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<\/a>Every Saturday morning in fall I wake up and feel a tinge of disappointment that I have not woken up in a dorm room in South Bend, Indiana; that my Notre Dame marching band uniform does not hang in the closet at the foot of my bed.<\/p>\nI\u2019m disappointed because I\u2019m not eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old. And I\u2019m disappointed that instead of spending the entire day wrapped up in the tradition and pageantry that is college football, I will instead mow the lawn, sort the recycling, and grade freshman composition essays.<\/p>\n
Notre Dame football is deeply engrained in my being. Put it this way, if something cataclysmic happened and we were all reduced to cannibalism, I like to think that I would taste like a crisp fall day, a hint of charcoal smoke, a whiff of beer breath, and the tang of the kelly green turf in the House that Rockne built. I like to think that you would hear strains of the Notre Dame Victory march as you roasted me.<\/p>\n
Sorry, I know that\u2019s really creepy, but that\u2019s the best way I can describe the zeal that I have for Notre Dame and its football team. It\u2019s more than addiction, it\u2019s as though my very genetic structure has been altered. This makes losing very, very difficult.<\/p>\n
When Notre Dame loses, which has been often in the last ten years, I\u2019m crabby and sulky. I have no appetite. I run the decisive plays backwards and forward in my head. If we had a dog I would be tempted to kick him. And yet, each new Saturday hope springs eternal. Whether they are 5-0 or 0-5, I watch.<\/p>\n
Despite this innate, unflappable love for my school and team, the death of Declan Sullivan, a twenty-year old Notre Dame student who was killed this past week [October 27, 2010] in a fall from a scissor lift while videotaping football drills, has left me questioning my allegiance. Sullivan, a film major and writer for the student newspaper,\u00a0The Observer,<\/em>\u00a0died when the lift he was standing atop was blown over by a heavy gust of wind.<\/p>\nI know that this feeling will eventually pass, but, right now, I don\u2019t want it to. I feel like Notre Dame, a school that has prospered over the last decade in terms of its endowment (one of the largest in all of higher ed), in terms of its mercurial rise in the\u00a0U.S. News and World Report College<\/em>\u00a0rankings (19th), in terms of its multi-million dollar television contract with NBC, needs to really think long and hard about this loss.<\/p>\nThis isn\u2019t just another football defeat\u2014we\u2019re used to that. We\u2019re used to not living up to the pre-season hype. We\u2019re used to losing at the last second. Declan Sullivan\u2019s death is final. There is no \u201cnext season,\u201d no excuses of \u201cthis is a rebuilding year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some in the media see Sullivan\u2019s death as symbolic, yet another indication of how moribund Notre Dame\u2019s football program is; an indictment of the university\u2019s hypocrisy\u2014being all uppity and self-righteous about its Catholic character, its commitment to fight for the poor and oppressed, all the while being willing to sacrifice one of its own in the hope of future football greatness. And it won\u2019t be long, if it hasn\u2019t happened already, that this incident will be tied in some way to the priest abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
And while I think that these and future allegations are myopic, it doesn\u2019t make Sullivan\u2019s death any less senseless and tragic. Like all tragedies, it could have been avoided; this is what makes a tragedy a tragedy: our ability after the fact to see the ways it could have turned out differently.<\/p>\n
In this case the only thing that would have saved Declan Sullivan was if someone in charge had been looking out for his safety. An investigation by the University and the state of Indiana will no doubt attempt to get to the bottom of how something like this could have happened, but what I suspect that they will find is that no one was looking out for him and that he was free to come down if he felt he was in danger.<\/p>\n
What gives me pause right now is had that been me up there\u2014the twenty-year-old me, the me who also wrote for\u00a0The Observer,<\/em>\u00a0also lived in Fisher Hall, wore a sweat-stained Notre Dame baseball cap every waking hour of my four years, the me whose life-long dream was to attend Notre Dame, who every now and then would get misty-eyed walking by Our Lady on the Golden Dome, not to mention the me who loves Notre Dame football with every atom of my substance, I probably would have stayed up on that lift. I would have wanted to show my loyalty to my school. I would have wanted to show that I was willing to make sacrifices to help make the struggling team better.<\/p>\nSitting here writing this in the hours just after the team\u2019s two point loss to Tulsa\u2014Tulsa, the smallest school to play Division I football\u2014I can\u2019t help, and I\u2019m sure many others can\u2019t help think, that this most recent loss is a referendum from Beyond; that Our Lady\u2019s University, as it is often called by its fans, is being humbled for its sin of pride.<\/p>\n
Whether this loss is Divinely ordained or just more terrible luck\u2014Notre Dame\u2019s starting quarterback was lost for the season in the first quarter\u2014I think it is important that Sullivan\u2019s death hang over the heads of the coaching staff, team, and administration as a reminder of the deep allegiance and sacred trust they\u2019ve inherited.<\/p>\n
I know that every day of my four years was a gift. I felt lucky to be in such rare air, and had I been asked, I would have probably gone up in that lift in high winds, too.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Originally published in\u00a0Good Letters\u00a0<\/em>November 1, 2010.<\/p>\nDavid Griffith<\/strong> is the author of Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America. His essays and reviews have appeared in Image, The Normal School, Creative Nonfiction, The LA Review of Books, Killing the Buddha, Offline, and the Paris Review Daily, among others. He lives in Michigan with his wife, the writer Jessica Mesman Griffith, where he directs the creative writing program at Interlochen Center for the Arts. He recently finished a book manuscript titled Pyramid Scheme: Making Art and Being Broke in America.<\/p>\n![\"GL](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2015\/09\/GL-banner-1024x279.jpg\")
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<\/a>Every Saturday morning in fall I wake up and feel a tinge of disappointment that I have not woken up in a dorm room in South Bend, Indiana; that my Notre Dame marching band uniform does not hang in the closet at the foot of my bed.<\/p>\n