For a coach, you know little. The history of Notre Dame football going back to the 1920s involved them playing an East Coast game as well as a West Coast game almost every year. In 2022, they played 2 EC and 1 WC game.
This was historically done to promote the "Subway Alumni" connection to the university. Subway Alums were people who never attended or likely visited the Notre Dame campus. Rather they took the IRT subway to the 161st Street station to watch ND play in Yankee Stadium, usually against Army. They were primarily immigrant or 1st generation Americans who were of Catholic descent and rooted for ND based upon its status as a prominent Catholic university that was athletically successful. ND wanted to and still does wish to maintain that connection. Historically, East Coast metro areas had large Catholic populations and Catholic schools that strongly identified with ND. The West Coast trips go back to Knute Rockne and they have played USC since then almost annually.
As one of only 2 Catholic universities playing major college football, and by far the most successful, ND has had the advantage of strong solidarity and allegiance to it by nature of its religious affiliation even though there have been droughts in the W/L record.
If you ask how I know this it is simple: the nuns that taught in my grammar school in NYC made us say a prayer every Friday that ND would win on Saturday in the fall of the year.
