Manti Te’o Notre Dame hoax is like an episode from ‘The Twilight Zone’ -- Fake girlfriend, fake death, is a twisted tale about life online - VIDEO

Manti Te'o and his fake girlfriend (Credit: Deadspin.com)

Manti Te’o’s lackluster performance against Alabama in the national championship game is now explained.

In a twist worthy of a Twilight  Zone episode it turns out that Te’o, the Notre Dame stand-out,  was the victim of a hoax girlfriend, a faked death and a professional scam perpetrated for no other reason it seems than to embarrass and seriously wound an outstanding young man.

The media is having a field day, especially the anti-Notre Dame shills. ‘Lying Irish’ is just one headline from The New York Post today.

I have just watched the entire press conference that Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick gave in South Bend and my head is spinning with the tale of deceit, lies and cold blooded callousness he revealed.

Much and all as we think a fake girlfriend would be an impossible trick to pull off, the fact is that online personas, avatars, and disguises are the stock in trade of millions of hucksters on the Internet.

We open our online accounts every day and there are a flood of such bottom feeders trying to inveigle their way into our lives.

In the case of Te’o they succeeded and in the process have created a sensational outcome that will deeply embarrass Notre Dame and all who sail with her.

Read more: Johnny Football got the Heisman and Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o got the shaft

Te’o’s only crime appears to be that he was so trusting that he was duped from day one in September 2011 when a woman masquerading as a Stanford student who was a big fan of his contacted him via Twitter.

Over the next 14 months or so it appears they carried out an intense online and telephonic relationship.

According to Swarbrick, there was a cast of characters who kept the dupe Te’o narrative going, an unbelievably cruel and sophisticated hoax.

The girl even came with a family, different characters who were introduced to Te’o who was obviously seriously smitten, strange as that may sound.

Or maybe not. People are smitten every day on the Internet by perfect strangers. Much of it is real, much of it is imagined. In Teo’s world the distant girlfriend became a constant presence.

As Swarbrick pointed out the scam was based closely on a documentary called ‘Catfish’ about this phenomenon of reeling in an unsuspecting person by virtue of a fable carefully constructed.

What possible enjoyment there could be from such a scam is hard to see but any scroll through the Internet reveals trolls and other evil people ready to do their worst.

Read more: Notre Dame support is a search for family and common roots for millions 

Just yesterday there was a series of articles about one of the heroes of the Sandy Hook shooting , a man who took in several of the panic stricken children who fled the school, being abused anonymously online.

Such is the world we live in and we should not be surprised when a major figure like Te’o, clearly way too trusting for his own good, was roped in to a scam.

It is deeply embarrassing for Te’o and for Notre Dame. One can only imagine what Coach Brian Kelly was thinking when he was informed of the hoax days before the biggest game of his life.

But the real victim here is Te’o, a young man caught in the full glare of the media headlights and revealed as naive and far too trusting.

People will ask how come he never demanded to meet her and apparently several planned encounters were canceled at the last moment. Those should have been warning shots for Te’o but he won’t be the first or the last fool in love to construct his own reality around events despite glaring holes in the story.

What satisfaction these bottom feeders got from their hoax I do not know but it is a sad reflection on our modern world that such people exist and thrive. I hope for Te’o and Notre Dame’s sake he can put all this behind him and be the great NFL player he is destined to be.

Just when you think you have seen it all a story like this comes along. Sadly, it is a truly a reflection on the times we live in.

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

Nightmare for Notre Dame ends a dream season for Fighting Irish -- Heavy hearts but heads held high after remarkable year

Nightmare end to the season for Brian Kelly and the Notre Dame team

Miami: In the end the dream season ended in a nightmare for Notre Dame, but the fans in Sun Life stadium in North Miami were still resilient despite the beating.

“Think how bad we’ve been for so many years,” said the woman from Virginia beside me as the Alabama juggernaut rolled over and crushed the Irish. “We made the national  title  game, that is amazing.’

True, but we had somehow convinced ourselves the stars had aligned and an incredible victory was at hand.

But as Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted, to be Irish is to know the world will break your heart.

There were a lot of broken hearts but no real complaints in Miami on Monday.

A journey that began in Dublin in September with a win over Navy took Irish fans on a magic carpet ride that finally crashed to earth on a humid night in Miami.

