Is Notre Dame football likable now?

Notre Dame and its famous symbols – the golden helmet matching the dome atop the main building on campus, the Touchdown Jesus mural overlooking the football stadium – are recognizable around the world.

This program is full of knowledge, full of history and full of nostalgia. The echoes are waking up. Playing like a champion. Winning one for the Gipper. That whole “Rudy” thing.

Fighting Irish football fans are everywhere, and many have never set foot in South Bend, India or even the United States.

Really, it’s all a bit much.

Notre Dame football holds a unique place in the hierarchy of sports in this country, along with the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and Duke basketball. The Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics share this spot in the NBA.

Love them or hate them, you can’t ignore them.

For every Notre Dame fan, there is at least one Notre Dame hater – irritated by the self-importance of the Fighting Irish, frustrated by how much attention they get and convinced that they are the beneficiaries of special treatment at every turn.

Yet something feels different this College Football Playoff.

“For the first time in my life I’m rooting for ND,” this text appeared in my college friends’ group chat during Notre Dame’s quarterfinal win against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl last week. Next up for Notre Dame is a meeting with Penn State on Thursday in the Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Marcus Freeman’s Fighting Irish is winning some hearts. Or maybe Coach and his team are taking advantage of many people’s dislike of his predecessor and a growing desire among sports fans to see the SEC humiliated. Who didn’t love Nick Saban being teased by comedian and Irish fan Shane Gillis on “College GameDay”?

Regardless, for the first time in a long time, Notre Dame is, apparently, likeable.

Podcaster and former Irish football player Mike Golic Jr. said, “I’ve come to terms with it and it’s very uncomfortable for me.” “It’s been a weird adjustment for me to suddenly not have to be on the defensive all the time when talking about this team.”

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Notre Dame has a long history of being hated, and its roots are nothing to joke about. Anti-Catholic sentiment was linked to the anti-immigrant movements that flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Notre Dame was the site of a three-day Ku Klux Klan rally in the spring of 1924, which led to a standoff between students and Klansmen.

When Notre Dame was rejected by the Big Ten in the 1920s, some suspected that it was at least in part connected to prejudice against Catholics.

Shut out of the ice by its Midwest neighbors, Notre Dame set out on its proudly independent path, traveling across the country to play football at the championship level. The Fighting Irish became an inspiration for Catholic immigrants from coast to coast, especially in the Northeast where many settled.

The New York City subway no longer has straps to hold riders in place, but the spirit of Notre Dame’s straps-hanger alumni is alive and well. For years, the Yankees’ regional sports network, YES, aired replays of Notre Dame home games. In November, Notre Dame took its annual Shamrock Series to Yankee Stadium for a matchup against Army celebrating the 100th anniversary of the famous “Four Horsemen” game and packed a house built by Derek Jeter.

Although no school celebrates its past like Notre Dame, a big reason why so many fans have their eyes set on the Irish is that many of their greatest successes came in the days of black-and-white photography. Notre Dame claimed eight national titles in the voting era of college football (1936–present), but half came in the 1940s.

The last time Notre Dame won a national championship under coach Lou Holtz in 1988, there was the Berlin Wall but no World Wide Web.

In 1991, Notre Dame became the first school to make its own television deal with a major network, and Irish home games have been televised on NBC ever since. At a time when only a few games were nationally televised each week, Notre Dame always had a prime slot – whether you liked it or not.

Shortly after the NBC deal began, Notre Dame football began moving toward normality. From 1994 to 2009, the Fighting Irish had twice as many losing seasons (four) as double-digit win seasons.

“I think the TV deal really screwed people over for a long time,” said Ryan Nannney, creator and host of the “Who Killed College Football” podcast and longtime co-host of the “Shutdown Fullcast” podcast. “There’s this idea that Notre Dame had this special deal with NBC, and they had to be on the network all the time, even though, you know, they were a mediocre football program that year.”

Of course, now, every arbitration team in the power conference is constantly on national TV. Iowa at Michigan State, for God’s sake, had a prime-time game on NBC in October. A generation of college football fans can easily ignore Notre Dame if they want to.

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Former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn was part of one of those false-start Notre Dame resurgences, leading the team to a 10–3 season under coach Charlie Weis in 2006, which ended with a 41–14 loss to LSU in the Sugar Bowl. Had ended with.

Quinn, from Dublin, Ohio, outside Columbus, didn’t really find Notre Dame polarizing until he joined the program.

“I always thought, you know, we’re a Catholic institution, a place that just wants to try to do good in the world,” said Quinn, now an analyst for Fox. “Yeah, obviously, there are a lot of other people who feel that maybe Notre Dame gets some special treatment, or they don’t like the fact that we’re not part of a conference. And this became clear to me as I grew older while living there.”

