Notre Dame support is a search for family and common roots for millions -- Celtic FC, the other great Irish Diaspora side, are their only equivalent

Notre Dame fans tailgating for the BCS Championship.
(US Presswire)

Miami: Picture the scene in the distant parking lot at Sun Life stadium in Miami on Monday night.
I had gone back to my rented car to retrieve the car keys, realizing in my rush to get to the game I had left them in the ignition - duh!

A family of five was sitting around in near darkness, attention glued to a small computer screen in front of them showing the first half highlights.

They were the only live occupants of the parking lot, sitting in the eerie glow of the nearby stadium lights, a part of but apart from the BCS Championship game.

Notre Dame was so far behind at that moment against Alabama that if it were a boxing match the bout would have been halted, but the family of five seemed undaunted.

They wished me good cheer and asked if I wanted to join them. Curious as to their story, I did for a few moments.

They had driven from Virginia and had no hope of seeing the game and could not afford the tickets anyway. They had watched the Wake Forest game live in the stadium but otherwise they drove from game to game following the Fighting Irish from a series of parking lots.

They loved to tailgate and join their fellow subway alumni wherever the green was worn.
Before you dismiss them as nuts, you have to understand the nature of the true Domer to whom no Notre Dame game is ever out of reach.

Read more: Nightmare for Notre Dame ends a dream season for Fighting Irish

I met so many in South Florida who consider Notre Dame games a holy pilgrimage, who build their year around them and win, lose, or draw will follow the Fighting Irish to hell and back again.

After the game I walked back to that same parking lot with a family of three, a mother and two young daughters, also from the South.

They were able to recite chapter and verse of every game they had attended and the cross-country trips they regularly took.

I would think the two daughters were early teens if that, but they were able to remember Notre Dame players like other kids could say the names of the One Direction boy band.

What is the attraction, I asked the mother? “We’re Catholic,” she said simply. “We see them as family.”

There is a lot to that, the sense of family that grows up around Notre Dame followers. It is one great shared ambition finding voice on playing fields from California to New York and even Dublin last year.

TV ratings were up 67 per cent for their games in 2012. Notre Dame remains a phenomenon of American sport. They could play a community college and 80,000 would show up.

It reminded me again of the similarity to Celtic soccer team, that other great Irish Diaspora side from Scotland who have come to embody something very deep in the souls of the children of Irish immigrants worldwide.

There is a shared pride and commitment to the heritage and memory of those who came before them. Notre Dame have been playing football for 125 years.

Celtic was founded in 1887 by Brother Walfrid of the Marist brothers, an Irish religious order. Irish priests were the foundation stone of Notre Dame too by the Holy Ghost fathers.

Both teams were blatantly discriminated against by top sides, which resented their religion through the early years and relegated them to underdog roles.

Because of that through the generations the commitment to the teams, as an intrinsic part of the DNA of the Irish emigrant experience, has lived on in millions.

What I saw in the parking lot and witnessed this week was much of that, mixed with pride and an embrace of all that is best in old fashioned America.

Celtic defeated Barcelona this year, the greatest club football team in the world led by Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest player in world soccer. It was one of the biggest shocks of recent times.

The Irish of Notre Dame went undefeated until the Alabama crash and burn but had a season to remember. Generations later those who follow them still have so much to treasure and to find common cause with.

Little wonder that they continue to be kingpins in their respective sports and to attract millions of followers, some of whom will never see them live.

Read more: Fighting Irish crusade crushed by the Crimson Tide 42-14 in BCS National Championship

GAA goes Broadway in New York as a new era dawns for Gaelic games -- Historic banquet marks major expansion by Ireland’s largest sporting group

GPA Chairman Dónal Óg Cusack pictured with GPA Chief Executive Dessie Farrell

A new era dawned for the GAA Ireland’s leading sporting organization in a New York hotel last night.

The first annual dinner of the Gaelic Players Association, the umbrella group for all the 2,500 top athletes in Gaelic football and hurling, was a smashing success with over 400 prominent Irish Americans as well as the All-Star teams from Ireland.

