We all love lists. They’re convenient, focused and authoritative; nothing says “Hah! I have more time, resources, inclination and less of a life than you, and to prove it I’ve constructed this numerically heirarched bullet pointed talking point sheet to indicate such” than a list. We also all love hating Notre Dame. Thus concludes the obligatorily obvious introduction which causes you to wonder why you put down $65.99 worth of plastic for a regurgitated fifth edition textbook that only has two grammar changes and a reorganized index to justify the new iteration.
And how.
Luckily for you all this blog is still wondrously free until I figure out how to scan your fingerprints and sell them to the NSA. Until that day, I am going to continue to produce scathingly obvious shit at a momentous rate. Maybe not as obvious as the following…
… but pretty damn obvious. In honor of it being USC-ND week, I present 50 reasons why you should be rootin’ for a Notre Dame loss on Nov. 25. Note that I’m not idiotic enough to persuade anyone to pull for USC: I’ve been a USC fan for a while and I’m not even sure if I like USC fans all that much. I also realize many of you might be pulling for a localized thunderquake/firestorm/Galactus tube strike to hit the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday. Too fuckin’ bad. There’s no such thing as a thunderquake, I’ve talked to my military contacts and they haven’t reported any Dresden-like incendiary carpet bombings about to take place, and I just renewed my Costco membership specifically to stock up on Ultimate Nullifiers.
This and a ten gallon barrel of ketchup will save your local planetoid from utter destruction.
So, on with the list.
*****
50. Your son or daughter could get cut on Jeff Samardzija‘s face.
Angular? Sharp? Reticulated…? Wait, what does ‘reticulated’ mean? It has something to do with giraffes, right? Right? Ohmygod. Where’s little Bobby? BOBBY? Ohmygod.
49. The Fighting Irish have averaged an impressive 33.2 points per game, but they’ve also averaged an ungainly 4.3 Al Qaeda operatives trained per week.
48. The school’s name is continuously mispronounced NO-der DAYmh when the original French pronunciation of UNC-tu-ous BAS-tion of un-EARNED ARR-o-gance is preferred by both linguists and architects.
47. After the North Dakota Fighting Sioux famously sued the NCAA in defense of its nickname, the Fighting Irish decided to sue USC for not being a military academy.
46. This man.
Spit guard, we hardly knew ye.
45. An anagram of Notre Dame is Rote Damen, which is German for “red ladies”. This was one of the codewords used by South Bend Nazi sympathizers in their quest to supply the SS with information regarding Allied nylon production during the Second World War.
44. Pop singer Michael Bolton is a Fighting Irish supporter.
“There was nothing wrong with my name… until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent assclown became famous and started liking those no-talent assclowns.”
43. Tom Lemming is rooting for Notre Dame. While no one should ever be penalized for bagging on Florida State, Lemming is a douche whose douche-ness exceeds your average Seminole brouhaha by several magnitudes. His inclusion automatically brokers Bizarro Superman behavior from the rest of us: whatever Lemming likes, you should dislike. Lemming likes Notre Dame. Dame Notre you not not not like.
42. Fighting Irish cupcakes call for Splenda, and no one likes Splenda. Or the Fighting Irish.
41. Rhema McKnight hugs little childern inappropriately.
40. Tom Zbikowski eats little children inappropriately.
39. Darius Walker can’t outrun little children even with an inappropriate head start.
38. Joe Theisman allowed his name to be rhymed with Heisman instead of its usual pronunciation of THEEZ-man as a shameless promotional gimmick for the 1970 stiff-armed statue race, which he promptly lost. He has retained said pronunciation. Also, he is a voracious cannibal.
37. Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White refuses to pleasure his wife.
36. Recent archaeological findings indicate the Golden Dome is actually a gateway to the Infernal City of Dis.
35. If you multiply the square root of Brady Quinn‘s passing yardage by the average length of Notre Dame Stadium’s grass and then divide by x, x being any number greater than the actual number of tolerable Irish fans, you get 26. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Using three of those letters once and one of those letters twice you can spell S-A-T-A-N. Think about it.
34. Taking this math thing further, if you cube the number of national championships Notre Dame claims and divide by the number of Fighting Irish Heisman Trophy winners not-named-Tim-Brown who don’t suck, you get ERRO. That’s because you can’t divide by zero. And your thumb is on your calculator’s solar panel.
33. One last ‘rithmetic: Charlie Weis is fat. 2+2=4. These are the two mathematical truths with which Socrates could have reconstructed the entire universe.
32. Jimmy Clausen is gonna be a Domer.
There is a Division XI in college football, Jimmy. They’re called the service academies. Unfortunately you don’t get a ring for beating them, you just get your ass kicked when you play someone with a pulse. Nice hair, by the way.
31. Former Zairean – now the Democratic Republic of the Congo – strongman Mobutu Sese Seko wore a customized green jersey during Notre Dame’s 28-35 loss to Georgia Tech in the 1999 Gator Bowl. Unbeknownst to the then President of Zaire, his name change from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (“The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake only to cheer for a team that can’t win its bowl game”) would presage many years of postseason disappointment for the Irish.
30. Zombie Ron Powlus is comin’ back from beyond the football grave to claim his long overdue three Heismans.
Remember: ward off zombie Ron Powluses with crowbars and Beano Cook pictures.
29. Touchdown Jesus is kitsch, yeah, but maybe a little bit too kitsch.
28. John Basedow has a Brady Quinn poster.
Brosephs forever, man.
