Our theme for October is “Why I Believe.”
Call it a down year. Or, more euphemistically, a rebuilding year. However I spin it, the truth is that Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish look to be having a rough football season so far. After the team endured loss after loss, from Texas to Michigan State to Duke, Sports Illustrated weighed in to offer a summation: “As Notre Dame tries to capture the form that made so many observers believe it was a national title contender in August, it will have to solve what ails its defense while leaning on its offense to prevent a total unraveling.”[1]
Even as its defense struggles, the team receives an unwavering holdout of faith from the ND network. Consider, for example, this appeal to its history:
Irish fans wondering what to expect moving on from a tough start to a season might want to harken back to 1978. That Notre Dame team, after winning the consensus national championship the previous year, began by dropping consecutive home games to begin the season to first Missouri and then Michigan in the renewal of that series after 35 years between Irish-Wolverine clashes.
Dan Devine’s club rebounded to win eight straight games—including against ninth-rated Pittsburgh, 11th-ranked Navy and 20th-rated Georgia Tech. The Irish lost their regular-season finale 27-25 at USC on a late field goal—then defeated ninth-ranked Houston 35-34 in the Cotton Bowl in the game that became famous as much as anything based on Joe Montana’s consumption of chicken broth on a bitterly cold afternoon in Dallas. Notre Dame rebounded from a 34-12 fourth-period deficit to win that game on a Montana-to-Kris Haines scoring pass as time ran out (with Joe Unis’ PAT providing the margin).
In all, Notre Dame has had 16 previous seasons that included 1-2 starts. The only two of those that included two losses sandwiching a second-game victory came in 1956 and 1985. That 1956 campaign (that ended with a 2-8 record) qualifies as the only one that featured a road loss to open the season followed by a home-field victory and then a home defeat.
On five occasions, Notre Dame has come back from 1-2 starts to play in bowl games:
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1978—Cotton Bowl win over Houston and final 9-3 mark
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1983—Liberty Bowl win over Boston College and 7-5 record
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1997—Independence Bowl loss to LSU and 7-6 mark
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2010—Sun Bowl win over Miami and 8-5 record
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2011—Champs Sports Bowl loss to Florida State and 8-5 mark [2]
It can happen. It can still happen. “Rudy! Rudy!” Whatever the current predicament of the season, people hold out. I come to this fan base as an outsider, with a rather lackluster knowledge and even less of an investment in the game itself. But the faith in the team astounds me. Notre Dame is a big name in football, sure—but a holds an even bigger name in Catholic higher education.
So, ever the faithful. The diehard Irish fans flock to campus every home game. Win, lose, or draw. For these modern-day pilgrims, the can’t-miss stop is The Word of Life mural. You may know it better as “Touchdown Jesus.” Certainly the most popular selfie-spot on campus, Touchdown Jesus overlooks the football stadium with Christ and his perpetually upraised arms. Background information provides the context and initial purpose for what Touchdown Jesus was to achieve:
When the Hesburgh Library opened, its most distinctive exterior feature, the “mural,” had not yet been installed. The artist Millard Sheets was commissioned to create a work large enough to cover the southern face of the tower, visible from the football stadium. Its theme was to be saints and scholars throughout the ages; this was suggested by Father Hesburgh.
In an interview, Sheets explained that:
What they asked me to do was to suggest in a great processional the idea of a never-ending line of great scholars, thinkers, and teachers—saints that represented the best that man has recorded, and which are found represented in a library. The thought was that the various periods that are suggested in the theme have unfolded in the continuous process of one generation giving to the next. I put Christ at the top with the disciples to suggest that He is the great teacher—that is really the thematic idea.
As the composition evolved, the figure of Christ the Teacher was developed with arms raised in what has become known as the “touch-down” gesture. The official designation for the mural is the Word of Life mural, because it is a representation of a passage from the Bible in the Book of John.
“The Word of Life”
In the beginning was the Word:
the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things came to be,
not one thing had its being but through him.
All that came to be had life in him.
and that life was the light of men,
a light that shines in the dark,
a light that darkness could not overpower.
(John1: 1-5) [3]
Since then, however, Touchdown Jesus has taken on a life of its own. Yet the ritualized selfies attest to something more. Arms raised in touchdown formation, the fans participate not only in the football culture that persists even in disappointing seasons but also reenact, whether or not they are fully aware of it, in mimicking an iconic gesture of Jesus—with a “great divorce” from anything football. And as passersby stop in their tracks to let the pictures happen, I dwell on the multitudes before me, an image of faith, however the fans may spin it.
[1] http://www.si.com/college-football/2016/09/24/notre-dame-fighting-irish-duke-blue-devils-brian-van-gorder
[2] http://www.und.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/092116aad.html
[3] https://library.nd.edu/about/history/mosaic.shtml
Jacob Schepers (Calvin ’12) is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (2014), a winner of the 2013 Outriders Poetry Project competition. His poetry has appeared in Verse, The Common, PANK, The Destroyer, and others. He lives in South Bend, IN, with his wife, Charis, and two sons, Liam and Oliver. He is both an MFA student and doctoral candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame.
