It’s not a choice, it’s just who we are. Hundreds of times in my life I’ve used this phrase either in person or in type in response to the same question. Why Notre Dame, John? And why love it so intensely?
It’s just who I am. I didn’t choose it on a whim or a hot run of late 1980’s Notre Dame football. To families like mine, South Side Chicago Suburban Irish Catholics, Notre Dame football is just an inherent way of life. Watching “Rudy” was a part of the curriculum twice a year in school. We wanted to be Notre Dame players for Halloween every year, not ghosts or goblins. We waited for the recruiting magazine to hit the front stoop like we were 7-year-olds on Christmas morning looking under the tree.
Notre Dame is just different. It doesn’t represent a geographical region like most colleges, it represents folks’ religion, heritage and values. The “Fighting Irish” moniker, once an insult, is now taken as a compliment as a nod to our ancestors’ journey, struggle and rise in America. For so many of us, Notre Dame represents these very personal, deep, meaningful and existential familial tales of struggle and triumph. The football team is the most iconic visual publicly known representation of Notre Dame and we value this entity being respected more than anything else. It’s personal to us, it’s just who we are.