More importantly however, the New York dinner signaled a fresh assault by Ireland’s leading sporting organization on the lucrative overseas market where tens of thousands already play their games.

Also present last night was GAA president Liam O’Neill who spoke about the new effort to spread Irish games worldwide on the wings of emigrants and the GAA’s legendary amateur status.

Though their players fill arenas as big as Yankee Stadium, the players are unpaid and in many cases,out of pocket as a result of giving their all for Ireland’s premier sports.

It is an incredible achievement and story that deserves far greater coverage and acknowledgement over here. Playing for the love and not the money is a foreign concept in big time sport anywhere in the world except Ireland.

Read more GAA news here

Ireland’s greatest athlete is Henry Shefflin who has nine hurling all Ireland medals, the equivalent of 9 super bowl rings -- but by day he is a bank employee making a relatively modest wage.

Guest of honor on the night was Donald R. Keough, the former top Coca-Cola executive who has done more to ensure bonds between Ireland and America remain closer than ever than any Irish American alive.

He was the one, as a former Chairman of Notre Dame and founder of the Keough Naughton Irish Institute there, who was the prime mover behind Notre Dame playing in Ireland this year-- and what an incredible success that was.

Now the GAA has come to play in America and based on the overwhelming success of the GPA players first dinner, there is a bright future ahead.

The games of hurling and Gaelic football are thrilling, fast moving, and can hold their own with any games on earth. With such a plethora of sports networks now here in America it seems a wonderful opportunity to spread the games of the Gael to new worlds.

The first steps for that American presence were taken in the Marriot Marquis Hotel in New York’s theater district  last night. The GAA are finally going Broadway.

Thousands across U.S. gathered for Donegal-Mayo standoff -- Irish Diaspora shows up in record numbers for All-Ireland football final

Donegal become All Ireland champions for 2012

Long Island: I doubt if there has ever been a bigger crowd at the Irish Center in Mineola, New York for an Irish football game as there was on Sunday.

From early morning hundreds came streaming in from all over Long Island and Queens to see the novel final pairing between Mayo and Donegal in the All Ireland football final. It was a scene duplicated all over America and the world in Irish centers, bars and restaurants as well as online.

It was a beautiful September day, but the Irish Center crowd was much more interested to hear that the wind was blowing strongly in Ireland, which would affect the flow of the game.

By the time of the national anthem played live from Dublin’s Croke Park there was nowhere to sit and a deep sense of quiet pride was felt.

For emigrants to see Dublin’s Croke Park packed with fellow Irish, to see the Tricolor fluttering, to feel the same identity that crosses oceans and continents is always a profound moment.

Young and old, Donegal and Mayo fans as well as many neutrals came to see the Irish Super Bowl, the major game of the year between two counties who have endured massive emigration and were considered long shots to make it to the final at the beginning of the year.

The crowds at the Irish Center and elsewhere are dictated by which teams are playing, Kilkenny, hurling kingpins, will not draw any large numbers as relatively few have emigrated to the U.S. from the Leinster county.

On the other hand, Cork, Kerry, Mayo and Donegal bring out massive numbers, successive generations having left their far-flung homes in those counties to come to America.

For Mayo people, the All Ireland has become a trail of tears. Since they won their last one in 1951 they have contested six finals, including yesterday, and lost them all.

They are the Chicago Cubs of Gaelic football, lovable but always no cigar. Yet their fans continue to turn out in massive numbers as they did on Sunday, undeterred and bruised but not broken by the final result, which saw Donegal win deservedly.

Donegal are now 2 for 2 in all Ireland final appearances, their last appearance and win was twenty years ago. Like Mayo they are a county wracked by emigration and unemployment and their football team has become an emotional touchstone for Ireland’s most isolated county.

Remember, these are amateur players playing for the pride of their county and no money and a few dollars in expenses.

I spent some time in Donegal a few weeks ago and every available public space was plastered with Donegal team slogans.