The refereeing decisions in the critical early plays went against Notre Dame, but even if they had got every bounce of the ball it would not have been enough.

It seemed like men against boys at times and the Irish faithful so boisterous, so upbeat, so hopeful at the start were soon reduced to shocked silence as Alabama moved the ball at will. The crimson tide proved unstoppable.

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

It was clear from the beginning that the Irish fan base were more energized. This was not Alabama’s first rodeo and their fans were far less boisterous in the pre-game cheering sections.

They were like the Yankees in baseball, they expect to be playing for national championships every year.

The Irish certainly do not. The long drought since the mid 80s seemed interminable. The pent-up demand for Irish success was never more evident, the dream of a national championship no mirage as the season advanced with win after win.

Earlier, the Notre Dame tailgate party in Miami Beach was a celebration of a remarkable year. 10,000 fans paid $75 dollars a head to wine and dine, bask in the Florida sun, reminisce and brag and talk about the big game. The atmosphere was electric, the anticipation total. The shattering disappointment to come was still unseen.

So defeat was utterly devastating.

We trudged out of Sun Life Stadium late in the fourth quarter, heads down and spirits sagged but the disappointment will lift. As the lady from Virginia noted, the Irish have come a long way and the road back was always bound to have many turns. But the Fighting Irish made their fans proud from Dublin to South Bend and beyond.

Alas, it was not a championship season but it was a wonderful year.

Notre Dame’s new ‘Rudy’ is Arturo Martinez, a cancer survivor -- Walk on will bring back Rudy memories to Fighting Irish fans

Notre Dame's Arturo Martinez

Miami: Notre Dame will have an inspirational player to match the famous Rudy story when they play Alabama tonight in the BCS Bowl.

Arturo Martinez will be suited up tonight for the Fighting Irish, a walk on who has survived Stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma.

He will take part in the pre-game warm ups with his team. “It will be 20 minutes of being just like the other guys," Martinez told the Miami Herald. "I’ll look up and see an ocean of people for the national championship game in my own backyard.”

Rudy Ruettiger is a legend for walking on at Notre Dame and getting to make the team in his final game as a senior, even for one play.

But Rudy never battled cancer and still made the team.

Arturo Martinez will not get into the game on Monday night. Hopefully as a senior he will get a walk on role, but his inspirational story will drive the Notre Dame legend once again, as a place where magical things can and do happen.

Read more: Joining the Notre Dame faithful in Miami on a mission

Martinez was a sports crazy ninth grader in Miami when cancer was first diagnosed,a golf ball sized tumor on his jaw.

He conquered the cancer and made his high school football team as a defensive end in his final year and went to Notre Dame, a college that had always inspired him.

After attending his first football game he decided to try out as a walk on.

The odds were huge, but like cancer, Arturo wanted to beat the odds.

“There are kids sitting in that chemotherapy room right now wishing they had the energy to play a sport...I had to do this not only for me, for them.”

After seven months getting in condition with the help of a Notre Dame conditioning coach, he sent his tapes to the team. A few days before the end of his freshman year he was accepted.

So like Rudy, Arturo is an inspirational figure.

“I call him Rudolfo," said Arturo Martinez Jr, Art’s father, “He’s our miracle."

On Monday night he will be a hero for everyone.

Read more: Joining the Notre Dame faithful in Miami on a mission

Joining the Notre Dame faithful in Miami on a mission -- Alabama and Notre Dame roll into town for BCS stand-off

Notre Dame gears up to face Alabama

Miami: The Notre Dame faithful are gathering in their droves here, the weekend of the big game.

But so are the Alabama battalions and the good-natured rivalry has already begun.

At a nice beachside restaurant here the numbers of Notre Dame and Alabama fans were about equal and the good-natured ribbing lasted through three courses.

On the plane from New York the numbers were overwhelmingly Notre Dame, the subway alumni traveling from all points North, South, East and West  to support their team on the big day.

Many are still pinching  themselves that they are here at all. You would have got odds of 100/1 on it before the season started.

I feel the same myself, suddenly strolling  around in shorts and a T shirt, when I should be shivering in a New York winter. I associate Notre Dame games with cold crisp Autumn days in South Bend , not T shirts and  88 degrees in South Florida.

