From: Byron Cain [mailto:heritagetoursllc@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Byron Cain
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2012 12:46 PM
To: Greg Knapp; Jim Grace; Jerry Rotunno ; Andy Kuklish; Andy Moyer; Aryan Dokht; bchome@texastourstrade.com; Bill Byerley; Bill Little; Bob & Lynne Arlen; Cecil. H Ross (Cecil.H Ross); Chris Young; Chuck Higgins; Chuck Lipscomb; Chuck Roehrig; Cleve Latham; Craig Smith; Crean, Bill; David McDonald; David Scannell; Don Cardinal; Doug Hirt; Fred Clay; Greg Lamb; Gus Jones ; Gus Mader; Jake Friemel; James French; James McFarland; Jason Maynard; Jay Masingill; Jim & Susan Everitt; Joe Estes; Joe Longino ; John Ciccarelli; John Clanton; John D Watt; John Dredge (John Dredge); John Hudson; John K. Larkins, Jr.; John Mead; Ken Capps; Kent Owen; Kevin McCulloch; Larry Green Jr.; Lawrence/Sandra Perkins ; Lee Reid; Marc Winandy; Mark Browning; Melinda Cain ; Michael H. McCoy; Mike Flechas; Mike Rodgers; Morris Family; Murray, J. R. (John); Myrph Foote ; Paul Springman; Phil Davidson (J Stanley); Poppin McCullough; Richard A. Daley; Richard Bower; Richard Taylor; Rob Baker; Robert F Marchesani ; Roland B. Pelt; Rolfe Harden; Ross Rainwater; Scott Davis; Scott Schrakamp ; Shannon Price; Shawn Collinsworth ; Stephen Heishman; Steve Moiles; Steve Nieslawski; Steve Whittington; Susie Owen; Tav Lupton ; Tim Walsh; Timothy Tangen; Will Haskett
Subject: Stadium of the Week: Notre Dame
ATTENTION: The following e-mail contains information that may be offensive to non-Notre Dame fans. Reader discretion is advised.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hello Stadium Fans Everywhere! It is I, your roving Stadium Reporter, bringing you all of the important stadium and game day information that the talking heads ignore. In honor of Notre Dame's accession to the Number One ranking in the football polls, we are featuring one of the most storied and tradition-laden college arenas in the land, NOTRE DAME STADIUM. I have so much information and so many photos to share with you that I have broken down the story into two parts, The Campus and The Notre Dame Game Experience, and The Stadium.
Point of View Disclaimer. In the interest of full disclosure, I shall state that I went to see Notre Dame with the point of view of one who loved to hate their football program. Having grown up in the Sixties and Seventies, I considered ND to be those insufferably obnoxious, rough, uncouth, black-leather-jacket-wearing, sons of immigrant dock workers and coal miners. Several events changed my mind. Notre Dame went co-ed in 1972, and now the school is 47% female. That has softened their swagger. Then the football team became mortal for a quarter-century. Nothing reduces overbearing obnoxiousness like losing. I begin to meet some living, breathing ND alums who are actually great people (eg Jim Grace, take a bow) that I really like. But my visit to the campus and a game turned me around completely. I was so impressed with the attitude and approach of the people and the students. and the atmosphere at the game that I have now become a long-distance Notre Dame fan.
THE GAME WEEKEND EXPERIENCE.
A home game in South Bend attracts not only the fans of the opponent but also hordes of general tourists. More than any other school game experience, ND is a "tourist destination." As a person in the tourism business, I would say that ND is a place people go to see because of the nationwide reach of their legendary teams and the mystique of the school. The University knows this and milks it for all its worth, and that is a lot. Starting on Friday, there are green-coated volunteers stationed at main intersection points around the campus to greet visitors with a "Welcome to Notre Dame. May I help you with any directions?" It got to be a joke with my host and myself, every time we turned around it was "Welcome to Notre Dame. Welcome to Notre Dame." All right already. I feel very welcomed. The Bookstore was packed wall to wall, but its two-story big-as-a-department store layout - enormous for such a small school - is needed to display all of the Notre Dame Stuff. (#1098 - an interesting sculptural work in Bookstore.) I contributed to their gazillion-dollar intake of tourist money. Student guides give hour long walking tours to the thousands of tourists throughout Friday afternoon.
