It is 1:15 a.m. Saturday morning and, on what turns out to be the day of one of Notre Dame’s greatest victories, there is complete darkness in the tunnels beneath the stadium’s seats.
The student managers who paint the Fighting Irish helmets before each game noisily finished their chores longer than an hour ago and they have left to join the revelry that has built steadily throughout the campus for the past two days and nights.
Now, from a far corner deep in the stadium’s southwest side, a howl pierces the blackness. This is a long, mournful sound, lasting long enough to make my ears perk.
Has the ghost of Knute Rockne, designer of the very stadium where the game will be played and my home for the night, come back to haunt-perhaps incensed at being called Rock Knutne by Florida State players?
Is he outraged at the Seminoles’ plan to remove sod from his field and take it back to Tallahassee?
In a few seconds, the lonesome sound is joined by howls from two more sources. George Gipp? Frank Leahy?
With a goal of seeing whether Notre Dame Stadium truly is haunted by the school’s fabled football personalities, the answer appeared to be closing fast.
But these “ghosts” proved to be four-legged. A canine crew, responding to a stadium break-in the previous night, had been assigned to patrol inside the brick walls-and their hourly trips around the interior apparently were enough to scare anything extraordinary away.
As much as anything, Saturday’s contest was about mystique and history and the stuff of legends. Notre Dame has it. Florida State wanted more.
“We were a girls’ school in ’47,” noted Seminoles’ coach Bobby Bowden.
The Atlantic Coast Conference member will have to wait a bit for its first national championship, but, for now, everyone connected to the game could be sure of one thing: They had played in a contest that will add much to each school’s reputation.
“This was a special game,” agreed Lou Holtz. “I was afraid it might not live up to the hype. I think it did.”
For most of the week leading up to kickoff, campus enthusiasm had built to nearly a break point.
A warmup by the Notre Dame band near Washington Hall almost 24 hours before kickoff drew approximately 500 people. The musicians’ march to the practice field made them look like Pied Pipers with almost everyone following on the half-mile trek. Hundreds were turned away from the Friday night pep rally.
Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winners such as John Lattner, Paul Hornung and John Huarte, the latter making a rare appearance here, were gathered for the kickoff.
“I’ve been coming for years and I can’t remember anything like this,” Lattner said. “Even when we played some of our big games (in the early 1950s), they always seemed to be earlier in the year.
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“I don’t ever remember 1 versus 2. I think everyone thought it might be like this almost from the day the game was scheduled.”
Bowden said his players weren’t particularly awed by Notre Dame’s storied past.
“There’s no doubt about the great spirit they have here,” said Bowden. “It helps them. It doesn’t hurt us because, in all honesty, we don’t really know what it is. But it helps them.”
And while my overnight search for ghosts may not have produced conversations with the Four Horsemen or Seven Mules-only three dogs, their handler, and a night watchman, there was plenty about this game to be added to the history books.
“Our mystique here is about faith and belief,” said defensive lineman Bryant Young. “It starts with believing in the Lady of Notre Dame. There’s a special spirit about the place. It keeps growing and growing as you get older.”
Placekicker Kevin Pendergast hit his career-long field goal in the third period with a 47-yarder.
Tailback Lee Becton collected his fifth straight 100-yard rushing game, tying him with Allen Pinkett for the school record.
Defensive lineman Young’s two sacks of the Seminoles’ Charlie Ward drew nodding approval from Notre Dame Hall of Famer George Connor.
“There’s no subsitute for a great rush,” said George.
Flanker Adrian Jarrell may have etched his name alongside Johnny “One Play” O’Brien, who scored a winning touchdown in 1928 to beat Army in Yankee Stadium on his only play of the season. On this day, Jarrell, a senior, scored a 32-yard TD on his third career rush with the Fighting Irish.
Or Notre dame quarterback Paul Failla, who came in for one play on his team’s clinching drive to hand to Jeff Burris for what proved to be the winning TD.
Split end Clint Johnson, whose game-opening 33-yard kickoff return got Notre Dame off to a good start, explained he was not offended particularly by Florida State’s seeming lack of respect for school tradition “Unless you’re here and experience what goes on here, you don’t know what it’s about,” he said.
“Everyone on campus seemed more excited than usual,” he added. “Coach (Lou Holtz) kept us focused all week, telling us we can’t make it bigger than life.
“But when I heard they were going to come in here and take our sod, well, nobody comes in here and takes anything away from us.”