Interesting  to me is how many Irish-born I know who are going to the game. The contest in Dublin between Notre Dame and Navy opened up a huge new fan base for the Fighting Irish, the fact that this is a dream season and that it kicked off in Ireland makes it even more remarkable.

The ‘Bama folks have seen it all before. Bill Petersen, a fanatic Alabama fan was in the restaurant eating with his wife and two daughters.”I wanted to bring them to learn and witness the old time football religion,” he said gesturing at his two young  girls. “It is  the closest thing next to religion in bringing Alabama folk together.”

And Notre Dame folk too. This game is already a blockbuster and South Florida will bleed crimson and blue and gold these next few days.

The talk is all about tickets which are apparently, dropping in price as the game nears. The question for many is when to buy their tickets, ten minutes before kick-off or now when the market seems to be saturated.

All I know is that through the graces of a dear friend, my in-law Pat Egan and I have two of the most precious ducats in all of sport-- and no, they are not for sale.

Go Irish!

A Christmas interrupted by bad flu and canceled Irish trip -- But it’s not all bad news as Notre Dame tickets magically arrive

Tickets to Notre Dame/Alabama game a special Christmas gift

I had planned to go to Ireland this Christmas as we always do after spending Christmas Day with my wife's folks and New Year's with mine but we got poleaxed by a nasty flu.

How nasty? Here we are spending it at home in New York surrounded by medication, antibiotics, heating blankets and every other healing remedy from hot whiskies to Advil, not to mention assorted curses and holy water deliveries by worried relatives.

We're fine, but Christmas Day was a blur. I felt as weak as a kitten and as useful as one too. The thought of flying to Ireland in that condition filled me with dread.

My sick daughter went to the pediatrician with my wife who was feeling fine at the time. The pediatrician gave my wife antibiotics too, predicting accurately she would get it next.

"It's highly contagious" she informed her.

Boy was she right. Within 24 hours we were all slammed,

So no Irish Christmas this year, no race days at Leopardstown, long family dinners and far too much Irish trifle and chocolates, not to mention a lovely stay at the Merrion Hotel for my money best in Ireland indeed the world.

The week between Christmas and New Year's day is great there. No one goes to work, the roads are clear and goodwill exists everywhere. It’s the Irish at their best.

But it’s not too bad here in New York now that I am feeling a little better. The bright mornings are wonderful, the long day allows a chance to read and catch up on books.

I'm currently finishing ‘The Patriarch,' a powerful biography of Joe Kennedy Senior whose family has been such a presence in American life. It is a monster, over 700 pages, but made for a lazy Christmas read. Next up is Salmon Rushdie's memoir ‘Joseph Anton’ about his life on the run after Satanic Verses.

What’s keeping me going is the two tickets for the Notre Dame/Alabama game that arrived as a very special Christmas gift from a wonderful friend after I had pretty much given up hope.

My in-law Pat Egan and I will be jetting down to Florida a week from today. Sunshine, BCS Bowl!

As long as I can breathe I’ll be in Dolphins Stadium on Monday the 7th to cheer the Fighting Irish on.

I was there in Dublin for the first game this season along with the Don Keough/Martin Naughton Irish Institute gang and if you told me I’d be going to the BCS game against Alabama a few months later I’d have had you certified.

But the Fighting Irish college football champions? Now that’s a thought to  banish the blues!

The Gathering not a scam but an opportunity -- Gabriel Byrne right on culture, wrong on The Gathering

Notre Dame fans arrive in Ireland among thousands enjoying what Ireland has to offer

First of all let me say that Tourism Ireland and The Gathering is a sponsor in several of our publications but I am trying to be as objective as possible about Gabriel Byrne’s recent comments calling The Gathering a scam.

I don’t believe that it is a scam but I do believe Gabriel has it right in several other comments he made about how the concept of the Diaspora is treated in Ireland.

Let me deal with The Gathering concept first. I know the people who came up with the concept originally, men like John Concannon of Irish Tourism and Tim O’Connor former Consul General in New York, and their advocacy for the importance of the Irish abroad is both far seeing and genuine.

I saw it working in the Notre Dame game in Dublin and the Tip O’Neill clan gathering in Buncrana, Donegal, both of which I attended in September.

