All the buzz in the air sparked by Notre Dame's impending visit to play Wake Forest at BB&T Field on Saturday proves, if nothing else, that mystique has a considerable shelf life.
Of the 11 national championships Notre Dame claims, the last was won in 1988. Only five players on Wake Forest's roster — Cameron Ford, Dennis Godfrey, Gabe Irby, Kyle Jarrett and Chance Raines — were even born.
Since 2000, the Fighting Irish have had as many non-winning seasons (five) as winning seasons.
Notre Dame, from 1995 through 2007, lost nine straight bowl games, a streak that was stopped with a victory over Hawaii in the 2007 Hawaii Bowl.
And yet the one game on the Deacons' 2011 schedule that sophomore nose guard Nikita Whitlock heard about from friends before the season started was the one Wake Forest will play at 8 p.m. Saturday.
He understands the uproar. Sort of.
"They're not Oklahoma,'' Whitlock said. "We're not playing Oklahoma here.
"But they are Notre Dame. So you still get more excited and more of a hype-type high when you're playing Notre Dame. I mean the history of Notre Dame, everybody knows who Notre Dame is. They play on national TV every week. They've got about 30 movies out about just Notre Dame. Who doesn't know Notre Dame? So I mean the electricity is still definitely there. You definitely have a different feeling playing Notre Dame.''
A smattering of tickets remained at midweek but school officials are expecting a sellout by kickoff. Making the game an even hotter ticket is BB&T Stadium's capacity of 31,500, smaller than any stadium Notre Dame has played in since Frank Leahy's 1945 Fighting Irish played in front of 23,000 at the Great Lakes Training Center.
Coach Jim Grobe, who like many of his generation grew up listening to Lindsey Nelson and Paul Hornung review Notre Dame highlights on Sunday morning, said there was early talk about the game being played at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.
"But there was some problems with television and what-not,'' Grobe said. "And we weren't going to take a game away from our fans. We weren't going to take a home game and go to Charlotte.
"They do that sometimes because Notre Dame has such a big following. But for us we felt like if we took a home game out of our stadium, it just wouldn't be right. It wouldn't be fair to our fans to do that.''
Wake Forest already had a trip scheduled to Notre Dame for 2015 before reaching the home-and-home agreement that entails a visit by the Deacons to South Bend next season. Grobe said there have been better seasons to play the Fighting Irish.
With Brian Kelly in his second season as head coach, Notre Dame clubbed Navy 56-14 Saturday to improve to 5-3.
Since back-to-back losses to South Florida and Michigan at the start of the season, the Fighting Irish have won five of six games.
Although athletics director Ron Wellman scheduled the game, he did so with Grobe's blessing.
"Ron's always been good about, 'Do you want to play these guys?' " Grobe said. "He would never make us play anybody.
"But I think both of us together felt like, 'Hey, Notre Dame's coming to town. That's pretty good stuff.'
"And I told Ron back when we were putting this together that I really think if my players found out we had a chance to play Notre Dame and I turned it down….''
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