A Football Game at a Football Stadium in New Jersey

Notre Dame played Syracuse on Saturday night at the Meadowlands.  Not thinking about Notre Dame's disastrous first game at MetLife Stadium back in 2010, I bought tickets back in November of last year.  I was there in 2010.  Tailgating before the game was fun.  The game itself, not so much.  That was a miserable day.  I drank away my sorrows at my friend John's engagement party that night.  I also didn't think of the last Notre Dame-Syracuse game I went to back in 2008.  We lost 24-23 to a bad Syracuse team and it was 27 degrees at kickoff.  Let us never speak of those two games ever again.

Anyway, this year's game was a night game.  I really hate having so many night games.  It's not the worst thing in the world when you're watching at home.  I like being able to go to mass before the game and then not have to worry about it on Sunday morning.  But my favorite thing is watching us win in the afternoon and then just relaxing, drinking some good beer, and watching the other games at night.  All of our road games this year are probably going to end up being night games.  Fortunately, the rest of our home games are day games.  So my dad and I went to mass at 4:30 and then drove to the Meadowlands.  It took about an hour and 45 minutes to get to the stadium, but we were there with plenty of time before kickoff.

Our seats were up high, right in the middle of the end zone.  They were the cheapest tickets I've gotten for a football game in a long time (maybe since I was a student).  But it actually wasn't that bad of a view.  If you're sitting behind the endzone, I'd rather be up high so that you can tell what's going on when the ball is on the other side of the field (although I definitely would have taken a little bit lower in this case).  I've sat down low by the end zone and that's great when the ball is close to you, but terrible when it's far away.  I'm going to the game against Stanford this coming weekend and I have seats down low behind the south end zone.  Hopefully Notre Dame will score a few touchdowns on that side of the field.

My friends Jon and Notre Dame football legend Kyle were at the game.  They came over to our section at halftime.  It was good to see them, but it was too bad I only saw them for about ten minutes.  I should see them both again before the season is over though.

It was a weird game.  We were minus 4 in turnovers and we won by 16.  That shouldn't happen.  Everett Golson turned the ball over four times, but tied or came one short of the NCAA record for consecutive completions (I saw different things on that and I don't feel like doing the research to see if he actually tied the record or not).  He also had four touchdown passes.  The defense played really well.  Syracuse's offensive statistics were skewed by a fake punt and some late yards.  We won fairly easily, but we should have won by a lot more than 16.  We'll have to play better to beat Stanford.  I thought it was a well coached game.  Brian Kelly called a ton of wide receiver screens, a lot more than I can remember us running in one game.  And Syracuse never stopped them.  We also broke out some formations that I've never seen us run.  People complain about our running game, but I thought it was pretty good in this game.  It certainly wasn't spectacular, but our three running backs had a total of 131 yards and they all averaged at least four yards per carry.  I felt like we were able to get the tough yards on the ground when we needed them with the two tight end formations we were running.  The only thing that kept the game from being a blowout was us giving the ball away.

The game reminded me a little bit of the Big East Tournament, my favorite meaningless sporting event.  I love the Big East Tournament, but the atmosphere isn't great until Friday night or so.  For the earlier nights, you have a decent crowd for the early game and then the crowd clears out.  This game was a little bit like that.  Fans were looking for a reason to leave early.  It never felt like Syracuse was going to win, but lots of fans had cleared out before the game was decided.  As for the makeup of the crowd, I was a little surprised.  If we played Syracuse in basketball at Madison Square Garden, that would be pretty close to a Syracuse home game.  Obviously that's their sport and football is our sport, but I was still expecting more Syracuse fans considering it was technically a Syracuse home game.  It definitely seemed like we outnumbered them.  I wasn't sitting in a section that had been allotted to Notre Dame fans (I got my tickets through Ticketmaster rather than Notre Dame) and there were definitely more Notre Dame fans in my section.

My view for the opening kickoff.

So it was a football game.  Not a great atmosphere and not a great game.  We didn't play very well, but we won and it was never in much doubt.  MetLife Stadium is one of my least favorite sports venues that I've been to.  It's just a football stadium in New Jersey.  I once heard somebody describe it as sterile.  I think that's a good description.  We play Syracuse in the Meadowlands again in two years.  I feel like I'd rather watch it on TV than go to the game, but there's a decent chance that my friends will be there, in which case I'd probably go.

We've played four bad teams so far and we're 4-0.  This week we get our first real test.  I'm hoping we beat Stanford a little easier than we beat them in 2012.  Go Irish!