesn't retire numbers and can only imagine it never will.