The rules of being a college football fan

Pity spurred me to really root for Notre Dame.

Well, pity and the ethnic O'vertones of me last name.

It was 1985, and Gerry Faust was coaching his final game at Notre Dame when Jimmy Johnson's Miami Hurricanes punched his ticket out of town with a 58-7 blowout that was about as classy as a lower-back tattoo. Miami scored on each of its possessions except when it ran out of time at the end of the two halves.

I was living half a country away in the logging outpost of Klamath Falls, Ore., but I had an Irish last name, attended a Catholic school and was compelled by the sight of a victimized underdog that has been an Irish passion since at least the arrival of Oliver Cromwell.

I also remember the exact point at which I stopped being a Notre Dame fan. I was in the stands at Husky Stadium, a freshman at Washington in my first quarter on campus.

It was the first Apple Cup I attended, and I was in the stands when I heard Boston College had beaten top-ranked Notre Dame and I felt absolutely nothing. I was more worried whether Napoleon Kaufman would stay another year at Washington. (He did.)

It seems a little odd in retrospect. From ages 10 to 18, Notre Dame was the most important sporting enterprise in my personal pantheon, and then it ceased. The Grotto and the Gipper were meaningless, along with the multiple Heismans Ron Powlus failed to win.

In retrospect, it's clear that I followed the cardinal rule of college fandom: Thou shalt not covet another college's program. You don't get multiple favorites, and if you enroll at college, the team you grew up rooting for gets trumped by the one whose college you attended. There are limited exceptions to this rule, of course. Very limited.

This isn't professional sports, where the players and coaches are recycled and, as comedian Jerry Seinfeld once observed, fans essentially cheer for laundry (and for the Seahawks on Sunday, it was particularly gaudy laundry).

College is different. It's more visceral. You are entitled to crow or complain as loud as you like, avowing that the current coach either embodies everything that is good and unique about your esteemed institution or he is guilty of murdering a fall's worth of Saturday afternoons.

I arrived at Washington to a football team freshly placed on probation, with an iconic coach who'd quit and no idea that it was only going to get worse. Two years later came the abomination of the purple helmets in which the Huskies looked like participants in a Fruit of the Loom ad.

Even then, I loved it. Shared suffering is what defines a fan base, whether it's the color of helmets, Rick Neuheisel's flexible ethics or Tyrone Willingham's final year, which is the closest thing I've ever experienced to a hostage situation.

Attending Washington was the first time I didn't have to explain my affection for the program. I was in the stadium and in the student body. Until age 15, I lived in a part of Southern Oregon remote enough it once was part of a secession attempt. The state had no professional football or baseball franchises, so I missed out on some of the geographical bonds that draw natural connections between fan base and franchise.

As a member of the cable-television generation, I developed some counterintuitive allegiances. Georgetown basketball, New York Mets baseball and then Notre Dame football.

Notre Dame is as close as any college comes to a national following. Its games used to be boiled down and broadcast on Sundays, and even now the Irish have their own TV contract with the station that broadcasts the Olympics.

Cheering for Notre Dame seems so generic in retrospect. A couple of my cousins went there, and I have the ethnic affinity that so many Americans feel toward Ireland. It's why we have green beer on St. Patrick's Day and why I ended up in a modern Irish history class at Washington with pretty much every other O'McPaddy on campus.

But I never felt the same about Notre Dame after I arrived at Washington, and now it's the Huskies who are the underdogs. They've lost all seven games they've ever played against Notre Dame. Six of those defeats have been by at least 19 points.

The closest Washington has ever come was 1995, my junior year. The Huskies blew a late lead in that game. First, punter John Wales dropped a snap that hit him right in his hands and then the defense forgot to defend Derrick Mayes, who was only Notre Dame's best wideout, on the two-point conversion that gave the Irish a fourth-quarter lead. An interception returned for a touchdown capped Notre Dame's afternoon.

Four years earlier, I would have celebrated Notre Dame's victory. Now, it makes me mad remembering what happened, even though it was more than 10 years ago.

There is no gray area when it comes to the colleges you cheer for. You don't get two favorites, and now Notre Dame feels like a shamefully populist case of puppy love.

On the positive side, I still get to root against USC.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com