The fun of Notre Dame vs. Penn State, the agendas of Jalen Hurts, and other thoughts

First and final thoughts …

The easy joke to make ahead of the Orange Bowl, Thursday night’s national semifinal matchup between Penn State and Notre Dame, was that the cops would have to grease every pole in Northeast Philly, Delco, and Grays Ferry just to limit the chaos. Easy … and yet still funny.

The Fighting Irish fans were the ones who got the chance to celebrate, of course. But for anyone without a direct (or, in one case, ethnic) connection to either school, Notre Dame’s thrilling 27-24 victory was cool simply for being a blast from the past. The programs last won national championships two years apart — Penn State in 1986, Notre Dame in 1988 — and each has come close to winning another only occasionally since.

The combination of their popularity, the (yes, sometimes insufferable) devotion of their fan bases, and those championship droughts made Thursday’s matchup more interesting. One team would take another step closer to the top of a mountain it hadn’t scaled in a generation, and the other would have to begin the slog from the bottom again. It felt like so much was at stake.

» READ MORE: James Franklin says Penn State is ‘that close’ to winning it all. A new baseline for success has been set.

This set of circumstances and others like it will be one of the best features of the 12-team college-playoff tournament as it progresses. It’s already fun that teams that haven’t been traditional juggernauts — SMU, Arizona State, Indiana, Boise State — are getting their shots. There are also plenty of big-name, pedigreed programs that, like Penn State and Notre Dame, have fancied themselves as national-title contenders but haven’t actually contended for one in a long time. USC, Miami, Florida, Nebraska: None of those programs has won a national championship in the last 15 years. The first time one or more of them qualifies for the playoff, you’ll see a similar and (for their loyalists) welcome surge in hope and passion. Just without the slippery streetlights.

Jalen Hurts carries an agenda into every interaction with the reporters who cover the Eagles. That’s OK … to a degree. Hurts is the starting quarterback, the $255 million man, the face of the franchise. It’s a significant part of his job to project a particular image of himself and the entire organization.

There are times, though, when he can follow those plans too closely. His media availability Friday was an example. It marked reporters’ first opportunity to interact with him since he suffered a concussion — his first, he said — on Dec. 22 against the Washington Commanders. Now here he was, two days before the Eagles’ wild-card game against the Green Bay Packers, and his responses when asked about his head injury were so terse that he appeared annoyed, defensive, or reluctant to reveal anything of note — as if he had reason to hide something. All he wanted to talk about was the Packers.

“That’s the main thing, the team we’re about to play,” Hurts said. “Obviously we’ve gone through three weeks of Coach [Nick Sirianni] saying, ‘He’s still in protocol.’ Now he’s saying that he’s not in protocol anymore. So I don’t think there’s anything else to talk about with that. I’m thankful that the refs and everyone did what they’re supposed to do in that time. They made the right decision in that moment, and I’m thankful for that, and now I’m ready to go. And we move forward to the Green Bay Packers.”

Sorry. Just because Hurts has an agenda doesn’t mean those of us asking the questions have to follow it. Plenty of people who root for the Eagles want to know what the last three weeks have been like for him: how he’s healing, how severe the concussion was, how it affected him, how he’s feeling now that he has been cleared to play.

Friday, again, represented the first time Hurts faced those relevant and reasonable inquiries. He might have wanted to toss out a few canned quotes about how terrific Saquon Barkley has been or how formidable Green Bay’s defense might be. But he’d have been better off understanding that there are certain situations even the franchise quarterback can’t control.

Ready for a quick history lesson? Of course you are.

Even after a subpar performance (in terms of pure production) Wednesday against UConn, Villanova’s Eric Dixon still led the country in scoring, at 25.7 points a game, ahead of the Wildcats’ matchup Saturday night against St. John’s. Dixon’s scoring average is the highest for any Big Five player since Randy Woods put up 27.3 points a game for La Salle in 1991-92. And if he wins the national scoring title, he will be the first Big Five player to do so since Temple’s Bill Mlkvy averaged 29.2 points during the 1950-51 season … 74 years ago.