Junior Year. By now, you theoretically know what’s going on. How to write a paper, how to live with a roommate, and how to enjoy game days.
Or at least, you used to know how to enjoy game days. Junior year means at least one of your friends is getting game updates a few thousand miles away. If you are especially unlucky, your established ‘game day crew’ is mostly gone. The tailgate you used to attend because of someone’s connections is out, a huge game watch for away games happens only if you go to the one in your dorm, and there is no longer that crowd of people crammed into someone’s dorm room reveling in the fact that we just won that game. Now, football is something different.
I am not knowledgeable about football. (I might not even watch away games without prodding from football fanatics…) But, I have learned to love being in the stadium with friends ensuring I am at least following the game. It’s good to have that friend who knows everything about the technicalities of the game, and the one with, um, colorful words who can let you know why that penalty flag was thrown. Coming from a high school with a football team that lost every game as well as being a Philadelphia sports fan, having a good team to root for was amazing.
Still, I am lucky if don’t miss a touchdown happening. Yes, I know. And that was when I was surrounded by college football experts who explained to me what was happening. When a cheer shoots up from the student section for no apparent reason, I’ll usually elbow a friend and ask what just went down. (This happens a dozen times a game.) But I had them all to ensure I was cheering my heart out six Saturdays a year.
Now I struggle to be enthusiastic about the culture of game day. I forget it’s a game weekend until I get asked three times for directions to the bookstore on my way back from class. I’m still at every game, I’ve become that invested over two seasons, but something of the magic of a game day is gone. It really is only the game for me now, when it never was before.
And don’t even try and do pushups with a group of three friends. At least when I am one of those friends, this is doomed to fail.
It’s not all negative. The few of our friends who remained on campus have definitely gotten to know each other better. Another friend rose to fill the spaces of our missing football experts. Hey, we don’t have to try and save nine seats every game anymore.
Football has remained constant. The outcome of a game can never be determined with any certainty, but there is a predictability to the mood of the student body and the events of a football weekend. Junior year has caused a definite shift in my experience of something as Notre Dame as a football weekend. It leaves me awaiting next season for the return of the magic of game day.
Images 1, 2 (provided by author)
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