Notre Dame football has a chance at its first title in 36 years and looks more like Rocky this time around than Rudy.

Monday will mark the first-ever meeting between Ohio State and Notre Dame football in a football national championship game.

But evolution is also a choice. The dinosaurs didn't have to walk into the tar pits. And college football programs -- even old-timers such as Ohio State and Notre Dame -- don't have to walk into the quicksand of mediocrity, led there by the blinders of obligation to keep on keeping on the same way that Knute Rockne and Woody Hayes did.