Ah the pageantry, the rivalry, the nostalgia, the focus of college football and the sporting nation on the Army – Notre Dame Football game. The 1920’s 30’s, and even the early 40’s games that were played long before any of us were born, those were the days. The Blue-Gray Sky article, the win one for Reagan speech and the forward pass. Wooden H goal posts. 75,000+ fans cheering in Yankee Stadium, the house that Ruth built. Leather helmets to keep the opponent from chewing your ear off as you lay flattened at the bottom of a mass of bodies. Simple, dull uniforms made by Spaulding in America. Male cheerleaders running around carrying megaphones and hidden hip flasks. Diagonal hash lines in the end zone. Referees dressed in white shirts, goofy hats and knickers carrying flags to indicate out of bounds and stop the clock. Students played to have fun, obtain an education and get chicks.


Sadly today’s average college football player could care less and scoffs at the old grainy pictures and black-white too fast-moving film clips. It appears all so foreign.

Today it’s a jumbotron, cheerleaders with short dresses and great legs, in the house that Steinbrenner built. Football players today are sporting crazy looking tattoos on their necks and arms and long hair that begs a comb and scissor work. The worry today is making a bowl game or the future size of the paycheck. Now it is state of the art wearing apparel called a uniform with brash colors, stripes and team logos. (Some are down right frightening).  Helmets that you pump up with air. Names on the back so you don’t have to pay $10 for a program. Students today get recruited to play, receive a lot of money in the way of “scholarships,” seriously look forward to the next level at the NFL and to get chicks.

Well at least at the Notre Dame Stadium the end zone hash marks are still the same.

Steinbrenner Stadium