27. John Basedow’s Brady Quinn poster makes you uncomfortable for reasons you’d don’t want to explain.
26. Ted Kaczynski’s favorite movie is Rudy. His favorite color is gold. His favorite play is Trips Right 82 Media Whore.
25. Charlie Weis claims he invented the calculus before Leibniz and Newton, and he’s got the Super Bowl rings to prove it. 
He’d show you his bling, but this particular ring was emulsified by finger fat back in April.
24. Victor Abiamiri can’t seem to choose between Crate and Barrel’s charcoal Simone daybed or the Pottery Barn’s Greenwich sofa with the dual ottomans, but he does know it’s time to update his holiday centerpieces.
23. Chinedum Ndukwe is a registered Scientologist and he’d like to know if any preclears would like their E-meter readings, because you never know when Xenu might be around.
Ndukwe knows science when he sees it.
22. Derek Landri hates America.
21. Terrail Lambert has denigrated novelist Kurt Vonnegut in multiple literary journals and reviews, paying particular attention to the author’s highly personal account of his sister in the widely panned Slapstick (1976) and dismissing Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions (1973) and Timequake (1997) as “churlish solipism” and “narcissistic misogyny” while completely glossing over the highly regarded Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Cat’s Cradle (1963). He went so far as to describe Vonnegut’s short fiction, correspondence and speech collection Welcome to the Monkey House and Palm Sunday as “gaseous self-importance and sophistry masked as everyman wisdom” and wrote that Vonnegut “believes writing is an exercise in blatant and unregarded stupidity, mistaking simplicity for profundity.” After Lambert’s Winter 2005 anti-Vonnegut invective in the American Quarterly Review many have called for a public apology; Lambert has thus far refused.
20. Sam Young came up with Jean Grey‘s codename.
19. Jerry Bruckheimer is rumored to be producing a joint Uwe Boll/Michael Bay film starring the Wayans brothers. The project is tentatively titled “We Are Notre Dame” and is centered around America’s most famous football program’s national championship winning 2005 season: its trials, its tribulations, its NBC live feed problems. Tara Reid will co-star.
18. The Grotto was recently exposed as a front for a chunky wife swap ring spanning three continents sponsored by the Catholic Church and Dinty Moore.
17. Mounting evidence points to Notre Dame’s Four Horsemen not being Famine, Pestilience, War and Death but, rather, Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden. Also, the four were not destined to appear as heralds of the end times but were instead seen as emblems of a time when now antiquated powerhouses could collect national championships using a backfield called the Four Horsemen, none of whom weighed more than 162 pounds and all of whom connotated boiling cabbage more than they evoked Armageddon.
Emblems of leather helmeted revelance and the power of a persuasive press: feel the apocalyptic burn.
16. The Notre Dame subway alumni – infamous for ignorance, obnoxiousness and the fickle nature of their loyalty and the origin of their fandom – do not have cellular walls.
15. Fighting Irish telecasts contain trans-fats, carbs, coconut oil, egg yolk, aspartame, MSG, nicotine and asbestos, and are transmitted directly into your child’s pineal gland.
14. Because the Irish refuse to join the Big Ten we are all denied a chance to see what that conference would do with twelve members. Stay Big Ten? Dare the wrath of the already existing Big XII by going to Big Twelve? Shortening to the simple but effective Big? Eschewing needless trappings and naming self what we all knew ought to be the name to have begun with: It’s Cold and We Like Booze and Oblong Pig Bladders? Sadly, we’ll never know.
13. The Notre Dame athletic department can be directly linked to the downfall of each of the following American institutions: marriage, Hungry Hungry Hippos, talking with your family at dinner, wholesomeness, NBC, loyalty amongst dogs, and The Simpsons.
N’Sync? The Simpsons? Thank you, Fighting Irish. Thanks a fucking lot.
12. Chris Frome doesn’t let his steaks rest after cooking.
11. Bob Morton uses button mushrooms, iceberg lettuce, yellow mustard, Morton’s iodized salt and velveeta cheese.
10. Ryan Harris once pooped in an elevator and told no one, allowing Walter Treverson of Terre Haute to be blamed by several young women visiting from Decatur, Illinois.
9. Mike Richardson is a direct descendant of Ephialtes of Trachis, betrayer of the Spartan king Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae.
8. Jeff Samardzija used to totally zergling rush even when “NO RUSH!!!1” was explicitly stated.
d0od jef so nt kewl!
7. Tom Zbikowski believes not only in Cuts, but in Butts as well as Coconuts.
6. Brady Quinn does not refill the office coffee pot when he’s the one to finish it off. Also, he’s a serial killer.
5. Notre Dame – the Yankees of college football – owns a 13-14 record in bowls and during several of ND’s national championship years the Irish did not participate in a postseason game. The Golden Domers, however, are the proud owners of a 69-9-1 record against the Navy Midshipmen whom they profess to play out of respect after the service academies scheduled the Irish during their lean years. This is not made up.
4. Ara Parseghian introduced Yoko Ono to John Lennon in 1966.
Don’t worry your silly little head, Ara: it’s not like the Beatles were that good anyway.
3. The Associated Press recently broke a story centered around a leaked ESPN memo in which the Bristol, Conn. based media syndicate stressed world domination through the will-destroying repetition of the following cliched headlines: Luck o’ the Irish, Weis Guys, Waking Up the Echoes, The Mighty Quinn, Golden Era, Charlie and the Touchdown Factory, etc.
2. The Fighting Irish totally meant to call you but, like, lost your number.
1. Notre Dame sucks.
82 Sluggo Win 