We were in a restaurant last week in Arizona and the waitress, sharp as a pin, said, "Hey you guys, y'all sound foreign".

And we said, bowling her over, "Yeah, we're from Ireland actually".

So she said, playing her ace and wrinkling her brow, "Gee, where's that?"

And we said, kinda pissy, "It's on the edge of Europe".

And she said, "Gee, which edge?"

And we said, "Look Christopher Goddamn Columbus, why doncha just bring us the bleedin' meatloaf".

And she said, "Well, wherever in hell y'all are from I sure must compliment you on your English".

You grow up taking certain things for granted. The world revolves around Ireland. People are fascinated and charmed by us. If you are on a plane, say, and the plane is hijacked by fundamentalists of any hue except loyalist, your trump card will be your Irish accent and passport. The hijackers will tip you the wink early on and whisper apologies to you for the inconvenience anytime they get the chance.

In America you expect to be loved, honoured and adored. We're the people who built America, so why not? You expect that the least America will do is bestow good will on your teams. If you are sporty, you find yourself by reflex checking out how Notre Dame are doing. You expect all of America to root for Notre Dame. Just out of gratitude.

Not so. There are people in Arizona who have never heard of Ireland. There are people everywhere else in America who hate Notre Dame with a passion which makes ABU folk look positively soppy.

And when you look at the place through their non-Irish, non-smiling eyes, there is much to dislike. The big golden dome which dominates South Bend, Indiana, the bizarre Touchdown Jesus which presides over the pitch, the prancing leprechauns, the history fat with success, the incredible hubris, the existence of its own TV network in a $9 million per year deal with NBC, the legend of Knute Rockne and the whole business of winning one for the Gipper.

What a surprise it is then to find that there are godless heathens out there who root against Notre Dame the way one might root against disease, pestilence or Britney Spears.

Notre Dame had a bad week last week. It capped off a bad season. Great and merry was the rejoicing among those who will spend eternity fighting off the fires of hell when Notre Dame got rapped for allowing the amateur purity of student athletes to be defiled.

Something about Notre Dame's well-advertised spiritual cleanliness has always got up the noses of otherwise decent people. So raucous and long was the pagan festival last week when Notre Dame went down. Notre Shame! said the papers. Agony of the Tarnished Dome! If Dana was caught romping in the sack with Brendan McGahon the sniggering couldn't have been louder.

First thing to understand is that the NCAA, which runs college sports in America, set commendably high standards for the preservation of the pure amateur status of student athletes.

Second thing to note is that with so much money floating about college athletics, so many TV deals, so many putative pro deals, well, these rules are better celebrated more for the breach than the observance.

Notre Dame, however, has not only made a conspicuous point of being holier than thou, but likes to wear snow-white gloves which it holds up to show the world that the college is without sin or stain in this regard. Something about this sanctimony sticks in people's craws.

The misdemeanours involved here have a film script air to them. You could play it as a romp, you could play it as a tragedy, you could treat it like a romance.

A now convicted embezzler called Kimberly Dunbar took up with a player, Derrick Mayes, some six years ago and she would come to be part of the golden firmament of Notre Dame hangers on, romancing Mayes and eventually some other players, becoming friendly with more and more stars, favouring them with holiday trips, practical favours and lavish gifts.

For a dizzy period of time in the mid-1990s Kimberly Dunbar bought her way into the swirl of big time sports. Actually, better still, she allowed her unwitting employers to buy her way into it.

The evidence is colourful. Dunbar kept a diary in which she recorded in sometimes breathless tones the adventure of it all. "Got him camcorder." "Went to Six Flags." "Said he could commit."

Credit card bills make for equally light reading. First class tickets to Vegas. Restaurant receipts that would make Charlie and Terry query the bill.

She siphoned off $1.2 million from the heating company she worked for to pay for her largesse. Still only 30, Dunbar has done a year in Indiana state prison for her troubles, is on probation to 2014 and has been ordered to pay back the cash as best she can. She has a child now with one former player, Jarvis Edison.

Dunbar has fared the worst of the parties. She seems genuinely to have been acting out of pronounced emotional needs and used the cash to buy herself some esteem and popularity.

Notre Dame hasn't done too badly by comparison. After a losing season on the football field - a rarity in Notre Dame history anyway, but a losing season pockmarked by unforgivable mediocrity - the final embarrassment has been the disclosure and an official rebuke involving a two-year probation and the loss of a scholarship for each of those two seasons.

It is expected that by the end of the year lawyers for Dominiack Mechanical, the heating company which employed Dunbar, will have named up to 15 former Notre Dame players as having been the recipients of largesse paid for with the company funds. The company is taking a civil suit for recovery of the money involved.

The whiff of sex and scandal around the golden dome of Notre Dame has been a Christmas bonus for so many people and has brought Dominiack Mechanical so much publicity that they could sell executive boxes and season tickets for that one when it comes around.

For the rest of us godfearing folk, Leeds beating Chelsea yesterday is enough to copperfasten this season of goodwill.