J. Michael
Brooks, M.D., '79
Like many other Notre Dame students, I had been a reasonably
good high school football player with dreams of participating
at a higher level. While on campus for placement testing the summer
before my freshman year, however, I met Jeff Weston, whom I later
found out was the starting defensive tackle. He was 6-foot-5 and
weighed 245 pounds, a chiseled inverted pyramid of muscle. Every
thought of playing football at ND immediately left my mind. It
was a good thing, too, because pre-med studies ended up taking
up most of my time in the next four years.
But my dream of being a varsity football player on display in
front of more than 50,000 people at ND stadium lived on. My plan
evolved as the 1978 season developed. Friends of mine on the Dillon
Big Red interhall football team loaned me a gold helmet and pants
and equipment and shoes. Dave Huffman, the starting center and
All-American that year, let me borrow his #56 varsity green jersey.
It was an original jersey from the 1977 Southern Cal game, when
Coach Dan Devine first surprised the team and the home ND crowd
with the new uniforms. I finally decided that I would get on the
field during the last game of the season.
It became a group effort. I went into the stadium wearing the
full uniform covered by blue jean overalls and an old football
parka from high school. A friend went in a different gate wearing
the helmet, and we met inside. By senior year we had all managed
to get student tickets on the 40-yard line, but we instead made
our way down to the freshman section near the band.
As the team lined up in the tunnel, I took off the parka and
overalls and put on the helmet. When the team ran out and lots
of students tumbled over the restraining wall to greet them, I
slipped over the wall and picked my way through the band to the
sideline with the team. As the kickoff occurred, I said hello
to Huffman and one of the senior managers I knew and then tried
to mingle at the periphery of the players on the sideline.
Halfway through the first quarter, a student manager asked me
who I was and what I was doing there. In retrospect, I think the
fact that my interhall helmet wasn't newly painted shining gold
was what gave me away. That, or the fact that all my friends kept
running down the aisle yelling my name and taking pictures of
me. I told him I was working on a George Plimpton first-person-type
story for The Observer, which seemed to work for about
five minutes. Rapidly after that though, a larger crowd started
to surround me. One of the stadium guards seemed to accept The
Observer story initially, then decided I should leave. Devine's
bodyguard, a not-too-tall but very wide and imposing man, walked
by, and the security guard asked if he thought it would be all
right if I stayed. "No," he growled. "Coach Devine wouldn't like
it. Get him out of here." I offered to climb over the wall and
go up to my seat, but the security guard became alarmed at how
that would look. I finally admitted that I wasn't with the school
paper and had done it as a hoax and for the experience. The more
the guard thought about it, the more conspiratorial he became.
He decided to escort me out along the sideline and into the main
tunnel, and I could leave the stadium from there. He suggested
that I should limp as I walked so it would look like he was taking
me to the locker room for treatment.
One of the offensive coaches in the pressbox later asked Huffman
if he knew anything about the #56 who went limping off. Huffman
told me that he just smiled and said nothing, which is hard to
believe because he liked to talk. I received a nice round of applause
from the band and the student section as I was escorted off. The
guard shook my hand at the outside gate and out I went, just at
the end of the first quarter, my dream fulfilled. In retrospect
it wasn't as thrilling as I had imagined it might be, mostly because
I was scared to death of getting in big trouble the entire
time I was on the sideline.
As I was running back to Dillon Hall, a child outside the stadium
asked me for an autograph. I told him I was sorry but I couldn't
stop, that the urinals in the varsity locker room weren't working
and I really had to go to the bathroom.
After removing the uniform and changing in the dorm, I went
back into the stadium. I had made a point of being on my best
behavior the entire time and was unfailingly polite to the guard
and everyone else I encountered, hoping no one would get angry
and take what was intended as a playful prank to the administration
for discipline. That included absolutely no tailgaiting or alcohol
before the game, as I was sure that would have ended badly. At
halftime, however, my friends and I all went to the old Senior
Bar, where I was the happy recipient of many of my friends' generosity.
The Irish beat Tennessee 31-14 and went on to finish the season
9-3, winning nine of their last 10 games. I went on to medical
school, the Navy and ultimately medical practice in Maryland.
But on that November day in 1978, I had achieved my once-in-a-lifetime
experience.
* * *
Mike Brooks, who left the Navy in 1990, is a family physician
in Prince Frederick, Maryland.