Their victory will be more important to them than a Super Bowl for New York.

Donegal won, but the Irish love of sports and unique identity was the biggest winner of all. Despite all the bad news out of Ireland, the final proved once again that some Irish institutions will stand forever.

The GAA and the All Ireland football final are paramount among them.

Read more: Hills of Donegal to welcome Sam Maguire back home after stunning Croke Park victory 

Why Rory McIlroy is happier to be British and not Irish -- No history of Irish nationalism in area where he grew up

Graeme McDowell, right, and Rory McIlroy walk behind the Tricolour during
the Opening Ceremony of the World Cup in Hainan Island, China, last year  (Photo: Getty)

I think I know why Rory McIlroy is happier with his British identity rather than his Irish one.

It starts with North Down, the area he comes from.

For the length of The Troubles, North Down was never a hot bed of nationalism, preferring most of the time to send very moderate nationalist politicians to local assemblies.

To this day Sinn Fein has no real traction in the area and despite the death of a relative at the hands of Loyalist killers, McIlroy grew up unaffected by the aftermath of the Troubles.

It is also an historical legacy. Unlike Tyrone and Armagh where the planters were brutal and drove the Catholics off the land and persecuted and damned them, in Down the occupation was much more gently handled.

This led to better relations between the communities there than almost anywhere else in Northern Ireland.

McIlroy is following men like Lord Ballyedmond, formerly Eddie Haughey, another highly successful Catholic businessman from close by to McIlroy, who assumed the British mantle as well.

So McIlroy was insulated from much of the bad stuff growing up and indeed in the post-troubles era his choice of British as his identity is not a complete shock.

He is too young or too successful to have studied the history too much I imagine or his family has made peace with the other side a long time ago perhaps.

Yet when you visit Northern Ireland you immediately become aware of the scope and intent of the original plantation.

All the good land was taken by the Protestants and their holdings tended to literally look down on the Catholic patches where they drove off the natives.

If you visit Stormont, the seat of government, you see how the massive building with its triumphal statue of Carson looks down from a height on the deprived nationalist neighborhoods below.

The history is rife with Protestant triumphalism, Derry, the leading Catholic city still does not have a proper motorway to Belfast – the best roads always led to Protestant towns.

Equally, when a second university was to be built it was sited in Coleraine and not Derry so that Protestants could take better advantage.

Up until the 1970s and the civil rights movement, there was not even one-man one vote. People with property, always Protestants, were entitled to extra votes.

Ironically, an example of this arrogance was on display with McIlroy's former golfing counterpart, David Feherty, now with CBS Sports. During the Notre Dame game in Dublin, Feherty, a Protestant,  made the claim that Gaelic football and hurling were not played in Northern Ireland -- even though they are by far the most popular games in nationalist areas.

Those bad days are behind us but driving through the North the other day I could not miss the triumphal Ulster flag flying that still goes on both on the motorway to Belfast and then from Belfast to Derry.

The bad days are over, nationalists are now in a power sharing government and men like Rory McIlroy are free to make a choice that would have been almost impossible a generation ago.

It is still one that will grate with many, especially many Irish Americans I’d wager. Then again I’d rather cheer Padraig Harrington anytime just to see the Tricolor wave after a major tournament.

The Northern Ireland flag, flown by a Protestant like Graeme McDowell, will never bother me in the slightest, flown by a Catholic like Rory, however, will never seem quite right to me.

Read more: Rory McIlroy denies that he has decided to play for Britain in the 2016 Olympics

Gold medalist Katie Taylor is the hero that Ireland desperately needed -- After dreadful times, at last a ray of sunshine breaks through at the Olympics

Katie Taylor after her victory on Thursday

The Irish have suffered a few dreadful years, turning from Europe’s poster children, to goats.

All the old familiar devils are back; mass unemployment, rampant emigration, bankers greed, made worse now in some ways, because for a few brief shining years the country saw what it could become.

So heads are down and depression rampant and dreams are dying everywhere you look. Gloom, deep and dark, reigns

Then another hero comes along.

