Notre Dame football is making a lot of people happy by the season it is having. Zero and five for the first time in history? how the mighty have fallen. Certainly one would expect ND to do better, after all they hold the most national championships and heisman trophies, and the second-best winning percentage. They have been a major heavyweight on the college football landscape for nearly a hundred years.
Notre Dame fans are trying to deal with this bitter autumn. Some seek a pound of flesh: after watching the Irish lose to Michigan State two weeks ago, one fan struck up a conversation with me where he declared several times that Charlie Weis, our head coach, "has got to go." ESPN agrees--and has pointed out smugly that since ND fired Willingham after three years, surely Weis should (in a fair world) be given the same treatment. This is natural. But I think it is the wrong approach, given that Charlie has a historically inexperienced team. The reasons for and consequences of which are explained very well here. Certainly ND has shown some promise on the gridiron, successfully excecuting long passes, good runs, and solid defence. The consistency required to win football games--and eliminating penalties--will come with more experience. I am far from despair about the state of the Fighting Irish.
It is more disturbing, however, to find that some Irish fans are developing indifference. They have stopped watching or even following the games, perhaps as a way to insulate themselves from the disappointment of losing. That's understandable, but ultimately wrong. To my mind, we earn the right to be fans in the bad seasons. Solidarity is better developed through adversity and struggle than victory. Of course, one could argue that these fans are still supporting the team internally. But a great pope once said that love is mere sentimentality without sacrifice, and I think that "supporting a team" means making the sacrifice to follow the team, or at least continue to support them. To become indifferent is to abandon them.
Now I have made the argument before that we take football so seriously at Notre Dame because it represents everything we strive for at the university: excellence and righteousness. Though love and responsibility for a football team is far less important than most other obligations we contract during our lives, abandoning it when it ceases to be valuable, or pleasurable, or successful speaks poorly of our ability to support anything else we love. For us fans, Notre Dame should be our football team, win or lose. And when responding to any comments made about this terrible season--whether good-natured cracks to dark, sincere joy at our predicament--we should always make clear that we care deeply enough about this team to feel strongly disappointed (or excited, if fortune turns).
