MIAMI GARDENS, FLA. >> You might want to say luck ran out, but that notion disappeared as quickly as Eddie Lacy into the Notre Dame end zone the first time. And it never returned. This had nothing to do with the fickle nature of good fortune.

It was all about reality. The simple math of 42-14, and Notre Dame on the wrong end of it. Afterward, Fighting Irish coach Brian Kelly questioned if Alabama was four touchdowns better than his team. Good question. On this night it was almost name-your-own-score superior.

The first instinct as a human being is to cut Manti Te’o slack. He’s a local boy, an outstanding person who has been through a lot. He’d done so much all season, performing through personal tragedy. He played with rarely seen talent and heart to get Notre Dame here, in the process giving Hawaii someone to cheer for in the national championship game.

So I wanted to believe Te’o not showing up at the ball and not making tackles in the first half while Alabama won the game was because it avoided him by design. But that was only partly true — you can only run away from an inside linebacker so much. That montage of lowlights they showed on TV early in the third quarter made it obvious — he was missing tackles, he got sucked in on play-action and he was sometimes being manhandled.

The 20-yard run by Lacey to set up the second ’Bama touchdown comes to mind, behind Chance Warmack, who pushed Te’o downfield way too easily. You can blame the D-line if you want, but that’s one of the vulnerabilities of the 3-4 scheme.

Te’o got to the right place at the right time, on Lacey and T.J. Yeldon, in the backfield, a couple of times. But not with enough to bring them down. They both went over 100 yards. He almost got an athletic pick of a tipped pass, almost like the ones in the Oklahoma and USC games.

Of course, no one pointed fingers, except in the direction of the Crimson Tide for being so spectacular.

“We had hats in position,” Kelly said. “But they’re pretty good.”

Te’o — second in the Heisman Trophy voting — had a poor first half, like most of his teammates. He didn’t get his first solo tackle until there was less than a minute left before the break.

And by then it was over. The Alabama players could’ve given Nick Saban the sideline bucket shower right then and there, after Lacy scored again with 31 seconds left to make it 28-0.

Te’o was better in the second half and finished with 10 stops — three solos and seven assists.

When Notre Dame finally did score in the third quarter, it produced as subdued a celebration as 60,000 people can muster. The score was 35-7, and by then everybody knew, even the most faithful.

The Crimson Tide is great enough to make a good team look bad — and make a great linebacker look a step slow and confused.

“I think everybody knows about Alabama’s offensive line,” Te’o said. “They’re very big and they’re very athletic and very strong. We battled. They just did what Alabama does.”

The Tide got so bored with beating Notre Dame up front that center Barrett Jones took on his own man. He threw a two-hand shove on AJ McCarron for barking at him after a delay of game penalty. It was the only time another player got his paws on the Tide quarterback all night.

For Notre Dame, it was error after error, physical and mental. And those aren’t allowed against the best team, by far, in college football. The Irish defense couldn’t get off the field and the offense couldn’t stay on it on third down.

No goal-line stands in this game. It wouldn’t have mattered.

“It definitely sucks, to be quite honest,” Te’o said. “But I wouldn’t trade this team for anything and I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”

The bright side for him is this is just the end of a chapter. Not a happy one, obviously. But there’s more to come as he readies for the NFL Draft. He said this will strengthen his resolve, as well as that of the teammates he leaves behind.

“The best thing about this experience is it creates fire,” he said. “It creates fuel for both the guys staying here and the guys leaving. And everybody here, everybody here tonight will be better because of it.”

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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783.