Call it ND - The Experience

Growing up down the road from South Bend, I had always held out the desire to go to a Notre Dame football game someday. According to most people who seemed to know, that's one of the toughest tickets in the country, so I had never really made an effort to get any. Many years ago, we had some friends who were ND alums who had season tickets and told us they would let us have a couple if they ever couldn't make it to a game themselves. But that never happened - they never missed a game, at least up until the point when we moved away and lost touch.

So this year, sort of out of the blue, Nick scores some tickets from being in the right place at the right time with the right friends. And he arranged them for Tim and me, so we all got to experience the event together.

And that's the main point of the game vs. Syracuse at ND stadium this weekend. It wasn't just a football game; it was an event. I'm still in awe, and now understand a little bit more about the tradition and pageantry and mystique that are Notre Dame Football.

I've been to lots of football games. Indy Colts, Indiana, Ball State, Clemson, South Carolina, Ashland, Rose-Hulman. None measured up, from the standpoint of the overall experience, to this weekend at Notre Dame.

And I'm not really talking about the game itself. Sure, ND dominated Syracuse on the field. What put me in awe was the atmosphere, the crowd, the band, the stadium, the lights - everything was on a grand scale and exceeded just about anything I've seen before.

In South Carolina, where I obtained my Master's degree, they love their Gamecocks. I had season tickets to USC football while we lived in Columbia, and up to that point would have to say there were no other venues I had been to that were more impressive. Carolina sold out their 70 thousand plus stadium for every home game, the weather was on the whole much warmer there for football games, and Tim and I even got to sort of participate in the filming of a movie.

And the RCA Dome is a nice venue to see the Colts, even though it's about to be replaced with a whole new, more modern stadium. But pro football just isn't the same. The fans are different, there aren't any student sections, no band, no fight song or alma mater, there's just no comparison.

The whole experience was greatly enjoyed and appreciated by all three of us. Even the hike I led Nick on when trying to find the parking lot after the game wasn't enough to dampen the experience. I think I can feel my legs again today, now that I've had a chance to recover from that adventure. It involved going the wrong way in trying to find the parking lot and walking around the perimeter of the Notre Dame Campus for some untold number of miles before returning to the stadium to hop a shuttle bus for the parking lot, which was what we should have done in the first place.

Anyway, here's hoping we get another chance to return. At least I've got enough experience from the first time to use toward an even better one next time.