The Fighting Irish celebrating the Legend’s Trophy is still fun

Chug away

Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame really emphasized the Legends Trophy this past week as the Irish prepared to take on the Stanford Cardinal. To be honest, the focus on the trophy was a little surprising to me — but thankfully — this is a bigger thing moving forward for the Irish.

If you have followed my work at all over the last 17 years, then you know how much I love rivalry trophies and their place in college football. You also know about my frustration with Notre Dame’s reluctance to celebrate and publicize the handful of rivalry trophies that they play for each season.

Brian Kelly, actually got the ball rolling during his time at Notre Dame, but things move in very slow increments in South Bend. We saw snippets of locker room celebrations, and there was a trophy case made for them as well. Still… we never saw them on the field.

It was more of the same under Marcus Freeman until the win over the Purdue Boilermakers. The Shillelagh Trophy was ON the field during and after the game. While there are probably a couple of really good reasons as to why that was the case, I didn’t care what the reason was (that much) and was ready to welcome a full change to the policy.

So with the many mentions of the Legends Trophy this week, I really thought the thing would be on the field against Stanford, but I haven’t seen anything that shows it out there before, during, or after the game.

The trophy, however, did take center stage in what the program put out after the win.

Why does any of this matter? Well — it really doesn’t, and maybe that’s the problem. In an ever-changing college football world, holding onto tradition and the fun non-factor things won’t change the product on the field, but it definitely helps keep the sport rooted in something different than the NFL Light that it’s headed toward. And that’s more of what I want as a fan — nonsensical fun.

So, if you’re one of the dozens out there that are asking why it wasn’t out on the field — maybe it was because they are playing at home and it was fine where it was at? Maybe the Shillelagh only made it’s presence because it was a road game and they were going to have to do something with it anyway.

The overall hope is that the crown jewel of Notre Dame’s rivalry trophy collection is hoisted in the air ON THE FIELD after a win over the USC Trojans to end the regular season. That’s all I really want (and a renewal of the series against the Michigan State Spartans).

Just have some fun.