"Foe"Rensics: Notre Dame

Hello. As members of the greatest fanbase in college football, it is incumbent upon on Hokies to learn as much as possible about their opponents as to pity them more effectively for all their shortcomings and grudgingly admire their attempts to emulate Virginia Tech's great program. Thus I have embarked upon this long journey of discovery, by which I mean I discovered that the journey through Wikipedia and my imagination is the most accurate way to research all of these opponents. This week, "Foe"Rensics and Virginia Tech football travel somewhere they've never traveled before: Indiana.

Aaaaah, the midwest. Where they have tons of snow and cold and no mountains to snowboard on.

1. Well, actually, the Hokies played Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana last year. You wrote about it.

A. Well, yes, they went to West Lafayette last year, but I'm specifically talking about SOUTH BEND, Indiana. And if you think being a little "Well ACTUALLY" fact checking nerd is earning you any friends, think again.

2. WELL ACTUALLY, it's technically Notre Dame, Indiana, and if you think condescending to one of the three people that actually read these things is earning you—

A. MOVING ON. Yes, Tech is traveling for the first time to SOUTH BEND, Indiana, home of the Fighting Irish of the University of Notre Dame du Lac.

Hahaha, just kidding, if this is what Notre Dame football looked like, they'd be able to win more than four games.

3. Wait, du Lac? How have I never heard that before?

A. It's true¹! Even better, it was originally founded as L'Université de Notre Dame du Lac by a Frenchman. What many do not realize is that Notre Dame is a "Just the Tip" member of the ACC, not because they are scared of commitment, but because LOLUVA has blocked their full entry, which would strip the Hoos of the title of Frenchiest ACC team. In order to compensate, they'd have to serve only escargot in the dining halls, which would utterly decimate the global snail population.

Anyway, the reason they have the du Lac on the end of their name is because there is, interestingly enough, a lake nearby; Saint Joseph's Lake. Long story short, Rev. Edward Sorin had come to Indiana from France on a mission to, I dunno, save Indiana's soul from being cold and boring? The Bishop was fishing in said lake at dusk, when he noticed a disturbance on the other side of the lake. Turns out, a member of the nearby women's college was, ahem, taking a late swim au naturel and Rev. Sorin, having taken a bit too much of the sacramental wine before venturing out to the lake, became convinced that she was the Lady of the Lake. As in, the one who brought Excalibur to King Arthur².

4. Wait...King Arthur lived in BRITAIN, didn't he?

A. Correct! I will say that things like "history" and "geography" were not big points of emphasis for the good Reverend. Along those lines, Sorin decided that he HAD to get Excalibur, and the only way to do that was to assemble a group of knights, pretend they were Irish³ from Camelot and go on quests for stuff. NATURALLY, since wearing swords and armor around the Midwest was a bit faux pas at the time, they decided to dress up as the closest thing to a traveling knight in a suit of armor, a football player.

They went on quests to slay mythical beasts such as Wolverines, battled pagan warriors from Troy and Sparta, attempted to cut down an enormous hideous Tree/Cardinal hybrid thingy, and even fought cruel and evil Black Knights. Turns out they were pretty good at this football thing, actually! So good, in fact, that all these other teams that they were unchivalrously spanking got pissed and demanded that the NCAA refused permission to let them play anymore because they weren't actually a school, just a bunch of drunk, bored midwesterners.

Well, Sorin got upset something fierce, and was still obsessed with getting Excalibur out of the lake, so he founded an etiquette school to flout the rules, the closest thing he could get to a chivalry school. It worked! Midwesterners are known as the most polite people in the country, and Sorin got to continue his football quests.

5. Huh. So...did they ever get Excalibur?

A. Well, remember when I said that Sorin wasn't so bright? Eventually, one foe, the Trojans of USC, said they'd FOUND Excalibur and would play Notre Dame every year for the right to possess it. Sorin bit immediately, not realizing that USC was playing a huge joke on him, and what he THOUGHT was a Bedazzled Shillelagh⁴ was actually a giant dildo with those jangly tambourine things glued to it.

I have never seen anything like that used in a video on the internet. Ever.

6. So they football well, then?

A. Well, if you lived through the time when Ronald Reagan was an actor and not a politician, you may think so, particularly if you went into a coma sometime after the time he moved into the Governor's mansion in Sacramento⁵.

Speaking of which, Reagan portrayed a very famous Notre Dame player, George "The Gipper" Gipp, in a movie back when Notre Dame was actually good at football. The funny thing is, the movie was set even FURTHER back in a time when Notre Dame was actually GREAT at football. In fact, that time was so long ago that Gipp died of STREP THROAT. So the short answer to your question is, Notre Dame used to be the bee's knees at football, back when they said things like "the bee's knees" and when people died of STREP THROAT, something you probably had two or three times in middle school and the worst you ever got was laying in bed watching Wings and eating pudding all day.

