Tim Cooke has gazed upon the Golden Dome, knelt at Knute Rockne's grave and pulled a bit of grass from the hallowed field where Montana, Hornung and Lujack played. He has flown Notre Dame banners from the third-floor apartment he once rented in Fells Point. Now a resident of Massachusetts, Cooke boldly wears his Notre Dame sweatshirt to Boston College football games, especially when they're home to the Fighting Irish.
Yet Cooke is not a graduate of Notre Dame. He attended Towson University, and earned a master's degree from Boston College. But like thousands of other fans devoted to the South Bend, Ind., school, Cooke grew up in an Irish-American household, watching Notre Dame games in the living room at his father's knee.
On the other hand, Sally Hermann hates all things green and gold. Imagine her chagrin when, at a recent dinner party at the Country Club of Maryland, the band broke into the Notre Dame fight song. "I had to put my fingers in my ears," says Hermann, 60, of Towson. "I know I'll probably go to hell, but I've never liked Notre Dame."
Such is America's prickly alliance with the Fighting Irish, who play Navy today at Ravens Stadium. There's a reason for that fractious relationship: No other college football team is as famous and successful, yet none is thought to be as superior and as unfairly entitled.
"My sense is that there are probably more who hate Notre Dame than who love them," says Michael Oriard, professor of American Literature and Culture at Oregon State University and a former Irish player. "Younger people are more likely to hate [the school] for its perceived arrogance and its perceived unearned privilege - getting undeserved bowl bids and Heisman trophies.
"What's misunderstood about Notre Dame is that it has gone its own way forever, out of necessity."
Notre Dame is unique in college football for its long history of playing to a national audience, its ethnic genesis and the shrewd entrepreneurship of Rockne, the school's most charismatic coach. The calculating Rockne operated on such a big-time scale that he shared a sports agent with Babe Ruth.
It was Rockne who led a promising football program out of the Indiana wilderness by staring down the anti-Catholic bias of the 1920s, unabashedly courting the media and captivating a largely immigrant fan base, which gave rise to a cathedral of Notre Dame worshippers, coast to coast.
Rebuffed in efforts to play Big Ten schools, who were prejudiced against Catholics, Rockne took his club farther afield, playing games in New York, Los Angeles and other melting-pot venues. The ploy paid off. Notre Dame won, created a buzz and became known as The Little School That Could, a poster team for striving throngs of first-generation Americans, mostly Catholics, and for big-city newsmen like New York's Grantland Rice, the country's first celebrated sportswriter who trumpeted the gospel according to Knute.
"Working-class people who never went to college became huge Notre Dame fans," says Murray Sperber, author of Shake Down The Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football. New Yorkers called the Irish groupies the Subway Alumni; in Pittsburgh, they were the Coal Field Alumni. Elsewhere, the Notre Dame fans were simply the Curbstone Alumni because, for all their zeal, they were too poor to attend games.
If its blue-collar fans could not afford to see the Irish up close, they poured over written accounts regaling the feats of The Gipper or the Four Horsemen. Certainly they huddled around the family's Philco on Saturdays to hear the contests.
"From radio's early days, Notre Dame refused to charge stations for carrying its games. The priests who ran the school wanted to build a national reputation," says Sperber. "It was a brilliant move for the university, a short-term financial pain but a long-term gain. For a time, in the 1930s, all three major networks carried those games. That really consolidated Notre Dame fandom."
Another clever move: As its glory grew, Notre Dame pared its schedule of Catholic rivals. The Irish chose not to play schools like Fordham, Boston College and Georgetown for fear of losing their grip as America's Catholic Team.
"Rockne said, 'Why share our fame and fortune with other Catholic schools?' " says Sperber. "Notre Dame liked to run up the score, and it wouldn't look good to do that against Catholics. Worse, what if Notre Dame were to lose?" So, for nearly half a century (1928-1975), the Irish would play but one game against a Catholic institution - the University of Detroit, in 1951.
Rockne died in a plane crash in 1931, to be immortalized in a 1940 film that would rally Notre Dame devotees for decades to come. Never mind that Knute Rockne, All American, starring Pat O'Brien, idealized the coach and his star player, George Gipp, a hard-drinking, heavy-gambling running back. Gipp's purported deathbed request - "Win one for the Gipper" - helped mythicize Notre Dame football for new generations of teary-eyed fans.
When television arrived, the university plugged in. In 1947, its first games were telecast. In 1990, Notre Dame became the first school to sell football broadcast rights to a major network; that deal with NBC Sports still stands.
"I loved having all of our games nationally televised. I wanted that showcase every week," says Javin Hunter, rookie receiver for the Ravens and a Notre Dame alum. Hunter was to attend today's game with Ravens defensive end Tony Weaver, who also played at South Bend last year.
Raised an Army brat, Weaver says his family moved frequently but that the one constant in his life was Irish football. "Whether we lived in New Jersey or Hawaii, they were on TV," he says. "You couldn't help but get caught up in the heritage of the place. I grew up Catholic, too, and every week, toward the end of Mass, the priest would mention Notre Dame football."
Small wonder the Irish draw well, says Weaver: "I don't remember ever playing to anything but a sold-out crowd. Even at Southern Cal, we seemed to have just as many fans as USC had."
Notre Dame still caters to a national audience, having played to a full house in 146 of its past 169 outings. No matter if the Irish stink: in 1999, the team went 5-7 but still played to crowds of 111,000 at Michigan and 107,000 at Tennessee. Each year, Notre Dame tries to play at least one game on either coast, to accommodate its fans. A game with Navy in 2000 was played at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., far from either campus. The game still drew a crowd in excess of 47,000.
"People want to be around what they see as the history of college football," says Jim Mutscheller, former Notre Dame and Baltimore Colts great. Mutscheller, Class of '52, was to be at the game today with his wife, son and grandson. Likewise, Bob Williams, quarterback of the 1949 Irish national championship team. "What other school has had a film made about it?" says Williams, of Towson, who planned to tote along eight of his kin.
Meanwhile, the naysayers may be online, griping that Notre Dame keeps getting more than its due. Many still fuss about Paul Hornung, winner of the 1956 Heisman Trophy despite going 2-8 as quarterback of the Irish. No other player from a losing team has ever won the award. In 1949, the Heisman went to Leon Hart, one of only two linemen to have snared it. "Had Hart played anywhere but Notre Dame, he wouldn't have won it," says Frank Deford, senior writer for Sports Illustrated and a commentator for National Public Radio.
The critics on some Web sites seek out other Notre Dame detractors to deride the team. One site is filled with put-downs and jokes ("Question: How many Notre Dame football players does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Just two, but they each get three hours' credit.")
As for Sally Hermann, her distaste for Notre Dame is personal, going back to her childhood in Pennsylvania. Hermann's father was a football coach at the University of Pittsburgh, long a rival of the Irish.
"I remember sitting in the stands beside people who were staunch Pitt supporters until Notre Dame came to town. Then they became turncoats and rooted for the Irish," she says. "They did it year after year. I hated Notre Dame; I have two daughters, and passed it on to them. They hate Notre Dame, too.
"Will be be rooting for Navy today? Absolutely."