So much more than football: Dublin gives Wildcats a weekend for the ages

Why are two American universities playing football in Dublin? I heard the same question from both sides of the Atlantic.

Europeans, whose universities generally treat sport as a bit of extra-curricular fun between lectures, find it hard to grasp the near-professional status of college football and the passionate, life-long allegiance of alumni. Americans understand why Notre Dame might make the effort to play in Ireland, but why
Northwestern and Nebraska? 

Only my Irish friends show no surprise. There have been seven college football classics in Dublin. They understand the cash a well-managed sporting match-up can bring flooding into town, and know they have a well-oiled hospitality infrastructure to handle it. The fact that the Irish Minister of Finance was the ranking local host on the field to start the game told the tale. The Irish are also keenly aware that although there are less than 6 million Irish living on their litttle island, there are nearly 32 million Americans with Irish descent, and most of them dream of visiting the auld sod. 

You don’t have to scratch deep beneath any university’s surface to find the green. Northwestern may have been founded by Anglo-Saxon Methodists, but our beloved football coach is named Pat FitzGerald and our largest alumni donor is billionaire Patrick Ryan, whose Aon Corporation is incorporated in Ireland. Did the latter have anything to do with us being named the home team, despite the fact that our 3,000 visiting fans were outnumbered by Nebraskans more than four to one? I have no idea, but we enjoyed the designation.

In fact, we enjoyed everything Dublin could throw at us. The loving welcome, continual merriment, tribal bonding, genial opposition and flawless organisation ... the only experience I've had that comes close was our trip to the Rugby World Cup in Japan. And this may have been even better. Possibly because the climax of the weekend was an unexpected win from a Northwestern Wildcat team predicted to lose by 13 points, who never gave up in a nail-biting game that was always close and regularly switched the lead. 

It was one of those games where you’re dancing in the aisles and hugging complete strangers. Drenched by beer because of the liquid that went flying as people reacted to wondrous, unexpected plays. The purple love-fest was no doubt fuelled by €500,000 of free concessions given away when digital payment provider SumUp’s networks went down and the stadium decided to keep the hospitality flowing. (There’s much speculation in industry publications about how pro-active troubled SunUp was in the crowd-pleasing solution, but they’ll undoubtably be paying for it.) The 31-28 battle was one of the best sports experiences I’ve ever had, and that includes the Rugby World Cup, Cardinals’ Word Series Games and the London Olympics. It was pure, miraculous joy from start to finish.

And that’s the end of the story.

It started mid-week with Dublin dressing herself as if the city existed only to host our party. The airport sprouted arches and pillars of balloons in purple and white and red and white. Banners hung on lamp posts. Huge signs sat outside Dublin Castle and the Mansion House, the Lord Mayor’s official residence. Pubs and restaurants flew university flags and blew up more balloons. If there was a purple, red or white balloon left in the city by 28 August, I’d be shocked.

Down in Temple Bar, the boozy heart of the entertainment district, each university had official pubs. (Reflecting relative numbers, we had one, Nebraska had three.) FitzSimons had been transformed to “Coach Fitz’s” with new purple hoarding boards outside and an interior wonderland of so many Northwestern flags, assorted bunting, balloons, posters, banners and the like you wondered if there was any decorative gear left in Evanston. Every member of staff wore Northwestern branded hats and shirts. (And I’d bet they made good money off selling the hats to alumni on Sunday, since that particular pattern wasn’t available for purchase and had only been given to people who went on the pricey package tours.)

The first official activity was a pep rally in Merrion Square. This is one of my favourite parts of Dublin: a verdant, partially wooded rectangle surrounded by gracious Georgian townhouses and overlooked on one side by the neoclassical majesty of the National Gallery and the Irish Parliament. Yeats’ house is on one side and Wilde’s on the other, with a marvellously louche statue of Oscar reclining on a boulder welcoming you to the park. Never could I have imagined watching the Northwestern Wildcat Marching Band play along its paths, or linking arms with friends to sing the alma mater into Irish skies. But there we were. A range of luminaries turned up at the pep rally but the only one anyone wanted to hear from was Coach Fitz. Who made promises he’d later deliver on, had us swear we’d out-yell the Nebraskans despite their numbers and solemnly pledged his boys would be taking in the full range of Irish culture for two days after the game. Being Northwestern students, they probably were indeed doing something brainy and worthy in addition to discovering pubs.

