Yesterday I made my first trip to South Bend to see Notre Dame open the Brian Kelly Era against Purdue. The Irish shutdown the Boilermakers offense for most of the game winning 23-12 in their home opener.  The speed of the game was really fast with both offenses throwing the ball the majority of the time.  I thought the Irish offense looked pretty good but then again Purdue is not known for their stout defense.  Next week against Michigan will answer a lot of questions.

There is much talk about Notre Dame Stadium being built with the same plans as Michigan Stadium.  I’ve been to Michigan Stadium a handful of times and I can see the parallels.  My real question is I don’t understand if the designs are the same why Michigan Stadium is so quite.  The reason usually given is the design and thats why the added the most recent expansion to make the ‘Big House’ a much more intimidating environment.  Notre Dame Stadium didn’t seem to have any issues with level of crowd noise.  I thought the stadium was really loud throughout the whole game.  My only complaints were the 1930’s 2×4 bleachers and the razor like knees of the old lady behind me.

Side Notes:

*Horse Cops are still absolutely pointless:

**This man was searching in vain for some one in a sea of more than 80,000 people:

***Drew Brees jerseys were in surplus throughout the day:

****The View From My Seat:

Thanks to Dom I had some of the better seats I’ve had at a College Football game in years.  We were about 27 rows up right on the 35 yard line.

***** The rest of my photographs are on Flickr here.