Notre Dame is football, sure. But those of us who went there know it's so much more than that. We're two years, a year out of Notre Dame, or six or 18 months from being out of Notre Dame, and what are our memories made of?

Not football games. There are plenty of memories involving football games, like bowl trips and tailgating. Rushing the field, hugging and high-fiving people we barely know, and sprinting from one end zone to the other. And walking out through the tunnel to see Touchdown Jesus. Watching away games in small groups or large parties, drinking and cheering on Saturday afternoons.

But we don't remember them for the football games; we remember them for the people we cheered with, jumped with, "OOooooooooooooooh, GO ... IRISH!"ed with, swayed to the Alma Mater with. We remember saying hi to everyone on the quad going to and from classes, dorms, dining halls, Observer offices, study sessions, libraries, games, tailgates, parties, dances, and maybe a student affairs hearing or two. We remember lies to get cars on campus and lugging beer in duffel bags from far-away parking spaces. We remember dorm masses and late-night trips to Fat Shirley's or Steak'n'Shake. Or the Grotto.

We remember weekend snowball fights and cursing the South Bend weather the rest of the semester. We remember the nicknames we had for people we saw frequently, and the fleeting or secret or on-second-thought-I-never-should-have-done-that romances, which hopefully now, or someday, we can laugh about. We remember the two weeks of hideous humidity at the start of the year, and moving in from the storage sheds. We remember the Parents' Weekends and spring breaks and road trips, the JPWs and Sophomore Sibs weekends. We remember how annoying Zahm is, and how the hell could someone like Doug really come out unscathed by it all?

We remember the Huddle cart and (was it a pumpkin) placed atop the finger of Moses by the library on October. We remember the sprinklers watering the sidewalks, which if you think about it, is probably to erase all those pink-and-purple triangle drawings that appear a few times each year. We remember GLND/SMC and the battles surrounding it.

We remember stealing from the dining hall and ordering Papa John's or going to Bruno's or Don Pablo's or Friday's or anywhere to avoid dining hall food for one night or another. Or another or another .... We remember Freshman Orientation and the grafitti dance, Senior Week and the final formal (well, most of us do). We remember Corby's and Coach's and CJ's and BW3 and Jazzman's and the Boat Club and Club 23 and the 'Backer and Senior Bar. And Bridget's.

We remember a few professors, both favorably and not. We remember those life-altering, maybe even defining moments, those all-night conversations, those talks that arise by chance, or are planned. We remember meeting each other, or at least some of the parties or classes or dates from early on, from what seems like so long ago. We remember flag and interhall football; section football. Bookstore Basketball. We remember Chicago, maybe Indy. We remember flying in over campus, or that long drive across Ohio or Indiana or Illinois.

We remember drinking games (or not) and breaking parietals. We remember Father Ted, and realize the honor it is to meet him. We remember construction. We remember movies at Cushing, the Snite, North Quad. We remember Easter masses and rearranging dorm masses on Super Bowl Sunday. We remember Halloween parties and Christmas dances with mistletoe and saying goodbye for the holidays after all the exams are done. We remember the first time we came onto campus, and the last time we left. Most of us remember when Grace and Flanner were dorms, and the view they had over campus. We remember learning the Internet and e-mail, and that even something that simple is not enough to hang on to all our high school relationships, but it's doing pretty well for our college ones.