Saturday

I'll do a few paragraphs today and tomorrow to share some facts and some other memories of my days in South Bend.  To those who have heard my stories too many times, sorry.

I did read the article posted by Yahoo writer Pat Forde that 4 referenced in her comment a few days ago.  He seemed to be saying that there continued to be an element of truth to the concept that ND football players are mixed into the general student population without favor.  My guess is that there is probably a lot of stories to support that thesis, but there are probably a lot of specifics that might go the other way as well. 

To some extent, all schools have to have their athletes rubbing elbows with the other students.  You know, that whole business about "student-athletes". It sounds like ND still doesn't have a "jock" dorm like they do at some schools.  But I suspect that room selection after freshman year drifts more toward the athletes choosing to live with teammates.  And I suspect that over time, more athletes might choose specific dorms such that there will be some buildings with a greater percentage of athletes than that of the student population in general.  Proximity to the practice facilities.  Food.  Reputation of the dorm.

The article referenced Sorin Hall numerous times.  It was one of the older dorms, even when I was there.  It is located just down from the main church and the Golden Dome building.  (In the map below showing Cavanaugh Hall, Sorin is the un-named building just below and to the left of the church.)  Again, when I was at ND, the football captains had first choice to the end rooms on the first floor of Sorin.  It was a high-status thing.  My recollection is that they had a big front porch that was a bit of a hot spot on football Saturday's.  I never spent much time at Sorin.

I was assigned to Room 124 in Cavanaugh Hall as a freshman.  It was a triple, with one of my roommates from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and the other from Maryland, I think.  The Pittsfield guy was a really good guy and I roomed with him sophomore year on the second floor of Cavanaugh.  You can see from the map-ish picture (taken from the ND campus site) that Cavanaugh is just to the right of the Golden Dome building.

Cavanaugh was on what was then referred to as the Freshmen Quad on the North side of campus.  In those days, there were fewer students, no girls, and some remnants of "old school" college.  You had a dress-code for dinner, which meant a coat and tie.  (I think my freshman year may have been the last year for that nonsense!)  We had a curfew...with lights out...at 11PM.  Girls were not allowed in the dorm rooms.  (Yeah, like there were lots of girls hangin' around campus in those days.  Not!)  There were Saturday morning classes.

I don't recall many football players living in Cavanaugh.  I don't remember much about those years except that I was not very happy, school was hard, and baseball was a roller-coaster of frustration.  We played a lot of hearts at night, made popcorn nightly, had a late-night frozen pizza/sandwich room, and a TV lounge in the basement.  No car.  Almost no money.

A girl from my high school in Ottumwa was year ahead of me at St. Mary's (across the road), and she kinda saved me through those first couple of years.  Mary Niemeyer.  We never "dated", but she was one of those glass-half-full  people, was involved in several church and social groups, and she routinely drug me along to various get-togethers.  I remember riding the "red-eye" train back to Ottumwa with her one time, making the terminal change in C-town, and getting home dead tired.  We stayed friends for a long time.

For junior year, I moved across campus to Pangborn Hall on the South Quad.  My roommate then was Tim McCullough, a guy I had known in Cavanaugh and with whom I had spent some of those late nights in the TV lounge.  We were both in ROTC (he in the Army) and Pangborn gave us close access to the ROTC building.  You had to be in uniform for the ROTC classes, and I was always able to get in and out of uniform in the dorm without having to wear my dress blues to my other classes.  (But I would be remiss if I didn't admit that Tim and I had grade points that didn't give us much priority on any favored- locations in the dorm pool.  Pangborn was a good fit for us, but it was not necessarily a highly preferred residence hall among the student population.)

The other bonus for Pangborn was that it was immediately adjacent to the Rockne Memorial building.  (See the map-ish photo nearby.  At my time, the ROTC building would have been behind The Rock, just off this picture to the left.)  "The Rock" was the only indoor gym available to the students before they built the dual-domed Athletic and Convocation Center (ACC) next to the football stadium.  I was a certified Rock Rat.

Now, Pangborn did have a number of football players living there.  Walt Patulski was the #1 selection in the NFL draft in 1972.  He was a big guy, very athletic, and the center on our inter-hall team.  We weren't best friends, but good acquaintances.  He was in a few of my classes as well.  Mike Kadish was another player down the hall, maybe Patulski's roommate.  He spelled Walt at center on our basketball team.  The third player I remember from Pangborn specifically was Ralph Stepaniak, a d-back who had big hops.

Our inter-hall team with Patulski in the middle, myself and a 6'6" stringbean from Williamsburg, Iowa (yes, Williamsburg!) at the forwards, Stepaniak at the 2 guard and a gunner from C-town at point, won the campus-wide tournament my junior year, then lost on a missed free-throw in the championship game my senior year.  I remember that it took some convincing from other guys in the dorm to get the football players to let Williamsburg and myself be the forwards.  Once we came into the starting line-up, the team got it figured out, and we frustrated a lot of guys, particularly other dorms with footballers in their line-ups.  It was a fun time.

Another factoid from Pangborn is that I think I started my preference for country music there.  There were a couple of guys across the hall junior year who played in a band, and they always had country music coming out of their room.  It must of struck a chord with me, so to speak, eh?

So that's enough for today.  I've enjoyed the memories.  More tomorrow.

BCOT