TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Former Notre Dame great Manti Te’o joined the NFL Network as a studio analyst this week. While the 2013 National Championship Game wasn’t brought up initially, Te’o described how his Irish team were nearly intimidated by Alabama before kickoff.
Most college football fans outside Alabama and Notre Dame likely don’t remember much about one of the most dominant championship performances all time. The Crimson Tide rolled up over 500 yards of offense and won by a decisive 28 points, 42-14.
Quite frankly, it could’ve been much worse had Alabama played more a hurry-up style offense that’s popular now. Eddy Lacy, T.J. Yeldon, A.J. McCarron and Amari Cooper were too much to combat for the Fighting Irish playing for its first title since the 1980’s.
Manti Te’o talking about playing Alabama in the 2013 National Championship 🙂🔥pic.twitter.com/uiD7hKydq8
— Alabama DieHards (@DiehardsAlabama) August 17, 2024
“We are playing at the Hard Rock Cafe in Miami, Dolphins Stadium,” Te’o said. “For people that don’t know anything about that stadium, there’s only one tunnel, so both teams come out of the one tunnel. We were the number one ranked team in the country that year. So we’re the home team. We came out of our locker room first. Alabama hadn’t come out of their locker room yet. So everybody stopped us at the tunnel and said, Hey, you have to wait. You have to wait until Alabama comes out. So, I’m one of the captains. I’m in front of all my guys. Alabama hasn’t come out yet. My guys are hyped. They’re loud, they’re doing their thing.”
“When I’m in Game Day mode, I see things, but I don’t. I’m kind of just in my own little zone. Alabama’s locker room door opens and they start running out, right? And they’re going out. And I do remember this very visibly, my soon to be teammate, DJ Fluker and chance format come running out of the locker room with their jerseys. Big bellies are out And I remember DJ going by and saying, and I remember vividly remembering the silence behind me, and I kind of glanced back at my teammates and the eyes on them, were so large, I knew at that time, I was like, All right, gonna be a long day. Oh, no. To my guy’s credit, they never flinched. But let me tell you guys, when, when we played the Alabama team in 2013, there was a difference, there was a difference with those Bama boys.”
Despite the loss, Te’o experienced a decorated college football career including a near dozen individual award and was a top-three finalist for the Heisman Trophy. He racked up 437 career tackles which ranks No. 3 all-time at Notre Dame. His impact for the Irish came early when he started the fourth game of his career which led to 47 consecutive starts to end his college career.
Te’o spent seven seasons in the NFL playing with the Chargers and Saints from 2013-2019. His best season as a professional came in 2015 when he recorded 83 tackles and four tackles for loss.