7. So...they're not good anymore?

A. Nope! Notre Dame has ridden those national championships they won back before the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system was invented to continued fame and enrichment in an age of their own mediocrity. Oh, they made it to the National Championship at the end of the 2012 season, where they got shellacked by Bama 42-14. And yes, they beat No. 23 LSU in the Music City Bowl in 2014. But when's the last time they beat a real team in a bowl game? That'd be No. 6 Texas A&M in 1994 when Lou Holtz, that annoying old guy on ESPN, was still their coach. Since then, they've gotten spanked by every decent team they've played in a bowl. Which brings us, conveniently, to my next point.

Much like many of you, I have actual game experiences that have fed my pity, annoyance, dislike, and hatred of LOLUVA, Georgia Tech, Miami, and WVU, respectively. And even though Virginia Tech's never played them, I HATE Notre Dame. And why is that? The 2001 Fiesta Bowl. The Hokies were 10-1, their only loss to an eventual 11-1 Miami team that got jobbed out the national championship game, and Tech was in the second, and final, season of the glorious Michael Vick years. Ranked No. 5 at the time, the Hokies were a LOCK to get an at-large bid to a BCS bowl game, right? NOPE. In swoops Notre Dame, their legions of boring, midwestern Rudy wannabe fans ready to buy tickets to ANY bowl game and the history and nostalgia and oh my god I'm going to hurl.

So Notre Dame basically rode the Gipper's fatal tonsils to an invite to the Fiesta Bowl where Oregon State promptly curb stomped them into oblivion, 41-9. It's actually painful to watch highlights, it's like watching Mike Tyson boxing a drunk Golden Girl. And did we all learn our lesson, that picking Notre Dame for a BCS bowl is like casting the post-apocalyptic-plastic-surgery Meg Ryan as the lead in your Hollywood blockbuster? NOPE. The Domers have gone to FOUR MORE BCS bowls since then and gotten pasted in ALL of them by an average of more than three touchdowns.

To sum up; Notre Dame embodies the WORST of all of Virginia Tech's rivals. They are forever BAK like Miami, only their glory days came during the Louis Armstrong era, not the N.W.A. era. They are ENTITLED to and obnoxious about their special treatment because of their HISTORY, much like the LOLUVA folks who won't shut the hell up about Jefferson. They come from a place that you would NEVER want to go to, much like Morgantown. And they play boring football with an annoying coach... although no games are less fun to watch than Georgia Tech and no coach so terrible as Paul Johnson. I'm sorry, that's a bridge too far.

This is your fault you...oddly lumpy...guy. Sorry you died of strep throat.

8. So...they're bad now?

A. Let's say they are perennially overinflated. And they are 💩 again this year, having lost to bad Texas, Stanford and Michigan State teams, as well as Duke, NC State and Navy, meaning they'd have to beat Virginia Tech and THEN beat USC for the Sparkle-Brite Tamborildo in order to sneak into what I'm sure would be a BCS Bowl.

9. I'm sensing some hostility. Let's move on. What about a coach? Did they ever replace Holtz?

A. Many times! Right now, Brian Kelly is in charge, who you may remember from the one Orange Bowl Hokies don't block from their memory — the 2009 season when the Hokies beat Cincinnati! So the good news is he has experience losing to Tech!

10. Do they have any Fullers?

A. Thankfully, due to declaring for the draft early, William VINCENT Fuller is now being paid to play football in Houston instead of preparing to line up against Tech's Fuller-less squad. CRISIS AVERTED.

11. What about the rest of the roster?

A. For starters, there's Daniel Cage, who I can only assume was named by parents who loved Power Man and Iron Fist, so respect. The only things that we should actually be concerned about is the fact that they are aware of our secret, and have no less than TWO sets of brothers on their roster; Jamir and Jarron Jones as well as TWINS Austin and Bailey Ross. Have the Hokies ever had twins on the roster? Because that would be awesome. Oh my god, imagine if one of the Fullers has FULLER TWINS. Luckily, this is all offset by the fact that they've got Ron Powlus as the Director of Player Development, which explains why they are 4-6.

12. Any interesting alumni?

A. Highlights include Norm from Cheers, Regis Philbin, spiky haired celebrity brat Jimmy Clausen and Adolfo Calero, who led the Nicaraguan Contras, the counter-revolutionary force secretly funded by the Gipper in the 80s. So...no.