The daughter of my host Bob Marchesani offered interesting observations when I interrogated her about student attitudes toward the Big Time Football Grandeur at ND. She shrugged and said, well we all hope we win, and we go to the games, but many are more involved in one of the nation's largest IM sports programs for real students.( ND, along with the Military Academies, is the only university with full contact IM football. The IM championship game takes place in The Stadium.) She wondered who all of these people were clogging up their campus on game weekends, and getting in their way. Why are you all here, and why do you take it so seriously? When are you leaving?
Notre Dame sits on a mostly flat plain in northern Indiana, with a campus of 1,250 acres. That means they have lots of space. I was struck by the openness of the campus layout, as most of the brick buildings are placed in quads, with large, open spaces in the center. I found this to be similar to Purdue and Indiana, not to the forested enclaves of Vanderbilt and Duke. Most of the space in the quads is open with few trees. The structures are of a yellowish-tan hue, in a simplistic Gothic design, devoid of much ornamentation. (See photos 1165-1188-1283-1323.) Appropriately there are statues of Christ and other Christian figures spotted around. #1099. The dorms are segregated by sex, with visiting hours for the opposite kind. Each dorm has its own chapel (see #1094) so none of the 80% of the students who are Catholic are far from a mass, which is celebrated over 100 times a week when all of the various chapels are considered. Number 1186 proves that Irish students ride bikes just like real students elsewhere; they especially need to, given the size of the campus.
Number 1102 is one of the few buildings hidden by trees. Movie fans will recognize it as the building where "Rudy" went in to talk to a priest about attending ND.
The complete name of the university is The University of Notre Dame du Lac, (that's French, not Latin, for you unlearned) and there are indeed two lakes on the large acreage that are lined with woodsy walks. Near one is the famous Grotto, a recreation of the one in Lourdes, France. (#1104) This is where the devout are drawn to meditate, light candles and pray. On a football weekend, it is a bit awkward when students and faculty are there for a religious purpose, and the tourists are there to snap photos.
Obviously ND is a Catholic institution, and many think it is run by the Jesuits, but that is not true. It was founded in 1842 by a member of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. Members of that order still oversee the University. (Boston College, a major rival, is Jesuit run, a reason for the rivalry.) For much of its first century. ND was known as a good school, but not great academically. In the last half century it has markedly upgraded its academics, and is now on everyone's lists of the top twenty national universities in America. No longer is it a football team with a school attached.
The iconic Golden Dome houses the Administration Building, and faces down an avenue of trees and walkways, which is where the Saturday morning pre-game food stands are located, and where the players walk from the Basilica to the Stadium. #1220 is me and the Dome, to prove I Was There, but regrettably the goldness of the Dome is lost in the sky. The trees were a gorgeous dark gold, so the leafy mall made for some striking pictures, such as the red-coated Utah fans among the gold leaves (#1222). #1208 is the mall as seen from the Dome, and #1131 is the mall facing the Dome. The architecture of The Dome Building, I would say Gothic with Italianate ornamentation, can be seen in numbers 1198-1199-1207 and 1213.
Other buildings of note are the Arena (for basketball, #1322) and what I call Indiana Stonehenge (#1183).
PRE-GAME on FRIDAY.
THE TUNNEL.
