10/04/08 - Notre Dame Fighting Irish - Notre Dame Stadium
Love them or hate them. There is no in-between with most people when it comes to two sports teams - the New York Yankees and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. As you can probably guess from the rest of this blog, I'm not most people. I can appreciate Notre Dame as an important piece of the college football landscape. You can't discuss the history and tradition of the sport without them. On the other hand, losing every bowl game for a decade shows that you may be a touch overrated. Bottom line is that if you are a true college football fan or just a sports road-tripper, you need to witness at least one game at Notre Dame Stadium in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus (He's painted on the side of the library overlooking the stadium). As an interesting side-note, taking this picture is closer than I got to either a church or the library during my four years at college.
This trip was my second to South Bend, both with my old college roommate. He is a die-hard Notre Dame fan (currently owns 18 signed ND mini-helmets) who was born and raised in Penn State country. We went in 2001 to see them beat Purdue and when the opportunity came to go again, I wasn't about to pass it up. We drove into town Thursday night and spent Friday playing 18 holes at Warren Golf Course on the ND campus. It's a challenging course that's well worth the money but if you're going to try to play on a gameday weekend, make sure to get your tee time in advance because it fills up quickly. After a couple of rounds on the patio to help forget my round on the course, we headed in town to the College Football Hall of Fame. Full of the usual interactive exhibits, plaques of enshrined players, and memorabilia, the Hall of Fame is a nice afternoon activity (skip the movie though - it was pretty bad). If you time your visit right, you might even get to take the tour with Notre Dame's weekly opponent. Most teams walk through Friday afternoon when they're in town and we shared our visit with Stanford. (It was recently announced that the Hall is relocating to Atlanta within the next 3-4 years so if you're planning a trip, make sure it's still there)
Campus on gameday is what you'd expect it should be. Since the stadium is right in the middle of campus, parking is mostly offsite and requires shuttle buses to get you there. Although this is inconvenient at the start and end of your day, it means that once you're there it feels like you're back at school. You can walk the quads where students are playing. You can buy food from the different campus clubs that set up tables around the stadium. I even saw one place that you could get your face painted and get a smoked bratwurst, all in one transaction. A few hours before kickoff, there is a pep rally in the basketball arena - complete with activities for the kids, the cheerleaders and, of course, The Leprechaun. About the same time, you may hear the sound of police sirens and helicopters. Don't be alarmed, that's just the police escort for the ND team bus reminding you that in this town on a Saturday in the fall, everything stops for the football team.
Tickets to see Notre Dame, either home or away, are pricey and almost always bought through ticket agents. If you are fine seeing a mid-level opponent (think Purdue, Stanford, Michigan State), you're looking at a few hundred dollars for a decent seat. If you want to see a top level opponent (USC, PSU, Michigan), expect to sell the rights to a vital organ. A few year's back when ND hosted #1 USC, I recall seats listed for upwards of $3000 each. My advise - hang on to your spleen for when you might need it, grab some upper level tickets to a mid-level opponent and enjoy the experience. Men in kilts march onto the field ahead of the team. There are no jumbotrons. Omnipresent advertising is nowhere to be found. It's just a classic, one-level bowl design stadium in the middle of rural Indiana. Notre Dame won that day and although it made the ride home better (imagine driving 11 hours with someone who's team just lost to a school who's mascot is a tree), sometimes the outcome of the game isn't the point. Love them or hate them? It doesn't really matter. If you call yourself a football fan or even a traveller who likes sports, South Bend belongs high on your list of destinations.
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