As conference realignment has upended college sports over the years, Notre Dame’s independence now seems quaint, an artifact of simpler times. Likewise, the pride the Domers take in their players’ rigorous academic schedule is practically adorable as college football has become more and more transactional.

“Mentally, it feels like we have eight or nine days (to prepare) because we don’t have to go to school,” quarterback Riley Leonard said of preparing for the Orange Bowl. “Obviously, the Notre Dame school is abusive. in a good way. “We all love going to class.”

Rick Reilly wrote for ESPN in the summer of 2012 that Notre Dame football had become irrelevant. Of course, one could argue that simply writing the column refutes its theory, but still, it would be fair to wonder if Notre Dame was a fading brand like Jourdanche jeans or MTV.

Notre Dame responded with an undefeated regular season in 2012, turning Reilly’s column into a meme and providing the first indication that the Irish had finally found a coach to fix the problems. Football problems, that is.

Brian Kelly consistently brought Notre Dame back into contention, but he also gave Irish haters plenty of fodder. (Reinhold Maate/USA TODAY)

Brian Kelly became the head coach of Notre Dame in 2010 and spent 12 years re-establishing the program as one of the best in the country. There were some ups and downs and starts, but the Irish won at least 10 games seven times under Kelly, reaching the BCS Championship Game in 2012 and the College Football Playoff in 2018 and ’20.

But while Kelly significantly improved the quality of Notre Dame football, his Irish also flopped on the biggest stage in spectacular fashion. Notre Dame lost the BCS title game and its two CFP semifinals by a combined score of 103–31.

Hell hath no fury like a football fan watching an explosion in a special TV window.

Additionally, fair or not, Kelly himself did nothing to increase Irish’s Q rating. Even Notre Dame fans respected and appreciated Kelly more than they embraced him. He was the face of the program, and many times that face was captured by TV cameras on the sidelines, red with anger and issuing animated warnings to some player, coach or official.

“Yeah, it’s that Brian Kelly thing,” Nanni said. “And it’s probably not just Brian Kelly. Charlie Weis didn’t seem like a particularly likable guy. I think Ty Willingham wasn’t inappropriate, but he was flat and he certainly didn’t perform well. “When was the last time Notre Dame had a really likable coach across all parts of the spectrum?”

Despite a shocking home loss to Northern Illinois in the second week of the season, the 2024 Irish have addressed both of those issues.

“This is a team that people think probably has better high-level talent, whether that’s true or not,” said Golic, who was an offensive lineman on the 2012 team that reached the BCS title game. Lost to Alabama 42–14. “There are parts of it that I look back on and say there were a lot of talented teams that just happened to be generational teams that were going to win national championships and maybe they were being sold a little short in that. But I think the quality of this team compared to the rest of the field now makes it easy for people to say, ‘Oh, no, this is something that’s building.’ “We feel like they’re really on stage.”

Last week’s win against mighty Georgia, the SEC champion and winner of two of the last three CFP titles, served to prove the remaining doubters wrong, while also linking it to the SEC and its group of defenders who have been highly rated over the past month. Had become arrogant.

“I think there are a lot of college football fans who are supporting someone other than the SEC,” Quinn said.

“A big part of it is that, hey, the enemy of my enemy is my friend type of thing,” Golic said.

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Then there’s Freeman, who took over the program when Kelly joined LSU after the 2021 regular season. Kelly explained that he moved because he believed he had more opportunities in Baton Rouge, La., than in South Bend. Had a better chance of winning the national championship. Who can blame him? LSU has won three titles this century with three different coaches.

Freeman was promoted to head coach at the age of 36 because the players clearly loved him so much. They’ve learned on the job, and it’s been hard, with losses to Marshall and NIU as well as a loss to Ohio State in 2023 in which the Irish had only 10 defenders on the field for the winning touchdown.

Still, Freeman has a cool head and seems to be appropriately balancing embracing the new world order of college football while also respecting all Notre Dame…stuff.

“If you want me to answer simply, why is Notre Dame such a favorite right now? It’s because of Marcus,” Quinn said.

Freeman looks great in tailored shirts and being confused for a player — which my wife did earlier this year when he was being interviewed on TV — certainly doesn’t hurt.

Probability is difficult to measure. More vitality than science. But when I conducted an informal survey on Ax this week, the results, if not scientific, were dramatically different from what I expected at almost any other point in Notre Dame’s history.

You’re not rooting for any CFP semifinalists. Who would you like to see win the championship?

– Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoATH) 7 January 2025

There are plenty of fans who are still staunch Never Notre Dame fans, but right now the closest you’ll get to America’s college football team is the one with the handsome coach and the shiny helmet.

(Photo: Michael Reeves/Getty Images)