Twenty-five thousand Notre Dame fans traveled to Ireland and got an overwhelming welcome from Irish people throughout the island. Sure, there may have been cynics about the whole enterprise, but the genuine welcome went very deep with the Notre Dame fans.

The Tip O’Neill gathering which I spoke at was more what the nuts and bolts of The Gathering is about. The former speaker of the house traced his ancestral roots to Donegal and the extended O’Neill family came in en masse, about 80 in all.

The locals joined in for a weekend that was poignant, fun and deeply meaningful for the O’Neills.

Read more: Actor Gabriel Byrne slams The Gathering as ‘a scam‘ aimed at gullible Americans

It was precisely the kind of targeted event, drawing on a local connection across the country, that The Gathering is intended to be.

Last year we at Irish America Magazine hosted our first Hall of Fame event in Wexford, right on the Quayside where Patrick Kennedy set off for America in Famine times. Our main honoree was Don Keough, former president of Coca Cola, whose great grandfather made the same trip from that exact spot.

To walk that quay with him, to visit the famine ship replica, was a deeply spiritual moment for him and the locals could not have been more welcoming and more informative about his ancestor’s journey.

That is what The Gathering promises to be to me, a series of events across the island of Ireland where locals draw on the genuine local historical record and reach out to their separated brethren across the Atlantic or indeed in England or elsewhere.

Where Byrne is correct is in his criticism of what happened to the cultural outreach from Ireland. Culture Ireland set up an extensive cultural program of Irish events across the United States.

Byrne served as cultural ambassador for two years and did his damnedest to expand the cultural footprint of Ireland over here.

Then the Irish government abruptly pulled the funding, ending the experiment long before it should have.

Byrne is also right that the return to roots of so many Irish Americans is a deeply spiritual journey and that there are some misguided Irish who scoff at the whole business.

They display an incredible ignorance of the ties that bind across the centuries for two countries that are inextricably woven together through emigration.

But I don’t think those folks who sneer make up the majority, no more than some gombeen politicians who see the Diaspora through dollar signs and little else do.

The Gathering is a step in the right direction in my book, not a scam, but an opportunity.

A glimpse of sun a powerful morale boost for Ireland -- Doom and gloom of wet summer suddenly swept away

The "Old Sol" shining on Dingle in County Kerry (Photo:EmeraldIslePhotos)

Well reader I took a drive from Dublin to Dingle, about 180 miles, on a glorious Sunday after the Notre Dame/Navy match and all was well with the world.

I'm not a particularly lucky person but over the years for some reason, whenever I go to Ireland the weather is usually good -- no matter the time of year.

The millions worldwide watching the Notre Dame game the previous day would have surmised that we were all living in sunny Spain.

The hot sun beaming across the Aviva stadium and reflecting back on the TV cameras made it seem like a Florida beach day more than an early September one in Dublin's fair city.

Rare is the sun over here this summer.

So rare that for a joke the other day I sent our Irish correspondent Patrick Counihan a picture of the yellow orb, otherwise known as Old Sol or the sun, just so he would recognize it if he ever saw it again. His reply was unprintable.

They have had the worst summer in decades but as I made my merry way through counties Kildare, Laois, Tipperary, Limerick, and Kerry, the sun split the rocks and kids and parents in shorts and T shirts were hell bent on making it to a beach someplace.

The Irish landscape in the hot sun is a summer Eden, there are few countries on earth that blossom so much in great weather and look so dull and dank in bad.

I stopped in a little pub somewhere between Tralee and Dingle to watch the All Ireland football semi final between Mayo and Dublin. Dublin were the overwhelming favorites and to everyone's utter shock Mayo gave them a footballing lesson. The locals in the pub, Kerrymen all, the most knowledgeable people on earth about Gaelic football, were plainly shell shocked

It was glorious to see as the unfancied Westerners showed the famous Dubs how it was done , racing to a ten point lead early in the second half.

They were so far ahead that I decided to drive on to Dingle, content that Mayo would get a crack at their first All Ireland win since 1951, when they faced Donegal in the final on the third Sunday in September.

The glorious uncertainty of sport is reflected in that pairing. You would have got 50/1 on that pair meeting in the All Ireland final at the start of the year.

