Here’s one from my brother: He ran into Lou at the airport last year, and went right up to him, “Hi, Lou, I’m X., ND class of ’93. My senior year, you brought us coffee and doughnuts while we were waiting in line all night to buy student season tickets.”

Lou looked at him and said, “No, I didn’t. I brought you doughnuts and juice.”

“You’re right,” remarked my chastened brother.

I second your call for the return of Lou. Sadly, I don’t think that ND will be replacing anymore coaches until they’ve finished paying a few more contracts off.

May the Forcier be with you all.

Kevin in Dubuque, Iowa, who watched his first football games of the season last Saturday, so guesses that means fall is here and all leaves are turning maroon and gold in my mind’s eye, even if they are still green in color

I’ll grudgingly admit the uniforms are good, but you have to subtract for the helmets. And for all the yonder sockets in Ann Arbor. And for Ann Arbor.

Case closed.

As to Notre Dame, I have yet to forgive them for beating the Utes on the back of some suspect officiating at the NIT many moons ago. The only good that came out of that game is the shock and horror of some cheeky Utahns and their underdog local supporters starting a bad form chant of “The Pope is a Dope” during the third quarter and I am only relieved the NIT does not take place in Boston.

My own alma mater produced Merlin Olsen but damned if they can ever get out of their own way even when talent is in hand. The fans used to have really good aim during Tequila Day against BYU though…don’t know if they still do because Out of State Tuition went up some time ago, thus letting a lot of air out of the Tequila Day supporters. To a resident of Happy Valley, where drunken trappers and their inebriated Indian cohorts once traded their cache, well…a big city slicker from Salt Lake might just as well been some damnable New Yorker .

But, all this college boy talk can’t hold a candle to a High School Football Game I once enjoyed on a bright September evening after one of the best steak dinners I ever had……. in Sydney, Nebraska, a few hours east of Cheyenne. This, my friends……is world class football and there aint no commercial interruptions. Raw Talent and an entire Town OUT FOR BLOOD! One could spend a couple months traveling the back roads of the plains states and watching local high school football…the game in its purest form….and die a happy, accomplished man.

BTW, I too am entirely opposed to this mania to have a national football championship. A national championship makes a lot of sense for basketball — a game in which the individual game does not mean quite as much because there are so many more of them. But it will ruin college football. Not only will the conference championship come to mean nothing, but the national championship idea is diminishing the value and meaning of the game. At MSU, beating UofM is more important than anything else, even if it doesn’t have the same importance the other way around. And that’s the way it should be. And there are other rivalries with similar meanings. The national championship is a concept to argue about over a beer during the off-season; it should not be allowed to substitute for the game itself.

Indeed, I find my attachment to ND to be ludicrous at times as well. But most affairs of the heart are ludicrous in one way or another, and the attachment of working class Catholics to ND is an affair of the heart, not one of the mind.

Growing up in the 70′s, my Big Bruddah attended ND for 2 years before “tuning in, turning on, and dropping out”. Long enough for me as a child of 9 years old to spend a night in his room in Zahm Hall, listening to him tell ghost stories about the ghost of Rockne who supposedly roamed campus, and to take in a game at ND stadium where some skinny kid named Montana led the Irish to victory that day. But my love of ND football is not linked to Montana, Dan Devine, Gerry Faust, Lou Holtz, or Charlie Weiss. No, they are all just players in a drama much bigger than their particular personalities. I look on them like I look on an alcholic uncle, or a bone headed brother who walked away from ND for a flop house in SF. Dysfunctional family, but family all the same. (Well, maybe not Joe. He’s more of the dashing older cousin)

As for SU, in the 70′s I was only vaguely aware that they had a football program. I did however, cheer quite heartily for Coach MacPherson in the late 80′s. But I was cheering for the coach, and the program, not necessarily any SU “ideal”. The fact that I’ve never been an SU “fan” probably has as much to do with the fact that they wear the color of the “wrong” end of the Irish Flag. That always bugged my Mom.

I do hope SU can rebuild their program. WNY needs SU, and anything other positive thing they can find. As a good Catholic I’m praying for you. My advice to long suffering SU fans is no different than my advice to Damers, “Offer it up.”

Peace,
Tom