Even for those who don't care about football, Notre Dame, with quadrangles of emerald green bordered by Gothic style buildings and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart with its 230 foot spire topped with a cross and the largest collection of 19th-century French stained glass in the world, beckons as a place to explore.

Known for its Golden Dome, dominating the landscape for miles around, the university was founded in 1842 as a school for young men by Father Edward Sorin. It wouldn’t go co-ed until 130 years later.

But its aura comes not from the fact that the university is one of the top-rated national Catholic research institutions in the country but instead because of the mystique of its football program, memorialized in movies such as Knute Rockne "All American" and "Rudy.

But there is more that adds to the myth such as Rockne's "Win One for the Gipper" speech to the Notre Dame players at halftime of the 1928 helped win the game against Army even though it’s debatable whether George Gipp really uttered those words on his death bed. But the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame were real before riding into the legend.