McNair Becomes Part of Mystique

Mike McNair admits it.

Before McNair, a fine fullback at Mater Dei last year, made his recruiting visit to Notre Dame, he gave himself a little lecture. McNair told himself that when he took his first look at the Golden Dome, when he first set eyes on Touchdown Jesus, when he saw the places where Knute Rockne walked, where Paul Hornung played, he was not going to be in awe.

McNair told himself that legend meant nothing, that mystique sounded like a fine name for a perfume but it had nothing to do with where McNair would choose to play college football. He told himself that his head was going to make this decision and not some corny stuff that lots of gray-haired TV announcers made such a big deal about.

“And then I saw the Golden Dome,” McNair says, “and I forgot all that stuff I had told myself.”

A year later and McNair is coming home. Coming home from the Golden Dome.

He is from Corona del Mar and is a freshman third-string fullback for the Fighting Irish, who play USC Saturday at the Coliseum. Last year, McNair sat in the stands at South Bend for the Notre Dame-USC game and then he hadn’t decided where he would be playing college football. He knew only that it would be USC or Notre Dame.

McNair chose Notre Dame, and he has mostly stood and watched as the Irish have compiled an absolutely silent 9-1 record. Even McNair admits he would never have thought Notre Dame would be 9-1 and barely get a mention in all this talk of BCS rankings, national championships and big bowl games.

“You always expect Notre Dame to be kind of in the news when we have a record like this,” McNair said by telephone Tuesday afternoon, just before he headed off to practice. “It’s funny in a way, how quiet things have been here this fall.”

A quiet season after an explosively noisy summer.

By the time McNair arrived on campus last August, Notre Dame had gone through nasty and very public humiliation during a trial in which a former assistant coach had sued present head coach Bob Davie for age discrimination.

There was name calling and petty revelations about football players watching two cheerleaders who were in, um, an indelicate position, and by the end of the trial, Notre Dame’s golden image had become fodder for late-night talk show hosts and indelicate jokes.

Partly because of that, there were not many expectations for this Notre Dame team and, says McNair, “maybe that’s why nobody is paying much attention to us.”

McNair, himself, was the quiet recruit last fall while USC freshman quarterback Carson Palmer and UCLA freshman tailback DeShaun Foster gathered all the local high school football accolades and most of the national attention.

But McNair, 6 feet and 229 pounds, was a first-team All-American on the USA Today national high school team and he did gain 2,671 yards and score 33 touchdowns as a senior at Mater Dei.

He says that many of his friends and most of his neighbors are USC fans, and that there was some local disappointment when McNair chose Notre Dame.

And, honestly, McNair says, it wasn’t that the gold in the dome blinded him.

“I like the way Notre Dame uses its fullbacks better,” McNair says. “I’m more of a running-type fullback and that’s what Notre Dame is more about. At USC, they like blocking fullbacks more. And the people here, they were more like the people around Mater Dei.”

Indeed, one of McNair’s teammates is Brad Williams, another former Monarch and the starting right end on defense.

McNair finds it a little funny how Notre Dame has disappeared pretty much from the national radar screen, considering how that same radar picked up nothing but Irish dirt all summer.

“Things got so blown out of proportion,” McNair says, “that it was kind of amazing. Every little thing just got blown way up, just way magnified. By the time the football players got here, I think everybody felt like it was time for a new start and that’s what we’ve had.

“I can’t really describe what it’s like to be here, the feelings you have. You try not to be in awe of everything but sometimes you can’t help it.”

There will be no awe Saturday, McNair says, when he steps onto the field against USC. No fear or nerves either.

“Just excitement, I think,” he says.

It is near the end of a long season. But for a freshman, one ending only means another beginning, another when he will be more experienced, more important, more a part of the winning and the losing.

“And next year,” McNair says, “if we’re 9-1 at this point, I think it won’t be so quiet.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com