The loudest, and possibly the dumbest, IU fan was seated about four rows behind me in our section. He kept trying to stir things up with ND fans, but no one took the bait. It was more sad than anything. Even the two IU fans sitting in front of me, who were good sports, looked visibly annoyed by him. I didn’t care all that much, but he was foul-mouthed, and I had my 7-year-old son with me. I’m no saint, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but it was just awkward because he would start screaming nonsense whenever the stadium got quiet. ND fans around us were both annoyed and secondhand embarrassed for him.
Outside the stadium, I ran into a group of IU fans asking Notre Dame fans where they could find Touchdown Jesus so they could plant an IU flag on it. One ND fan calmly pointed out that it was really high up and not exactly easy to reach. The IU fans just stared at him - he was so polite about it that they didn’t even know how to respond.
IU's fans showed up overly confident, much like their coach, under the delusion that ND Stadium would be as quiet as Sunday Mass and that the team was just a bunch of pussies with golden helmets strapped on their heads. That confidence lasted all of five minutes. Their fans were visibly blown away by the atmosphere, and their team was doomed the moment ND ran out of the tunnel. I watched IU's sidelines as ND took the field - they just stared, kind of frozen. Their body language was shit. Did anyone else at the game notice that?
