Notre Dame vs. Alabama: One Foot Down provides guide for 'Bama fans

There is a long interval between BCS bowl announcements and the actual games, so that gives coaches, fans and players of No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Alabama have plenty of time to get acquainted with each other. In the spirit of full disclosure, the staff at Notre Dame Fighting Irish blog One Foot Down has prepared a guide to ND football for Alabama fans.

Here's a breakdown of the offense that ND runs, straight from Eric Murtaugh of One Foot Down:

What kind of offense do you run?

The simple answer is that Notre Dame runs a pass-first spread offense, except well that really isn't true this season. There's still plenty of shotgun, 4-wide receiver sets and throwing the ball around from time to time and depending on the situation and score, but this year's offense has been built around running the ball.

It's a hybrid spread offense with a ton of power running, mixed in with plenty of option football and running from the quarterback position---yes, it makes Gary Danielson very confused.

There's a lot more runs from under center with 2 or 3 tight ends on the field. A little bit of deep passing built off playaction too. You might see some hurry-up offense as well, mixed with our quarterback running around and doing some improvising on his own.

Manti Te'o is the biggest name on the Irish, but most of the guide focuses on the other players that have not hit the spotlight as often as the Heisman hopeful.

No. 1 Notre Dame will take the top scoring defense (10.3 pts/gm) in the FBS into the BCS National Championship game, while the Crimson Tide are close behind with the No. 2 unit in terms of point prevention (10.7 pts/gm).

ND and 'Bama are set to clash on Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m. CT on ESPN in the 2013 Discover BCS National Championship game.