From: Rolfe Harden <Rolfe@rolfeharden.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 2:48 PM
Subject: FW: Stadium of the Week: Notre Dame (The Stadium Batch Two)
To: rolfeharden@gmail.com
The Notre Dame Experience.
The aspect of The Notre Dame Experience that I was most impressed with was their enormous effort to keep the entire matter in the stadium as original, old fashioned and collegiate as possible. For instance, the seats: as afore-mentioned, with the exception of the first seven rows on both side for the Big Donors, are all WOODEN BENCH SEATS. No aluminum. no chairbacks, 79,000+ wooden seats, found by row numbers that are spray painted using stencils on the aisles! (#1314).
The End Zones. Still, in 2012, the original 1930 diagonals. No test pattern checkerboard (Tennessee) and no names in the End Zone grass so you could tell whose stadium it is. When you are in the Notre Dame Stadium you know what school it is. (See #1297 and #1334.)
The Press Box. This new one was created for the 1996 expansion. It has ample room for the fawning press and coaching staffs, but no boxes! At this stadium fans are supposed to sit outdoors in the stadium in the Midwest -Lake Michigan driven weather like real fans, not like wimpy rich cat donors.
Note that the game began in cool but clear weather, but a light mist came in toward the end of the first half. Ponchos and hats began to appear, producing a colorful mélange of color spots all over the place. Note that ND fans do not wear much color, at least for late season games (the game being photographed was mid-November) when they dress for the weather. So, note that the stands are full of dull blacks and browns, coats, hats, windbreakers. No vast seas of red (Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia) or even white (Penn State) or green (Oregon). Note #1260 which reveals the spots of color that appeared like dots everywhere once the mist started. Also note the areas of solid red, occupied by the visitors (Utah) in their section in the Upper Ring. (#1230). I was surprised at the number of seats the visitors had, given the extreme scarcity of Notre Dame game tickets.
(The darkening sky and the mist is what made my photos not as sharp and clear as they otherwise could have been.)
SCOREBOARDS.
More simplicity. See #1301 and 1305. These are the two new scoreboards put up in 1996. They do what scoreboards are supposed to do, give you the score, (and a bit of other essential information). Basic, traditional, collegiate. They do not light up, spit fireworks, or look like godawful web pages full of ads (Vanderbilt). They do not entertain. The entertainment is on the field. (You are not supposed to watch the Scoreboards, you dummies (SMU or Vanderbilt, or is this because they are trying to distract the fans from what is happening with the game?) There are no horribly annoying running ticker tape message boards ringing the stands (Alabama).
THE INTIMACY.
Rockne wanted a stadium, an arena where young men played football and their fans could watch them, and watch them close up. One of the most outstanding and notable features of Notre Dame Stadium is its intimacy, the closeness of the fans to the action. Look at the amazing photos #1330, 1333, and 1353. Marvel at how close the stands and the fans are to the field and especially the End Zones!! The Stadium is a pit with the fans practically falling onto the field. WOW!!!
STUDENT EMPHASIS.
Given their fame, one might think Notre Dame possesses a large, overwhelming student body. Not so. Undergraduate enrollment is an amazingly low 8,400, and with 3,400 grad students, total enrollment is only 11,800 , one of the smallest in Division IA! And get this, for an emphasis on making it a true student experience:
The school allocates 10,795 tickets for the students, which means 91% of all Notre Dame students get tickets, surely one of the highest in Division IA, and a major benefit of going to a small school. And you can bet they use them! It should be noted that schools such as Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, Tulsa, Wake Forest and SMU (all under 14,000) are similar in their ability to provide tickets to as many students who want to go to a game. Take that, you behemoths such as Ohio State, Texas, Florida, Texas A&M (all about 50,000).
And now get this: the Student section starts at the 40 yard line of the Press Box side, and is divided by year, so that the Seniors get seats from the 40 to the 35, juniors from the 35 on down and so on. Take a very good look at photos 1337 and 1361 and note how the student section stands out. As there is bench seating, the students are able to crowd more bodies into their space than the more standoffish adults. They pack themselves in and have a riotous time! The Band faces them from the nearby corner, and frequently plays certain Irish ditties to which the students all do choreographed arm gestures.
