Notre Dame Football

What's this? An actual blog post! Trust me, I'm just as surprised as you are! With our move back home to Louisiana only eleven days away, I'm determined to catch up the blog before we leave.

Tony's second favorite football team has always been Notre Dame. I know. Try not to judge him too harshly. Overall, he's a great guy. You just have to let it go and not hold it against him. For this birthday last October, I surprised him with tickets to see Navy play Notre Dame in South Bend. This turned out to be a very busy sports weekend as we watched the Cardinals win the World Series in Game 7 on Friday night at our neighbor Mike's house, woke up very early to drive to South Bend on Saturday, and then returned home for the Saints vs. the Rams in the Edward Jones Dome at noon on Sunday.

It turned out to be a gorgeous day, but we hit torrential rains driving into the city of South Bend. Luckily, we missed a major hail storm by roughly 30 minutes. The car was only 2 months old at that point, so the possibility of hail had Tony stressing out!

Upon entering the stadium, Tony wanted to check out the snack selection. His first pick was this order of bbq nachos.

Prior to the game, we walked through the tailgating area. I was looking forward to this part of the day as we had always heard how great the tailgating scene was at Notre Dame. Living in SEC country, we are clearly spoiled. This was the most boring tailgating I've ever seen. Even Tony was highly disappointed with the atmosphere.

Notre Dame takes the field.

Navy takes the field.

We were talking to the guy next to us and he mentioned that Navy was the only opponent that he doesn't boo. He said that he just couldn't bring himself to boo a team that ran out with the American flag. There's a lot of truth to that! You really can't boo a service academy team.

We had great seats in the lower bowl area.

The stadium was much smaller than I was expecting. Tiniest, most uncomfortable seating that I've ever experienced at a sporting event.

The stadium is in the flight path for the South Bend airport. Throughout the game, we had planes flying overhead.

Tony demonstrating the size of the seats.

We ended up leaving the game with a few minutes left in the 4th quarter. Even inside the stadium, the atmosphere was very subdued. Not at all what we are used to in an SEC stadium!

The famous touchdown Jesus.

Our trip was right around the time that "Tebowing" exploded onto the scene. I begged Tony to let me take a picture of him Tebowing in front of touchdown Jesus, but he wouldn't. 

All in all, I'm glad we went once, but we'll never go back. It was by far the most boring tailgating and football atmosphere that we have ever experienced.