Notre Dame vs. Stanford Memories

I've been to quite a few ND-Stanford games in my lifetime. Since I've been a kid, Stanford has been on the Notre Dame schedule on a nearly yearly basis. I think that scheduling arangment has worked out for both teams. Notre Dame gets a team it should beat every year and Stanford pulls off an upset every few years.

I remember quite vividly watching Stanford beat Notre Dame a few times as a kid, but I didn't start going to these games every year until I got to high school. Bellarmine made everyone do 100 hours of community service over the course of a year. Bellarmine, being a Catholic school, also had a good group of alumni that went to ND. Somehow one of them managed to convince Bellarmine that there was a "service" oportunity at the Stanford-ND game. The event was one of those 25 dollar lunches that benefits athletics. I'm one of those who thinks that gifts to a University that go to athletics shouldn't be tax deductible at all, but that's another blog post. This was about as good as community service can get. You get there early, put up some tables, eat lunch, take down some tables, and watch a football game. I even got a free shirt that I still wear once in a while.

Recently, my memories of Stanford-ND revolve around watching games in the rain because the game is always in November. The games also tend to be a night. Brrr.

Today's game should be exciting: a battle of low teams when it is not raining during the day. Go Cardinal.