aka “The Brad Edition”.
Q1, from Brad (they all are): “In college: beer bonging til things get ugly, or grain alcohol riot punch til you blackout? Discuss the merits and drawbacks of each.”
This one is easy for me. First, I’ve always been a beer guy. I find it more social, and for some reason ‘happier’ than booze booze. Not sure why, really, as I’m sure others have very different approaches to drinking. The other thing is that it’s just tougher to get really, really F-ed up with beer, given all the volume. At some point you just get full. The few times in my life where things got seriously bad were due to things like riot punch, and it was never fun cleaning up the next day. I took this practice so far that on my birthday I deferred my 21 shots to our Ecuadorian Pal. He did the 21 shots for me, and it didn’t end up too pretty. So instead, I drank a case of beer. Also not pretty, but not quite as ugly. Finally, I’m definitely a social drinker, so any excuse to play a game (and crush people in said game), I am in. So, beer is the way to go for me here.
Q2: “Favorite ritual/tourist attraction/tradition about Notre Dame/gameday and why. What is over/under rated?”
Knights of Columbus steak sandwiches is one of my favorites, and it’s probably over-rated as well. On a cool fall day, round 11 am, bout 9 beers in, there’s nothing better than that steak sandwich. At the same time, it’s probably not REALLY all that good. I’ve never had one sober, and I am sure the mystique around it (shocking at ND) makes it seem like that’s a better sandwich than it really is.
Most underrated is the Irish Guard inspection. I don’t know if it’s underrated so much as not super-publicized. It’s a pretty cool ritual, especially when Irish Guard alums are back to do the inspection and mess with the Guard like they’re British Honor Guard soldiers or something. Quite entertaining, and recommended if you’ve never checked it out.
Q3: “Best spot to tailgate?”
JACC South, on the ‘Grassy Knoll’. I’ve never tailgated anywhere else, so it’s tough for me to do a fair comparison to other spots. But this has always been our tailgating home, and I am pretty sure it always will be. Close to the stadium, in the heart of the action, with a little grass for the tables/grills/chairs/coolers.
Q4: “What is the first and best drink to start off a 6 am tailgate?”
I kind of answered this on Friday: Boddington’s Pub Ale. Super smooth and creamy, not harsh at all at 6 am, and somehow feels like a real breakfast. On a colder day, I’d rock some coffee with a little Bailey’s in there to warm things up even more. Another great way to kick off a solid day of tailgating at ND stadium.
Generally not this fancy, but you get the point.
Q5: “How do you keep your livers so strong, and what kind of exercises/stretches can we folks do at home to keep our livers in shape?”
I keep a strict regimen of training (3 days drinking per week), yoga, and acupuncture. The acupuncture is the key. Releases all the toxins in there, and allows the liver time to recuperate between training sessions. My training regimen is similar to circuit training. I mix up the routine, but keep most training sessions relatively short and sweet during the week. Weekends alternate between a long-distance slog all day, and a series of sprints at night at the bars around West LA. Similar to weight-lifting, the liver can get acclimated to a repetitive training regimen, so the key is to mix it up. Happy drinking!
Q6: “Favorite opponents stadium?”
I’ve been to games at Stanford, USC, Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, Pitt, the Fiesta Bowl, Gator Bowl, and Orange Bowl, and UCLA at the Rose Bowl. Stanford’s stadium is underwhelming, the Coliseum is fun for tailgating but the surrounding area sucks, the Big House is a piece of garbage, MSU’s stadium is less interesting than the School of Packaging there, Purdue is ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ….Pitt’s stadium is no longer there and Heinz Field is a pro field through and through. The Fiesta Bowl was pretty cool, but it wasn’t really an opponents’ stadium. So I have to go UCLA. The Rose Bowl is an awesome venue for tailgating, the history is really apparent, and the facilities are decent. The only problem is that the place is usually only about 80% full, and it’s just SO big that it seems kind of quiet and uninteresting during the game itself. But for tailgating and general aesthetics, the Rose Bowl takes it for me.
