GAMEDAY. CF championship. who's your team today?

@KNmeh7

I agree that Notre Dame always gets seated higher than it should and always gets more attention than it deserves because of being so special in Notre Dame and all that

However in my family, Notre Dame was defeated once and for all by my dad back in 1943, 1944

here’s the deal

You know how Notre Dame has a real pretty campus and they got that real pretty gold dome and a bunch of other pretty buildings and they have the little lakes that ice over and the kids play hockey on them in the winter and the real pretty attractive place

Well it’s so happened that my dad was stationed in 1943 1944 before overlord in southern Illinois

he was in the army core and he was a fighter and transport pilot and more importantly he was a pilot trainer. His biggest job was teaching kids how to fly and not crash.

Then after the daytime spent doing that pee and all the other pilot writers flew stuff all around the country all night long and nobody can figure out when they slept, but somehow they lived through it at least until they got assigned to Europe

But you know those fly boys they’re hard to control and they can get a little bit restless

And every single one of them hated Notre Dame

Because they all had their favorite schools from wherever they came from and Notre Dame was the only national school then with the national fan base and it got way more attention and higher ratings than it deserve back then way worse than it is now

Even the base commander hated Notre Dame

Hating Notre Dame was a thing you did on the base.

so if you happen to be a pilot instructor taking the kids up and teaching them how not to crash you have to fly around

Sometimes you have to fly around in the rough direction of I don’t know I wish you or Michigan or Indiana or Notre Dame or Wisconsin. You just might have to fly around.

All the pilots were pretty much college kids who’s had gotten interrupted by Pearl Harbor.
And the pilots are all college football fans and so they go explore during their instruction hours with the trainee pilots.

Most of the schools they just flew around and pointing stuff out look there’s the horseshoe and all that

And most of those excursions just involvied admiring the scenery and making sure the training pilots didn’t crash and teaching them how to navigate and all that stuff

But that’s not kind of how those pilots behaved when they went to visit the golden dome

There were a few students left on the Notre Dame campus and when there were hockey games on those frozen lakes in progress and the pilot instructor showed up the pilot structures would kind of try to join the game from the air

This was not appreciated by the Notre Dame administration

Neither was the pilots habits of flying with their wing tips maybe 4 feet away from the golden dome or some other high up windows in one of the administration buildings and waving at the staff inside

And sometimes mysteriously school swag from some of the competitive schools got dropped on campus at Notre Dame

And Notre Dame would get upset and the men would call Washington and bitch sometimes and he knew which base the Flyers were coming from and would call the commander and complain

And the base commander would do this all shucks thing you know they’re just letting off steam no harm no foul

But I’ll tell him to cool it and stop doing that

Then the base commander would have a meeting of all the pilots on the base

Now y’all quit doing that it’s bad an accident can happen

so cool it for at least two or three weeks

That was the base commanders attitude. He never worried about what Notre Dame thought.

so as far as I’m concerned, my dad beat Notre Dame so thoroughly but it’s fine with me if they have a winning year now and then

in the end my dad remembered them very, very fondly because they put up with them because they had no choice

—-

When I and my siblings were young maybe elementary school one year in summer my dad took us on the huge vacation and we went to the base and Illinois and we went to visit all the schools that he had buzzed as an army air core pilot

And he would show us in the stadium with the approach would be and what they do when they got there and

it was nice to see all those pretty stadiums. That’s when I first saw the horseshoe.

But for Notre Dame our family got a full two days and a walking tour where he described everything they’d done way back when

@KNmeh7

One more reason Notre a dame doesn’t bother me si much:

Remember 1969 if you’re old enough

This was 100 year of college football and all the players had insignia on their uniforms, indicating the hundredth year of college football

Right before the last game of the regular season there were three undefeated teams Penn State, who had had a soft schedule

And university of Arkansas and the University of Texas, who had both had very tough schedules

Roone Arledge at ABC had this brilliant idea that the last game of the regular season should settle the national championship given that Arkansas in Texas were at that time in the same conference

so he pulled strings and called Texas and called Arkansas and got them to reschedule the game for after every other regular season game two undefeated teams widely believed to be the best two teams in the country

Played in Fayetteville

oh yeah, I was watching

it was an absolutely heartbreaking game for Arkansas. They lost but just barely and they played beautifully.

it was a wonderful game for the University of Texas who completed their national championship run and who had respect for the Arkansas team who played so well

But the game was also heartbreaking for Texas as well because Freddy Steinmark was diagnosed with leg cancer and had to have his leg amputated

it turned out the cancer had already spread, and though he had a few good years and managed to get married he didn’t live very long just a few years after he got out of the University of Texas and today the scoreboard at the University of Texas is named after him

But the game was a circus not only because ABC had pulled out such a clue of getting the national championship effective game to be the last game of the regular season after every other game

it was 1969

The country was wild with as war, protest, and anti-racial protest

Bill Clinton was in a student at Arkansas.

