A Flagon of Ale and Forgetfulness, Please

I know everybody loves sports posts and because there are just so few blogs out there in cyberspace dedicated to sports, I thought I'd do a quick little one here on a Saturday. I mean, seriously...no one has an opinion or seven million on sports in this country?

Anyway, this little gem comes from The House Rock Built, which is a Notre Dame football blog. It's appropriate for today, since today is the day Notre Dame and Navy square off in their annual tilt. So, enjoy the video.

Delete the Wikipedia page...

There's a bunch more over at The House Rock Built. If you're a Notre Dame fan, you'll appreciate them all. If you're not, I'd still recommend the video from the week after ND lost to USC, mostly because we've all been sad clowns and tried to forget our misery via mini candy bars before. Plus, the music on the video is R.E.M.

And, since it's Navy weekend, that usually means that stupid ass college football fans start bitching about how Notre Dame is scheduling weak service academy teams in order to pad their BCS resume. Most of these dipshits are ACC fans, so they wouldn't know a football team if it slapped them in the face. First of all, how is this different from the one or two Division I-AA schools that you schedule every year in order to pad your numbers just to make it to a bowl game? Oh, that's right, Navy is Division I-A. My apologies to the USNA.

Second, Notre Dame and Navy have a long history together. During WWII, a sort of perfect storm erupted over South Bend, IN. Young men (Notre Dame was not co-ed at that point) were being sent off to Europe and the Pacific to fight our enemies and protect our shores and defending our allies from tyranny and totalitarianism. This meant fewer students were on campus, and the lack of students meant a lack of funds, putting a huge financial burden on the school.

Now, as the branches of the military were swelling with more and more recruits and enlistees, there was a pressing need to train officers to command these men in the course of battle. Notre Dame's president, Fr. Hugh O'Donnell, seeing this as, perhaps, a way of solving the cash crunch, opened Notre Dame's doors to serve as an officer training school. He first approached the army, who politely declined. However, Admiral Chester Nimitz liked the idea and immediately took Fr. O'Donnell up on the offer. Notre Dame then became a training facility for officers in the US Navy. The cash crunch was solved a the school and the navy got to train their soldiers. Both parties were happy.

Nimitz (who has a street named after him in South Bend...I used to live off it) and O'Donnell then agreed that Notre Dame and Navy should play football every year. O'Donnell promised that Notre Dame would always keep a spot open for Navy on the football schedule. Sixty-three years later, and we're still upholding that promise (the current series is scheduled until at least 2016, and will be renewed again when it's time). Yes, the luster has come off the football program at Navy, however it is still a rivalry game. Not so much like the hated rivals of Michigan and USC, but a rivalry borne of mutual respect and friendship. Do the two schools want to beat each other to a pulp during each game? Absolutely. But after the game is over, we shake hands, joke a little bit, congratulate one another on a hard-fought game, and promise to see one another next year.

So, to cocksuckers like John Feinstein, who whines about how Notre Dame is a bully for scheduling an overmatched Navy team every year, you can just shut up, eat dick, and maybe--just maybe--take a little time out of your daily need to make up for your tiny dick and have a little respect for a time-honored traditional football game between two friendly rivals.

Alright, Irish. Let's go! Beat Navy! Make it 45 in a row because, as we saw above, 2007 never happened!

Also a little note. Monday will mark one of those really rare occurrences in the universe: I will actually be rooting against Indiana basketball. Why? Because my alma mater will be playing them in an exhibition game, that's why. Do I expect the purple pumas of St. Joseph's College to beat Indiana? No. But then again, no one expected LeMoyne to beat Syracuse, either.

Go Pumas! Beat Hoosiers!