Q7: “Would you wrather have ND win and lose to the teams we are supposed to, or lose a headscratcher and have a miraculous, no-way-we-should-win-this-game upset?”
It’s not sexy to say it, but I’d much rather have this team beating the teams it’s supposed to. Two reasons for it. The first is that that would show that this team is back to at least being decent. Beating up on the teams you’re supposed to beat is the first step in the process. WMU was nice for that reason. The second is that, in any given year, we should be a favorite in most games. We have superior talent to most teams on our schedule each year, so this would give us a solid record. Too practical? Maybe. But those two reasons combined do it for me.
Q8: “Best place to defile yourself following a gameday in South Bend?”
In terms of nostalgia, I’d have to say that I really liked going to the ‘Backer and what used to be Finnegan’s/The Library. No idea if that’s still there, even. Lots of stupid, drunken nights at those places in those days. Today, I generally hit up something a bit more ‘adult’ and just hang out and throw back a beer or two while watching the evening games. But if you want drunken mess, the ‘Backer is your go-to.
Q9: “You can only play 5 songs on a loop throughout your entire tailgate. What are they?”
1. Here Come the Irish – O’Brien Brothers. DMQ hates this song with a passion, but I dig it. It gets me fired up, and it’s great background music for a tailgate.
2. Notre Dame Fight Song. ‘course.
3. We Will Rock You/We are the Champions by Queen. Queen rules, and I like that I can squeeze these two in as one (they’re linked in the albums, so I’m doing it) to increase the variety. 5 songs is tough for an all-day tailgate. Plus, they’re good ‘I am drunk and super fired up and want to kill somebody’ songs that are still family-friendly for the nephews/nieces.
4. Mo Money Mo Problems by The Notorious BIG featuring P Diddy and Mase. Old school enough to be palatable to most, new school enough to still be awesome.
5. Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen. A favorite across ages, and a good tune to sing along with once you’re really sloshed.
Q10: “People often complain that ND can’t compete due to the administrative/atmospheric/academic/self-imposed challenges. If you’re in charge of the University, and you get to change anything about it, what change would you most want to make that you think would ensure the longterm success of the football team while still keeping the University what it is.”
Academically, I wouldn’t change a thing. ND has tougher recruiting standards than 99% of our competition, and it should always be that way. ND still gets enough of the top guys to put together a MNC team, so I don’t see it as that big of a problem. ND can win with current academic restrictions. (which, btw, are a bit overblown. yes, more difficult than most schools. no, not overwhelmingly so). I may loosen them slightly in a few cases here or there to get a kid in that has a weaker profile overall but has put in hard work and shown improvement in his Jr/Sr years of HS, but that’s pretty much it.
I thought the training table addition was great, and they should implement it for more than just dinner. I wouldn’t be opposed to Athlete Dorms or Apartment Complexes for upperclassmen only.
I think the biggest opportunity is with scheduling – getting away from 7-4-1 is huge, and Jack needs to ensure that we don’t get into a situation where the schedule impedes success. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but we’re almost always in the Top 30 in SOS and often Top 15, and I think that winning a MNC against that kind of schedule year in and year out is just challenging. We have enough challenges as it is, why make it SO much more difficult on ourselves? I’d rather be in the 30’s/lower 40’s in SOS. More manageable week in and week out, and I don’t mind an easier game here or there to give the guys a break.
I also think that Jack needs to figure out a way to get 1-2 easier games in to start off the season. I only say this because all of the other top teams across the country on starting off with 3-5 really easy, cakewalk, non-conference games. We start off with the likes of Purdue, Michigan, MSU (and in future years Oklahoma, Miami, etc) in the front end of the schedule. We drop a game or two, and we tumble out of the top 25, with no way to climb back because we need to schedule our weaker games later in the year. ND needs to start off with 1-2 relatively easy games to let the team warm up/work out the kinks before diving into the meat of the schedule. If that means we can only play certain teams (Michigan, MSU) every other year, so be it. I’m not advocating playing Kent State, but we don’t have to play solid competition Weeks 1 and 2 every year.
