A win for the ages...

(I know that for most of the people who read this blog the following information is neither useful nor sensible but Chris Jericho is back! The Lionheart has returned and now I have something to live for on Monday nights. Why yes, my life is rather sad and pathetic. Why do you ask?

Seriously though, he’s pretty much the only guy in wrestling that I like who isn’t either retired or, uh, dead. Man has it been a depressing year in that regard.)

Ok, back last spring when I filled out my ND ticket lottery forms I was hopeful that I was going to get a good game. Maybe USC or Boston College if I was lucky or a nice September game with great weather. Instead I got tickets to the Duke game in the middle of November. I usually don’t even apply for those games but it is Duke and what can I say, my Duke fandom runs pretty deep. But when I won the lottery I sure didn’t expect to experience what I experienced on Saturday.

I went to the game with my brother and drove in from Chicago on gameday. Got there a few hours before kickoff and noticed something before we even got off the toll road: there was no traffic. Seriously, we made better time than I did on most of my trips to school. Pulling into the White Field lot and walking through the parking lot gave you a weird vibe that just got worse the closer you got to the stadium. The entire campus seemed entirely dead. Not much of a crowd and certainly no sense of enjoyment.

This is tough to explain if you have never experienced an ND game before. It didn’t make sense to me coming from Illinois. As Illini we didn’t really tailgate. We just kind of showed up at the game and hoped beyond hope that we wouldn’t suck as badly as we did the week before and could somehow find a way to make the Liberty Bowl. It wasn’t an event, hell I went on a date that consisted of going shopping at the mall instead of attending a game one week. But at ND the entire point of the fall is going to football games and even when the weather is bad for the last home game you celebrate knowing that this is going to be your last chance.

But that just did not seem to be the case. This season had just sucked the life out of everyone. You just didn’t hear people playing the fight song or laughing about or even being there at all. The lots were pretty empty and sure, the weather had something to do with it but that wasn’t it. I even stopped by the Backer in the hopes of seeing Donna and Joey (sorry I missed you guys) and even it didn’t feel right. Hell, even the guy who took my ticket and said “Welcome to Notre Dame” didn’t seem to mean it.

The game itself was nothing to write home about. It was two bad teams playing in rainy, cold weather. ND had the much better squad and won out eventually. After seeing him in person I am really not sold on Jimmy Claussen. I’ve never seen a quarterback outside of high school just lock on to his primary receiver and never even think about the other guys. They might as well not even be running their routes. The running game came together but they still don’t have a breakaway runner. Basically this entire season could be described by the dumb penalties in the first quarter. First down at the four brought back due to an unsportsmanlike conduct. Punt downed inside the ten cancelled out by a late hit. Just the sort of stupid errors that an ND team are not supposed to make.

(Other notes that I don’t think I can fit in elsewhere. There were pretty visible empty seats in the student section. Looks like where the sophomore and grad students sections met but I wasn’t sure. Also, I happened to have the most cynical season ticket holder fans behind me who spent the entire game ripping on the team and then leaving in the third quarter. That was actually embarrassing. I’ll make fun of Claussen but I do cheer the guy on. And as always, the band and the leprechaun were cool.)

But here is the thing, going to see a game at Notre Dame, even in these conditions, is still one of the coolest things in the world. There’s the fact that while walking around campus in the morning we stumbled across a rugby game and were able to watch that for a while. Or the fact that I was once again able to hang out at PODs tailgate (not affiliated with Legends as the sign so eloquently stated). It’s still one of the best stadiums I’ve ever been in and even though I was in the end zone I still felt like I was right on top of the field. It really is what college football is supposed to be about. I know a lot of people view statements like that as par for the course for obnoxious Notre Dame fans but I really think it is true. It isn’t fancy, it isn’t corporate, it is just about the game and the students and the community.

I just hope that next year the team has improved. I’m not sure if I could take another season like this one.