Eck Visitors Center opened in January 1999 and
on the Saturday of last year's final home football game, November
23, it welcomed its one-millionth visitor. Sort of. The center's
staff kept a fairly careful eyeball count of visitors the first
2½ years the building was open and stationed students with clickers
at the doors on busy football weekends. But after that the counting
became less exact. The arrival of the so-called millionth guest
was really a scheduled, symbolic event. Basically, organizers
counted down from about 150 after the building opened at 8 a.m.
The lucky landmark visitor turned out to be Bob Kelly, a Fighting
Irish fan from Kendall Park, New Jersey. He received a gift basket.
. . . The undergraduate accountancy program remains
fourth nationally, and the graduate program moved up one place
to fifth in the annual survey of academic quality by the industry
newsletter Public Accounting Report. . . . Kroc
Institute for International Peace Studies launched a
website that explains alternatives to war with Iraq. It's www.nd.edu/~krocinst/media/iraq.html.
. . . The Institute for Church Life's Satellite
Theological Education Program or STEP launched a website offering
distance learning in theology: step.nd.edu. . . . The
most impressive website created by the various instrument
sections of the marching band has to be the baritones'. Check
it out -- with a broadband connection, if possible ) at www.nd.edu/~baritone
. . . This year's saxophone section T-shirts
were Ty-Dyed. That is, they played up the names of Coach Ty
Willingham and Band Director Ken Dye on the back. They
were also yellow tie-dyed in design. . . . To look
at him you might not guess Tyrone Willingham to be Irish.
But genuinely Irish fans (the ones who live in Ireland) know that
"Tyrone" is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland. Coach
Willingham was made aware of this fact just before the start of
the season when Marty Scanlon '80 paid a visit bearing gifts and
dignitaries. Scanlon raises money for the Gaels, an amateur Gaelic
football (a cross between soccer and rugby) team in the Washington,
D.C. He was on his way to the North American Gaelic football championship
tournament in Chicago. Joining him in the visit with Willingham
were the president-elect of Ireland's Gaelic Athletic Association,
some Irish professors, and a publicist for the North American
league. Together they baptized the coach an Irishman by presenting
him with an autographed Gaelic football used in a semifinal match
the previous week, a shirt from the Gaelic football board of County
Tyrone (Tir Eoghain in Gaelic), and a souvenir "Tyrone
6"(as in kilometers) highway sign. Of the last, Scanlon joked
that the six referred to the number of national championships
"reasonable" Irish fans expect him to win his first 10 years on
the job. . . . Scanlon also observes that the
last name of Irish men's basketball coach Mike Brey is a homonym
of Bray, a city south of Dublin. . . . Former Notre Dame
Arts and Letters College dean Harold Attridge is the
new dean of the Yale Divinity School. He has taught at Yale since
1997. . . . Concern over the sniper killings
forced the Center for Social Concerns to cancel its Washington
Seminar and Living the Gospel of Life Seminar, both of which were
planned for the nation's capital over fall break, October 19-26,
2002. . . . NBC's broadcast of the home game
against Boston College, the first loss of the year for the Irish,
was the highest-rated sports program of the day, according to
Nielsen Media Research. The 14-7 upset delivered a 5.3 overnight
rating/12 share, which represented a 56 percent improvement the
game the Irish played the same weekend the previous year, a loss
to Tennessee. . . . Singer-songwriter John Mellencamp,
whose song "Small Town" is about the southern Indiana town of
Seymour, where he was born, played the Joyce Center in early November.
. . . A mini-controversy developed at the start
of the semester when a junior wrote to The Observer with
what he thought was a great idea: Salute Coach Ty Willingham by
wearing ties to the game. The suggestion drew scorn from other
students who worried that an array of ties would clash with the
unity demonstrated by everyone wearing The Shirt, not to mention
the potential loss of charitable revenues if tie sales cut into
Shirt sales. Few ties were spotted at the first home game, against
Michigan, played on a hot day, and none thereafter. . . . As
most Domers know, at the end of the third quarter of
every home game, the Band of the Fighting Irish strikes up the
finale of 1812 Overture. During the Lou Holtz coaching
era, it became a student tradition to salute the coach by making
a finger-pistol L as arms chop the air in time to the music. During
the Bob Davie era, some students switched to forming lower-case
b's and d's. Coach Willingham has secured his own fingered-letter
1812 salute but not without a complication. The initial
thinking of the cheerleading crew was to have students form a
W by crossing the ring and middle fingers and splaying the pinky
and forefinger. That idea was scrapped after a cheerleader mentioned
that this is a known gang sign in California. Instead most students
make a two-handed W with crossed thumbs forming the inside of
the letter and outward-angled forefingers making the outside lines.
When combined with the arm waving, this results in a sort of worshipful
bowing motion. . . .For $6.95 a month Irish fans
can now listen over the Internet to every audio broadcast of Notre
Dame football, men's and women's basketball and soccer, hockey,
and baseball games, plus view press conferences, coach's shows,
highlight shows and similar programming about Notre Dame and other
teams and sports. The service is run by the webcaster RealNetworks.
A portion of the fee (they won't say how much) is donated to Notre
Dame athletics. For more information, visit the official Notre
Dame athletics website,www.und.com. . . . The latest audio
CD collection of classic calls to NPR's Car Talk show
is titled "Hatchback of Notre Dame."
