by Andy “Coach” Cotton
“Outlined
against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.”
– Grantland Rice
Thursday, 10:35pm, Nashville: Southwest Airline flight #242 is
three hours late. The 12 UT students aboard are, by now, quite drunk. Two hours
ago, when they first sang “Texas Fight” it was… well, not cute but at
least tolerable. The aircraft pitches and yaws wildly, struggling to gain
altitude – keeping me alive – in another thunderstorm. We’ve been battling
nasty weather since leaving Austin five hours earlier. The travelers are tired,
edgy, and cranky. When an airplane really starts tossing, things get kinda
quiet. We are, after all, about to die. It’s time to reflect and make deals
with God. This was the scene, except for the Texas 12. They’re drunk. They
sing. The gentleman sitting next to me spoke for the first time in hours.
“This,” he said with eyes closed, hands gripping the armrest, “is the sort of
thing that could make a guy root for Notre Dame.”
Friday, 2:30pm, The Stadium, South Bend, Indiana: Rest assured –
I entered the empty, windblown stadium with absolutely no nostalgia for
Touchdown Jesus, the Gipper, or anything Irish. I just love stadiums. The dirty
red brick structure, it looks much smaller in real life, is not impressive, not
in the “Wow, look at that!” sense, anyway. Entering a time warp, there’s
nothing to indicate it’s 1995. Were this 1930, the scene would look the same.
From the tattered sheet-metal press box, to the thin, worn benches – no seats –
that ring the stadium, to the vanilla scoreboards, to the windblown peanut
wrappers and empty paper cups. No advertisement for Coke or Cellular One or
even Notre Dame. The field is green and pristine. No logos at midfield, no
paintings in the end zone. The 50-yard line has a purple-and-white stripe. The
20 sports purple, white, and yellow. That’s it for glitz. Rockne walked here.
It’s odd, the most overhyped football program on the planet is, physically
anyway, so restrained. In a world where Jerry Jones will, for the right price,
pitch lubricated condoms on the 50, this reverse hype is most moving.
4:30pm, South Quad: The quad is a bucolic, quintessentially
Midwestern place. Basically, a giant rectangle, it’s about a half-mile in
length. Each side is lined with dorms and classrooms, the sidewalks splashed
with still, lush oak and elm trees. The interior of the quad, covered with
cool, green grass, is busy with students playing football or jogging, and
parents sightseeing.
A few words about the Notre Dame student body. It’s a small group, about 8,000
undergrads, but from what I can see it’s a mighty healthy group of kids. The
Notre Dame men are clad, every one, in some sort of ND athletic clothing:
blue-and-gold sweatshirts, headbands, shorts, many styles of ND hats. They’re
all sweating, whippet-thin, and engaged in or just finishing some kind of
healthy activity. Not to be outdone, the women of ND, although somewhat more
beefy and red-faced than their male counterparts, are dressed to the nines in
ND attire. The only difference? Gray tights and the omnipresent Walkman. The
student body is very, very white.
I’m pondering a notice posted on the Alumni chapel. It says, “Saturday
football vigil: one half hour after the game.” I’m wondering if any other place
in the world has notices like this when, without warning, I’m engulfed in a
parade. There’s a lot of tangential noise out here; churchbells clanging,
students shouting, little brothers whining. I mention this because, after all,
how can an observant journalist be startled by a band numbering 300 members? Be
this as it may, I was engulfed in a maelstrom. The fully uniformed band is
parading four abreast, smack down the center of the quad, playing – surprise,
surprise! – “Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame. Wake up, the echo’s cheering her
name….” I would hear this tune many times in the next 24 hours. I felt like
an extra in The Music Man, as everyone from eight to 80 gleefully
followed the band. I spun off from the parade at my car. I needed to find
the…
Linebacker Lounge, 5:45pm: Every campus has a place like the
Linebacker Lounge. A tattered, wooden little bar, badly in need of many gallons
of white paint. An inflated Budweiser can perches precariously on the roof.
