If I could venture to provide one piece of life advice it’d be this: get yourself college roommates who go to grad school at dope universities. That’s what I did, and it led to one of the most memorable weekends of my life.
One of my undergrad roommates at BYU got accepted to Notre Dame’s graduate school of architecture and moved to South Bend, Indiana with his wife a year or two ago. The first thing I did when he told me he got into Notre Dame (after congratulating him of course) was check the Irish football schedule. I’ve never been a Notre Dame fan, but my whole life they’ve been one of those larger than life type programs. Brady Quinn was one of the first college football players who I made sure to watch every single week growing up; I even have some old VHS recordings my mom made for me of old Notre Dame games so I could watch him. The movie “Rudy” is like the ultimate crossroads of college football movies and Cinderella stories. With seven Heisman winners and eleven National Championships, Notre Dame is the most storied program in the country. The opportunity to experience the place where so much of college football history had been written was something I knew couldn’t pass up.
Lo and behold, North Carolina of all teams (special place in my heart) was scheduled to play in South Bend on October 30th, 2021. Seeing that game on the calendar was game over for me, and I spent more than two years planning my trip to Notre Dame. A few weeks ago October 30th finally came and I got to experience a place that every college football fan should get to experience.
I had never been to the midwest before, and I was super surprised at how pretty the drive from Chicago to South Bend was. The trees basically all had their autumn red and yellow foliage still, the farms were so green it was almost a completely new shade of green that I'd never seen before. Indiana cold hits differently than Utah cold, it’s almost deceivingly cold. The whole time I had the feeling that it had just rained (even though it hadn’t), and everything was naturally cleaner somehow. South Bend didn’t come out of nowhere like some towns do, the farm houses slowly started becoming more and more frequent until we found ourselves on a row of farmhouses with tons of space that all looked like a wildly fun place to grow up in.
Eventually the farm houses turned into a town. The first word that comes to my mind when trying to describe South Bend is old. Not run down or anything like that, but almost frozen in time. You can tell it’s been there forever, and so much history has happened there, yet not much if anything has changed. I can’t imagine a town that’s personality so closely resembles Notre Dame, and can’t think of a better place for Notre Dame to call home.
As soon as we dropped our stuff off at my old roommate’s house in South Bend we walked up Eddy Street to get to the campus. Our short walk was filled with tailgaters watching other college football games and trying to stay warm, and every single one of them looked up from the Michigan State/Michigan game they were watching to say hello.
A few years ago the University bought the property directly South of campus and turned it into student housing, bars, a couple other businesses, and the school bookstore and named it Eddy Commons. That place was POPPING with mostly navy blue clad folks, with a few people in Carolina blue as well. I was with my twenty year old cousin so we had to skip the bars and go to a fantastic burger joint.
The first thing we did on campus was walk past Knute Rockne gate on the way to the library, where the Touchdown Jesus mural is. The stadium is built into the school athletic buildings that have the same renaissance-gothic inspired architecture as the rest of campus. It almost looks like Notre Dame built the athletic buildings first, and then tried to squeeze the stadium in between everything after the fact.
Just north of the stadium is the library lawn, featuring the famed “Touchdown Jesus” mural which faces Knute Rockne gate entrance to the stadium. The lawn was already packed (PACKED) to the brim with people lining up to witness the Player Walk, when the team walks from the Library to the stadium. The Player Walk is closer to a parade than anything else; bagpipers are doing their thing, kids are trying to get the player’s attention for a high five, people line up for hours to try and get the best vantage point.
We found ourselves huddled between an eldery couple from Carolina and a Notre Dame frat bro who had climbed up a tree to get a better angle. He was nice enough to text me the video he got (if you’re reading this my man that was much appreciated, dinner on me if you’re ever in Salt Lake). During the Player Walk I couldn’t help to think of the Notre Dame players that starred when I first started watching football making that same walk years ago: Brady Quinn, Jeff Samardzija, & Tom Zbikowski (and everyone else on the roster not of Eastern European descent).
The Player Walk is about two and a half hours before kickoff, my game plan was to go check out the Golden Dome and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. As soon as the Player Walk ended everyone at the Player Walk, literally every single person there, booked it to the Golden Dome and the Basilica (which are like 15 feet from each other). I just thought everyone had the same idea as me, but it turns out right after the Player Walk the trumpet players from the school band play the fight song and the Alma Mater at the Golden Dome. Let me tell you, Notre Dame has some of the catchiest music of any school in the country.
Once the trumpets were done playing the Victory March we had a little bit of free time before going into the stadium. We went inside the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and what a juxtaposition and perfect example of the culture at Notre Dame. Just outside the Basilica people were tailgating, bumping music, and anything else you can think of to get ready for a huge football game. Inside the Basilica was like walking into a completely different world, and for a bit I almost forgot I was at Notre Dame for a football game. They have a couple of Gameday Masses (just good ole regular Mass, but on game day) you could attend throughout the day, such a unique aspect of Notre Dame that was super cool to experience.
After all that, we finally made it to the stadium. We went in through Knute Rockne gate and walked up and down the concourses taking the scenic route to our seats. The concourse is filled with posters that are blown up programs from old Notre Dame games back in the day honoring all their previous national championships & seven Heisman winners; tied for most all time.