Katie Taylor is an unlikely one. Daughter of an English father, an evangelical Protestant who prays and gives praise before and after every fight, she is hardly the archetypal hero we have come to expect from the Emerald Isle.

But yesterday she broke all the stereotypes.

Before an audience that included Kate Middleton and thousands of Irish fans singing their hearts out, she won Ireland’s first gold medal of these games and the first since Michelle Smith’s highly dubious swimming haul in 1996 in Atlanta.

Ireland has only won eight gold medals in the history of the Olympics. Taylor won one of the first Olympic boxing medals for women and in the process stamped herself as one of the heroes of the games.

A Cinderella sport so long ignored by the International Olympic Committee at last found its day in the sun -- and a heroine to go along with it .

Don’t just take the Irish word for it. Here is what Sports Illustrated said.

“Looking for the most popular athlete at the Olympics? Any list has to include Taylor. Katie Taylor might be the most popular athlete in any sport at the London Olympics,” the magazine’s website reported on Thursday.

And here is what the London-based Guardian said after her victory

“Katie Taylor is a giant of Irish boxing, European, World, and now Olympic champion – a showman and a folk heroine.

“Everything she does gets a roar, whether it's hugging her coach – who doubles as her father – or grinning at the camera. She has very easy manners, a look of genuine affection when she makes her peace with her opponent at the end of each fight; if there is one Olympic athlete you'd go to the pub with (apart from Bradley Wiggins), it would be Taylor. “

When the Irish anthem was played for the first time in 16 years at the Olympics at the London venue there was not a dry eye in the house or in Ireland or among those abroad watching.

The sun came out for Ireland yesterday, after a lousy spell, and a modest 26-year old girl from Bray, County Wicklow became an unlikely hero.

In the process she lifted Irish hearts back where they belonged.

Why are the English cheering for the Irish at the Olympics? -- All changed utterly as old foe embraces Irish competitors

Irish Olympic team greeted with a warm reception in London

Des Cahill, an Irish sports commentator, put the cat among the pigeons yesterday when he tweeted “The English public are giving massive support to all the Irish athletes at the Olympics. It’s embarrassing, knowing it is not done in reverse.”

His tweet drew a massive response. His point was clear. At every competition where an Irish athlete was participating, the English fans cheered and clapped loudly, second only to their support of their own athletes.

It was clear from the opening ceremony that the English crowd heartily approved of the Irish team as they walked into the stadium. The US, British, and Irish teams got the largest cheers according to media who were there.

What is going on?

As Des Cahill pointed out, it is highly unlikely that the Irish, if they were hosting, would cheer as loudly for the British.

I guess it has to do with conqueror and conquered but also with more recent events which have taken the edge off the sad history.

Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ireland last year was truly a watershed. Her conciliatory actions there and the massive approval of the Irish people registered heavily in Britain, where she is seen as the ultimate class act by many.

The fact that The Troubles are over and that Londoners, in particular, no longer go around worrying that they will be targets of an IRA bombing, also improves relations dramatically.

When the violence stopped, the healing began and the relationship now is on far more equal terms.

Many Irish for their part proclaim they are still anti-British, but after seeing the work that men like Tony Blair did to make the peace process happen, not to mention the apology for Bloody Sunday and the Famine, it is hard to hold that grudge much longer.

Besides, there has been been so much intermingling over the years that the shared ethnicity is a binding factor.

Take soccer legend Wayne Rooney, born of Irish Catholic stock in Liverpool. Take Tony Blair whose childhood holidays were spent in Donegal with relatives, or take Danny Boyle, whose mother is from Galway, who pulled off the massive Olympic opening ceremony, as examples.

It is a very healthy and welcome sign that the British are cheering for the Irish in London and it is no exaggeration to say that the day will come soon when it is reciprocated in Ireland.

That is how it should be for two countries who have been so intertwined in a negative way for so long but who are now learning how to live together so much better.

The Olympics and the reception for the Irish is another step forward in the right direction.