Standing outside, I’m awed by the din emanating from within. I assume this is
an ND frat bar on a football Friday. The raucous patrons are not disturbed by
the noticeable lack of, let’s say, interior design coordination. The bar is
framed by erratically lit old Christmas lights. Metal poles have green street
signs welded on, indicating Notre Dame Boulevard or Rockne Street. The filthy,
low roof is festooned with tiny beer flags, the floor more than a tad sticky.
Men outnumber women at least 15-1. I think you get the picture.
I know KVET’s Jeff Ward and Bill Schoening are doing their sports talk show
from here… somewhere. Although the Linebacker Lounge is small, the crowd is
so dense I can’t immediately ascertain the whereabouts of these Austin
celebrities. I speak with many fans, all highly inebriated, during my search.
It turns out things
continued on p.41
Coach, from p.87
are not always what they seem. This is not a local crowd at all. It’s the
much-heralded subway alumni. In fact, absolutely no one I talk to goes
to Notre Dame. Everyone is from somewhere else. No one has tickets to the game.
Everyone is confident that tickets – this, after all, is a town where miracles
are taken seriously – will somehow be procured.
Why do Texans stand out in even the most drunken of crowds? I followed the
howls and high-pitched, heavily accented squawks of “Go, Texas!” to the rear of
the Linebacker Lounge. In a tiny room, dominated by a pool table,
reeking of stale beer and urine, I find Ward and Schoening. Their “remote
studio” is a tiny table, hard against a rotting, wooden partition. Schoening’s
seat is inches from the squalid men’s room. Ward is frequently forced to move
to avoid being hit by the butt of a pool cue. He has a bemused,
what-me-worry-I’m-gonna-die-anyway grin on his face, as one besotted Notre Dame
fan after another shouts unspeakable obscenities into their open, live mikes.
Schoening, ever the pro, sports a tight, nervous, twitching grin, like a parent
whose child is having a fit in the check-out line at Randalls. It says, “Just
wait ’til we get home.”
Saturday, 10am, The Leprechaun: If you’ve ever seen ND play, you’ve
seen The Leprechaun. Television cameras love the guy, and why not? He’s a color
TV dream. Sporting a canary yellow vest, sparkling white shirt, Kelly green
knickers, emerald coat, and stove top hat, The Leprechaun is an excellent guide
to adjust your hue to. He’s short, stocky, has a gritty little beard, and looks
like a leprechaun. I thought he was the same guy every year, but he’s not. This
year, he’s Jamie Sottis. The Leprechaun, like his athlete brothers, must
perform to stay The Leprechaun. He has to audition every year. No
Leprechaun has ever lasted more than two years. He’s a God among mascots
because, unlike cows or toads or tar-heels, he gets real face-time on national
TV every week. He’s recognized in airports and apparently has a social life
Eddie Van Halen can relate to.
11:45am, The Game: I’m disappointed at the fawning, obsequious coverage
by the prestigious Chicago dailies and their star writers at The Tribune and Sun-Times. The most common adjective used in their
stories is “rout.” The most common noun is “Lou Holtz.” It was sniveling, homer
coverage, beneath the dignity of major metro newspapers. The game, which UT
lost 55-27, was not a “rout.” Holtz, himself something of an elderly
leprechaun, had nothing to do with it.
I thought UT looked flat in pre-game drills. The way they straggled out on
the field before kickoff did not dispel these concerns. I was wrong. This was a
close game, not really decided until midway through the 4th quarter, when a
deluge of UT turnovers created 21 Irish points. Notre Dame All-American
receiver Derrick Mayes and Texas wide-out Mike Adams traded impossible catches.
James Brown, not feelin’ so good, was brilliant and terrible. Both defenses
were porous. It was a game of big plays, big mistakes, long drives, and calls
by the officials made and not made.
The key play of the game came with UT down by seven, mid-way through the 4th
quarter. With the Irish facing an unlikely 3rd and 25 from midfield, UT
cornerback Taje Allen was flagged for a questionable interference call. The
Irish capitalized on the generosity of SWC refs and the game was over. It was a
tight tiff between two slightly above- average teams. Next September, ND visits
the fast, broiling turf in Austin. The results could easily be reversed. n
This article appears in September 29 • 1995 and September 29 • 1995 (Cover).