Nothing is trivial when it comes to Notre Dame football

Unbuckling the mailbag:

Question: I’m a long-suffering Notre Dame fan and I’ve been trying to figure out the last time Notre Dame beat a top-10 team on the road at night?

Brian Clark

Answer: You’ve come to the right place. I majored in journalism but minored in “Trivial Fighting Irish Tidbits and Knute Rockne’s favorite drive-ins, diners and dives.”

I stayed up all day once to write a finals paper titled, “The day Notre Dame played at night.”

Here is your Notre Dame nighttime answer: It was Oct. 8, 1983, a 30-6 victory at No. 7 South Carolina. The last time Notre Dame defeated a top 25 team at night, on the road, was No. 22 Purdue in 2005.

You might think this does not bode well for Notre Dame against No. 10 Michigan State on Saturday night?

Notre Dame is trying to get to 3-0 for the first time since 2002!

But know this: The Irish are 2-0 in night games played on Sept. 15.

Brian Kelly is 6-5 after sunset. Dan Devine was 5-0 at night. Lou Holtz was 20-5-1 after dark and Ara Parseghian was 10-2-1. And no, the tie wasn’t that 10-10 epic against Michigan State in 1966.

Notre Dame played Miami to a scoreless tie in 1965.

Notre Dame’s first night game was Oct. 5, 1951, a 40-6 win over Detroit at Briggs Stadium.

“Outlined against a … wait a minute, I can’t see a thing because of the glare!” — Grantland Rice

Bob Davie had terrible night vision. He misled Notre Dame to nine straight night losses and reportedly asked whether the school would consider moving all night games to summer in Alaska.

Notre Dame is 6-8 in nighttime bowl games and 38-25-2 all time in nighttime road games.

Hope this helps. If not, I just wasted 45 minutes sifting through Notre Dame’s game notes.

Good day … and night.

Q: Two games and talking Heisman?

John Boxley

A: Talking, not awarding. I got dragged into the discussion this week when UCLA’s Johnathan Franklin ripped off 217 yards against Nebraska and showed up tied for No. 8 in one straw Heisman poll conducted by a former USC assistant sports information director.

Imagine if a USC tailback rushed for 217 yards against Nebraska. They’d put the engraver on standby.

We found no conspiracy here, just Heisman awareness lag time, a delay comparable to beaming pictures back from Mars. Part of it is the fact that UCLA has been so crummy in recent years that I think some pundits forgot they still fielded a team.

Heisman voters will get a chance to dissect Franklin as a candidate Saturday night when UCLA hosts Houston at the Rose Bowl. The game will be televised on the Pac-12 Networks.

Heisman voters with DirectTV can’t wait to catch more of Franklin in action.

Oh, wait …

Q: Help! I have DirectTV!

Nancy Ringman

A: I’m guessing DirectTV won’t be using that as an advertising blurb.

I feel your pain, as I am too a DirectTV subscriber with no access to the Pac-12 Network.

You want to hear something funny? The Network came to my house last month to film a bunch of segments for a “Pac-12 Greatest Games” series.

You know, program filler on an endless loop.

I could go on for days about all the great all-time Pac-12 games involving Utah and Colorado, but I can’t even get the Pac-12 Networks in my own living room?

This is getting serious now because UCLA and USC are featured exclusively on the Pac-12 Networks the next two weeks.

The Pac-12 took out a full page ad in Thursday’s and Friday’s L.A. Times to put the pressure on DirectTV, so we’ll see how it goes.

The league seems to have targeted the USC-California game Sept. 22 as negotiating leverage, figuring fans will storm the gates if USC is not on television in the Los Angeles area.

Here’s the problem: USC and Cal could both lose Saturday. The Trojans are playing at Stanford; Cal is at Ohio State.

Is DirectTV sticking pins in voodoo dolls of Trojans and Golden Bears?

The Pac-12 can’t take sides in games involving conference members, but it seems to me it would be better positioned against DirectTV if Cal is coming off a win over Ohio State and USC is either No. 1 or No. 2 in the polls.

I can’t publicly root against Stanford because my wife is a graduate, but privately I can do anything I want …

Q: You have been an advocate for eliminating these foolish preseason or early rankings. Do we need better evidence than the first two weeks?

Jack Rosenberg

Goodyear, Ariz.

A: Of course we need more than two weeks of evidence or else Northwestern might be crowned Bowl Championship Series champions. But that’s also why there are 10 more weeks.

Early season polls are OK as long as you keep everything in perspective. Polls aren’t going away because they serve as publicity tools for the Associated Press and USA Today, but they will be greatly diminished in two years when the sport goes to a four-team playoff.

My only concern is football might lose some of that week-to-week spontaneity that makes it so much fun.

The first BCS standings, released in mid-October, offer a weekly snapshot of how things are shaping up. The standings create a buzz and get people riled up into early December.

And that’s not a bad thing. The new system will use a selection committee to choose the playoff participants. But will the committee have weekly standings starting in mid-October? Or, will it just dump the top four on us on Dec. 5 with no hint of what is coming?

News release: “The committee has selected North Texas, Central Florida, Rutgers and Iowa State. Any questions please contact your nearest BCS conference representative.”

Q: What’s up with you and the Hokies … being left out of the top 25? This is ridiculous.”

Blair Everett

A: Virginia Tech didn’t make my preseason top 25 but used that big win over Austin Peay to climb all the way this week to No. 23.

I have Virginia Tech ranked lower than most other pollsters, but that was based on looking at some hard, cold facts. The Hokies were replacing their entire offensive line, both starting receivers and the star tailback.

Pardon me if I wanted to wait a few weeks before anointing Frank Beamer’s boys. Fact is, Virginia Tech needed overtime to survive Georgia Tech in the home opener.

There’s no doubt now the Hokies will win 10 games because the Atlantic Coast Conference is pretty weak and there’s not much left on the schedule besides Clemson and Florida State.

I’ll keep monitoring Virginia Tech the way I do all teams trying to slither into the national conversation.

Q: The NCAA washed its hands completely in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky mess and allowed the current Penn State players and coaches to go down the drain in the process. Typical NCAA justice. … Who are these people, anyway?

Mark Bell

A: I understand your frustration with what’s happening at Penn State. I knew it was going to get bad, but not this fast. Watching Sam Ficken miss four field goals last week in a one-point loss at Virginia was heartbreaking.

The NCAA, though, isn’t “those people.” The NCAA is an organization made up of its own members. NCAA President Mark Emmert is former chancellor at Washington and Louisiana State. Former Penn State president Graham Spanier was a mover and shaker who, frighteningly, might have been named NCAA president instead of Emmert.

Imagine that.

What was extraordinary in the Penn State case was the NCAA board of presidents (members) giving Emmert czar-like power to adjudicate an extraordinary case without any due process.

Even pirates are offered a last cigarette and blindfold before shoving prisoners off the plank to the sharks.

chris.dufresne@latimes.com