If you haven’t seen the movie “The Rookie” it’s about a high school baseball coach who makes it to the Majors as a relief pitcher. The coolest scene in the movie is when a few players he coaches on his high school team go to watch him pitch against the Rangers in their hometown of Dallas. The camera shows the high school kids excitedly walking with their hot dogs and popcorn through the stadium concourse gate. You can slowly start to see the ballpark lights past the players heads, then the fans come into the picture, until at the same moment the players get a full view of the stadium is the moment the camera flies past them to pan across what seems to the students like the most incredible stadium in the world. The camera cuts from the stadium to the players' amazed faces, where you can tell they’ve all been transported from the nosebleeds down to the field, dreaming about what it’d be like to be a major leaguer.
That walk from the concourse where you can hear the crowd noise and feel the energy of the stadium, through the tunnel where the field slowly comes into view, until you get past the gate and all of a sudden you’re actually there is one of the most surreal moments of any game in any sport. I think about that scene every time I go to a game, and I was certainly thinking of that when I walked through the concourse to my first view of Notre Dame Stadium. It took a few minutes at least for it to sink in that I was actually in the same stadium where so much of college football history had happened.
I was so busy taking in the stadium that I didn’t notice half the Notre Dame football team walking right by me on their way to early-out warmups. Before the game Notre Dame walks through the middle of the student section to get to the field before going back into the locker room. It was kinda weird, something I’d never seen before just because stadium steps are usually pretty slick and Notre Dame was no exception, & the players are all in cleats and that’s just asking for a slip and fall. Luckily all the players had helmets, even more good luck no player slipped despite a couple close calls.
Some of those Notre Dame players are enormous, and all college football players are big but seeing defensive lineman Isaiah Foskey in person made me change the way I look at the limits (or lack thereof) of the human body.
We got to the stadium almost two hours early to walk around and make sure we got the best seats in the student section that we could, which paid off because we were in the front row right on the goal line. The game is finally about to start, the band is running out playing the Victory March and 77,000 people are anxiously waiting for the players to come make their way back to the field. All of a sudden the lights go off, every light in the stadium so it’s pitch black. The whole crowd lets out this surprised, excited gasp like no one knows what's about to happen. A couple minutes later music starts roaring and sporadic lights start flashing on and off. Through the smoke and the flashing lights the players come storming out of the tunnel and the whole place goes berserk.
The lights came back on as the captains were doing their thing at midfield and the teams were both getting ready for kickoff when all of a sudden the Leprechaun found his way over to the student section and started clogging around and getting everyone amped. No one in the country is living a better life than the Notre Dame Leprechaun. The whole game he was clogging around, taking pictures with fans, and doing a ton of push ups because Notre Dame ended up scoring in the forties.
Because I was in the front row I didn’t really notice anything that was happening right behind me. After an Irish touchdown in the 2nd quarter I turned to say something to my cousin and had to do a double take because it looked like something was being thrown around the stadium. Turns out it was the actual students that were being bounced around like a beachball! Every time the Irish score the students are tossing each other around in conjunction with the Leprechaun’s pushups. The students look like a combination of a Beach Boys concert and a giant piston.
At the end of the third quarter all the lights shut off again and this Irish jig/rock music started playing. The stadium lights were blasting green flashes of light that were borderline blinding. It felt like Conor Mcgregor was about to walk out for a fight I almost forgot I was at a football game. Even the North Carolina players were dancing around with the music.
Everything the students did, and the whole crowd honestly, made the game so much fun. During a timeout the video board showed a promotion for Mass the next day. The video showed split shots of Irish head coach Brian Kelly and a priest from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus. Every time Brian Kelly was on the video board the stadium was dead silent, and every time the video switched to the priest the crowd ERUPTED, it was louder than a couple of the touchdowns that the Irish scored that night. That’s just one example of so many random things that by themselves aren’t that big of a deal, but added up throughout the whole night helped make it an unbelievable experience
As soon as the game ended I found myself locking arms and swaying shoulder to shoulder with one of the recruits on his official visit and a freshman gal who seemed to have had a bit too much fun at the tailgate. With everything that was going on during the game I’d forgotten the part that I’d been most excited about: singing the Alma Mater while the players sang facing the students. My camera roll on my phone is full of everything I did in South Bend that day, the one thing that’s not on there is the Alma Mater because I was so wrapped up in the moment that I forgot to film it, and I’m kind of glad I didn’t if we’re being honest. Being able to see the looks of the player’s faces as they sang “our hearts forever love thee, Notre Dame” with the entire stadium singing and swaying along with them gave me chills, a once in a lifetime opportunity I’ll never forget.
I grew up watching Notre Dame. I was never a fan but I never disliked them either, I was always just neutral. They were always just another football school. After getting to experience everything that Notre Dame has to offer in person: the player walk from Touchdown Jesus to Knute Rockney gate, the Golden Dome and Basilica of the Sacred Heart, hearing the Victory March so much I’ll never be able to get it out of my head, facing the players and singing the Alma Mater, and the funnest game atmosphere I’ve ever experienced; Notre Dame catapulted itself to the top of my list of favorite school/college town atmospheres. If you’re reading this and went to Notre Dame, you attended an incredible school. If you’re reading this and have never been to South Bend, as a friend I’m telling you that it’s unlike any other place you’ve been and something I’m begging you to experience for yourself.
-By Jake Cowden
Photo: Chad Weaver | The Goshen News