Fight Song Friday: Connecticut Week

My apologies for missing my Tuesday Tunes entry this week. Food poisoning has a way of incapacitating you such that even a simple blog entry seems insurmountable. Rather than try to make up for lost time, I'll simply move on to my Friday staple and give a preview of the Notre Dame-UConn game scheduled for Saturday. Much like the Pittsburgh matchup last week, this game would not normally incite anxiety or second thought, but this year's promising beginning has fizzled into an uncertain ending, and the Irish team better come prepared or they might be in for another loss.

The Connecticut Huskies have played some good football this year, despite their 5-loss record. According to the UConn Athletics Website, the Huskies have lost those 5 games by a combined 15 points...not exactly devastating, blowout losses. When the UConn team plays at Notre Dame Stadium, they will likely be playing in front of the biggest live football crowd in Connecticut school history. Add to those notes the fact that the UConn players continue to play in honor of their fallen teammate, who was killed in a stabbing earlier this season. All factors combined give UConn plenty of motivation and emotional edge for the game against the Irish.

Obviously, the Irish team has plenty to play for as well (not the least of which is job security for the head coach), so hopefully they show up for a full 4 quarters. If they do, it will be an evenly matched game which may again come down to the wire. May the best team win. Go Irish!

Fight Song Friday: Pittsburgh Week

The University of Pittsburgh football team is good this year. Tough, reliable, high-scoring. Good. The University of Notre Dame football team is suspect (at best) this year. Resilient, yes. Consistent, no. You never know which Notre Dame team is going to show up on any given Saturday, and you have even less of an idea which Irish coaching scheme is going to emerge. Will the players demonstrate a week's worth of solid preparation for the opponent, or will they miss their assignments and fail to execute? Will the coaches make adjustments throughout the game and keep pressure on the opposing team, or will they follow a scripted game plan regardless of the on-field results?

I can't remember being truly worried about a Notre Dame-Pitt matchup in recent history, but I'm worried about this one. While I want to believe that the Irish team has learned and grown this season, I don't have enough evidence to give me confidence that they truly know how to win when it counts. Playing a strong Pittsburgh team (at Pitt's home stadium) will be a true test for a wobbly Irish squad. If they can pull off a solid victory, the Irish have a chance at saving the season from dismal failure. If they lose by multiple touchdowns, they might need to start saying their goodbyes to Coach Weis. If the result is something closer and more vague entirely, the fate of the Irish is anyone's guess.

I know what I am hoping to see tomorrow night...I just don't know if the team will be on the same page. Here's hoping. Go Irish.

Tuesday Tunes: Glee (Revisited)

So it's not Tuesday...and I've already written about Glee in the past...BUT this week it finally comes back on after a several-week hiatus. I had originally stated that it would be back last week, but thanks to the World Series, Glee was preempted, so tonight marks the glee-orious return. If you don't have anything better to do at 9 p.m. ET, check it out on FOX.

Fight Song Friday: Navy Week

It's Navy Week at Notre Dame. Not quite the same as a traditional "Navy Week," but in many ways not too far off. While I don't know that the Naval Academy intends for its football game visits to Notre Dame to act as community outreach missions, the peripheral effects are recognizable. There are always swarms of uniformed naval ambassadors blanketing the campus, which I can attest is never an unwelcome sight in South Bend. There is a feeling of family and mutual respect that doesn't usually accompany a true sports rivalry. There is admiration for the effort and sacrifice the Midshipmen give not only on the football field but also in serving and defending our homeland. There is appreciation for an annual contest that has been scheduled without interruption since 1927. There is understanding that regardless of which team wins and which team loses, the integrity of the relationship between Notre Dame and the Naval Academy will endure.

Whenever I try to explain the significance of this traditional game, I fail to convey the extraordinary quality of the annual rivalry. Rather than bumble through a lackluster attempt, I encourage anyone who is unfamiliar with the matchup to read a brief synopsis here. To put the rivalry into real-life perspective, I like to use the post-game visitors' lockerroom as a metaphor. As a student manager in college, I was often charged with helping clean up the visitors' lockerroom after football games. You can imagine that for the "big" rivalry games (USC, Michigan, Michigan State, for example), regardless of the game's outcome, the visitors' lockerroom was never in very good shape when we entered for cleaning duty. Dirty towels strewn all over the floor, bloody bandages littered near the trash cans but never in them, used athletic tape wads stuffed into lockers, empty Gatorade bottles in the showers...you get the idea.

Contrast those dreadful images with the condition in which the Navy team always left the lockerroom: spotless. Not a towel or a piece of trash anywhere but in the hampers and trash cans. No puddles on the carpet from used towels lying around. No bodily fluids to dispose of. It never failed that the Navy game was our shortest clean-up of the season. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the Navy game was then (and has remained) my favorite game of each season. There is something to admire about a team that not only conducts itself with dignity and pride (regardless of on-the-field results), but also considers how its actions might affect even the lowly student managers. They always exited the stadium with purpose, often throwing a wink or a smile our direction as we headed in to "clean up" what was already immaculate.

I look forward to tomorrow's game and the overwhelming experience of being part of something bigger than the game itself: a lasting friendship. Go Irish.

World Series Champs: New York Yankees

There's possibly not a major sporting event I care less about than the World Series. Don't get me wrong, baseball has its redeeming qualities...namely beer and hot dogs...but the best part about baseball is that it signifies summertime and being outdoors and enjoying one of America's oldest pastimes. The fact that the championship for this sport is played in NOVEMBER is a travesty. November is for campfires and raking leaves and FOOTBALL. Frankly, by the time the World Series comes around each year, I've moved my interest elsewhere, and I simply don't care. It also doesn't help that Indianapolis doesn't have a major-league baseball team, so I have never pledged my allegiance to a particular clubhouse and followed an entire season, thus the World Series is always anti-climactic for me.

All that said, I congratulate the New York Yankees on yet another World Series Championship. For those who are counting, this year's title makes 27 World Series Championships for the Yankees, the most championship titles for a single franchise in all of North American professional sports. Whether you love the Yankees or hate them, that's an impressive statistic. It's just too bad that the "boys of summer" had to win it in the Fall. I doubt they care.