You don’ t have to go to the game to have a great time on a football weekend on the ND campus. Here the editors of Notre Dame Magazine offer 25 suggestions for making a home game weekend fabulous no matter what.
Light a candle and say a prayer at the Grotto, and leave double the suggested offering “just to be sure.”
Stroll through Eddy Street Commons and see the new face of off-campus retail.
Buy a steak sandwich from the Knights of Columbus food stand. Or a blackened brat from student grillers.
Take a campus tour Friday and ask to see the Nude Rockne.
Endanger your hearing with the Trumpets Under the Dome fanfare at 4 p.m. Friday. Return to the Main Building for the Midnight Drummer Circle. Not loud enough? Come back Saturday at 11 a.m. for the Bagpipe Band Concert. Can you hear us now?
Wait for the team to emerge from its pregame Mass in the Basilica at 2 p.m. Saturday and help form the tunnel they’ll follow across campus.
Try to get photographic evidence to verify the widely held conjecture that Irish Guard members wear nothing under their kilts.
When you see visitors posing, volunteer to take their picture so everyone in the family can get into the photo in front of a campus landmark — Touchdown Jesus, Fair-Catch Corby or First Down Moses. Be sure to include the little girl in the blue-and-gold cheerleader outfit.
Read Father Sorin’s letter to Father Basil Moreau near Old College. Read Tom Dooley’s letter to Father Ted at the Grotto.
Visit the College Football Hall of Fame before it moves south.
Enjoy a free intellectual massage at a Saturday Scholar Series lecture at noon Saturday in the Snite Museum.
No tickets? Pull up a lawn chair and watch the game on a portable TV in the shade of an RV in the parking lot. Or go to the Huddle and watch it there.
Make a band member laugh during inspection at Bond Hall.
See a piece of the plane that Rockne rode to his death (and a lot of other memorabilia) at the Sports Heritage Hall on the Joyce Center’s mezzanine.
Go to the Eck Visitors Center and watch the movie about Notre Dame.
Try to spot the undercover officers looking to buy tickets to the game. Yes, they can ruin your day.
Complete the entire good-luck, statue-rubbing sequence — Rockne’s nose, Leahy’s foot, Moose’s championship ring — then sit on the bench next to Moose and try to explain to him “power ratings” and the Bowl Championship Series format.
Feel good about your environmental awareness and recycle your beer cans.
After the game, scavenge at least 50 commemorative cups to use at your New Year’s Day bowl-game watching party.
Visit an empty dorm chapel and say a prayer for friends gone by.
“May I have your attention, please? This is Tim McCarthy of the Indiana State Police. Don’t let your day go down the drain by not heeding my silly safety plug.”
Feed the leftover sandwich bread from your tailgater to the ducks in Saint Mary’s Lake.
Go to the bathroom, buy a hot dog, finish Christmas shopping, read James Joyce’s Ulysses and still be back in your seat before the end of a TV timeout.
Have a post-celebration breakfast at 3:30 a.m. at Fat Shirley’s — a cheeseburger with fried eggs and bacon on top.
Link arms with someone and sing “Notre Dame, Our Mother” — the whole thing, not just “Luuhv thee Noe-Ter Daaaaayme!”
(Part of this list is reprinted from the Autumn 2001 issue.)