The Yuck Of The Irish!

Notre Dame Stadium, originally opened in 1930, is like many big name college stadiums in that the stadium is a hybrid of different renovations that have taken place over the years, usually initiated to increase the capacity in the stadiums.  Notre Dame Stadium as it stands today holds over 80,000 die-hard Fighting Irish Fans.  Sadly, it has become all too common of a theme that the money for stadium renovations isn’t   “appropriated” on the restrooms or any type of modern amenities to improve sanitation.

The concessions at Notre Dame Stadium are old, cramped, dirty, and lack any type of modern comforts that a stadium built today might contain.  Many of the young concession workers are grabbing food and drink whenever there is a slower time at the counter.  UFE has no problem with these workers eating the concession food, but there are few – if any – sinks at their disposal, so the workers are eating and then serving food without any hand sanitation.  There always seemed to be hand sanitizer available, but no employee was ever observed using the limited number of sinks or the sanitizer after eating or touching contaminated surfaces or money.  Several concession workers (male) were observed using the restrooms without washing their hands.

The men’s restrooms have the old reliable antique urinal troughs.  We’re not trying to say that the urinal troughs were old, but we did see some initials carved on the side of one of the urinals that read “Knute,” but we couldn’t make out the last name.   The restrooms for the public don’t have hot water at the sinks, which seems like it wouldn’t pass health code enforcement.   Fans continue to clog up the stalls in the restroom to mix the little bottles of liquor they sneaked into the stadium.  One bold, rather sneaky fan was able to bring a 1.75 liter bottle of whiskey into the stadium; he must have been quite proud of himself, because it doesn’t seem like that would be easy to hide.  Again, we would rather have the NCAA sell liquor at the concessions – they certainly tolerate it outside the stadium.  Selling liquor would be a source of revenue for the stadium. In addition, it would relieve some of the congestion in the restrooms stalls.  The UFE team is amazed at the amount of liquor that is smuggled into the football stadiums only to have the empty bottles discarded in the stalls and restroom garbage cans.

The hand washing statistics at the Notre Dame-Pitt game broke a new UFE record!   A whopping 53 (double the previous female record) of the female fans exited the restroom without washing their hands.  Males have always been a little gross with their restroom hygiene, but when females start to approach full male piggy-ness status, you really have to start questioning yourself. Predictably the men failed to wash their hands 88 % of the time – not a men’s restroom record, but still very impressive.  The UFE team was baffled at how dirty the Fighting Irish fans were (C’mon Ladies, Really! Don’t lower yourselves to our level), but they came up with these possible reasons.  First, it was chilly on game day, so no one really wanted to wash their hands in cold water.  Second, it was a great game which was decided in triple overtime and very crowded.   Finally, the best excuse of all, a high percentage of Chicago Cub fans are also Fighting Irish fans, so seeing that Wrigley Field is the filthiest stadium in baseball, it is only fitting that Notre Dame Stadium with similar fans would be the dirtiest  in college football.