Little did I know, right after I settled back in the car, happy as Larry, the radio commentary revealed a slight hitch in proceedings.

Between Tralee and Dingle it was white knuckle stuff as Dublin launched what would have been an incredible comeback that fortunately for Mayo just fell short as I drove into Dingle.

Dingle was its incredible self. My sister was waiting when I got to her house seven miles west in Ballydavid, a little village that looks out on the broad Atlantic and the grand sweeping vistas that make this one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Later that night a massive harvest moon overhung our little village and the quay was thronged with revelers and kids enjoying the Indian summer.

The local pub, Tig TPs, was doing a roaring trade, and the hot weather is set to continue this week.

As I said, all is well with the world.

Irish pride and power spill over as Notre Dame triumph over Navy - What Irish and American dreams are made of in the Emerald Isle

Notre Dame

Dublin: In years to come hardcore Notre Dame fans will ask “Were you there?” when this Dublin game against Navy is discussed.

I predict it will be right up there with many of the great moments of this storied college.

What a day to be both Irish and American.  If you were not proud of your heritage in Dublin on Saturday then you lack an emotional bone in your body.

It started early at the Aviva Stadium.

I‘m a sucker for two national anthems, the Irish and U.S. ones.

Hearing them both played at the commencement of the Notre Dame/Navy football game at the astonishing Aviva Stadium in Dublin was a deeply emotional moment.

The Aviva is built acoustically to keep the sound waves in, to magnify the impact of the home crowd and as the thunderous anthems rolled across the stadium I saw many in tears.

This was the homecoming to beat the band, the day that Ireland saw what the legend of Notre Dame meant to so many millions of Irish Americans as 35,000 fans made the pilgrimage across the Atlantic.

The Fighting Irish ran out 50 –10 winners, giving a high-octane performance no doubt fueled by the emotion of the homecoming and the historic nature of the clash.

Somewhere coach Brian Kelly’s Irish antecedents were waking up the echoes, pointing to the great-grandson of Irish emigrants doing them so proud back in the old sod.

The Irish are sponsoring a year long “Homecoming” inviting the Diaspora back in 2013 but the Notre Dame 2012 event will trump anything ever again.

It will simply never be matched. For the best part of the week every location on this island has felt the power and emotional strength of that Diaspora that so many pay lip service to but never fully acknowledge.

The spangled banner stretched from Kerry in the south to Belfast in the North and points east and west. For a country so troubled economically it was manna from heaven. But there was emotional sustenance too, the sense of a tribe reuniting, if only for a brief time.

The Irish National Anthem contains the words “Buion Dar Slua, Thar Toinn De Ranaig Chughainn.” Roughly translated it is an explicit recognition of “Those who have come, of our ancestral race, from a land beyond the wave."
It was a recognition of the Irish who left and the generations they bred who still cared deeply about the land.

It was a clear reference to the Irish in America, and at the Aviva stadium on Saturday they did indeed come in their tens of thousands from the land beyond the waves.

You could not imagine a more picture perfect scenario. The leaden Irish skies of summer gave way to a brisk autumnal day, reminiscent of South Bend in the fall.

The CBS network carried the images back across the broad Atlantic, and one can only speculate how many watching will be stirred to make that homecoming journey too.

The game was the vision of two men, Irish businessman Martin Naughton and his American counterpart Don Keough, former President of the Coca Cola Company. The two should be renamed the “Sunshine Boys” for the ray of light they shone on Ireland yesterday at a time of tough economic tides.

Sunshine it was, and sunshine it hopefully will be and a weekend to remember --one of the best ever in fact.

Ireland has never seen anything like this Notre Dame invasion -- Dublin goes green as Fighting Irish fans feel right at home

Preparation of the Notre Dame pep rally in St. Stephen's Green

Live coverage of the game here on IrishCentral

Dublin: In the 125-year history of the Fighting Irish football team there has never been a weekend like this.

Four thousand miles from South Bend, 35,000 Irish have transplanted themselves in the heart of Dublin and indeed, all over Ireland, charming the locals wherever they go.

Walk along Dublin’s main shopping thoroughfare, Grafton Street, today and it seemed like a green invasion had begun.

