S

tephen Erwin’s earliest memories of Notre Dame football were sitting with his grandpa on Sundays as a little kid, listening to replays on the radio. Dan Hulihan’s family rushed home from church to watch the Fighting Irish’s highlights before NFL games.

“We just were big, big Notre Dame fans,” Hulihan said. 

Erwin was born and raised in the Syracuse area. Hulihan in Albany. Both are dedicated Fighting Irish fans. They’ve spent time as presidents of local ND alumni clubs. But there’s a catch — neither went to Notre Dame. Instead, they’re Subway Alumni, devoted Notre Dame fans who didn’t attend the university, but usually have Irish Catholic backgrounds. The name was termed since fans traveled via the New York City subway to watch the Fighting Irish. 

As an Irish Catholic, Hulihan’s dad was a big Fighting Irish supporter, which trickled down to his son, who’s now the president of the Northeastern New York Notre Dame Alumni Club in Albany. Erwin, who spent 10 years as president of the Central New York Notre Dame Alumni Club, fell in love with ND when he visited in 1969 with his dad and grandfather, and “was raised” on Notre Dame. 

Erwin and Hulihan will be among the significant number of Subway Alumni expected inside the JMA Wireless Dome Saturday for the matchup between the Irish and No. 16 Syracuse. It’s the first time ND has played in central New York since 2003, and for months, local Notre Dame alumni clubs have been organizing events and selling hundreds of tickets.  

“We haven’t had an opportunity to flex this specific muscle in terms of being the sort of ‘host’ city for Notre Dame away games,” said Jude Seymour, president of the Central New York/Syracuse Notre Dame chapter. 

Upstate New York features a high percentage of Irish Catholics. ND has long had a coast-to-coast following, generated in part by its decades of national media coverage. It’s just one of two Catholic schools playing in the Football Bowl Subdivision, and its effort to play games around the country — hitting Syracuse, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, among other cities this season —  continues to bolster support. 

“This is a big Notre Dame area. (There’s) a big following,” Hulihan said of upstate New York. “It’s a big deal.”

SU is excited to play Notre Dame. Matthew Bergeron watched Rudy growing up, and both he and Marlowe Wax said they’ve been looking forward to this game since the Irish beat them handedly in 2020. Head coach Dino Babers said beating Notre Dame in any season is a “big thing” because of its unique brand and status as a prestigious program.

In the early 1900s, ND played games outside of the midwest, drawing large crowds for games in New York City. Eventually, these alumni grew into other large markets like Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston, among other upstate cities in Albany, Syracuse and Rochester. 

The school’s 266 alumni clubs are classified by size ranging from AA (over 1,500 alumni in the area) to F (less than 75). The Rochester and Albany clubs are both B-sized, and Syracuse is C-sized. All three have roughly 200 members, and Subway Alumni make up over 50% of the Albany and Syracuse organizations. 

Several years ago, the Notre Dame Alumni Association rebranded its tagline to include “friends” of the university, acknowledging fans who didn’t attend ND. A Subway Alum also now sits on the national Notre Dame alumni board.

“We’ve been trying really hard to kind of reduce the stigma that you have to have some sort of diploma or some sort of affiliation to Notre Dame that’s set in stone in order to be part of our club,” Seymour said. “We don’t care about what school you ultimately attended, as long as you cheer for the Irish you’re good with us.”

Erwin has continued his family’s ND support without being an alumnus. When his dad was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1990s, Erwin told his wife he wanted to take him to South Bend, Indiana. He did so twice. 

At the time, Erwin didn’t think he could be part of an alumni club since he never attended Notre Dame. But he’s now been a Central New York chapter member for decades. He’s taken his oldest grandson, now 20, to Notre Dame every year since he was 1. 

The clubs organize watch parties, bus trips to games, masses and community service projects with the Brady Faith Center, Liberty Resources, The Rescue Mission and Hopeprint, among others. The Albany chapter hosts a send-off picnic for local students going to Notre Dame. 

As the Syracuse chapter’s president, Erwin organized annual bus trips to South Bend. Usually filled with around 50 people, 90% of the bus was Subway Alumni, he said. The bus from Syracuse would be the first in the tailgate lot on gameday and one of the last ones to leave. 

Seymour has continued the bus trips as president, but said they didn’t do one this year, putting their focus on the SU game. When the game date was announced, the club was “all hands on deck” to find partners and arrange events, Seymour said. 

The club has planned several events for the weekend: a lecture on Thursday between Notre Dame and the Maxwell School, an “Irish Night Out” on Friday night at Coleman’s Irish Pub, a tailgate in the Schine Center Saturday morning (featuring “as much Guiness as can be consumed by all the people standing in that room” via a local distributor) and a Sunday mass at the Church of Most Holy Rosary. 

Seymour said he purchased Syracuse season tickets to have access to Saturday’s game, and the Central New York club got 150 tickets for an all-Irish section in the Dome. The Rochester club’s 80 tickets sold out quickly, and other locals bought tickets through the box offices, Rochester club president Amy Porter said. The Albany chapter had never pre-purchased as many tickets as it did for Saturday’s game (70), Hulihan said, but they sold out in less than a week. The club will have a huge presence in sections 312 and 313 on Saturday. 

When the Irish visited Syracuse in 2003, the CNY club rented the Oncenter for the weekend, hosting a big tailgate on gameday. Seymour drove up from the southern tier to watch SU running back Walter Reyes record five touchdowns in a 38-12 Orange win. The last three times the Fighting Irish traveled east to play Syracuse, the games were played in the New York City metropolitan area.

The extra wait adds to the anticipation for Saturday’s visit from the Golden Domers. 

“We never really got Notre Dame sports to come to the area,” Porter said. “It’s a rare opportunity to have them so close to home…so a lot of people are very, very excited about the opportunity.”

Published on October 26, 2022 at 10:41 pm

Contact Connor: [email protected] | @csmith17_