Notre Dame Can Skip Ahead in the Schedule

Notre Dame won the toss and elected to win.

OK, maybe it wasn’t quite that easy here Saturday for the Fighting Irish. It just looked that way. The 12th-ranked Irish, now 4-1, beat previously unbeaten Purdue, 35-21. That immediately raised the question of how the Boilermakers became unbeaten.

The answer is Indiana State, Miami of Ohio, Ball State and Minnesota. And none of the four was a lark, especially the 38-31 overtime survival against vaunted Miami of Ohio. So, in some ways, Saturday’s exercise, attended by the usual 80,795 that represented the 188th consecutive sellout of Notre Dame Stadium, was a bigger workout for the stats crew than the teams.

The Irish scored four of the first five times they had the ball. The teams ran up 944 yards of offense, 490 of that by Purdue, which had sophomore receiver Selwyn Lymon gain 238 yards on eight catches, the most receiving yards ever by a Purdue player in this home-state series that started in 1896. Lymon was No. 1 on Purdue’s roster, but certainly not in Irish hearts.

“We put him in the Hall of Fame,” Irish Coach Charlie Weis joked afterward.

Weis could afford to laugh. After getting everybody but the Leprechaun mugged by Michigan two weeks ago, he had escaped with his life last Saturday against Michigan State, rallying from 16 points down in the final period to win, 40-37. That set up the second half of his march to BCS fame and fortune quite nicely.

The main question after Michigan State had been Purdue. Even though the Boilermakers weren’t ranked, 4-0 is 4-0.

Now, with that easily answered, a glance at the Irish future shows the real possibility of yet another season coming down to yet another Hollywood ending against USC in the Coliseum. That Nov. 25 date is a long way off, and lots can happen. But assuming USC keeps rolling, a look at Notre Dame’s lead-up log to that Nov. 25 date certainly allows college football fans to project and speculate and ABC to get giddy.

Of the six Irish opponents before USC, the most dangerous appears to be, ironically, UCLA. Notre Dame plays Stanford here next Saturday, and then takes a week off to get ready for the Bruins here. That is followed by a game at Baltimore against Navy, and then it’s back home to play North Carolina, out to Colorado to face Air Force and then home against Army.

None of those teams currently rank in the top 25. None of them probably will. After Saturday, they had a 12-14 record, with Stanford 0-5, UCLA 3-1, Navy 4-1, North Carolina 1-3, Air Force 2-1 and Army 2-3.

So the hype will begin, even though Weis certainly would have nothing to do with a discussion that looks past six opponents to chat about the Trojans. Nor would his well-programmed players.

Rhema McKnight, a fifth-year senior from Inglewood and La Palma Kennedy, was asked if it was hard not to take a peek at the Nov. 25 date, especially when it means a trip home and a chance to play in one of the brighter spotlights of the college game, assuming both teams win out from here.

“It’s easy not to,” he said. “You have to approach every game the same way. If you don’t, you set yourself up for failure.”

Even if it is a 10-1 Irish team against an unbeaten USC on Nov. 25, Saturday’s game here showed that the Irish have a long way to go to get to USC’s caliber. Purdue’s Curtis Painter, a junior quarterback, who drew sarcastic praise afterward from Coach Joe Tiller -- he said he was happy Painter hadn’t “hit the open linebacker” this week -- passed for 398 yards and two touchdowns. Weis said afterward, correctly, that many of Purdue’s yards were of the “garbage” variety, meaning they were gained after the game was well in hand for Notre Dame.

Still, if the Irish secondary continues to look like Swiss cheese, the biggest problem John David Booty might have Nov. 25 is wiping the drool off his chin.

Extra Points

* When Notre Dame rallied to beat Michigan State last week, TV’s Lee Corso called it a $14-million game, meaning that, without that win, the Irish would probably fall out of the BCS money-grab by the end of the season. Looks like Corso was right, which proves there is a first time for everything.

* Lost in all the babble about Terrell Owens last week was the need to take a long look at something: Owens has a publicist? Who does he think he is, Madonna? (Don’t answer that).

* Those of us deeply knowledgeable about the sport of baseball knew it would be only a matter of time before the names James Loney and Gil Hodges would be mentioned in the same breath.

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. For previous columns, go to latimes.com/dwyre.