Texas Guest, you let the word "we" slip into your post, so I suppose I can assume that you and I are both ND alums now living in warmer climes. What I wrote is from memory, but I'm pretty sure it came from ND magazine or some other "Irish" source (The bits about the Michigan fight song being slightly older and a source of inspiration for our even-more-superior song). I'm pretty sure I remember something about the composers being brothers, too.

Notre Dame and Michigan have played each other in a huge number of college football games, starting back in those very early days and, more recently, every year since the early 70s. In my student days (65-70), however, this rivalry was not active at all. Notre Dame had an annual meeting with Michigan STATE that was a huge deal at the time, and in fact involved a memorable tie game AND a tie for the national championship my sophomore year. But U of M was not on the radar screen at all; we didn't play them, and they were not a national power at that time.

Leenia, I spent five winters in South Bend, IN, and I know very well just how dark and gray ~ and snowy! ~ those skies can be. Perhaps it's because my school days predated the onset of global warming, but what I remember is a series of dark, gloomy, snowbound, and very l-o-o-o-n-g winters, during which the ground stayed covered with snow from Thanksgiving all the way through St. Paddy's Day (mid-March) every year. (Northwestern Indiana, just to the windward of Lake Michigan, gets more snowfall than any other area in the Lower 48.)

Spaw, your proposal is intriguing, but I'm too broke to bet much of anything these days. Well, maybe I can afford an LSU t-shirt, but not one of those quasi-authentic $90 game jerseys. For a little over a year there, we were temporarily rich thanks to flood insurance money, and I was having the time of my life writing four- and five-figure checks to various contractors as if it were something I'd been doing all my life. Now all the extra money is gone, and we're not yet bringing in enough income to make up for it. Reality bites!

Besides which, I'm not all that much of an LSU fan, anyway ~ although this year, the football Tigers are kind-of taking on the role that the Saints played last year, representing the hopes and dreams of our entire region. I am not entirely bought-into that notion, but since I have so many friends who are die-hard purple-and-gold-bleeding LSU fans and alums, I'd rather see them win than lose.

Personally, I'm basically dispasionate about the BCS game outcome ~ just as you seem to be. I mean, it's not as if you're an OSU alum, right? But if I recall correctly, you live right there ~ not just in the state of Ohio, but smack dab in Columbus itself, or at least "greater" Columbus. Am I right?

Rapaire: What Swarthmore team was ever out for blood? Y'all are Quakers, aren't you? Or, at least, were at one time? Of course, Tricky Dick Nixon was brought up Quaker...