Last week I wrote that the Southern California game was a big one for Irish head coach Brian Kelly and his staff to show how far his program has come and whether it is on track to get Notre Dame back among college football's best.

Kelly and company failed, miserably.USC ran the football almost at will, outgaining ND by a whopping 219 to 41 yards, and overall 443 yards total to 267. Passing yardage favored ND by two, 226 to 224.Kelly and company got a lesson on what it means to play good, solid defense. The Trojans entered the game with a suspect offensive line, but managed to dominate the more experience Irish defensive line.After winning four straight games and admittedly showing improvement each week by eliminating turnovers, the Irish returned to their old ways last week. Turnovers at key times in the game cost the Irish a chance to comeback and win the contest. Also, some disturbing comments by two Trojan players that claimed the Irish "quit" in the fourth quarter. If true, that is a bigger problem for Kelly than losing the football game. Since those comments were made, however, the Trojan player recanted and said ND players did not quit.With the loss any hopes of a BCS bowl bid are now gone. Kelly and the Irish have little chance of gaining any respect with the pollsters with games remaining against such foes as Navy, Maryland and Boston College, all having subpar years. The only real shot for redemption is the last regular season game with currently unbeaten Stanford on the road. A unlikely chance for a win.Turnovers again plagued the Irish. A fumble by Dayne Crist that was returned for a 80 yards TD as the Irish moved to within one score of the Trojans in the third quarter hurt the most. It was a third and one for the Irish with a tie game a score away. Instead Crist fumble and a possible tie game had a 14 point turnaround in favor of USC. Game over.Kelly is now an unimpressive 12-8 as head coach. He keeps talking he is still building the program but that flies in the face of what happened last week. You started to believe his words as ND eliminated mistakes in streaking to four straight wins, two impressively over Michigan State and Air Force. Then back to the same old play with many turnovers and foolish penalties. That is far from showing improvement.This brings us to the argument among the diehard, which was mentioned this week in the South Bend media. Is Kelly the man to bring the Irish back, and the other argument, no one can and that the days of the Irish being among the elite in college football is over and there will be no more national championships. Food for thought.Questions arise if Tommy Rees is the quarterback of the future. Three areas that you look at in evaluating the ND QB position are pass-efficiency, red-zone offense and turnover margin. The Irish are moving backwards in all three.ND was 59th in passing efficiency last season, they're now 61st. In red-zone offense they have fallen from 49th to 110th and in turnover margin from 51st to 119th.And add to all this 12 of ND's 18 turnovers have come from the QB position. Ten are by Rees.Today the Irish host a Navy team that enters at 2-5. After winning their first two games (Delaware, 40-17; and Bowling Green, 40-14); the Middies have lost five in a row to South Carolina, 24-21; Air Force, 35-34, in overtime; Southern Mississippi, 63-35; Rutgers, 21-20; and East Carolina, 38-35.Navy has given the Irish fits since 2007 when they broke the longest winning streak by one team over another in beating the Irish, 46-44, in three overtimes. Navy has won the last two and the last two played in ND stadium. Last year the Irish were routed by the Middies, 35-17. The last ND win was in 2008, 27-21.Althrough Navy does not have the same personnel that led them to consecutive wins over ND, they still run the triple-option attack to perfection, very similar to Air Force.. Remember in the win over AF, the Falcons had over 500 yards total offense despite losing by a 59-33 score.Navy lost a key player last week when starting QB Kriss Proctor went down with his third dislocated left elbow. He won't play today and his place will be taken by backup Trey Miller. Miller has not played a lot this year. Proctor was a key in the running game because of the option attack. The other top runner is Alexander Teich, with 109 carries and 521 yards and two scores. Teich single-handedly beat ND last year. Top receivers are Brandon Turner and Matt Aiken.Today is the 85th straight meeting of the two, which is the longest constinuous intersectional rivalry in the nation. ND leads the series, 71-12-1, and the game has been played every year since 1927.The game will be televised nationally by NBC-TV with a 3:30 p.m. start, kickoff at 3:40.IRISH NOTIES:Eighteen of 22 athletic programs at ND compiled graduation rates of 100 percent, and none were below 93 percent, according to the seventh year of Graduation Success Rate measurements developed by the NCAA and released this week. None of the 120 NCAA Division-1A programs in the country had a higher percentage of 100 GSR scores than ND with its .818 number. This is the sixth time in seven years of the survey that ND has been ranked number one in percentage of teams with 100 scores. Following ND are Wake Forest, Boston College, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern and Rice, tied, and Vanderbilt....Senior TD Kapron Lewis-Moore is lost for the season due to a knee injury. Freshman Stephon Tuitt will replace him....Look for more night games at ND stadium. Last week's game was a success in the ratings for NBC so the network reportedly would like at least one home game a year under the lights....The starting time for the Wake Forest game has finally been set. It will be another night game with a 7 p.m. start on ESPN2....Kelly has reportedly been really tough on the team this week in practice trying to quiet the critics about the mistakes and toughness of the team. ND is favored by 20 today. In my preseason picks I had the Irish winning. If ND fails today, Kelly may have to get out of town, quick.