On Rudy and Notre Dame Football

September 12, 2011 in Uncategorized with 4 Comments

I’m not Catholic, I’ve never been to South Bend, and I don’t have a single family member who’s ever been a student at Notre Dame.

And yet I’m a Fighting Irish football fan.

I’m a Duke fan, but a Notre Dame football fan.

Growing up in a state that requires one to pledge allegiance to either Duke or Carolina before his first day of kindergarten, I sided at age six with my grandfather and became a Blue Devil fan.

Which was great for me (and still is) during basketball season.

However, Duke’s football team was (and still is) abysmal.

So, growing up I never had anything to root for during football season.

That all changed in 1993, though, when I saw Rudy. That night, right there in the cinema, I fell in love with the story and the tradition, and to this day I maintain my loyalty to the Irish football program.

When you mention being a Notre Dame fan, people invariably have strong reactions one way or the other. And very few of these people side with you; instead, most immediately tell you how much they loathe Notre Dame.

And this surprises me.

Not because I imagine there are hordes of people with just cause for supporting the University of Notre Dame, but because I can’t imagine that watching Rudy didn’t cause untold numbers of people who (a) didn’t already have a favorite team, or (b) didn’t previously care about college football to suddenly become Notre Dame fans.

I mean, come on… when homeboy sprints on the field at the end of the game and gets the sack? When Jon Favreau, before he was anybody, screams “Who’s the wild man now?” When Charles S. Dutton gives the inspirational triple clap?

I simply can’t understand it.

I beg you to explain: unless you already had a team, how are you not a Notre Dame fan after watching Rudy?

  • http://thomasmarkzuniga.com TMZ

    Love the new look to your site. Someone once highly recommended Rudy to me, but I never got around to watching it.

    On top of that, I don’t really have a college football team of my own. So maybe Rudy would remedy that situation.

  • http://www.austincarty.com Austin

    Thanks for the kind words about the site; very glad you’re liking it. It’s going to continue undergoing a facelift over the next week-or-so and should be completed very soon. Meanwhile, yes, you absolutely must stop whatever you’re doing at this very minute and run out and rent Rudy. It’s a travesty that you’ve never seen it. You really are doing yourself a huge disservice with each passing minute that you go without having watched it!

  • Pattirick

    So did you sit on the bus on Sr trip and relive that “Ru-DY, Ru-DY, Ru-DY” moment?! Still toting that movie on the bus every year…getting harder to make kids enjoy it though! Well done-I enjoy reading your blog!

  • Anonymous

    Pat, thanks for the kind words. And even though it’s now nearly twenty years old, still, how can kids not love it. I mean, come on!