The MNC Wednesday “prequel” miniseries continues as we go back in time to 1930. Herbert Hoover was President; the Philadelphia Athletics won the World Series. And Notre Dame football had the attention of sports fans, whether deserved or not. One of the reasons the Fighting Irish are what they are today is because of what they were in yesteryear—like this one. Catholic football fans of America, unite and take over!

The 1930 MNC: Notre Dame (Helms, NCF); Notre Dame (DMP)

Notre Dame posted a 10-0 record and has been declared the mythical national champion for this season by the usual suspects. The Fighting Irish did finish first in the SRS and the SOS, however, so it may be hard for any team to take that on. Notre Dame played only major-college teams and outscored its opponents by a 265-74 margin. That’s not super dominant, but 10-0 is 10-0 against a legitimately full schedule of schools.

Yet Alabama has a claim, too: at 10-0, the Crimson Tide finished No. 2 in the SRS and No. 8 in the SOS after burying nine major-college teams during the year by a 271-13 margin—which is absolutely nuts. That is some dominance. Alabama also played in the Rose Bowl, beating Washington State by a 24-0 margin. This was the eighth shutout the Crimson Tide defense dealt during the season, a very impressive feat overall.

So, Notre Dame had the No. 1 offense and the No. 3 defense, sabermetrically, while Alabama had the No. 4 offense and the No. 1 defense. You know what they say, too, about defense winning championships. It would have been interesting to see these two teams play. As is, the Irish rate out as a 3.6-point favorite over the Tide on a neutral field, according to the data. But why? SOS, and SOS only, really. Can we dig deeper here?

Perhaps. Notre Dame beat the No. 3 and No. 4 teams in the SRS by a combined 41-0 score, with both victories coming on the road in November. Meanwhile, Alabama beat the No. 6 and No. 7 teams in the SRS by a combined 30-13 score at home in October. This begs the question of how seven other teams scored on the Irish defense when the best teams in the nation could not do so? This is why it’s so hard to correlate.

After all, Notre Dame gave up double-digit scoring to the No. 18, No. 20, and No. 37 teams in the SRS. Were the Irish on cruise control in those games? But those 13 points that the Crimson Tide coughed up were the only points scored on the Alabama defense all year, and that was against Top 10 teams. Otherwise, the defense was perfect on the year, including the highlighted bowl game against Wazzu, the No. 14 team (SRS).

We know Notre Dame was not allowed to go to bowl games for a long part of its history, but the added pressure of performing on New Year’s Day in this era cannot go unnoticed. If the Crimson Tide could travel all the way to California and still pitch a shutout against a Top 15 team, then we’re pretty sure Alabama could have taken the train to South Bend, too, and given the Fighting Irish a pretty good run for its money.

This creates a dilemma, really: the classic paradox of unstoppable forces and immovable objects. The No. 3 team in the SRS was Northwestern, which rated out to just a 0.9-point underdog against Alabama on a neutral site. And we know what Notre Dame was able to do against Northwestern on the road, beating the Wildcats by a 14-0 margin. Maybe the Irish would have beaten Alabama, 7-3, in our imaginary universe.

Either way, we have to stick with the math, even if other factors tell our guts something else. Sorry, Tide. By our count, this is the seventh MNC for Notre Dame—and the first we’ve awarded the Irish since our 1993 piece so many years ago. Sadly, Irish Head Coach Knute Rockne would die famously in an offseason plane crash, bringing an end to an era of Notre Dame dominance and prominence in the American consciousness.