CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — The Notre Dame championship chase is, in fact, just that: A chase, a full-on sprint after others in clear sight but clearly ahead in the distance.
It's not a hunt if you're in front. No matter what the Irish did, no matter what spectacle each weekend brought, others had to tumble and drop for the Irish to pass them.
As the Irish lingered in the underbelly of Alumni Stadium on Saturday, the news trickled in via cell phone. The coaching staff caught sight of it on a television en route to the turf for warm-ups. About 1,200 miles away, No. 1 Alabama had fallen. Notre Dame was one step closer to the BCS championship game. It was a seismic ripple. It was precisely what the Irish needed.
What they needed next, given such supercharged stakes, was anything but an unsightly meltdown against unsightly, two-win Boston College. A 21-6 victory achieved that but perhaps little more. There would not be another epic upset in this series, only some mauled Eagles, ensuring the No. 4 Irish will creep up in the polls but not ensuring they won style points doing so.
"You're so focused on the job at hand, you can't be happy that another team lost when we still have a game to compete in," said Irish cornerback Bennett Jackson, who was one of the players to learn of Alabama's loss before kickoff.
"You can't get caught up in other things. We could have easily been caught off track and wound up losing tonight. But we stayed focused, we held together."
Everett Golson threw for 200 yards and two scores while running for another, Theo Riddick rushed for 104 yards and the defense stiffened from the second quarter on, but Irish tailbacks coughed up two momentum-killing fumbles. Notre Dame perfunctorily made its way to 10-0 for the eighth time in school history, and voters will decide how high they climb after that.
With Texas A&M stunning Alabama, the Irish were all but assured of moving to the No. 3 position, at least, in the next set of BCS rankings. But Oregon and Kansas State still were preferred in the human components that make up two-thirds of that BCS formula. As tantalizing as being one spot away from the national title matchup is, it was still one spot away.
So the relative beauty of these victories may come into play if future losses by Oregon and Kansas State don't. And it remains to be seen if grinding, imperfect victories like Saturday's are anyone's style.
"We're going to work on winning against Wake Forest (on Saturday) and take care of what we can take care of," Irish coach Brian Kelly said.
"When it's all said and done, we'll see where we are. You see how hard it is to win in college football — we can't worry about those things. We have to focus on what we can do. If people don't like us winning, I don't know what else to tell you."
Notre Dame had just three first-half possessions, thanks to a ball-hogging, clock-chomping offense that excelled at keep-away. The first example: A 95-yard marathon on the Irish's first possession, capped by a Golson 2-yard touchdown run to open the scoring midway through the first quarter.
Boston College frayed some nerves with a field goal drive and then forcing a George Atkinson III fumble. But the Eagles' ensuing drive sputtered.
Notre Dame's next series did not. That one would eat up 81/2 minutes of clock over 16 plays, with a Golson-to-Troy Niklas touchdown strike making it 14-3.
Golson hit a wide-open John Goodman for an 18-yard touchdown on the first series after halftime — a modest nine-play march — to extend the lead to 21-3. But that was basically that, the Irish walking out with a victory but not running away with anything.
"It's always about the win," Irish linebacker Manti Te'o said. "There's nothing else that matters. Stats don't matter. As long as we win, that's all that matters to us."
It wasn't close, really, with the Irish converting 10 straight third downs through the late third quarter. But it was uneven, even as Notre Dame suffocated the possibility of another season-killing Boston College upset, a la 1993 and 2002.
The Irish won, which is what they needed to keep doing. But was it aesthetically pleasing, and does that matter? Was it enough if the final stages of the BCS race devolve into a pageant? Beauty may be in the eye of the vote-holder, even if those national title aspirations grew slightly more real as the Tide went out, for the moment, on Saturday.
"That's proof that it's college football — any team can lose at any time," Te'o said. "We just don't want to be that team."
bchamilton@tribune.com
Twitter @ChiTribHamilton
Notre Dame dominates game in 21-6 victory
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Notre Dame dominates game in 21-6 victory