All sorts of activist groups descended on Arkansas campus to protest all the hot button issues of 1969

in addition Richard Nixon was president and Richard Nixon was as serious as a college football fan as you could get

so president Nixon announced she would attend the game in Fayetteville and that meant all the protest that were planned just got that much bigger

he did attend in Texas one and he presented the winner of the game, which was Texas with a plaque saying they were the national champions in the hundred year college football

But this left out Penn State who did have an undefeated streak, even though there’s scheduled that year was soft.

so President Nixon gave them a consolation prize he gave them a plaque stating that in the hundredth year of college football they had the longest unbeaten untied winning streak

They weren’t exactly happy with the substitute plaque. They wanted to be considered the national champions.

But it turned out they were a bunch of cowards or something

Because the winner of the Arkansas Texas game who would be the other undefeated team was contractually bound to play in the Cotton Bowl on January 1 and the cotton bowl could invite any were the opponent who wasn’t already contractually bound elsewhere

so the Cotton Bowl committee did the sensible thing and invited Penn State to come play the winner of the Texas, Arkansas game and that would settle who is national champion on the field where it should be settled

But Penn State also had a big fat invitation to the orange bowl and to play there and party their heads off in Miami

And the team had a vote and voted Miami and I think they won that game. I forget who they played but nobody took them seriously as a contender for the national championship after that they had a chance to play for it and they had deliberately chosen not to.

—-

so this left the Cotton Bowl committee, wondering who to invite to play against Texas in the Cotton Bowl

Notre Dame had always avoided ball games for decades, but somehow somebody persuaded them to give up their isolation stance and the first ball game. They played in after decades of being too good for ball games.

Was the cotton ball on January 1, 1970

And Texas beat them

And then Texas had no contenders for number one for the football year of 1969

—-

so since Notre Dame came out of its isolation to play Texas and they lost. I have a hard time hating them as much as my dad did.

And they were well-behaved I gave them that

—-

The game had some unexpected ripples down through the years for one thing the Arkansas Texas game the Texas barely won is considered to be one of them. I don’t know top 10 or top five college football games ever it was a heartbreaker.

it was so painful that neither the coaching staff nor the team ever watched the game tape even after 30 years they had not watched it. The game was too painful.

a book was written about the game. That’s pretty decent if you like college football.

Horns Hogs and Nixon Comimg
The title of the book is an obvious reference to the famous song Ohio from that era.

—

And there was a code to the game decades later I think in the 1990s or late 1980s

One of the players on the Arkansas team became an assistant football coach at UCLA. I think it was UCLA.

And every morning he would get up and go for a run and then he would go run to the locker room and take a shower and change clothes and start his workday

so one morning in the late 1980s or the early 1990s he’s doing his morning run around LA and he runs past a famous hotel

And his eyes kind of bulge a bit because what he sees is the very retired and elderly Richard Nixon and his Secret Service crew out for a walk in the early morning of Los Angeles

I think he met Richard Nixon at that game all those decades ago but that was just a handshake or something

And he wants to sort of go up and say hi but you don’t walk up to a president with his Secret Service people and you’re all sweaty in your running clothes and just say hi

so he walks up to one of the Secret Service guys and tells the Secret Service guy who he is and then he’d like to say hello to the president and he still remember the president attending that football game

This particular player didn’t approve of Nixon’s conducting office, but that has been over decades before so he’d put that behind him and Nixon was obviously quite frail at that point

Anyway the Secret Service guy goes up to the president and ask if he wants to talk to an assistant coach at UCLA who was on the Arkansas team in 1969 for that game in Fayetteville

And Richard Nixon suddenly tossed off all the years and lit up because he loved college football in a way that he loved nothing else ever

And so they re-introduce each other and shake hands and to the astonishment of the UCLA guy Richard Nixon starts giving him a play-by-play of the game. This is decades later.

Nixon remembers the players names. He remembers the place. He lights up and they talk about this in that aspect of the game.

And the UCLA guy could’ve stayed there all day and had that conversation. He was fascinated, but he had to get to work and so finally he excused himself and ran back to the campus to take a shower and change clothes and start work.

Before he left to the Secret Service guys, took him aside and said you don’t know, but you just made his day his week and his year

And he’s knowledgeable about college football as anybody who works at one of the networks or who writes a national famous column on it

so that story of the impromptu encounter is recounted in the book I mentioned

—-

Anyway I don’t exactly root for Notre Dame

But given that Texas beat them on January 1, 1970 I’m OK with them

Especially since my dad got to see the golden dome up very close and personal from the outside without using a ladder
Repeatedly.

@f00l @KNmeh7 That was very long but I read every word. Fascinating!

@KNmeh7 @Kyeh

I dictated it. As usual, SIRI was so helpful.

For instance, I kept saying “bowl game”. And SIRI kept transcribing “ball game”

Oh well. Still a decent story about my Dad and his “defeat” of Notre Dame.

@Yoda_Daenerys

Younger bro has lived in Cinti for decades. Because he and his kids love college football, he’s been to games all over the area, even tho none usually of the teams are one of “his team” unless some Texas team comes up north to play.

His kids have also been to many college games. In Ohio and the surrounding states. In Virginia and the surrounding states (one of my nephews went to UVA)

And they would fly off to places to see other games elsewhere.

And they all (his other people who do similar agree) that OSU is traditionally somewhere between rude and extremely rude/hostile to visiting fans.

[Curiously, Notre Dame is very gracious to visiting teams and fans.]

I know OSU as a school has many virtues. But that portion of the various “student and fan traditions” needs to be gone for good.