Eagles Flock To South Bend

It was a different time when Notre Dame's Stuhldreher and Miller, Crowley and Layden were dubbed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It was in 1924 that Grantland Rice gave the four football players from Notre Dame that name, but the game they trailblazed has changed since then, as has the school they played for and the teams their alma mater plays against. All of the Horsemen were shorter than 6 feet and were lighter than 170 pounds. It is unlikely that they would hold their own in a Division I college football game today - they would certainly not add to their program's aura. Even the idea of a football program, an independent one with its own network television contract, would sound incomprehensible to them. There may be more muscle now, but brute strength and brawn, or even the most devilishly devised playbooks, contribute little to mythology.

The Boston College football team departs for Hanscom Airfield at about 1:30 p.m. the Friday before its match-up against Notre Dame. Four Peter Pan buses take the team, support staff, coaches, members of the athletics department, and an eclectic handful of others, including pencil-pushing journalists, to the tarmac, where they board a Miami Air flight to South Bend, Ind. Suzanne Baker, football staff assistant, said that the trip carries about 147 outbound, 156 inbound. The extra passengers will latch on from BC's hockey game against Notre Dame on Friday evening. This game is much less attended and attracts far less attention, than the football game.

The plane flies directly over Notre Dame's campus, and the football field covered over with a white plastic tarp, on approach. The land looks flat and geometric compared to the quilted patchwork of stony farms one could see when leaving Hanscom. When the team lands, they deplane and board four white buses to take them to a Clarion Inn and Suites in Michigan City, Ind. Though Michigan City is in Indiana and not in Michigan, it is in a different time zone, and so the itinerary will become somewhat more confusing until the cavalcade returns to South Bend the next day. Just outside of the South Bend airport there is a Tara Airport Inn and Suites, whose sign welcomes the team to their town with the message, "ND-BC, Catholic Collision."

The team stops for dinner at a restaurant called Hammers, where the owner, who was apparently a boxer of some renown at Purdue, has a deep and abiding animosity for Notre Dame, though he has lived in the area for some time. He takes a picture with Athletic Director Gene DeFilippo, where they both pose with their dukes raised, fisticuffs style.

The phrase "The Fighting Irish" first appeared around the American Civil War, said Kevin O'Neill, a professor in the history department, when it was applied to the Irish Brigade of the Union Army. The sobriquet returned to circulation during WWI. The period song "When the Sixty-ninth Comes Back" by Sgt. Joyce Kilmer included the line, "God rest our valiant leaders dead, whom we cannot forget/They'll see the Fighting Irish are the Fighting Irish yet."

Of the nickname, Rev. Charles Carey, C.S.C, wrote, "To us, it doesn't mean race exclusively; nor is it just another nickname. The fact is, it keeps alive the memory of a long, uphill fight for recognition against a spirit that was not always generous, nor even fair-minded." There is no doubt that the name is recognized now and afforded some substantial regard.

Before the game started on Saturday, Mark Blaudschun, sportswriter for The Boston Globe, wrote in an article that ND's cache as a stable of gridiron talent would have its effect on the competition. "Boston College has beaten Notre Dame six consecutive times, yet when people talk about the most dominant Catholic school in the country playing major college football, it is still Notre Dame, in terms of perception," he wrote. Quarterback Dave Shinskie would need to surmount his awe with the University's football prowess if he was to deliver, Blaudschun said.

However, a strong sense of the rival team's heritage did not reside in Shinskie alone. Blaudschun quoted defensive end Jim Ramella as having said of the school, "If they had offered me, I would have accepted a scholarship."

The Notre Dame student body, on the other hand, seems to have been much more concerned with their rivalry against the University of Southern California, against whom they suffered a loss the week before. The Observer, the Notre Dame student newspaper, published an article titled "USC-ND still one of nation's top rivalries." It was the Trojans' eighth consecutive victory against the Irish, and the trouncing hurt. "The Irish aren't in the business of moral victories," said Matt Gamber, Observer reporter, "and there are plenty of areas to correct before another rivalry game Saturday against Boston College."

In fact, nearly every indicator and statistical barometer predicted that ND would have a chance to console itself this past Saturday in the game against BC. Though BC had won the six last games against the Irish, the sense was that the Notre Dame campus was more subdued about this rivalry. "There are no longer signs and chalk messages all over campus urging Notre Dame to maim this week's opponent," Brian Bennett of ESPN.com reported. "The national media isn't descending into South Bend. No huge perception breakthrough is on the line."

The players were less interested in what the student body had to say and instead had kept their focus on the numbers. "Ending that streak would mean a whole lot," Kyle McCarthy, ND safety, told reporters. "First and foremost, getting our season back on track and what our goals are, that's the most important thing. Then the added flavor that it's BC adds fuel to the fire."

The BC football team arrives on Notre Dame's campus in the same train of four white buses, book-ended by an Indiana State Police escort. There was talk of traffic being heavy, but the buses encounter hardly any at all. They enter past WNDU16, which by Sunday morning will feature stories about Mark Herzlich and the ND-BC rivalry on their homepage. Driving in on the buses, one has an immediate sense of the sprawl of tailgating that surrounds the football stadium. Notre Dame fans wave in varying degrees of earnestness; one more-intoxicated fan by some portable bathrooms is one of a handful who make another, less courteous, gesture of welcome.