I had this game marked down as a game I wanted to go to. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a true road game. I’ve seen a bunch of neutral site games. I’ve seen Navy home games against us in Baltimore in 2008, the Meadowlands in 2010 (that was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had at a Notre Dame game), Dublin in 2012, and Landover in 2014. I saw a Syracuse home game against us in the Meadowlands in 2014. I’ve seen Notre Dame home games in the Shamrock Series in Yankee Stadium in 2010 and 2018, Landover in 2011, Jerryworld in 2013, and Fenway Park in 2015. And I’ve been to bowl games in Miami after the 2012 season and Yankee Stadium in 2013. But I’ve only been to a few games at another school’s regular home stadium. My first college football game was at Pittsburgh in 2005 (which is an NFL stadium, not on campus). We went to Georgia Tech in 2006. We won both of those (the Pittsburgh game was a lot of fun, Georgia Tech was a win that was closer than it should have been). The only one I’ve been to since I graduated was Penn State in 2007. That season was a disaster. I flew to Cleveland and got picked up by my friends who were on their way to the game from Notre Dame. Here’s what I remember about that game. It was Jimmy Clausen’s first start. Darrin Walls returned an interception for a touchdown. Trevor Laws was great (I remember Penn State fans sitting near Wilhelm and me commenting about how the PA guy kept calling his name because he was making so many tackles). What I didn’t remember was that Walls’s touchdown gave us the lead (we lost 31-10, I didn’t remember being up 7-0). Tom Zbikowski returned a punt for 47 yards. We had 0 yards rushing as a team (-25 on 10 carries for Clausen and 25 on 16 carries for the rest of the team). And we won the turnover battle 3-1.
So I’ve been wanting to go to an away game on another school’s campus for a while. I considered going to Virginia in 2015 at the last minute. Sean was still living in northern Virginia, but he was not around that weekend. I think I briefly considered going to the Temple game that year, but that didn’t happen. I wanted to go to Boston College in 2017, but John’s daughter was due to be born that week. Last year I had a hotel room near Northwestern, but I canceled it because I didn’t win tickets in the lottery and I couldn’t rope any my friends into going. This year I wanted to get to Duke. Tom and Erin are living in the area again so I had a place to stay. I had never been to Duke so that was something to do. It was really easy to get tickets. General admission seats were really cheap. I’m talking like what I paid per game for student tickets back in 2005 and 2006 cheap. I could have gotten good seats for like $75, but I just went the cheap route.
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| This was my view for the first three quarters. |
On Saturday, I went out for lunch at Backyard BBQ Pit. It was on Man vs. Food. I got the pulled pork with baked beans and mac and cheese. It was pretty good, but not as good as I was expecting. I used to work with a guy who made pulled pork and his was at least as good as theirs. After going back to Tom and Erin’s place for a bit, Tom and I went to campus.
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| It wasn't quite as good as I was expecting, but I would definitely have it again. |
The game day experience is very different at Duke from what I’m used to at Notre Dame. We got there a little before 3:00. There weren’t that many people walking around campus. Also you can easily find tons of information online about all the things to do and see on campus at Notre Dame for game day. Duke didn’t have much information. I did see that there was a Duke Basketball Museum that was free and right next to Cameron Indoor Stadium. What were the hours? Could you go inside Cameron? That was all unclear. Anyway, it’s a small museum and we checked it out quickly. For some unknown reason, they didn’t have an exhibit on former Duke assistant coach Mike Brey (the only interesting thing about Duke basketball). I was reminded of the 2014-2015 season. Duke won the National Championship, but we beat them two out of three times. We came so close to beating Kentucky and if we had, we were legitimately good enough to win it all. I asked a guy working there if we could go into Cameron and he said there was practice that was scheduled until 5:00 and they would have tours after that, but practice might go late. So I had thought about going to Mass near campus (there were 5:00 and 5:30 options at two Catholic churches). But I had to take advantage of an opportunity to see Cameron (don’t worry, I was back on Long Island in time for a 10:30 Mass at Holy Family on Sunday). After leaving the museum, we went to see if we could go inside Cameron. The doors weren’t locked so we walked in. They were doing tours so we got on line. But indeed, there was a practice so we didn’t see much. They just told us about the history or the building and Duke athletics, but we didn’t get to go into the seating area. And the tour ended at the museum, which we had already seen. So we went to a hotel on campus. There was a bar and TVs. I had a Red Oak Amber from Whitsett, North Carolina, which was pretty good. We went back to Cameron and got in line for a tour a little after 4:30. The line was longer so we had to wait a bit. I think we were the first tour that went in after 5:00. Volleyball practice was still going on. We got to the end of the tour and our tour guide held us up for a bit and waited for practice to be over. So we did get to see inside. If we didn’t, I was ready to get back on line and do the tour for a third time. There was a free volleyball game the next day, but I had an early morning flight. It would be cool to see Notre Dame play Duke in basketball there, but our February game is sold out and the cheapest tickets on Stubhub are almost 20 times more expensive than what I paid for football tickets. I guess women’s basketball might have been a more realistic option (by the way, Duke has had some success in women’s basketball, but they haven’t won any ACC women’s tournaments since we joined the conference). Anyway, it’s a really old-looking gym. Google says that it holds 9,314 people, which is 165 more people than Purcell Pavilion. But it’s much more tightly packed because Purcell held over 11,000 before renovations. After that we went back to the hotel bar because it was cold. Between our two stops at the bar, I saw a decent amount of the LSU-Alabama game. When it was about 6:45, I headed to the stadium and Tom headed home.