13. Any noteworthy football related traditions?

A. Well, they put ACTUAL GOLD in their helmet paint, which sparkles enough to distract people from the fact that they are sitting outside in frozen Indiana for three-plus hours on a Saturday afternoon, I guess. They built a statue of Jesus allegedly scoring a go-ahead touchdown over Michigan in the 28 A.D. Jerusalem Bowl. A fact that many biblical historians dispute, and there is no YouTube footage of, an ESPN box score, or NCAA records pertaining to. They had a movie made about a former player who was fined almost $400k for SEC violations, starring Samwise Gamgee, which was actually good if you forget it's about Notre Dame. They named themselves after a church in France.

This is Notre Dame's stadium, the "cathedral" of college football, allegedly.

14. Do they have rivalries?

A. With NAVY. And Army. And Michigan. And Michigan State. And Stanford. And USC. And Boston College. And Pitt. And Purdue. And...look, it doesn't count if you just call EVERYONE your rival, okay? Pick two, max. And don't pick NAVY, dear lord, it's been even longer since they've been any good.

15. Do they have food in Notre Dame?

A. Yes! Continuing our experimental restaurant reviews, I decided to pick the WORST reviewed restaurant in South Bend, Brother's Bar & Grill, and oooooooh the reviewers did not let me down. Our first review comes from Keshava Mysore, which is definitely a made up name about an STD:

a nice place for some cold beer and good taps.....I love their fried cheese curds.

So, I've ate cheese curds. What I had was essentially the nugget version of mozzarella sticks. Why don't you just call them that? Because cheese curds sounds disgusting. A more interesting take came from Jose Mariscal, whose comment seems ludicrous IF it wasn't echoed by MANY other reviewers AND confirmed by an owner response:

They dont allow people with tattoos WTF

16. Do they barbecue in Notre Dame?

A. Probably, but let's be honest. You ain't gonna wanna eat it. I'd like to take this space to instead make a confession and a sort-of apology, though I don't actually apologize because that's WEAK and for LOSERS. I was in Austin, TX last week, and during that time ventured down to Lockhart, home to very famous barbecue joints. And before you ask, no, I did not go to Franklin's, because I ain't got time to wait hours for anything. While Smitty's was closed by the time I passed through, Black's Barbecue was open and jumping, and I decided if it was going to be good anywhere, brisket would be good here. So I'd like to share this review, from T.F. Fuller:

As someone raised on North Carolina barbecue, I never saw the point of beef barbecue. I never ate brisket that could stand up to good pulled pork in a tangy vinegar sauce. Until last week. And I must admit, my mind has been changed. In the hands of a skilled master, brisket can melt in your mouth while firing explosive rounds of taste in every direction. If anyone had given me brisket like this in my more than three decades on this earth, I would not have spent that time badmouthing brisket. Bad brisket is bad and more pervasive than you or I could imagine. But there are good ones out there. So I apologize on behalf of all the terrible pit masters who have ever given me brisket before, it is entirely their fault for being incompetent that I have said what I said.

Might I add to this tremendously well written and inspiring review, the sausage was dry, so don't everyone go abandoning North Carolina yet. And because I can't resist, because there's one of these donkeys every time, let's hear what David Mills had to say:

This place is over rated. Turkey was dried out.

Again. You went to a place famed for their brisket and ordered turkey. You have failed at life.

17. How are the FAINTs looking?

A. Jerod Evans has only thrown FOUR interceptions all year! He is taking the Michael Brewer "FAINTs are a flat circle" approach and turning it on its HEAD. Problem is, he threw half of those last week and goddammit, every time I'm in Texas or Oklahoma and the Hokies play Georgia Tech, they lose. THIS WAS MY FAULT. The good news is that DBU has picked up 10 INTs and the Hokies stand at -6 on the year, so great job, everybody!

18. What should we watch for on this Saturday?

A. I'm watching for:

• I hope everyone has that GIF of Charles Dutton slow clapping from Rudy ready to tweet for every touchdown the Hokies score
• Someone to pull off the Brad Cornelsen mask off and reveal (GASP!) Bryan Stinespring underneath!
• Mook. You're needed, man. Please score the points as the offense seems unable to.
• Dragon. Juice. Anyone. Please go buckwild to take some heat off of Jerod.

For those traveling to Notre Dame, give Touchdown Jesus a high five from me and show those Domers how real fans travel.

¹It's true!
²And if you were wondering, King Arthur, the greatest leader the British Isles has ever known, was Welsh.
³I told you, Sorin was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Also, he drank a lot. And sucked at geography. And history. And not being French.
⁴Irish for "butt whoopin stick", which to Sorin, was the same thing as an enchanted sword.
⁵SPOILER ALERT: He later became president. Of the United States. Of America.