(Written Saturday Afternoon)
Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football…should that even be considered a proper noun anymore? I just don’t know how much longer I can take this. Every single year I get drawn in by a new quarterback, a new coach, or a “you know, we really didn’t look THAT bad in that BCS bowl game we lost last year.” – the same bowl game(s) we had absolutely no business being in. As I write this, the Notre Dame players are most likely getting cleaned up in the locker room after a filthy 28-27 loss to Tulsa. To quote a former college roommate of mine, “Tulsa is so bad we used to simulate playing them in NCAA on my PS2.” That we did, Tony. That we did. As I stare at the ESPN Gamecast screen, I also can’t help but notice that the Duke Blue Devil football team, arguably one of the biggest jokes in all of collegiate sports, is beating Navy 34-23. Thanks, Duke, you gutted me last spring when you knocked the Boilers out of the NCAA Tournament, now you are just pouring salt in the wound by showing even you can beat the Navy Midshipmen.
However, despite all the negativity that has surrounded the program throughout the Davie era, Willingham era, Weis era, and now Kelly era, I am not giving up hope. I think I may have a solution that will bring Notre Dame back to the prominence it once enjoyed. That solution you ask? Cheat – simple as that. How do you think I ended up with a B in calculus my junior year of high school? Through studying and going to morning study sessions? Absolutely not. I stole the answers to the midterm and final exams with two of my friends by breaking into Ms. Lucheon’s classroom while she was at lunch. What about that A on my AP History midterm? Stole the test and made copies at Matt Ingersol’s house and then snuck the copy back into the classroom without Mr. Elfner knowing. Did I end up dropping out of Purdue 7 or 8 years later? Sure I did. However, I graduated in the top 10% of my high school class and that ride at Purdue was amazing. Those extra years even helped me meet my wife. Plus, I’m back on track and will finish my degree this spring.
It has come to this, Swarbrick, Jenkins, and Kelly…you have no other choice but to make this happen. Start dropping off Lexus cars, bags of money, and John Deere tractors for recruits and their families like Western U did in Blue Chips. Start having morally questionable girls from St. Mary’s do “recruiting jobs” (see Jesus Shuttlesworth and his recruiting trip in He Got Game) instead of the finely tuned female morality machines roaming your own campus. I am sure myself and all the other Notre Dame faithful would gladly be on probation for a few years and a couple scholarships short for a while to enjoy the fruits of a BCS National Championship. The good news is that when the heat finally does come down, you can all jump ship and sign a contract to coach the Seahawks and/or date a girl with an ass the size of a drive-in movie theatre that made a sex tape with the less famous rapper brother of a hardly famous RB singer. Everybody wins…except for the Irish on Saturdays until you start taking my advice.
669 Mayfield Place 
You stole a test from a teacher named Ms. Luncheon while she was at lunch? Well if that’s not ironic I don’t know what is.
Coming to you from a lonely toilet in Denver, CO; I think I can see where the ND run defense has gone… I’m also about to send my hopes for the rest of the season on their merry way.
I wonder how that volleyball team is doing??
Agreed Joey. Part of the reason we even won the National Championship in ’88 was because we allowed “academically challenged” high school students like Tony Rice and Chris Zorich into the school. You think if they were Joe Schmo’s walking down the street the D-1 standard for academic excellence would have let them in? Not a chance. I’m not going to give up hope either brother, but those days are over. Not only do we have to try to convince Johnny Blue Chip from Texas to play corner in South Bend, IN, where the winters are freezing cold, but he is also going to be required to hold a higher GPA than he would at Alabama or Florida. Oh and by the way, Notre Dame is one of the most difficult non-Ivy League schools in America. Awesome. I guess we just tell ourselves the same thing we have the past fifteen years, “we have to give this guy 3 or 4 years so we can see what he does with his own players”. I just hope its not too late, considering the kids they are recruiting today weren’t even born when the Irish last one a National Championship.
Sorry to blog within your blog Joey, but it felt good to get that off my chest.
Nice post, Joe, and fantastic follow-up from Tony Tree. The thing is that Chris Zorich turned out to be a lawyer due to the ND education and Rice is a great businessman. All of that can be traced back to the help they received at ND – isn’t there a way we can take a chance on some borderline guys and not lose our academic reputation? I fully believe the only reason Lou is not there anymore is because he told the administration ND couldn’t win without a few borderline cases here and there. We’re never going to get over the weather thing or the fact that guys go to Florida for a weekend visit and it’s like a scene involving Jesus Shuttlesworth while guys come to ND for a weekend and Grant Irons takes them to a high school basketball game on Friday night (true story). There must be a way to do it though – Stanford is having a revival period in football and Duke just won the national championship in basketball and they’re both ranked higher academically than ND.
You forgot to add buying someone’s mom a house to the list. Just throwing that out there. But anyway, I totally agree! I would take probation and a BCS Championship over the let downs this by the book ND team has produced over the last decade.