Brad Okel isn’t exactly sure what to expect Saturday when he rolls onto campus and walks into Notre Dame Stadium for the first time as an employee of the University of Cincinnati.
But Okel, a Cincinnati graduate, is already assured that he’ll have plenty of red and black reinforcements around him.
Okel, the executive director of development for Cincinnati athletics, oversees Bearcat football weekend events and has spent about every day for the last nine or so months dealing with massive ticket requests from the Bearcats faithful wanting to make the trek to Notre Dame Stadium for what will be only the fourth home game Irish head coach Brian Kelly has ever worked against a top-10 team.
Notre Dame allotted Cincinnati about 6,000 tickets — which moved quickly — but Okel said he received thousands more seat requests beyond his quota.
Okel, along with more than 300 of his Bearcats buddies, will travel from Chicago by chartered train to South Bend after this large Cincinnati contingent gathers in the Windy City for game-related alumni events on Thursday and Friday — including one at a downtown rooftop party.
This Chicago weekend, Okel said, attracted Cincinnati faithful from Florida to California.
“So we have people coming to Notre Dame from all angles, which is fun, too,” Okel said. “This is a really big deal for our fans.”
There is no way of knowing until game day exactly what the Bearcats-to-Irish fan ratio will look like in and around Notre Dame Stadium.
But Okel believes that secondary ticket purchases and a strong Catholic presence in Cincinnati will leave Bearcats fans calling in all favors and sparing no expense to get into what is arguably the biggest game this top-10 program has ever played.
On StubHub.com and other online ticket outlets, seats to the game range in price from $100 for a nose-bleed corner view to about $1,100 for a spot closer to the 50-yard line.
Neither of Notre Dame’s first two home games (Toledo and Purdue) sold out while Cincinnati by far became the first of any of the six Irish 2021 home games to do so, suggesting a demand drive coming from the Queen City.
“Both teams are really good,” Okel said, “and folks here are also very excited just to go visit and tour the campus.”
Then, of course, there’s the unique sidebar of Kelly — along with his first-year defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman and second-year cornerbacks coach Mike Mickens (a Cincinnati graduate and former Bearcats player) — all having left Cincinnati for the same coaching positions at Notre Dame.
“The revenge factor is very real for many local fans,” Okel said, “folks wanting to knock Notre Dame off and rub it in a little bit with kind of a, ‘Look what we’re building over here and you all left.’”
This Cincinnati invasion won’t match the Georgia takeover in 2017 when the Bulldogs fans filled about 30,000 of the 77,622 seats inside Notre Dame Stadium to negate any Irish home-field advantage and help Georgia to a 20-19 win.
Ironically, Notre Dame has won 26 straight games since that loss to Georgia, and now Cincinnati comes to town as the toughest opponent to visit the Irish since the winning streak started — sans No. 1 Clemson in 2020.
And with only a four-hour drive separating Cincinnati from South Bend — and the Bearcats making their first-ever trip to Notre Dame in the same way Georgia did five seasons ago — touristy interest and ticket demand remain high this weekend for the “outta-towners.”
“Maybe it’s because of the large Catholic population or the Catholic high schools,” Okel theorized, “but Notre Dame has a lot of connections in this city and there’s a lot of interest in this game.”
With Toledo and Purdue already behind, and now Cincinnati up next, Notre Dame scheduled three regional opponents to open its 2021 home slate, and both Toledo and Purdue represented their schools well in travel and attendance, so expect the Bearcats to do the same, and then some.
Kelly was actually asked after the Toledo game about the 15,000 empty seats at the stadium and the smallest home crowd (62,009) since its expansion 25 years ago, not including 2020 because of pandemic seating limitations.
“I have so many problems I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis,” Kelly quipped. “… I just don’t have time to really concern myself with it.”
Fair enough, but Kelly may have to concern himself with it on Saturday if, in the same way Georgia’s did, the Cincinnati fan base drastically cuts into Notre Dame’s home-field advantage.
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