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| Mike Brey used to work in this building. |
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| Notre Dame beat Duke in volleyball on this court in October. |
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| The lighting isn't great, but that's the best we could do. |
Wallace Wade Stadium opened in 1929. It holds 40,004, which is slightly more than half of Notre Dame Stadium’s capacity. It had kind of a minor league baseball feel to it. It was small and all the concourse and all the concessions were located above the seating area. It was cool to see a game there, but there was no atmosphere. It wasn’t loud at all. Duke fans didn’t seem too excited. In the general admission seats were I was, there were definitely more Notre Dame fans than Duke fans. One interesting thing about Wallace Wade Stadium is that the 1942 Rose Bowl was played there. It was just weeks after Japan’s attack on Oahu and they were worried about an attack on the west coast. The Rose Bowl was supposed to be Duke against Oregon State so Duke offered to host it. Duke was undefeated and ranked 2nd, but they were upset by Oregon State (Oregon State’s only Rose Bowl victory). This game was not particularly exciting. We won 38-7. Ian Book ran very well, and threw four touchdown passes, but he only had 181 yards passing on 32 attempts and he threw two interceptions (one was a fourth down where he threw deep and Duke would have been better off just letting fall to the ground because it hurt their field position so whatever). Brian Kelly continues to take the ball when we win the coin toss which makes no sense whatsoever. We outgained Duke 469-197 so that was good. Chris Finke played his best game of the season so that was nice. We threw the ball downfield a decent amount, but our receivers just don’t get separation on deep routes. Our hope is Chase Claypool making great catches or getting pass interference calls. I mean, both of those things did happen in this game (Claypool had five catches for 97 yards and Duke was called for pass interference three times), but it would be nice to just get some guys open down the field. We could have been in much better position going into halftime. We were up 21-0, but we couldn’t score again. A bad punt led to Duke’s touchdown. After Ian Book's first interception, Duke had the ball at the end of the half with a chance to make it a one-possession game, but they missed a field goal. If they had scored a touchdown there, they would have had all the momentum, but I felt fine after they missed the field goal. And then we dominated the second half. So that was cool. The stadium really emptied out and I moved to the 50 yard line for the fourth quarter.
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| This was my view for the fourth quarter. |
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| It was maybe 10% full by the end of the game. |
It was quite cold. The box score lists the temperature at 35°. The coldest game I’ve ever been to was Syracuse in 2008, when it was 27°. That game was miserable (more because of our performance than the weather), but Manti Te’o visited from Hawaii and somehow still decided to come to Notre Dame. The coldest game I had been to since then was Stanford in 2014. It was October 4, but it was only 41°. In 2014, Kyle and I saw Notre Dame play hockey at Fenway Park when it was around 25°. The good news for this game was that there was no wind. I was pretty good in the first half of this one, but the second half was really cold. This was the first win that I’ve seen in person without Notre Dame wearing really silly uniforms since Navy in 2014 (my other wins since then are Boston College in 2015 and Syracuse last year). Notre Dame is now 31-12 with me in attendance and 10-1 since I was at the loss against Oklahoma in 2013. Who was the loss against? Duke in 2016. That season was so stupid.
I finished my day by going to Timeout in Chapel Hill. It was also on Man vs. Food. I had the chicken and cheddar biscuit, which was featured on the show. It was quite good.
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| This was much bigger than the Chick-fil-A biscuits. |
I don’t know when I’ll get to another true away game. Next year we only play two (Pittsburgh and USC) because we have a bunch of neutral site games. The USC game is a possibility, but that’s Thanksgiving weekend so traveling across the country is not ideal, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I would like to see us play USC out there, but it probably depends on what Sean and Catherine are doing for Thanksgiving. In 2021, we play at Virginia. That would be a cool place to see a game. Boston College and North Carolina would be on my list of places to get to (I’m thinking of how easy places are to get to, if I have a place to stay, and how difficult tickets will be to get).
We have three more regular season games. If we win them all, we have a chance to make the Cotton Bowl or the Orange Bowl, but we’re going to need some teams ahead of us to lose. My guess is that we won’t move up enough to make one of those (we’d probably have to be in the top ten because two of the twelve spots in the New Years Six are likely to be taken by teams way outside in the top ten with an ACC team other than Clemson in the Orange Bowl as long as Clemson makes the playoff and the Group of Five team taking one Cotton Bowl spot). Our next options are the Citrus Bowl (we can go there only if a Big Ten team makes the Orange Bowl) or the Camping World Bowl (which should really be our worst case scenario, but might be our most likely scenario right now). Go Irish!
