How's This For Intimidating

Maybe Notre Dame Stadium is a visitors’ house of horrors after all. Maybe all that talk of a recent 10-8 home record is as relevant as Nick and Jessica.

So No. 4 Notre Dame whips Penn State today in the kind of season home opener senior safety Tom Zbikowski was seekiing when he fired up Friday’s pep rally crowd with a vow to show the Nittany Lions how intimidating a place the stadium could be.

He returned a fumble for a touchdown, one of a bunch of Irish big plays as they produced the kind of victory sure to boost them back up the polls -- and tick off Penn State Joe Paterno, who isn’t used to getting humiliated like this.

OK, maybe No. 19 Penn State was way over-rated. This is not a Big Ten title contender. Still, Notre Dame was solid enough -- why quibble about the sacks and penalties when we can do that in Monday’s column -- to show that it would contend if it was in the Big Ten, which it would be if league officials had their way, but that’s another issue for another day. For now, the Irish are unbeaten and ready to host unbeaten Michigan next Saturday. If you bleed Blue & Gold, it doesn’t get much better than this.