Sept. 20, 2006

By Andrew Mathews
Saxaphone
Lake Bluff, Illinois
Class of 2008

There’s no better atmosphere for a football game than seventy-odd degrees, golden leaves on the trees, and a cloudless blue sky above the stadium.

Unless, perhaps, the weatherman predicts a high of thirty-one with a raging snowstorm.

True, odds are the conditions for today’s game will lean more towards the former forecast. But with Penn State returning to South Bend for the first time in over a decade, many Notre Dame fans can’t help but remember the last time the Nittany Lions visited campus. Then, the Irish faithful watched a game, the famed Snow Bowl, fought beneath a slate-gray November sky as snow tumbled from the clouds above. Snowflakes, footballs, and tailbacks flew through the air on that memorable day in 1992.

Memorable not just for the opponent, but, for one of the winningest coaches in college football. Not just for the weather, cold and snow unlike anything seen in thirteen years of Irish football since. And not just for the finish, a last-second two point conversion to seal an Irish win. Rather, this game sticks in the minds of those who saw it for all three reasons. It’s why this game is a staple of classic sports networks across the country, and why it is the first I can remember seeing from inside Notre Dame Stadium, back when I was six years old.

With kickoff only a few hours away, in some ways today’s game is worlds apart from the famous Snow Bowl. But many things remain constant. The seemingly immortal Joe Paterno will stalk the sidelines of Notre Dame Stadium once more, and both teams again bring with them the legacy of national titles and Heisman Trophies. And just as on that day fourteen long years ago, the Band of the Fighting Irish will be on the field to rally the team to victory. There’s nothing quite like three-hundred-eighty musicians blasting the Victory March at top volume after an Irish score, the audio complement to the student section’s boiling sea of blue. Scattered between the Irish scores are the other songs of Notre Dame. Irish Backs, The Victory Clog, Down The Line, Hike Notre Dame, Notre Dame Our Mother: each song has its own story. Irish Backs celebrates Notre Dame’s skillful running backs, as opposed to the somber origin of the alma mater, first played at the funeral of Knute Rockne.

We won’t know until game’s end which of these songs, joyous Clog or somber Alma Mater, will fit the Irish faithful’s mood after the battle with the Nittany Lions. But the band, just like the 80,230 fans and members of the football team, will do whatever they can: play louder, cheer stronger, hit harder, to guarantee an Irish win. As the team faces the student section and raises its golden helmets high following what hopefully will be an Irish victory, the band will play once more the Victory March, and shake down the thunder of eighty-thousand cheers from the early September sky.