I grew up with an allegiance to USC. Both my Mom and Dad attended the University of Southern California, as did several of my Aunts and Uncles. We spent much of my childhood attending USC football games, and many of our social outings were with a community of friends of my parent’s college friends. My “Fight On” fingers were subconscious when I heard the fight song playing. And that was all I knew.
When I was in sixth grade, my Mom and Dad took my brother and me to see USC Football play Notre Dame in South Bend. It was a fun trip for all of us, and a blast traveling to Indiana for the first time. We explored, toured the campus, and spent gameday tailgating with many of our friends and family from USC who had also made the trip. If you asked me today, I couldn’t even tell you who won that game, but I will never forget the feeling I had when I watched the Notre Dame student section chanting and cheering during the game. Hand motions and cheers in unison – I literally had chills down my spine. The Fight Song sway. The Victory March. It was a day I will never, ever forget, and it ignited a flame within me to attend the University of Notre Dame.
That flame burned bright from that point forward. I worked my butt off in school, and as a Senior in High School, was accepted to the University of Notre Dame. My parents supported my interest in Notre Dame wholeheartedly and couldn’t have been prouder. But let’s be real here – became a running joke that, in a family of Trojans, I was now one of the Irish. The proverbial “black sheep”, if you will.
We’ve had a good time with the rivalry over the years. 
My Junior Year of college when Notre Dame played USC out in California, my parents hosted a joint party for all of their college friends and all of my college friends. The tables were decked out in regalia from both universities, and we all had fun chatting and talking trash with one another and talking about the weekend’s game. My Dad had the last laugh though, when a contingent of the USC marching band marched into my parents’ backyard near the end of the party playing their fight song. Apparently the look on my face was priceless.
But the look on my Dad’s face was even better.
My brother and sister-in-law both also attended USC, as have several of my cousins -the next generation of Trojans in my extended family. There is always a great deal of jabbing that happens every football season, followed by wagers and poking fun. We’ve commiserated over shared horrible seasons, and each had successes of our own. All of our children have now latched on, and love taking pokes of their own. It’s now part of our family’s shared language.
Some people believe sports are trivial. I believe they are unifying, and a great diversion from the gravity of everyday life – a rallying point of commonality we can share among family, friends, and even strangers. We all need a team. Whether it’s a team we have a deep, long-standing connection with or the local team we causally follow – we all need a team to get behind, to cheer for, to support and to rally round. My life was and continues to be formed by my allegiance to two teams that happen to also be rivals.
My hope is also for my own children to find a team that they can feel connected to as they grow into their own adulthood. And yes, I have a strong preference that the team they choose starts with “Fighting” and ends with “Irish” – but I’m living proof that my preference doesn’t necessarily have weight in their choice. This might be the team that they support now, and later on it might be another one. That’s all circumstance. I just hope that as they continue to grow, they find joy in fostering a connection with a community and something bigger than themselves.
