A Stoolie Lives His Fantasy (no, the other one)
I think the exact moment it hit me that I was a witness to something we simply never get to be a part of in this part of the country was at the end of the 3rd quarter. I was in Notre Dame Stadium last week to see the Fighting Irish vs. Army , surrounded by 80,000 fans making “W”’s with our hands in honor of Charlie Weis and pumping our arms to the music of “The 1812 Overture,” and it hit me that I was seeing real, true, big-time college sports up close for the first time in my life. I’ll start at the beginning.
Last Christmas my brother Jack and his wife Pat gave my lovely wife and me a token that just said “Weekend” on it. Huh? Wha? They told us they’d take our kids for a weekend so we could go away together, and it was good for any weekend of the year. All we had to do was decide when and where we wanted to go.
If you have kids you know what a gift like this is worth. It’s hitting Powerball. It‘s a friend giving you his timeshare and frequent flyer miles. It’s the equivalent of a single guy being asked to deflower the Olsen twins; you might only have one shot at this, so you’d better make the most of it.
So I didn’t want to squander the opportunity. I didn’t want to settle for us staying in some bed & breakfast on the Vineyard, walking the beach and asking each other “What do you want to do now?” The decision was simple math really. Like some Barstool cover model interview question, I asked myself “If you had a weekend where you could do anything, what would you do?” Since the Olsen twins weren’t part of the equation, my answer was “Go to South Bend and see the Irish play.” I’ve heard too many times that seeing a game at Notre Dame Stadium is one of the things every sports fan should do before he dies to spend the weekend dodging antique stores in Oak Bluffs.
For a lot of guys, talking his wife into a trip like that would be harder than getting her OK on the Olsen twins deal (alright, I‘ll stop now). And my own Sweet Irish Rose admitted it wasn’t her first choice, but she was a champ about it. Fortunately for me, she went to school at St. Mary’s, Notre Dame’s sister school, and she’d always wanted to show me the place. So she got in touch with her college roommates and they agreed to come too. So we managed to take a brief, 48 hour shore leave from our lives and turn it into a combination sports fantasy trip/second honeymoon/religious pilgrimage/class reunion.
I’m not being a tool when I call the trip a religious pilgrimage; it literally is. The Vatican ruled that Notre Dame meets the criteria to be declared a Basilica because so people visit it (by my count at least 80,000, six Saturdays every Fall). And I was glad frankly that my wife got a reunion with her friends out of the deal. It was nice to hear their stories for a change and listen to their inside jokes instead of her having to listen to me and my idiot buddies laughing about the day Cliffy whipped his car keys at the scalper for the 10,000th time.
You learn a lot the first time you put together a trip like this. The first thing you learn is what an a-hole you are; you and everyone you know. At least everyone who lives in the Northeast. Without exception, everyone we met was a decent, friendly, Midwestern, salt-of-the-earth type. We parked at one of the public lots ($10, which would get you a space for a Tonka truck on game day in Kenmore Square), and from the guys running the lots, to the troopers directing traffic to the tailgaters, everyone treats you like a human being, which is a little unsettling when you’ve lived your whole life in Massachusetts.
Before we started tailgating, My Trophy Wife split me off from the group so she could show me around the campus. Visiting Notre Dame is a lot like going to Disney World, if Disney World was built by French priests to glorify the Virgin Mary, and not by a maniacal, race-baiting movie tycoon. First you have to take a picture in front of the Golden Dome, which is Notre Dame’s Cinderella’s castle. Then you pose in front of Touchdown Jesus (the big geodesic ball thing at EPCOT). Everything from parking lot shuttle bus (“Everyone remember we parked in Mike Golic 7.“) to the bazillion souvenir stands are Disneyesque. We were heading to the Grotto when we came upon people lined up along the sidewalk outside the Basilica and realized that the players were about to come out of the game day Mass. This is UND’s version of a Disney character parade. “There’s Brady Quinn! There’s Aladdin! Ooh, Jeff Samardzija is walking with Buzz Lightyear!” I’m not in the habit of getting all giddy about seeing 21 year old college boys, but it was great to be a part of that tradition. And I truly appreciated seeing my man crush Weis up close like that, his restraining order be damned.
That’s the thing that really strikes you about Notre Dame. Weis has said it, and Lou Holtz said it before him. There’s just something about the place that you can’t describe. If you don’t feel it, no explanation will suffice. If you do, then no explanation is necessary. Everyone there, from alumni to the student body to subway alums like me, appreciates and respects the tradition of the place. A few hundred feet from the Basilica we found the Grotto. There were thousands of people milling around it, but you could hear a pin drop. Everyone just quietly lines up, lights a candle, says a prayer and leaves. As traditions go, this scene beats the hell out of puking Kamikaze’s all over yourself at Mary Anne’s on game day.
Like any red-blooded football fan, I recognize “Rudy” as one of the ten best movies ever made. By the time we reached the stadium, I’d probably reached triple digits on the “Rudy Quote-o-Meter.” But my Belle of St. Mary’s and her friends indulged me. I even got a call from my cousin Phil asking if, when I came up the entrance ramp, I was going to do the Ned Beatty “This is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen” line. I considered it, but in the end I was too caught up in the moment to pull it off. Besides, nice as the place is, Mr. Ruettiger never saw Elisha Cuthbert in “The Girl Next Door.”
But it was beautiful. The whole thing. The stadium itself, the Fertile Crescent of college football, where Rockne and Parseghian coached. Where Gipp, Montana and the Four Horseman played. The game was a blowout, which was fine with me; I didn’t come all that way to see them lose a squeaker. But whatever the game lacked in drama, the student section more than made up for it. They’re constant entertainment, breaking out in a different ritual every minute and a half, from indecipherable chants to the Weis tribute to tossing each other in the air for every point the Irish score (41 by the end of the game. My Darling Reason to Live is a self-confessed band geek, and the Irish marching band, the oldest, biggest and best in the country, was spectacular; almost enough to make you wish they still showed them on TV at halftime instead of scores and highlights. (Relax, I said “almost.” I haven’t lost my mind.)
At the end of the game, Weis led the players across the field to the Army sidelines to listen to the Black Knight’s fight song and honor them for protecting our asses. Army returned the favor, standing in tribute through the Irish fight song and the “Alma Mater.” I haven’t sobbed like that since the 200th time I watched Rudy get his acceptance letter.
Our older son has made it clear he wants to play for the Fighting Irish someday. When we got home, the first thing I said to him was “You’re gonna start studying harder and practicing more.” And just to be on the safe side, spend more time practicing the trumpet. Thanks always, Jack and Pat.