Holy War Heartbreak: Boston College Drops One to Notre Dame

Is every October game involving Notre Dame played under the auspices of a blue-gray sky ? Even the soul-crushing "Mike Cloud Game" from 1998 is never not fresh in my memory. I was concerned—a Boston College graduate and fan—as we tailgated in the lot of Notre Dame Stadium.

Having arrived in South Bend early that morning and a mere couple hours later stepping foot on the Notre Dame campus, I had been forewarned whilst eating a below-average—for lack of a better term—breakfast at an airport Chili's To Go in the midst of my travels.

During the transfer leg of my red-eye flight, at roughly 5:30 a.m. local time, Rob Thomas's “This is How a Heart Breaks” did a little more than drone over the Chili's sound-system. Foreshadowing, I'd say, as the last time this power-ballad haunted me was at the hands of one "Dr. Azana," mid-day, at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas a few New Year's Weekends ago. I broke that day—financially and mentally—as her cards gave me a swift kick in the tookus to go along with her life story recounting the war in Yugoslavia during the time of Milošević.

As if it weren't bad enough, a dead ringer for Hugo Chávez shifty-eye stalked me in the middle of Foxtrot concourse in Chicago's O'Hare Airport as I made my way from the restaurant to my gate after breakfast tacos and coffee. Visions of heinous world leaders haunted my exhausted brain as I waited for the puddle-jumper to take me to Indiana. Thankfully, football was gracious enough to intercede.

After a longer layover than expected, I spent 19 minutes in the air, and touched-down in South Bend.

I'd been unable to find a reasonable ticket price, or a legitimate reason to arrive any earlier in enemy territory, so I spent the hours leading up to my flight following, via Twitter , the traditional Friday night hockey game—seats also expensive, and nearly impossible to come by—between the Fightin' Irish and the Eagles. While the Irish battled, the rematch of the 2008 Frozen Four final saw the Eagles come out on top 3-2. Even more disturbing was that I didn't feel I could get so greedy as to expect more than one pot of gold at the expense of the Irish over the course of a weekend.

Soon after I landed, my friend Joe picked me up and we went back to his hotel, where his mixed family—Notre Dame and BC grads both—welcomed me and we got ready to spend the day on campus. We went down and had a continental breakfast. I settled for a fruit plate, some orange juice, and more coffee.

We toured campus and the tailgating area, catching an impromptu concert by ND's Bagpipe Band, finally meeting up with some friends of friends—Domers all—in the parking lot for their tailgate. Hot cider, beef stew, and Halloween candy was the spread. At this point, the sky trended more gray than blue, a brisk wind and drizzle overhead, while a patch of clear sky hovered in the horizon.

Leaving the tailgate, we headed to the middle of campus to see the Notre Dame Marching Band's concert on the steps of Bond Hall. We weren't the only Eagle fans to witness this pageantry either, for it is the type of thing that makes a BC-ND game much more special than, say, a Patriots-Bears tilt. The drizzle began to subside as we made it back toward the stadium, stopping to see the Irish squad on their walk from pre-game Mass into the stadium.

At this point, I started to gain confidence in my team, though I had yet to see them take the field. The Irish, while not completely insouciant, looked nearly to a man as if they felt the inevitable coming—taking one on the chin for the seventh straight contest against BC.

After the players passed, we headed for the entrance and arrived at our seats in the south endzone, looking straight ahead at the iconic Touchdown Jesus. The Marching Band provided the music and pre-game show while the teams prepared in their locker rooms and the skies began to clear.

Notre Dame got off to an early lead with a field goal, and a few series later, the Eagle defense got Irish quarterback Jimmy Clausen to intentionally ground a pass in the endzone resulting in an Eagle safety and the atypical—and reverse of the previous night's hockey game—score of 3-2. The general pace of the game was a slog, much like the field conditions. The oft-missed Tu

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