In every store Notre Dame supporters and some Navy backers too, were thronging the aisles, looking for Irish bargains.

Outside the street performers were surrounded by Irish followers, and doing a roaring trade.

For many of the women shoppers, hurrying from one high-end store to another, this was their game day.

“I’m surprised I thought things would be cheaper,” Jane Byrne from Minnesota told me

”It’s easily as expensive – but it is far more fun,” she said.

All around her less discriminating fellow shoppers were buying up items like Guinness sweaters and Aran cardigans in all the usual haunts.

“It is busier than St Patrick’s week,” said the shop assistant in one.

It was the same story all over the country as the hordes of invading Americans, 35,000 in total, gave Ireland the kind of end of summer boost they could ever have hoped for.

Paddy Powers bookmakers opposite the Merrion hotel has been getting brisk business but not from the usual clients this week.

Americans are dropping in every few minutes the clerk said betting on their team to win in the Navy v Notre Dame game.

While I was there a Navy couple came in, seeking odds on Navy plus 15 points -- they got even money.
It is not news that bookmakers are winning but the Irish economy is getting a powerful boost too.

Earlier today I attended a reception at the American Ambassador’s residence in the Phoenix Park. Out in his garden Dan Rooney, the former owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, had his own football pitch where on July 4th every year there is a flag football game.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny dropped in to the pep rally at the O2 arena. 10,000 Notre Dame fans had crammed the arena and gave him a massive reception.

He called it the biggest overseas mobilization by any sporting team in American history.

Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrigg mentioned that Notre Dame has sold out every home game since 1964.

Over 300 performers were onstage between Irish and American musicians and band numbers for a finale that will not be forgotten.

A weekend to remember!

Wow!

Live coverage of the game here on IrishCentral 

Coming home with Notre Dame to Dublin; a trip of a lifetime -- A trip to remember as Ireland opens its heart to the 'Fighting Irish'

A group of fans of the University of Notre Dame American football team in
Galway's Eyre Square on Tuesday.Photograph credit: Joe O'Shaughnessy

Dublin: It is hard to miss that there is a Notre Dame/Navy football game going on here in Dublin.

There was not an empty seat on the Aer Lingus 109 from New York to Dublin last night as we joined the 35,000 mostly Irish fans who have flown from America in an unprecedented pilgrimage.

If you saw more green and “Go Irish” t-shirts per square foot than you’d see on St. Patrick’s Day, then you knew you were on the plane to the game.

You could hardly have missed it either as the Aer Lingus employees at the airport were decked out in Notre Dame caps in a nice touch.

Not that Navy was utterly outmatched. When the pilot announced as we closed in on Dublin that a Navy battleship was steaming into Dublin port right underneath us, the cheers for “Go Navy” were loud and raucous.

At the airport itself, Uncle Sam on stilts, perfectly kitted out in his red white and blue was there to greet the tired but eager fans as they poured off the plane.

A host of photographers and TV cameras closed in on the Irish Americans as they left the terminal. This game is big news here in Ireland and a massive boost worth an estimated $100 million to the ailing economy.

A large Notre Dame display in the main arrival hall at the airport added that extra touch to the festivities. This game has been organized expertly down to the last green balloon knot.

I had shared the flight with a couple from upstate New York who compared their trip to Ireland with the Hajj to see Mecca.

Lifelong Notre Dame fans, Bob and Ruth Murphy were living the dream as the plane decelerated and the Irish coastline came into view.

Neither had been to the Emerald Isle before but had been there often in their dreams. A sunny day sweeping away the wet weather that has plagued Ireland this summer awaited them.

“Perfect,” said Bob as he gazed out the window, as his wife slept. “A dream come true.”

The pilot announced that we were coming in over Mayo where Bob’s ancestral people come from so he felt right at home

At the Merrion Hotel, staff marveled at the enthusiasm and child-like happy faces they were seeing these last few days.

Notre Dame fans were in their second home and all of Dublin knew it.

The game has taken over the city and tickets on the black market are changing hands for $2,000.

The locals have embraced it. I had four messages from friends here asking about tickets.

It will be a wonderful occasion, like no other I have seen as the Fighting Irish take the field on Saturday at the Aviva Stadium a mile or so from here.

We can hardly wait.

