Dan Carter didn’t pack because he didn’t plan to spend the night in New Orleans. He boarded his flight from Los Angeles dressed for kickoff in a full leprechaun suit, plaid top hat, green bowtie and yellow vest. After the Sugar Bowl, Carter would head straight to the airport for home. He’d already made the trip to South Bend for the first round against Indiana two weeks earlier.
That leprechaun jacket ripped while Carter did pushups after Jeremiyah Love’s 98-yard touchdown. His wife, Tiffany Caterina, patched it because if Notre Dame beat SEC champion Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Carter knew Penn State in Miami was next. And then on to Atlanta.
“I had the first boarding group and no one wanted to sit with me,” Carter said. “You’re like first class if you’re dressed like a total weirdo.”
Not until after touching down in New Orleans did Carter learn about the attack on Bourbon Street that postponed the Sugar Bowl by a day. He bought a toothbrush and new underwear. He rebooked the flight home. The leprechaun suit stayed because that’s how fandom functions. You don’t mess with what’s working, not when you’re along for this wildest of rides during this most magical of seasons.
Count Carter among the hundreds of Notre Dame fans with perfect postseason attendance, watching Marcus Freeman’s program check every College Football Playoff box with soul en route to Monday night’s national title game against Ohio State. The ’06 graduate is so devoted he built his honeymoon to Paris around a stop in Dublin to watch Notre Dame blow out Navy to open last season. Now he’ll see the Irish play for their first national championship in 36 years. He doesn’t like to think about the cost of all of this, even if he’s picked up the tickets at face value.
And how much is a memory worth, anyhow?
“I didn’t debate anything,” Carter said. “It’s been a blur.”
Dan Carter hasn’t hesitated to travel to all four Notre Dame CFP games. (Courtesy of Dan Carter)
Michele Cahill and her husband, Matt, hopped on the highway home to Chicago after the Indiana game wondering what they’d just watched. And the ’07 graduates knew they wanted more of it. They texted friends, booked flights and arranged child care for their 9- and 7-year-old sons. They convinced friends to go along for the ride, a barnstorming alumni reunion to New Orleans and Miami before the road ends in Atlanta.
They chased this panic attack together, watching the kind of season that couldn’t exist before the 12-team CFP asked fans to crisscross the country to watch.
“Matt has been so calm and I’m like, ‘Where’s the vomit bag?’” said Michele, who refuses to wear Irish gear at games because the last time she did Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois. “You keep going because you keep believing you’re going to get over that hump and anything is possible.”
GO DEEPER
What does it cost to follow your team in the College Football Playoff?
During the Orange Bowl, when Riley Leonard left the game to be checked for a head injury, Michele texted back her mom back in Chicago, where she was watching their boys. She told 9-year-old Michael to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a good luck snack for Notre Dame’s backup quarterback. Steve Angeli led a field goal drive to help save the season. Michael ate the sandwich. Notre Dame rallied to beat Penn State on a game-winning field goal by Mitch Jeter.
Before Jeter’s 41-yard field goal tucked inside the right upright, Quinn Denvir and Jimmy Suszka took out the green rabbit’s foot they inherited a week earlier at the Sugar Bowl. The ’20 gradates made the Indiana game, then traveled to New Orleans with laminated rosters to help follow Notre Dame’s 23-10 win over Georgia, the program’s first major bowl of their lifetimes.
A row in front of them in the Superdome, Notre Dame fan Shelly Seaver kept rubbing that rabbit’s foot for good luck, a counter to her husband’s rooting allegiance to Georgia. Seaver appreciated those laminated rosters as a true sign of fandom. As the game tilted toward Notre Dame, she confided in Denvir and Suszka that she wouldn’t make it to Miami. But the plush trinket should travel. Would they mind taking it?
“Some would call this mad,” Denvir said.
Suszka wanted to break out the rabbit’s foot when Notre Dame fell behind early. And when Nicholas Singleton gave Penn State a fourth-quarter lead. Denvir insisted it should be used for field goals only. Jeter went 5-of-5 on field goals against Georgia and Penn State, all from 40 yards or longer.
“I’m not saying it’s all due to the rabbit’s foot,” Denvir said. “But I’m not not gonna rub it when Jeter comes out Monday.”
Denvir grew up on Notre Dame football around Chicago and started going to games in a stroller when his father Robert (’67) brought the family to campus. Robert won’t be in Atlanta on Monday night, refusing to mess with the karma established by his son’s roll alongside friend Suszka. Notre Dame won a national title in the fall of Robert’s senior year. He attended the clinching bowls that got the Irish over the top in 1973, 1977 and 1988, too.
“He’s seen so many championships his lifetime. I’m desperate for one,” said Denvir, who’s attended every Notre Dame game, home and away, the past two years. “I think about singing the alma mater after the game and being with people you might not know, but you feel like you’re a team on a very broad level. You don’t need to go to Notre Dame to share in this.”
Quinn Denvir, right, has attended every Irish game for two years. (Courtesy of Quinn Denvir)
Terry MacCauley didn’t, although he studied to be a priest at Saint Meinrad College in Indiana. His grandfather worked in development at Notre Dame, long ago enough that he helped raise the money to build the Hesburgh Library. He’s been a season ticket holder the past seven seasons. He’s hit all three Playoff games and will be in Atlanta for the national championship game with his son Riley.
Father and son went to Miami 12 years ago for the BCS title game against Alabama when Notre Dame was blown away 42-14, although they never made it into the stadium, watching from a tailgate in the parking lot instead. Riley was a middle school kid back then. Now he’s an accountant taking PTO to travel with his dad from St. Louis.
MacCauley landed tickets for all four rounds through the season ticket allotment, a total of 22 tickets that cost $8,500. If he had to sell any, he made sure they went to Notre Dame fans for face value. MacCauley said the hardest pill to swallow on the journey was flights and hotels. But it still went down.
“I think this team has taught all of us something,” MacCauley said. “This team just doesn’t quit. We all draw on sports to help get through some of the crap in life. That’s why we watch.”
MacCauley remembers playing youth league football back in 1988, a third-grader thinking the Notre Dame football he watched that season would be the Notre Dame football he got to watch the rest of his life. It hasn’t worked out that way, which is why he wouldn’t miss a chance to see a national championship actually happen on Monday night from his lower-level seats in the end zone.
He doesn’t want to think about what it would feel like to see Freeman lift a national championship trophy. But he can’t not think about it, either.
“Not to steal from Lou Holtz, but if you have to explain Notre Dame football, you wouldn’t get it,” MacCauley said. “Some people for Christmas choose different things. I choose Notre Dame football. It’s my own gift to myself. And once you have someone with you at a Playoff game, people get it. This is why you go.”
GO DEEPER
The family perspective inspiring Riley Leonard’s Playoff run at Notre Dame
(Top photo: CFP / Getty Images)
