Going for Brogue : Visiting Football Fans Revel in Game--and Pregame

In between serving up Irish coffees and Irish whiskeys at Tom Bergin, a Dublin-style pub in Los Angeles’ Fairfax district, bartender Chris Doyle was regaling the University of Notre Dame football fans who were pouring into town Friday. With a hint of a brogue, Doyle was telling his joke about the dog that rooted for the Fighting Irish.

It seems the big game was on--the annual clash with USC--and the dog was amazing everyone. He’d run and do flips every time Notre Dame scored a touchdown. Watching him, an incredulous bystander wondered how the dog reacted when Notre Dame lost to USC.

Doyle, grinning in his shamrock necktie, pouring another beer--it would be flowing all night--told the laughing Notre Damers the inevitable punch line: The dog’s owner simply didn’t know. “ ‘The dog is only 9 years old,’ ” he explained, giddy with a brand of humor that has flooded into town like a cold weather virus.

True, Notre Dame has beaten USC every year for nearly a decade. But that only hints at the kind of haughty confidence Notre Dame boosters are bringing to town for today’s latest installment of a rivalry that began in 1926. By some estimates, 10,000 to 15,000 Fighting Irish fans have descended upon Los Angeles to lay bets, down a few at dozens of Irish pubs, down a few more at football tailgate parties outside the Coliseum, and try to work their leprechaun magic from the raucous grandstands.

“You can’t walk any place in the hotel without hearing the Notre Dame fight song and all the other Notre Dame songs. It’s really fantastic,” said Vito Cinefra, 51, a data processor who was preparing to scream his lungs out late Friday at a Notre Dame football pep rally at the Anaheim Hilton.

Although he attended the University of Miami, Fla., Cinefra is a product of Catholic parochial schools who moved from New Jersey to South Bend, Ind., 13 years ago just to be near the hub of Fighting Irish football.

“It’s the greatest place in the world,” he said.

Pete Pranica, 28, who comes out every year for Notre Dame’s annual California trip to play Stanford or USC, is among those with strong feelings about one of collegiate football’s greatest rivalries. His favorite memory is the 1988 game--a battle between the No. 1-ranked Irish and No. 2 Trojans--when a key Notre Dame interception of USC quarterback Rodney Peete helped ensure a 27-10 victory.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been that happy,” Pranica said. He has been in California since Tuesday, awaiting today’s kickoff.

“People mark (the game) as a red-letter date on their calendars,” he said. “They save and they want to go to California. This serves as a vacation for a lot of people--you can come out, go to Disneyland, have Thanksgiving out here . . . and go to the game.”

Phil Hayes, 58, a Palmdale resident who began rooting for Notre Dame soon after moving to America from Ireland in 1958, considers the school an international symbol of strong Irish Catholicism. He recalled a game years ago when a downpour left more than a foot of water on some streets.

But he and other Notre Dame aficionados who come in by the busload weathered the storm with traditional Irish fortitude.

“We brought a bottle of Irish whiskey,” he said. “(So) some of us didn’t feel the pain so much.”

At Molly Malone’s, one of the many Irish pubs in Los Angeles where Notre Dame fans began congregating Friday, owner Angela Hanlon predicted that the postgame party would be an unimaginable din--as always.

“Whether we win or lose, people do the Notre Dame fight song and just go crazy,” she said. “They get up on tables. It’s pandemonium.”

Even Brian O’Leary, 30, of Hollywood, who does not follow football, planned to show up at Molly’s to watch the game and root for the Irish. “It’s a good atmosphere . . . everyone arguing about the game, making comments,” he said. “It’s just like live vaudeville.”

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