Before we get into football this week, I need to disclose something.

This column isn't usually about me, but I have to be transparent here to do my job, so thank you in advance for your patience while I tell this story…

I have some problems with Webb School.

Not this Webb School.

The other Webb School.

Which is completely unfair to the Webb School of Knoxville, but trauma does not always respect institutional distinctions.

I played football at Vanderbilt for Gerry DiNardo in 1992 and 1993. We held preseason camp at the Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee.

DiNardo, a medieval hardcase from Brooklyn who played at Notre Dame for Ara Parseghian, was very up front about telling us that we were no doubt the least talented team in the SEC, that we should all be embarrassed about the history of the program…and that the only way to redeem our miserable existence was to become the toughest team in the league…and we would learn what that meant in a place called Bell Buckle. Truly comforting stuff.

I remember Bell Buckle primarily as a place where the temp dipped down to about 90 degrees at night, there was no A/C, the showers didn't drain, the humidity hovered around 90%, and a group of college football coaches conducted what I can only assume was a federally funded study into the outer limits of human suffering.

We practiced three or four times per day. We started with 6:00 a.m. Hard Yards, which was discipline/supplementary conditioning if you couldn't follow rules or were out of shape. Just like it sounds…100-yard sets of bear crawls, reverse bear crawls, rolls, somersaults and sprints. 7:00 a.m. was run game/inside drills practice. 2:00 p.m. was pass game/7-on-7/11-on-11 scrimmage. 6:00 p.m. was conditioning (timed 110-yard sprints by position group…day 1 was 10, and that climbed to 20 by the end of camp).

After all that: weigh out (we would have linemen weigh in at 300 at 5:30 a.m. and weigh out at 270 at 7:00 p.m.), hit the training room for IVs and treatment, eat, sleep…do it again…for 10 days.

We had days when the 7:00 a.m. practice wasn't going well, so it just kind of stretched into the 2:00 p.m. practice…finishing up at about 5:15…which made the 45 minutes between the end of practice and the beginning of conditioning feel like looking up at the sky watching an extinction-level-event comet heading toward Earth.

So…Webb School…

I understand intellectually that Webb School of Knoxville and Webb School of Bell Buckle are entirely different institutions.

My central nervous system has declined to recognize the distinction.

And unfortunately, I've discovered another reason to be uncomfortable this week.

We'll get to that.

So let's break this down…

3 OBSERVATIONS

1. Sometimes the final score needs an attorney.

As we discussed in the game recap, Lakeway Christian beat Notre Dame 46–17 Friday night.

Lakeway is an excellent football team. They're big, they're physical, they're well coached, and over four quarters they made more plays than we did.

But if you looked only at 46–17, you'd come away with a pretty inaccurate picture of what happened.

It was 19–17 at halftime.

And even after Lakeway stretched the lead to 26–17, Notre Dame was still standing there.

Still fighting.

Still making them work.

Eventually the dam broke, and when it did, it broke pretty thoroughly. That's football.

But I've said since August that one of the questions about this team wasn't whether we could beat teams we were supposed to beat.

I wanted to know what happened when somebody really good walked through the door.

Could we take the punch? Could we stay in the fight? Could we get into the second half against a legitimate heavyweight and still have a football game?

Friday night gave us an answer.

Yes.

Now comes the next question. Can we do it for four quarters?

Because that's the difference between being competitive with really good football teams and becoming one of them.

Lakeway showed us exactly where that line is.

And I suspect Coach Hill will spend a fair amount of time this week pointing at it.

2. Rebuilding a football program is a strange business.

The scoreboard is usually the last person in town to figure out that it's working.

Notre Dame fans should understand that better than most.

We've watched this thing being built.

A new coach comes in. Expectations change. The weight room changes. The roster grows.

Kids begin believing. The campus feels and looks different…

At first, none of it necessarily shows up on Friday night.

At first you lose big…then you lose close…then you win close…then you win big…

We are in that transitional zone between losing close and winning close, with a little bit of winning big sprinkled in. Hence the new blood pressure prescription.

And eventually you realize something:

This isn't the same program anymore.

Which brings me to Webb.

The Spartans are 0–6.

And please, for the love of Steve Spurrier, do not pay any attention to that.

They lost to Upperman 21–20. They lost to Silverdale 27–26. And Friday night they walked into undefeated CAK, scored 32 points and lost 35–32.

CAK is 6–0…remember them?