Read more: For all the up-to-date news on the Notre Dame/ Navy Emerald Isle Classic click here

The man who brought Notre Dame back to its Irish roots - Notre Dame/Navy game in Dublin just latest legacy of Don Keough

Don Keough (left), former Irish president Mary McAleese, and Martin Naughton 

When 35,000 Irish Americans make their way to Ireland for the Notre Dame/Navy game on September 1st, it will be the single biggest exodus of Irish Americans to Ireland in history.

Along with the supporters will come the Notre Dame marching band and hundreds of school sporting and educational administrators.

Navy will also have their share of supporters, many of whom will travel from American bases in Europe.

Senator John McCain is also considered a likely visitor and several other leading politicians have expressed interest.

It will be an economic and tourism bonanza for Ireland, which the country desperately needs. Hotels and bed and breakfasts all over Ireland are busting at the seams for that weekend.

The man who played the largest role in creating the Notre Dame presence both in Irish America and Ireland will also be a quiet visitor to inspect his handiwork.

Don Keough, now in his eighties, former Chairman of the Board of Notre Dame and founder of the Keough-Naughton Institute on the Notre Dame campus is the man who reconnected Notre Dame and Ireland.

He retains the enthusiasm and work ethic of a much younger man and his love for Ireland and Notre Dame’s Irish project is undimmed by the passing years.

While it should have seemed such a natural fit, Keough, former President of Coca Cola and now Chairman of New York investment bank Allen and Company, had an uphill fight on his hands creating the Irish connection at times.

He traces his roots to Wexford and was instrumental in Cole setting up a major operation in Ireland. However, his ambitions for Ireland spanned far wider than just business involvement.

There was a prevailing view in some circles in Notre Dame that the college did not want to be so closely tied to its Irish American identity and it needed to expand its base rather than focus on its magnificent Irish heritage.
While the leprechaun mascot and the Fighting Irish moniker was fine there was very little effort to match up the college with its Irish Catholic roots in any serious way.

Keough, whose sons and daughters attended Notre Dame, was having none of that. The Keough Institute later renamed the Keough-Naughton Institute named after Keough, and Irish businessman Martin Naughton who has played a huge role in establishing it, has now become the most sought after Irish studies program in the US.

As Notre Dame’s President John Jenkins notes: “Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies is the nation’s foremost Irish studies program, and Notre Dame has the most prominent presence in Ireland of any American university."

The Keough-Naughton Notre Dame Study Centre-Ireland is housed in historic O’Connell House in Dublin, engages in extensive cooperative agreements with Trinity College, Dublin, and University College Dublin (UCD).

It is the wellspring of all Irish activity and connectivity between Ireland and Notre Dame. It has a stellar faculty and hundreds of kids clamor to take the courses in Irish studies at Notre Dame while the Dublin campus is one of the most sought after locations for overseas study.

Side by side Keough and Naughton have developed Irish political and academic links. Prime Minister Enda Kenny went to Notre Dame last St.Patricks Day to toast the upcoming game.

College president Father John Jenkins has also become a huge booster for the Irish project.

His speech acknowledging the amazing role of Irish clergy and Notre Dame’s sacred place in the Irish American pantheon that he made at the American Irish Historical Society in New York a few years back is considered the best ever made on the topic.

When the teams trot out on the Aviva stadium pitch on September 1st before 60,000 fans many waving Irish tricolors Don Keough and Martin Naughton can take great satisfaction in what they have created.

Ireland and Notre Dame were once like two ships in the night, now they are sailing the same water s and both Irish America and Ireland are benefiting in a major way.

Notre Dame lawsuit on health law is a huge blow for President Obama -- Damages Obama with Catholic vote, the key one in 2012 election

Father John Jenkins and President Barack Obama

The lawsuit filed by Notre Dame yesterday against the Obama administration and their health care law is bad news indeed for President Obama.

The Fighting Irish are putting up the gloves -- and it is against the president who needs their support more than ever this November.

In an election where the Catholic vote is widely seen as the critical swing vote, the Notre Dame move places the most famous Catholic institution in the United States firmly in opposition to the president on his singular policy on health care.

That is big news given that Notre Dame was widely perceived as being in the president’s corner after they invited him to be their commencement speaker in 2009 over the strong objections of local bishops.

