 "Photo:")
 "Photo: Nicole Choinski")
 "Photo:")
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.
The team exits the buses directly in front of the stadium, surrounded by blue, gold, and green. BC's maroon-and-gold-clad fans are for the most part still over a mile away - a bus will run from their tailgating grounds to the stadium. The team walks directly into the stadium. It is all they will see of Notre Dame.
The campus, however, is overrun with pigskin pageantry. What is always evident is an insoluble bond between the school's heritage and tradition and its football team. Yet, there is nothing that cannot fall into dispute. A group of co-eds joked with two older men that the Word of Life mural on the Theodore Hesburgh library was known as "Mr.," and not "Touchdown," Jesus.
The marching band starts their march from the Golden Dome, the navel of all school lore, and will proceed to the stadium along a path lined four and five deep of all generations of fans. Each age seems to have its own style of fandom, as well. Young men may dress up in green breeches and an emerald bowler like the school's mascot, but older men seem to favor a decorous ivy cap and tweed jacket. In the parking lots, a man in a mix of Celtic and Highland regalia plays the bagpipes. The Irish may not be an ethnic designation, as Carey said, but ND's fan culture has certainly adopted the trappings of a Hibernian heritage.
The stadium itself, truly the shrine of the ND football program, is surrounded by statues of past greats, including Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy, who also spent some time at BC. The stadium, except the BC student section, shows few empty seats by the time the ND team is ready to come on the field. The pregame ritual is ornate and well-rehearsed - there are no surprises, but that is seemingly also part of the practice's comfort. Kilted and tartaned guards raise the American flag. The crowd does a jig not unlike that Eagle fans do to "Shipping Up to Boston," if more choreographed. One aspect of BC's own football culture that will go lacking at this game is the music heard in Alumni Stadium. The Screaming Eagles marching band has not joined the team on the road this year.
This year's game day programs also pay homage to the games of years past. "The covers of the 2009 game day programs are retro versions of previous Irish programs with 'old-school' designs," the program reads. "The Boston College cover is from the Notre Dame-Purdue program from 1954." BC played ND for the first time in 1975.
Immediately before kickoff, screens flash the message that there will be a mass in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart 30 minutes after the end of the game.
Margaret Mansfield, A&S '11, is the daughter of two BC alumni. Her mother attended the first BC-ND game, Mansfield said. "My parents both said that we were garbage back then, there was no way we were going to beat ND." She lives in South Bend and so is accustomed to the usually friendly jibbing over her loyalties to BC. How much value one places on the rivalry, however, depends on which team one supports, she said. "I think we take it so much more seriously because we're the underdogs," Mansfield said. "We were talking to my friend [a Notre Dame student] we went to brunch with, and we said something about the 'Holy War,' and she said, 'What's that?'"
Mansfield said that while she has always supported BC, there are certain aspects of ND's football culture that undoubtedly have their appeal. "I think that Notre Dame has a lot more tradition than we do, and that's something we miss. Clearly tailgating was huge there," she said. "They have all of the cheers and chants that the student body does. But I think that both schools are very supportive environments with students doing amazing things. It's really cool to see that there is such a cool rivalry and to think of how many BC students crash on the floor of ND dorms."
"I think it would have been really fun to have the band there to hear them play 'For Boston' or have the students sing it," Mansfield said.
After the clock has run out, BC's players shower and change, make their way through a clot of reporters that includes the same Blaudschun who wrote the pregame article about Shinskie, and board the buses back to the airport. They cannot leave the game behind as easily as all that, however. The local Bob Evans' sign reads, "Go Irish, Beat Boston College." When they arrive at the airport, the hangar in which bags are searched is draped with flags from colleges and universities that have passed through, including USC, the United States Military Academy at West Point, and three from Notre Dame. BC is not among them.
The flight back takes only an hour and a half. The game against Notre Dame, in one sense, meant little to BC's program. The loss will affect neither their Atlantic Coast Conference ranking nor chance at the ACC Championship. One hopes, however, that the team is concerned not just with their position on a list, and that when they disembark in front of Alumni Stadium, they think that it will be the Irish visiting them next year, they who will enter past the statue of Doug Flutie, and that "For Boston" will play proudly to an Eagle's victory.
Be the first to comment on this article!