“If tomorrow you told me, you just can’t do what you want to do in athletics and you’re going to have to shut it down, and we would have club sports, something like that — I don’t think it would significantly impact the revenue,” Father Jenkins says. Some alumni and donors might revolt, he acknowledges. “But just in terms of a financial proposition, I don’t think it would impact the academy.”

Hmmm.

“You made the ‘Hmmm’ there,” he says, detecting the doubt prompted by recollections of, say, Alabama-Birmingham trying to shut down its football program, only to have outraged supporters swiftly revive it. Isn’t talk of such a move at Notre Dame more a theoretical exercise than a practical consideration? An existential matter only, to be debated by scholars over a couple of Father Hesburgh Manhattans?

Father Jenkins’s tone faintly suggests: Try me. “Would someone who was going to give a gift to Notre Dame for a chair in philosophy or physics not give it if we did without football?” he asks. “I don’t think so.”

Having said all this, the president says he embraces what athletics — what football — does for the Notre Dame community. “It brings people back to the university,” he says. “It gives them a visible bond. They feel, week to week, a connection to the university. And that does interest them in the academy, in education, in student life.

“That is real.”

The walk through the woods concludes, and the president of Notre Dame returns to his office under the golden dome. He has many things on his mind. A coming visit by Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court. A state-of-the-university speech that needs to be written. And the season’s first home football game, against Texas.

A few days later, a national television audience and 80,795 fans in sold-out Notre Dame Stadium, including Father Jenkins, would watch Notre Dame’s quarterback throw for three touchdowns in leading the Fighting Irish to a 38-3 victory over the Longhorns.

The name of the young man at quarterback is Malik Zaire, and he wears Notre Dame jersey No. 8 — available for sale in the bookstore.