Recently an observant (read: pigheaded) freshman decided to let her thoughts regarding the senior class be known. With infallible logic such as, "Notre Dame Football" is not about the football!" I realized how blind I have been the last four years. I haven't been paying $245 each year to watch football, I've been donating that minor fee to socialize for four hours once a week.
End sarcasm. Notre Dame football will always be about football, not showing up to the game plastered and taking a zillion pictures with every person I stumble into (which is what I assume she means when she says "being crazy, stubborn and unrelenting"). The bigger issue here is this: Notre Dame football is about winning. This applies to the whole school; winning drives this campus. People come to Notre Dame because they were student body president, valedictorians, or more concisely, winners.
While this seems arrogant, this is what makes our school great. We have the confidence to expect to conquer whatever challenges we face. But not every person can be a winner, and sports are the perfect example. Unfortunately, in the last four years we have been too often on the losing side, with many of these losses being ugly. While BK has the team on the right track, we're cautious to give ourselves to a freshman's boundless optimism because we know the sting of a thorough drubbing (see Notre Dame football 2007). It's like a cheating girlfriend. Every time you find out she cheats, it hurts you, but then for some reason you take her back. Then she cheats again, and it hurts even worse, because you should have seen it coming, but you didn't. At some point you reach an ultimatum: show me real change or don't come back. While I'm not disowning the football team, my optimism only asks that you give it a good reason to show itself again.
Mckenna Nakamura
senior
Keough Hall
Oct. 5
