Fighting Irish or O-H-I-O?

I have a confession.

 

I’m Catholic.

 

I attended Catholic schools for 12 years, graduating from Notre Dame High School in Portsmouth, Ohio, and matriculating to The Ohio State University.

 

After that, I began my sports writing career in my hometown and ran my parish’s food bank on the side.

 

In Charleston, I taught Sunday School at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist while writing sports at The Post and Courier.

 

And yet, somehow, I got the feeling that my dad, God rest his soul, thought I should be excommunicated.

 

The reason?

 

I rooted for The Ohio State Buckeyes.

 

People ask me about my feelings about the massive showdown featuring Ohio State vs. Notre Dame for the national championship on Jan. 20. It’s not what I’m feeling, it’s what I’m thinking. And what I’m thinking about is my dad, a member of that notorious “Subway Alumni.”

 

Our Sundays included church at 9:30 a.m., followed by a trip home in our 1964 Ford Falcon van that included a stop at the Townhouse Restaurant to get a bucket of chicken.

 

We would arrive home in time to watch the Notre Dame football highlights, which was hosted by Lindsey Nelson with Paul Hornung providing commentary. 

 

Certainly, you remember “There was no further scoring … ”

 

We then watched the Cleveland Browns in the old stadium on the shores of Lake Erie. It could have been 70 in Lakewood and 72 in Shaker Heights, but it was always rainy and muddy at Municipal Stadium.

 

That was our weekend: family, church and sports.

 

I went outside to play football in those autumn days gone by, and I usually listened to Ohio State on my faithful transistor radio – while watching Notre Dame on television.

 

My biggest Thanksgiving memories were turkey, turkey and more turkey and then the main course: Notre Dame at USC at the famed Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

 

I’ll never forget watching the 1970 game, which was contested during torrential rain. Believe it or not, The Irish lost despite a monumental effort by Joe Theismann, who completed 33 passes for 526 yards, numbers unheard of back in the day.

 

But my biggest memory was the 1974 game, also played at the Coliseum. The Irish grabbed a 24-0 lead late in the first half. But Pat Haden threw a swing pass to Anthony Davis to cut the lead to 24-6 at halftime. Davis returned the second half kick 102 yards to make it interesting. At about that time, I thought my dad was going to kick the television. It must have been a premonition because Southern Cal converted a 24-0 deficit into a 55-24 victory.

 

So, I often wondered why these two schools went decades without playing until that memorable Saturday in September 1995, which featured an Ohio State victory and an appearance by dad’s favorite all-time TV personality: Regis Philbin.

 

I was especially interested to learn why the two schools didn’t play during the Woody Hayes’ era, a time when college football on television was just beginning to become a big business.

 

I’ve read and read and one of the most recurring themes I found involved Hayes and religion.

 

He was well aware Ohio had some major Catholic high school football teams, including Moeller, which featured coach Gerry Faust. Faust went from the Cincinnati school to head coach of Notre Dame.

 

But Hayes opted not to schedule the Irish because he didn’t want to polarize the Catholic communities, schools, friends and families.

 

Notre Dame athletic director Edward “Moose” Krause told a different story. He claimed Hayes told him he wanted only one tough team, Michigan, on the schedule.

 

Either way it makes for a great story, and the Jan. 20 clash should produce another storied memory.