Touchdown Jesus: Faith and Fandom at Notre Dame PDF
368 Pages·2005·22.7182 MB·other
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.
Preview Touchdown Jesus: Faith and Fandom at Notre Dame
Description:
Since the time of
Knute Rockne, fans have been drawn to Notre Dame for reasons that go far
beyond the normal allegiances. Just as Ohioans root for Ohio State, Los
Angelenos for UCLA, Catholics everywhere root for Notre Dame. Over the
decades their devotion to team and institution has become a religion in
ways that exceed metaphor. Millions in number, these modern-day fans
treat the Notre Dame campus as a pilgrimage site, and six times a year,
for each home game, the action moves from the profane to the sacred. For
the fans, Notre Dame has become a symbol of the American immigrant
bootstrap ethos of hard work, of the Catholic faith, and of the notion
that the two entwined can only produce the good life. "Touchdown Jesus"
is the intimate chronicle of Notre Dame's 2004 football season as seen
through the eyes of a fan base unlike any other. A tapestry of vivid
character portraits and descriptive narrative, "Touchdown Jesus"
explores this phenomenon and reveals the story behind one of the
highest-profile head coach firings in the history of college football.
When the story begins in September 2004, it had been sixteen years since
the Fighting Irish had won a national championship, and eleven years
since the team had even been a contender. The Irish were coming off
their third losing season in five years, a span of failure that had
sparked fears of permanent decline. Over the course of the season, the
target of the fans' angst grew to include not only head coach Tyrone
Willingham, but also the caretakers of the university, whom many fans
believed were sacrificing football to the prerogatives of an elite
academe. As the losses piled up, the arguments for and against
Willingham went to thevery core of the identity of the university and
its fan base: the pressure to win, the Christian ideal, and the uniquely
American role of big-time athletics in higher education -- Notre Dame
football at the center of it all.
See more
The list of books you might like
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.
