Happy St. Patrick's Day. We're going to hear from a leprechaun now.
Traynor Jennings III lives in Memphis. His grandfather and father are both graduates of Notre Dame, and Traynor is a devout fan of all things Notre Dame. When Arkansas hosted Notre Dame for a first-ever football game between the two schools last fall, Traynor and his wife came to Fayetteville. Notre Dame's teams are known as the Irish, the Fighting Irish — and Traynor, all 5 feet 11 inches of him, dresses up as a leprechaun to support the team. That bit of knowledge sets the stage for Traynor's visit to Fayetteville last year:
Jennings: I'm dressed as a leprechaun. I could have been booed out of where they tailgate. I could have been booed out of the stadium. We had people coming up to us inviting us into their tailgate, whatever we wanted — food, drink. We were taking photos, and then I was being recruited by other people at other tailgates to come to their tailgate and do the same thing all over. I've never in my life felt more welcome than that day in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with the people around us. I was telling my wife, "Man, this might be a place we might want to move one day."
Kellams: You mentioned you were dressed as a leprechaun when you were in Fayetteville. Is that something that you do at other games?
Jennings: So this goes back to 2022. I had on the green hat. I got on TV and someone posted a side-by-side with the leprechaun sketch from Alabama — yeah, 2006. And then it just took off. Three years later, I'm sitting there in New Orleans and I'm at the Sugar Bowl. They have a lot of costume shops, and I'm like, why not see if they have a leprechaun suit? I've already been told I was the leprechaun, so why not? I did, and I found a suit — it had sequins and a bow tie. I actually went to the Sugar Bowl, got on TV again. I saw the superintendent of police, got a photo with her. That photo is hanging on the wall in a frame in the New Orleans police station.
Kellams: So you've come from Memphis, you've come to Arkansas this past fall for the first-ever meeting between the Razorbacks and the Fighting Irish. Tell me about how that starts.
Jennings: I don't really remember the hotel that we checked into, but it was like two miles from the stadium. So I call an Uber. Uber picks us up. I'm dressed as a leprechaun, and my wife and I get in the back seat. We come up to a roadblock and the deputy sheriff is like, Stop, sir, you don't have a parking pass, you're not getting through. The Uber driver said, Sir, I have the leprechaun in the back seat. At the end of the day, he was telling the truth. I was not the school mascot — I never said I was — but he said he had the leprechaun in the back seat. He did. And he rolls down my window. The deputy sheriff and I make eye contact. I waved, and the deputy sheriff said, Go ahead. So we go through the roadblock and he ends up dropping us off at the stadium. Where he dropped us off, there was a lady named Miss Bobbye. I could be wrong on her age — I think she's like 84. She looks 70, but I think she's in her 80s. She was the first person on the way to the game that asked me for a photo. I got a photo with her, and I found out who she was. I actually signed it, put it in a frame and sent it to her. I wrote a really nice note with it. She does security for a lot of Arkansas games.
Kellams: Let's go back to this Uber driver for a minute. You didn't know he was going to try to go through, did you?
Jennings: I had no idea. I already told him, Look, man, we got on tennis shoes, I'm ready to walk. I can walk, it's no problem. I did not think we were going to get past the roadblock in an Uber.
Kellams: You talked to Miss Bobbye, you get the photo. What's it like going into the stadium?
Jennings: On the way in, I probably took 150 photos. They were like lining up in the tailgate area, and on the way to the game people were still asking me for photos. I'm telling my wife, we have to walk away from the stadium — that's where all the people are, we're never going to get to the stadium at this point. There's still to this day one guy that I told I couldn't get a photo with because I didn't have time, and I still feel bad. He was the only person I rejected that whole day. We had to get to our seats.
Kellams: Well, Traynor, thank you so much for your time. If I'm in South Bend in 2028, I'm going to look you up. We'll do another interview on site.
Traynor Jennings III is often a leprechaun at Notre Dame sporting events and St. Patrick's Day parades. Learn more about him at irishtrain.net.
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