Notre Dame might accept students and offer classes, but beyond the trappings of dorms and dining halls, ND is football. I've seen Rudy, peeked through the fence to glimpse the football team practicing, and watched almost every home game on tv. I was SO excited that we were finally able to afford tickets this year (for a student and a spouse, tickets to the home games cost $500). Yesterday was the first game of the season. Mike and I got to campus early and wandered through the huge crowds of people, who were all dressed from head-to-toe in Notre Dame gear and were taking pictures of everything in sight. Grown men were acting like children on Christmas morning; it was hard to watch them and not get absurdly excited for the game.
Our seats were right next to the stairwell the players came through, which was really cool. Our team stayed ahead the entire game, and we ended up beating the Boilermakers by a comfortable margin. Despite some missed tackles, it was a very promising start to the season. And yet...
It was a mostly-miserable experience. Perhaps this was partly the product of overly-inflated expectations, but I couldn't wait for the game to be over, and kept thinking I'd be enjoying it more if I were watching it on TV. Tailgating, it turns out, is pointless if you're not ingesting large quantities of beer. The ridiculously overpriced hamburger I got before the game was almost entirely raw, and the two bites I had before looking down left my stomach queasy for hours. The stadium was so packed that we didn't have room to stand facing forward, but were forced to stand twisted sideways (and my shoulders are NOT that wide). My shoes got drenched in Coca-Cola, and everything smelled like vomit and alcohol. We had to remain standing on the benches the entire game, and even then a guy in front of me was so tall I could only see half the field.
Our section, which was supposed to be reserved for law students, was inundated by sophomores who were too drunk to find their real seats (which certainly didn't help the crowding problem). One of them, who decided to sit on Mike's other side, was constantly throwing his elbows out during cheers and knocking Mike and I down from the bench. This same fellow yelled a constant stream of filth, not only at the referees and the other team, but at our own players. His friends found it hilarious.
Notre Dame students have the tradition, whenever our team scores, of hoisting small-sized females into the air and throwing them up and down in celebration. The large, obnoxious sophomore was not paying attention, and thought that we had scored off an incomplete pass. He grabbed a drunk girl sitting in front of him and threw her up in the air. The other boys nearby didn't notice, and were busy trying to listen to the referee announce a penalty. Obnoxious boy couldn't catch the girl on his own, and she crashed down onto the ground, hitting her head on the bleachers. Blood started pouring down her face. A few of the boys seemed mildly concerned (i.e. put a worried expression on their faces and quickly asked if she was ok, but continued intently watching the game), but obnoxious boy thought her injuries were even more entertaining than his profanities. The girl's friends were, perhaps, even worse. One of them yelled to obnoxious boy "Make her stand up so I can get a good picture." And so obnoxious boy forced bleeding girl to her feet and held her up while her "friends" pulled out their cameras.
All this stood in sharp contrast to the games I watched last year, sitting on the comfy futon, eating homemade salsa and cookies and getting homework done during the commercial breaks. I'm all for cheering the Irish on, I'd just rather not do it from the stadium. As we have season tickets, hopefully yesterday was an anomalous experience, but ... I feel like such a terrible Notre Dame student right now.
