Sept. 19, 2001

The Notre Dame football team continues preparations for its first home game of the season. The Irish take on the Spartans of Michigan State this Saturday.

The game will be Notre Dame’s second of the season, after postponing last week’s contest against Purdue. In the team’s season-opening game against the Cornhuskers, Notre Dame inside linebacker Courtney Watson registered seven unassisted tackles. He led the team with 12.5 tackles overall.

The following is a quick question and answer section with the linebacker:

Are you looking for payback this year against Michigan State?

This is a long time coming right here. I figure we are just going to go out there and get it done. Everybody in our football program, we have to send a message to the rest of the country that we can play ball here, and we definitely didn’t show that two weeks ago.

Does that attitude stem from the Michigan State series outcomes the last three years?

Right now, it is just a big thing for us because we haven’t won this game the last four years, for me it has been the last two years. For a lot of our seniors it is hatred because of the way it happened. Michigan State feels they are a better team than us, and they feel like they can dominate. You can see it in the seniors, and the way they are preparing, that this game means a lot to them.

How has practice been the last week after the tragedies in New York and D.C.?

For myself, other players and coaches have said it makes you feel insignificant. What we do doesn’t seem as important anymore. When you see the people that have been affected by this, it seems like what we do isn’t that important.