Father John Jenkins is widely regarded as the most articulate and skilful Catholic college president in America, so his stance against Obama on this will be widely discussed and analyzed.

The wording of the lawsuit reflects Jenkins mindset. It is a passionate and emotional statement about the right of religious institutions to safeguard their own beliefs when it comes to what they wish to cover when it comes to medical care.

It is not the usual dry legalese stuff of most lawsuits and bears the hallmarks of Jenkin’s style.

Jenkins is no creature of the Vatican right-wing orthodoxy like so many American bishops. Therefore his lawsuit is all the more potent among moderate American Catholics.

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The college writes, “ This lawsuit is about one of America's most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one's religion without government interference. It is not about whether people have a right to abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception…. But the right to such services does not authorize the Government to force the University of Notre Dame… to violate its own conscience by making it provide, pay for, and/or facilitate those services to others, contrary to its sincerely held religious beliefs.

“American history and tradition, embodied in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, protects religious entities from such overbearing and oppressive governmental action. Notre Dame therefore seeks relief in this Court to protect this most fundamental of American rights.

Jenkins makes clear that, "We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others; we simply ask that the Government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings."

It is very hard to disagree with that statement which could have been made by any religious or political leader since independence.

Jenkins is no rabble rousing bishop out to get the Obama administration on religious grounds. His lawsuit is a passionate dissent from the notion that government can mandate what a Catholic college can and can’t do  when it comes to core beliefs.

As Jenkins concludes, "For if one Presidential Administration can override our religious purpose and use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut our values, then surely another Administration will do the same for another very different set of policies, each time invoking some concept of popular will or the public good, with the result these religious organizations become mere tools for the exercise of government power, morally subservient to the state, and not free from its infringement."

Suddenly the one major Catholic institution which had backed Obama now seems to be backing off on this one major issue.

That cannot be good news for the incumbent president. He needs Catholic votes in key states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and indeed Indiana, where Notre Dame is located. This Notre Dame uprising will come as a major blow.

20,000 Notre Dame fans set for Dublin in September 2012 ---Incredible reaction from Fighting Irish fans to Navy game in Ireland

South Bend: Notre Dame are expecting an incredible 20,000 Fighting Irish fans to come to Dublin in September next year Notre Dame officials say.

It will be the largest ever 'invasion' by US sports fans of Ireland.

The last time Notre Dame played in Ireland in 1995 only 4,000 or so fans traveled.

The Fighting Irish will play Navy on September 1st at the Aviva stadium in Dublin, in their first game of the 2012 season.

It is billed as the "Emerald Isle Classic."

The buzz around South Bend about the game has already begun.

Dolly Duffy, Executive Director of the Notre Dame alumni confirmed to me that the numbers are expected to break all expectations.

"There has been an incredible reaction to the Dublin game," she told me."We have been overwhelmed by the interest in traveling to Ireland."

Micheal Seamon, Associate Vice President also confirmed the number and stated that the weekend in Dublin is shaping up to be a spectacular occasion.

Some Notre Dame officials believe the final total could be 25,000, an amazing number.

On Saturday $400,000 was pledged from Irish supporters to bring the Fighting Irish marching band to Dublin as part of the celebration.

A massive concert and pep rally will take place at the O2 arena in the Dublin docklands the night before the game.

Top Irish acts have already been signed up.

There will also be a special Notre Dame mass which is expected to pack Dublin's main cathedral to the rafters

The day of the game will be spectacular with the trendy Temple bar area turned into a massive Notre Dame tailgate party.

The marching band will march through Dublin's Grafton Street, the main shopping thoroughfare, and will surely be a sight to behold.

The game is being played the same weekend as the All Ireland hurling final, Ireland's second biggest sporting weekend meaning that Dublin will be chock a block with both Irish and hurling fans.

Notre Dame's Irish campus at O'Connell House in Merrion Square will also feature prominently with a major conference on America and the 1916 Rising set for the week of the game.

All in all it is easy to get excited by the game which Notre Dame is billing as 'The Fighting Irish are coming home."

It will be an incredible bonanza for Ireland in terms of tourism in particular.

I predict there will not be a hotel room to be had from Cork to Dublin.

Roll on September 2012!