After buying stuff at The Bookstore, taken your tour, snapped the Dome (#1209), it is time to walk through The Tunnel. There is only one Tunnel, and it leads past the locker rooms to the middle of the north End Zone (EZ) of The Stadium. This is from where the team makes there entrance into The Stadium. Knowing that gazillions of fans salivate to walk down The Tunnel and run into The Stadium, the ND powers once again recognize their national touristic appeal, and open it for a couple of hours, I believe 4 to 6, on Friday afternoons. During that window, 5,000 gawkers hallucinate and see themselves slapping the "Play Like A Champion" sign, (actually hidden in a stairwell to the Locker Room), and rushing through The Tunnel and onto The Field amidst the strains of The Fight Song. From the ceiling of the Tunnel are hung banners(#1142) signifying each of the truly recognized National Championships, of which there are eleven - so far. (There are eight other shared, contested or self-claimed.) Finally you burst from under the overhanging championship statements and immediately you find yourself at the edge of the field (#1147) where your progress is stopped by a little white picket fence at the goalpost. From there you can look up behind you into the stands (#1161), and left (#1156) and right (#1154) to see The Stadium from the grass just as the players do. (Notice the upper ring of stands, the gold chair back seats in the first seven rows, and the upper tier of entrance portals, all of which will be commented on in Part Two of this essay, THE STADIUM.)Number 1160 is significant in that it shows where the Irish Marching Band sits, immediately to the left of The Tunnel, at field level, in four rows of folding chairs around the curve of the northeast EZ. (More on that in the Game Photos.) Number 1158 is proof that I was There at The Tunnel.
THE REHEARSAL.
After one has filed in and out of The Tunnel, then one walks to a nearby parking lot to watch the Irish Band rehearse their halftime show. #1168.
THE PEP RALLY.
There is a fenced off area encompassing a large open field and lot near The Stadium where a nighttime Pep Rally is held. The Band comes in from behind the stage and the whipped up frenzied event is of course led by The Leprechaun, backed up by the Cheerleaders. The various dorms have been competing for the best spirit signs and such, and are singled out, as there are no Greeks at ND. The crowd is all at the same flat level in front of the stage, so it is difficult to really see well or take photos unless you are right up front. Hearing their invigorating (or nauseating, depending on your point of view) Fight Song ("Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame") there actually at ND, being played by their band, and sung by their students, is simultaneously thrilling to a Goosebumps level, and intimidating. My host and I were amused to both be carded as we entered the fenced in and controlled Pep Rally area. How long has it been since that has happened?! (1977.) Apparently Indiana requires that everyone gets carded, so they don't miss anyone. This is because there are booths selling beer and brats and other such Midwestern fare. The rest of Friday you are on your own to eat, party, whatever. You need that time to get rested up for the full day of activities on Saturday.
PRE-GAME ON SATURDAY.
THE DOME AND THE MALL.
Now the tourists and fans have really flooded the quads and especially the Mall, where there is a line to get in - and out of - the Dome Building. (#1195). That is because a gaggle of pipers(#1203) is preparing to pipe inside the rotunda of the Dome. Now the Irish do wear kilts (but not really nearly as much as us Scots. ( Now you are playing on my ancestral field.) My host and I perceptively noticed that all of the tunes they played in their concert (#1225) (except the Fight Song) were Scottish, to tell you the truth. We decided it was the better part of being Good Guests to not start a squawk by informing everyone there of this Fact.
The mall is lined by stands of every manner of student organization and booster group selling every manner of outdoor game food, with much more variety than we saw offered the night before at The Pep Rally.
The players in the meantime go into the Basilica of the Sacred Heart next door to the Dome Building, for their pre-game mass. (# 1204.) (We Scottish Protestants call that an unfair advantage put on by the Irish Catholics.) As the Basilica is not quite as large as the Stadium, the public is not allowed inside for this spiritual battle preparation. However, I insinuated myself inside at a different time to obtain these shots of a gorgeous interior. No one does interiors like the Catholics. (#1108, 1113, 1114,1115). The Irish Marching Band is brought on to divert and entertain the crowd during the mass by performing on the steps of this building, #1190, which is one over from the Basilica. You will notice no crowds nor the band in this shot, because as with the Pep Rally, the flat surface leading up to the raised area where the band was is packed with people, so you really cannot get a good shot unless in the first row.
When the players are done with their religious inspiration, they leave the Basilica and follow the Band down the mall to The Stadium. The adoring fans form a tunnel for them to pass through, #1227 and 1230, with the Golden Dome and the Basilica as the backdrop. What a setting!!
The aforementioned eating, praying, listening, foaming at the mouth, has stretched over five hours, so now it is time to actually enter The Stadium.
That's in Part Two.
No comments:
Post a Comment