For many Notre Dame fans, any stop on a magical College Football Playoff run is not to be missed

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 outfit, plaid hat, green bow tie and yellow vest. After the sugar bowl, Carter would go straight to the airport and home. He had already made the trip to South Bend for the first round against Indiana two weeks earlier.

That leprechaun jacket was torn as Carter was doing pushups after Jeremiah Love’s 98-yard touchdown. His wife, Tiffany Caterina, patched it up because if Notre Dame beat SEC champion Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Carter knew Penn State in Miami was next. And so on to Atlanta.

“I had the first boarding group and nobody wanted to sit with me,” Carter said. “You’re like first class if you’re dressed like a total weirdo.”

Only after being in New Orleans did Carter learn of 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 works. You don’t mess with what works, not when you’re on this wildest ride of this most magical season.

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 heading into Monday night’s national title game against Ohio State. The ’06 graduate is so devoted that he built his honeymoon to Paris around a stop in Dublin to watch Notre Dame blow out Navy to open last season. Now he wants to see the Irish play for their first national championship in 36 years. He doesn’t like to think about the cost of all this, even though he has picked up the tickets at face value.

And how much is a memory worth anyway?

“I didn’t discuss anything,” Carter said. “It’s been a blur.”


Dan Carter has not hesitated to travel to all four Notre Dame CFP games. (Courtesy of Dan Carter)

Michele Cahill and her husband, Matt, hopped on the freeway home to Chicago after the Indiana game, wondering what they had just seen. And the ’07 graduates knew they wanted more of it. They texted friends, booked plane tickets and arranged childcare for their 9- and 7-year-old sons. They convinced friends to come 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 and saw the kind of season that couldn’t exist before the 12-team CFP asked fans to cross the country to watch.

“Matt’s been so calm and I’m like, ‘Where’s the poop bag?'” said Michele, who refuses to wear Irish gear to games because the last time she played, Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois. “You keep going because you keep believing that you will get over that hump and anything is possible.”

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During the Orange Bowl, when Riley Leonard left the game to be checked for a head injury, Michele texted back to her mother back in Chicago, where she was watching their boys. She asked 9-year-old Michael to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, good luck to 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 the green rabbit’s foot they inherited a week earlier at the Sugar Bowl. The ’20 graduates made it through the Indiana game, then traveled to New Orleans with laminated lists to help follow Notre Dame’s 23-10 victory over Georgia, the program’s first major bowl in their lifetime.

A row ahead of them in the Superdome, Notre Dame fan Shelly Seaver kept rubbing the rabbit’s foot for good luck, a counterpoint to her husband’s deep-rooted allegiance to Georgia. Seaver valued these laminated lists as a true sign of fandom. When the game tipped against Notre Dame, she confided in Denvir and Suszka that she wouldn’t make it to Miami. But the sumptuous trinket should travel. Would they mind taking it?

“Some would call it crazy,” Denvir said.

Suszka would break out the rabbit’s foot as Notre Dame fell behind early. And when Nicholas Singleton gave Penn State a fourth-quarter lead. Denvir insisted that it be used only for field goals. 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 down to the rabbit’s foot,” Denvir said. “But I’m not not will rub it when Jeter comes out on Monday.”

Denvir grew up watching 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 Monday night, refusing to mess with the karma his son’s roll with girlfriend Suszka created. Notre Dame won a national title in the fall of Robert’s senior year. He participated in the clinching bowls that put the Irish over the top in 1973, 1977 and 1988.

“He’s seen so many championships in his lifetime. I’m desperate for one,” said Denvir, who has attended every Notre Dame game, home and away, the past two years. “I’m thinking 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 have to go to Notre Dame to participate in this.”


Quinn Denvir, right, has featured in all-Ireland games for two years. (Courtesy of Quinn Denvir)

Terry MacCauley did not, even though he was studying to become a priest at Saint Meinrad College in Indiana. His grandfather worked in development at Notre Dame, long enough ago that he helped raise the money to build the Hesburgh Library. He has been a season ticket holder for the past seven seasons. He has hit in 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, though they never made it inside the stadium, watching instead from a tailgate in the parking lot. Riley was a junior high school kid then. Now he’s an accountant who takes PTO to travel with his father from St. Louis.

MacCauley landed tickets for all four rounds through the season ticket allocation, 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 trip was flights and hotels. But it still went down.

“I think this team taught us all 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 as a third-grader thinking the Notre Dame football he saw that season would be the Notre Dame football he got to see for the rest of his life. It hasn’t worked out that way, which is why he didn’t want to miss a chance to see a national championship actually happen 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 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 choose different things for Christmas. I choose Notre Dame football. It is my own gift to myself. And once you have someone with you for a playoff game, people understand. That’s why you go.”

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(Top photo: CFP/Getty Images)