So, an amazing emphasis on keeping the experience student focused, traditional, and collegiate. Now I know you are thinking, yes, but they have their own TV network, a nationwide fanatic fan base, and milk that for all its worth. So isn't it rather disingenuous for them to try to be so quaint? All true. Which is why I give them credit for not only making an effort to keep it under control at ground zero on game day, but to actually succeed in this effort. The Notre Dame Experience is one of - perhaps in this day and time - the most collegiate game day atmosphere there is left in Division IA.
An now a few random observations:
THE CHEERLEADERS.
During timeouts they span the field to lead the crowd. #1354.
THE FLAG.
In a perfectly symmetrical bowl, where do you stake the American flag? Their solution: on a very tall pole in the corner of the End Zone by the band. #1312. A real flag waves, not some fake video flag on a scoreboard.
The LIGHTS.
As befitting a traditional stadium, in northwestern Indiana near Lake Michigan, where games in October and November can get downright chilly, rainy and even snowy, the stadium was built without lights, because all games were day games. As with so many other matters, TV demanded a change, so in 1982 the school began to use portable lights brought in just for games, on very tall poles, (See my Northwestern message, where they still do that.) Permanent lights were installed as part of the 1996 expansion, and they were paid for by NBC, who dictated there needed to be better lighting for TV. Four banks were installed in the four corners of the Stadium and a horizontal bar of lights was put across the top of the Press Box. (#1321 and 1372). The contractual agreement with NBC was that the lights were to be used for those dreary days in November, but still, all games were to be in the afternoon. The thuggish goons at NBC however abused the school into finally having a night game in 2011 ( with USC), the first since the addition of permanent lights. Do note that the game I witnessed was an afternoon game, but it was in November in northern Indiana, so it was gloomy. The positioning of the lights in the four corners makes it well nigh impossible to take full stadium shots without having one or more of the light banks cause exposure problems. The various light splotches in some of the more panoramic shots are not light leaks, but are the lights themselves.
THE BAND
The Notre Dame Band sits on folding chairs on risers in the northeast (student side) of the field, as shown clearly in the Tunnel shots in the previous message. This has its advantages in that they face the students (#1282) and are easily heard by them for all of their choreographed Irish tune ditties. (#1239, 1243, 1318, 1320, 1331, 1341). The visiting band is also on the field in the other student side corner, which makes the ticket managers happy: there are no saleable seats taken up by the bands. This means that the PB side and the EZ patrons are always able to hear a bands, but those on the student side of the Stadium side are not.
For Pregame the Band forms the great "ND" outside the Tunnel (#1231) for the entrance of the team, and then repairs to their seats. For Postgame the band forms a giant block (#1380) that fills the field. (Note the Irish Guards dancers in front of the Band.) In recent decades the band has improved enormously in its quality. It took a Texas high school band director to do so. Luther Snavely went from Richardson, Texas outside Dallas, to Ole Miss and then ND, where he instituted mayor improvements in the quality of the playing and marching. Before his arrival, they were pretty bad. I can remember seeing them in the 1970 and 1971 Cotton Bowl games with Texas and thinking, ugh, we have high school bands in Texas better than this.
Because of the heavy mist, the Band donned their clear overcoats for halftime. See # 1257, 1258, 1271 and 1272. Their famous Irish Guards group is seen with them in #1267. You have to be of a certain height to be eligible to be one. That is to enhance the effect when wearing the tall bearskin hats. Unfortunately, note in the Halftime formation shots how the Big Donors in the first seven row chairback seats are the ones who have left to go somewhere during the Band's show, while everyone around them has stayed to support the excellent Band. What a show of lack of interest.
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So there you have it, the most authentically collegiate football experience going today in IA. You almost expect to see the coaches in their ankle length overcoats and fedoras on the sidelines.
Good luck for your next National Championship!
Signing off from having experienced the Notre Dame Experience,
Byron Cain
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