Saturday morning brought an invitation-only, pre-game brunch for long-standing university volunteers. While we occasionally get the president, a professor or a university official visiting London, it’s never en masse. It was incredibly exciting to meet up with people I knew but hadn't met, including our fantastically charismatic, outgoing Alumni Board President Larry Irving, and his successor Albert Manzone. (The fact that Manzone splits his time between the U.S. and Switzerland gives me hope of more exciting alumni activities on this side of the pond.) 

The brunch venue was another highlight of the weekend. Trinity College’s sports pavilion sits on a tall plinth overlooking its athletic field, at the back of a series of lovely quadrangles. Surrounded by high walls and academic buildings, it’s hard to believe that you’re in the centre of the city. The sun was shining, the field a dazzling green, the trees danced in a gentle breeze. By 11:30 most of the alumni had bustled off to get a bit of sightseeing in before the game. Not the London club. The pre-paid bar was still open and we had a table in the sun. We stayed until the staff started taking down the purple and closed the tab.

This being Dublin, naturally, there were other places to drink, all decked out as if inviting us to a private party. In O’Donoghues we fell in with the extended family of defensive lineman P.J. Spencer and were willing members of his fan club by the end of the first pint. I was touched by how passionate parents are about the university, how much they love Fitz and our educational ideals. “My son could have gone to a better football school,” P.J.’s mother told me, “but Northwestern is making him a better man.” 

At the Norseman, I struck up a conversation with six Yorkshire lads who’d flown over because they liked
American football and this was a far better deal than the annual NFL match in London. They were making a noble, and hysterically wrong, attempt at Go U, Northwestern from the lyrics card someone had given them. When someone mentioned 3,000 NU fans one of them said “3,006, love. We’re for the underdog.” Outside Buskers I ended up weaving through the Cornhuskers band in full, impressive flow, and some cheerleaders gamely posed with me. (They might not have been so cheerful post game.)

Pre-game, we followed rugby-trained hunches that said there’d be excellent pubs around the Aviva that were better staffed, and less crowded, than Temple Bar. We were right, and soon joined those establishing a purple beachhead at the Ryans Beggars Bush. They looked of an age with me, and sure enough I discovered we were all class of ‘86. Within five minutes we’d established mutual friends, professors we shared and bonded in our distress over the decline of the Greek system (fraternities and sororities).  Best of all, one of my classmates was there with his son, now a proud student, and he came with a whole crowd of his classmates. Multi-generational families would be common in the Nebraska crowd, but it’s far harder to pull off in a school as competitive as Northwestern. I loved the fact that I’d stumbled onto this rare example and that we got to spend some time with young people on campus now. They were bright, dynamic, full of enthusiasm and gave me a sense of optimism that the future is in good hands.

I suspect they, like their elders, were a good deal less bright by Sunday’s post game strolls around town. People wearing purple still exchanged the standard “Go ‘cats!” As they passed, but now it was quieter, with a hoarse croak and a wry, satisfied smile. Those with the most energy were the Dubliners, a surprising number of whom had followed the game and were wishing anyone in purple a hearty congratulations. 

I suppose that this must be what bowl games are like back in the States. But I can’t imagine any city feeling as overwhelmingly supportive of the event as Dublin, nor any citizenry doing hospitality like the Irish. The whole weekend felt like one big, loving, gently boozy hug from a benevolent fellowship of humanity. And that, at least for alumni, is why two American universities played college football in Dublin. The game may be football, but the trappings are the best days of our lives.