Webb very nearly made them 5–1.

So Webb is not a bad football team. Webb is a football team that hasn't learned how to finish yet.

And there is a difference. A fairly important one.

Because if Webb's season sounds strangely familiar, it should.

We've watched this movie.

They're squarely in the "lose close" zone, just a few scenes behind us.

3. And then there's George.

Here's the part of this week's game I didn't see coming.

Webb's new head football coach is George Quarles.

That name may not mean much to some of you. It means quite a bit to me.

George coached me when I played at Cedar Shoals High School in Athens, Georgia, back when gasoline cost 85 cents a gallon.

He wasn't a rah-rah guy.

He wasn't going to turn over a Gatorade cooler and head-butt a linebacker before kickoff.

George was cerebral. Quiet. An outstanding teacher.

I also knew George's brother Taylor through Furman (where I played the second half of my career).

The Quarles family has had my admiration for decades.

And here is the larger point…George turned out to be a decent high school football coach…

At Maryville, Quarles went 250–16 (a .940 winning percentage) with 11 state championships and 15 state-title-game appearances. He also had a 74-game winning streak and became the fastest high school coach in U.S. history to reach 200 victories.

Among high school coaches with at least 200 career victories, MaxPreps' national record book lists Quarles' .940 as the highest career winning percentage in American high school football history. He's ahead of legendary De La Salle coach Bob Ladouceur at .938.

He lost 16 games in 18 seasons as Maryville's head coach. Even crazier, after starting 10–7 in his first 17 games, Quarles went 240–9 the rest of the way.

I would call him the John Wooden of high school football if John Wooden had managed a higher winning percentage…

George later returned to Furman, became the offensive coordinator, took the head coaching job at ETSU, coached at Austin Peay and eventually decided to return to high school football.

And now he's rebuilding Webb.

For me, this is a tough one…

You love him.

You respect him.

And you desperately want to beat him.

Football is funny that way.

2 QUESTIONS

1. Which rebuild gets to take the next step?

This is what makes Friday night so interesting to me.

Brent Hill and George Quarles are at different stages, but they're doing the same thing: building football programs.

Notre Dame is further down that road. I believe that.

But Webb is coming.

You don't lose to Upperman by one, Silverdale by one and undefeated CAK by three because you have no football players.

And you don't hire George Quarles because you're content with where your program is.

Friday night, Notre Dame has an opportunity to demonstrate that our rebuild has reached a different stage.

Webb has an opportunity to demonstrate that theirs has begun.

Same movie.

Different scene.

And only one of us gets to feel good on the bus ride home.

2. Can we please have a boring football game?

I mean this sincerely.

I love resilience.

Wonderful character trait. Very useful later in life.

I'm just not sure we need to demonstrate it every Friday night.

We've come back from 21–0.

We've had games decided by one point.

We've had interceptions returned for touchdowns.

We've had Turbo doing things that probably require clearance from the FAA.

We've had Hosses relocating human beings without written consent.

We've had penalties occurring in ZIP codes unrelated to the actual football.

We've had enough fourth-quarter drama to embarrass Bette Midler.

So here's an idea:

Get on the bus. Drive to Knoxville. Play clean football. Don't turn it over. Don't give up cheap points.

Don't commit 15-yard penalties because somebody three counties away felt disrespected.

Block. Tackle.

Run the football.

Get ahead.

Stay ahead.

Get back on the bus.

I realize this concept lacks cinematic appeal.

At this stage in my life, I need everything associated with anything called Webb School to be cool, calm, and collected.

1 PREDICTION

I don't like this matchup nearly as much as an 0–6 record suggests I should.

Webb is getting better. They just played their best game of the season against an undefeated CAK team.

They're at home.

They're hungry.

And they are coached by a man who has forgotten more football than most of us will ever know.

I also suspect George has spent the last six weeks telling his kids that if they keep doing things correctly, eventually the scoreboard is going to cooperate.

He's right.

I just don't want Friday to be the night.

Notre Dame has already lived through the stage Webb is in now.

We've taken the close losses. We've learned the painful lessons.

We've discovered that we can stand in the ring with good football teams.

Now it's time to demonstrate that those lessons actually meant something.

I think we do.

Notre Dame 31

Webb 24

George Quarles helped me get to Furman more than three decades ago.

I will always be grateful to him for that.

I hope he wins a bunch of football games at Webb.

Starting October 9.

DMGB.