Friday Roundup: The “Tom Reynolds Doesn’t Understand the US Constitution” Edition

Tom Reynolds, perpetrator of the idiotic billboard from earlier this week, doesn’t understand much. He doesn’t understand that his voice is not “the voice of reason.” He doesn’t understand how to actually count a total number of supporters when he thinks they must total “roughly 50.” And he doesn’t understand the US Constitution. (HT: to @UHND) When asked about his monument to his own insipid lack of intellectual ability being taken down, he actually said…

“What Burkhart Advertising took away from me is far more valuable,” the former Notre Dame reserve football player told The Tribune Thursday afternoon. “They took away my freedom of speech. And Notre Dame pressured them to do it.”

Surreal. This ND alum and former marketing professor has less of a comprehension of the rights he’s guaranteed by the US Constituion than your average junior high school, C grades-level kid. (Hint to our 10 year old readers: a private institution is perfectly free to not publish the words of a person, be they rational or irrational. The Constitution only guarantees that the government wont censor or limit the people.) The way this opens up jokes about the quality of an education at the University of Notre Dame is terrifying. It’s as though he’s making it his personal mission to diminish the value of every degree held by every graduate of ND. His behavior and words are of the sort that you read about in history books, right around the time a king’s court begins discussing creative ways to implement and execute upon a succession plan. One wonders how often he writes letters to the editors of various publications in which he threatens to sue the editors if they don’t publish his rantings.

Thankfully, the billboard was removed, and we’ve come to the 14:59 mark on Tom’s 15 minutes – 15 minutes he could have enjoyed in the 1960s had he ever been much of a football player. 15 minutes during which he could have used his “leadership skills” to do some good in this world. As the final seconds tick away for Tom, let’s all reflect on the fact that Tom’s legacy is now just a poorly considered billboard that was very briefly located on the side of a road in South Bend, Indiana.

The Roundup:

• You’ve already heard about “The Punch” from last night. If you haven’t seen it, here it is. And to Oregon’s Blount: Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Loser.
• The Ducks are pretty embarrassed by all of it.
• This young lady made his local paper for making it onto the ND Band. Awesome.
• Utah soaks in the smell of victory. Just wish we’d had this game on tv so we could have seen some offensive competence.
John Walters is at Fanhouse now? And yeah, he’s writing about Notre Dame.
• We alumni are pretty apprehensive about the new ND pep rally formats too.
• Texas is #1 according to folks we know at least took a look at the entire CFB landscape.
• Get to know Zach Frazer and 10 other new starters for UConn just a bit better.
• Holtz sort of blasts ND’s scheduling philosophy here.

2 programming notes: 1) We’ll probably find a few more links as the day unfold and will post them here as we find them, but watch out twitter account for them as well. It’s likely to be a big CFB blogging day, and it’ll be tough to keep up. 2) We’ll be doing our usual game-day chat tomorrow. Biscuit will be on campus and I’ll be chasing a toddler during the entire thing, so we’ll be in and out, but please do drop by, say hello, share your drink of choice, and share a laugh as UM(s!) loses to Western Michigan (sucks in a westerly way!).