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 the very 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.
Borrowing its title from the celebrated mosaic of Christ the Teacher that adorns the south facade of the university library and overlooks the football field, Touchdown Jesus is the story of faith and fanaticism and a university struggling to maintain elite football, elite academics, and traditional Catholicism -- each an imperative, without any room for compromise.
Chapter One: Game Day
A congregation of about fifty people stood in a semicircle, three and four people deep, trying to pay attention to an elderly priest murmuring important words. Draped in a white alb, a white stole around his neck, he was celebrating a Mass, and he worked off a card table unfolded in front of him. A chalice stood on the table, and he faced the tailgate of an SUV.
It might have been difficult for the parishioners to hear the priest with any clarity, given their immediate surroundings -- a parking lot mostly full, boys chucking a football, men and women clustered in groups with beers inside beer cozies inside their hands, the "Victory March" playing from someone's car stereo, shouts and whoops from those of undergraduate age milling about nearby. Smoke rose from portable Weber charcoal grills and portable Coleman propane grills -- the air like some kind of briquette incense. The members of this congregation could in no way be distinguished from those of the secular tailgates. Everyone wore T-shirts of green and blue and yellow-gold, bearing ... read full excerpt from Touchdown Jesus: Faith and Fandom at Notre Dame ebook
