Notre Dame football is a Hummel doll sitting in your grandma's curio cabinet.
For her, it means a lot. She got it from some young beau after an exhilarating night at the sock-hop. They sat in his 1957 Ford Thunderbird, listening to the Big Bopper and wistfully imagining life under a president Richard Nixon, when suddenly he reached into his letterman's jacket and pulled out a porcelain figurine that she had her eye on for months. "Oh Jimmy!" she cried, "This makes me as happy as Liberace on his wedding day! Thank you!"
It became a part of the narrative of her life, generating ever-increasing sentimental importance as the years went on.