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Hello, My Name Is Doug, and I’m an Addict
It has been said that as a person grows older the approach of autumn can be depressing. From green to brilliant reds, orange, and yellow the leaves go and barren trees under lead grey skies shortly follow as a reminder of our own mortality. I look forward to autumn because I’m addicted to Notre Dame football. The words of Grantland Rice best describes how I feel about the mortality of the season.
“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.”
I’ll confess that I am a Notre Doter. This glorious addiction started in third or fourth grade and I have no desire to seek a cure. One Friday afternoon as class was ending one of the nuns reminded us to pray for Notre Dame. We always were given three to four hours of homework a day and this was one assignment that was not going to be a burden.
There were times when we were admonished for not completing our homework. The girls in class who always did their homework took the reprimand to heart and some would even start crying. The boys in class who were really the target of the admonition would look around the classroom as if nothing had been said.
My grandmother came along with my mom to pick us up from school that Friday afternoon. I told mom that Sister Gabrielle asked us to pray for Notre Dame. My grandmother turned around, looked at me and said God has more important things to do than concern Himself with a football game. The earth stopped spinning and for the first time in my young life I realized my grandmother was wrong about something. My grandmother was a Methodist. The no-drinking, no-dancing, no-card-playing type of Methodist.
The wins and losses are no longer as important to me as they were earlier in my life with the exception of the Michigan and USC games. The sword-and-sandal guy and that white horse is always good for some venial sins. I watch every Notre Dame game from start to finish regardless of the score. As I watch each game memories of hundreds of games and the friends and family I watched them with become part of the present Saturday.
I’ll leave you with a video of one of the Notre Dame Football traditions that I love.
Published in General
Here ya go Mike
Like! :-)
Oh great … let’s continue to encourage him. :) And you had to throw UT into the face of this Commodore?
On my end, do you have any idea how many Thanksgiving holidays were ruined by Woody Hayes?!
More encouragement, please. ;-)
Must you insist upon taking the joy out of everything?
One of the toughest runs in college football.
One of the greatest comebacks in college and ND football history.
Just to stay on topic:
There are some cultural hangovers concerning ND and before some become too critical of Rachel Lu there are some things that Catholics remember, and they remember what ND stood for in the 20’s. There are also some cultural issues in they way people look at Alabama and LSU. Randy Newman’s song Rednecks takes a shot at the hypocrisy of the elites in the North and in Chicago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nGw_vAnqPI
Good for you. My son was the 3rd generation to graduate from Purdue Engineering. What we have learned at that school as been very good for my family.
Ok, more encouragement……GO VOLS!!!!!
Wreck ’em, Tech!!!
What is it Neal Boortz calls them? Ah, yes . . . “Flatbellies”.