Niki and I attended our first Notre Dame Football game yesterday along with our friend, and one of Niki's colleagues, Nuwan. There are seven home games this year and this was the second. It was quite the cultural experience as we found out, full of interesting traditions. We sat in the student section which was probably the most lively section. There was no choice but to stand the entire game because everyone else was standing.
Depending on what was going on in the game we would perform a different combination of noise, body movements and claps led by the Notre Dame marching band and cheerleaders. For instance, when Michigan State had the ball and they were on the third down everyone would jingle their keys in hopes that the sound would intimidate them. When Notre Dame scored a touch down, groups of 6 or so people would lift a lightweight spectator and push them up into the air the number of times according to how many points Notre Dame has. So when Notre Dame reached 33 points the person would be pushed up 33 times. Unfortunately Notre Dame's main quarterback, a Clausen, was injured early in the game, but they managed to win in a very intense last minute where Notre Dame intercepted the ball from what could have been a Michigan State touch down. We will probably never watch a college football game the same way again.
