SOUTH BEND, Ind. - If anyone can relate to hurricane-hounded Floridians, it’s Ty Willingham. Notre Dame’s equally beleaguered football coach won a game he had to win Saturday, the Irish rallying with three fourth-quarter touchdowns to knock off No. 8 Michigan. But instead of leaving to an Irish jig, Willingham scooted off of Notre Dame Stadium’s hallowed turf so businesslike you’d swear he was off to start sacking sandbags to weather the next Category 4 storm headed his way.

As twilight wrapped its arms around Willingham’s bucolic campus, an hour after Notre Dame’s 28-20 win, a robin’s egg blue sky was streaked with wisps of pink clouds, and happy students and fans yelled themselves hoarse into the night. But those ominous clouds are still out there, hovering over the horizon.

And nobody knows it better than Ty Willingham.

“I would hope everything we did today starts to project us in the right direction,” he said on a day his defense was stout, a freshman running back emerged and big plays came in bunches after a first half that saw Michigan take a 9-0 lead. “But please understand: We still have a lot of work to do.”

The questions kept coming his way 30, 40 minutes afterward, attempting to evoke something — a smile, a gloat, a proclamation. On about the fourth try, somewhere between amused and exasperated, Willingham allowed this much.

“Any time you knock off a top 10 team, it’s a big win,” he said after the victory that promises to stave off the buzzards for at least one more week. “Our guys did something significant. But understand this — it is still one win.”

One sweet, precious, profoundly necessary win. But one win, nevertheless. Notre Dame pointed to this game with a zealot’s focus for one year, ever since Michigan pounded the Irish 38-0 in last year's atom-smashing win in Ann Arbor.

So had the Irish lost this one — on the heels of their season-opening loss to Brigham Young — the season would have been declared a disaster before the first leaf fell at the feet of Touchdown Jesus.

But there’s a big gap between avoiding disasters and winning national championships. It took Notre Dame many years and at least that many missteps to find itself a two-touchdown underdog on its home field, and one day — no matter how sun-soaked and glory-drenched — isn’t going to change that.

Let’s suppose Notre Dame isn’t quite as good as it looked in beating Michigan nor quite as bad as it appeared in losing to BYU. Let’s suppose that’s the way the season goes, the Irish having the thunder shook down upon them as often as they make it rain.

There’s still Washington, Purdue, Stanford, Boston College, Tennessee, Pitt and Southern California on the schedule. Unless Notre Dame bottles whatever it is the Irish captured Saturday, there’s still no guarantees this team can so much as get to a bowl game, never mind contend for the national title that marks eras around here.

Then what? Is .500 good enough to spare Willingham? Should it be?

Because if Ty Willingham doesn’t work at Notre Dame — a conclusion the subway alumni, if not yet the administration, were rushing headlong toward until Saturday’s reprieve — then maybe it’s time Notre Dame dig deeper to understand why.

Maybe it’s time Notre Dame looked in the mirror.

Maybe it’s time Notre Dame stopped trying to root one foot firmly in the past while simultaneously expecting to keep racing into the future with opponents far lighter on their feet — both feet. Because all that stretching has torn a hole in the Leprechaun’s britches.

This can’t be as easy as pointing Willingham, who got the job because he made a winner out of Stanford, a place where the ivy grows just as lush and green as South Bend. He knows how to build a program when the academic standards are a little more rigid, when you’re recruiting kids who’ve looked harder at places like Southern California and Florida State — and Michigan.

Look at Saturday’s depth charter at quarterback. Lloyd Carr went to the San Francisco Bay Area to pluck Matt Gutierrez three years ago, pirated Clayton Richard out of Notre Dame’s back yard two winters back and last year reached into eastern Pennsylvania to nab Chad Henne. All were among the top 10 high school quarterbacks in their senior seasons.

The only quarterback of similar repute at Notre Dame is Brady Quinn, who was torn between the Irish and Michigan. In the end, the presence of Gutierrez in the class ahead of him might well have been what pushed Quinn away from Michigan.

Quinn was from Ohio. And that’s the point.

Notre Dame might still carry cachet with recruits in neighboring states, but the best and brightest from football’s hotbeds in Florida, New Jersey, California and Texas wait by their phones for calls from Miami, Southern Cal, Oklahoma — and Michigan and Ohio State. Today’s recruits don’t remember the mediocrity of Ron Powlus, never mind the glory of Joe Montana.

The Irish are caught at a crossroads now. There’s still that NBC contract to insulate them from reality. But the network is selling an aura that erodes a little with every season that sees the Irish outside the BCS globe looking in, and erodes a lot with all those unthinkable years when Notre Dame’s season ends without any bowl bid at all.

If that safety net ever gets pulled on them, Notre Dame will have to grit its teeth and make the move its boosters have loudly made known they want no part of — joining the Big Ten.

Notre Dame pushed that decision a little further into the future with it absolutely had to have. But it’s still hovering out there.

Until Saturdays like this one happen with greater frequency, Willingham knows nothing changes. He knows he coaches at a place where football coaches are revered only for producing national titles, not sighs of relief.

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