At Notre Dame, nothing gets in football’s way

St Declan’s Stone in Ardmore, Co Waterford is probably more of a geological miracle than anything else but even if it didn’t, as legend has it, follow that county’s patron saint over the Irish Sea from Wales, it remains a subtle testimony to endurance and cultural memory.

That’s why I think it’s appropriate that Illinois native Declan Sullivan was named after him.

Sullivan, 20, a Notre Dame student for whom next Monday night’s College Football National Championship title match would have been the game of a lifetime, died just over two years ago when filming a team training session at the South Bend campus in Indiana.