Q11: “How the hell did I get a smiley face in there? WTF?”
HLS just loves you man.
- (Re)Introducing: DANCING LEPRECHAUNS - August 29, 2019
- Ticket Auction: ND vs USC - August 22, 2019
- No Respect! - December 14, 2018
The Biscuit
Oh, and on # 10 – I would also change the ref situation. Either get an “ND Squad” of refs, or use a conference that’s truly neutral. Not sure that that exists when it comes to ND, but the officiating has been pretty bad for years now, and I think there needs to be a new approach for ND.
Trey
Why do we have to use major college con refs? Southland has a great official developmenf program and conf like MWC, CUSA would love the opportunity to call these huge gms at ND.
Erik '04
I just had my first Knights of Columbus steak sandwhich this weekend, and I was sober while eating it. I have to say it really is the best food you can get on campus during a game day (especially now that they got rid of jumbo polish sausage at the stadium), and the value can’t be beat. The bread does need a fair amount of steak sauce to soak up, but the meat was cooked perfectly. The person I was with who had also never eaten one before kept exclaiming that it was the best food she’d had on campus during a game.
Mark G
Had the opportunity to tour the Gug before the Pitt game (brother in law’s friend’s friend). Awesome. Was shown area where training table is set up, and I asked if it is just dinner or includes other meals as well. Was told that NCAA rules allow school to give athletes only one special meal a day (i.e. meal different from what other students get) except when they are on the road.
Saw team nutritionists office, near weight room. Has boxes of pears, apples and bananas in boxes outside her office — I would guess that the coaches tell players “grab a banana”, etc., during or after workouts (bananas are good source of potassium, which helps prevent cramping).
The Biscuit
Good point Mark. Forgot about that rule.
Nate
I’ve got a question I keep meaning to ask, but haven’t gotten around to it–if you want to answer in comments, great, or put it in your next answer post, great, or ignore it and tell me to pound sand, that’s cool too.
Q: No disrespect meant to this blog or any other ND blog out there, but we all pretty much agree that “The Blue Gray Sky” was the gold standard of ND blogs when it was around. I found HLS, Rakes, and other ND blogs through the links off of BGS, and BGS was always my first stop for ND news. Now that they are gone, what differences have you seen so far this year compared to previous years? Is your traffic up? Are you trying to do more (or different) things that previously would have been over there? Any thing in the blogosphere that has been worth noting?
My own observations are that HLS has been pretty much the only consistent ND blog (of the ones I read regularly) this season, and I really appreciate it. UHND barely puts up a game summary once a week, same with Rakes. I refuse to go to NDNation, and the rest just aren’t inspiring me to head over on a daily basis. House Rock Built’s puppet shows are great, but that’s all they’re doing these days (admittedly, you don’t get that quality a production without a lot of work 😉 ) HLS is the one blog that I’ve noticed making an effort to fill the void, and has become my go-to for my fill of ND every morning.
Thanks, guys. Keep up the great work.
domer_mq
We definitely have an uptick in traffic year-over-year, and some of that is probably thanks to BGS recc’ing us when they signed off, plus they were awesome about linking to us when we wrote something worth linking. I’ve not met any of those guys personally, but I consider them friends, certainly.
At the same time, we’ve gotten a lot of attention from national sources as well. Every so often in the last year, EDSBS has linked us. We had some quotes in a piece that showed up on the Yahoo.com front page at one point. The Washington Post quoted us at one point. So that’s helped too. Of course, we may be getting that national exposure b/c BGS recc’d us on their sign-off. We’re certainly not failing to recognize that. And we’ve even offered (pleaded?) to all of the former BGS guys that if they ever want to blog, even just a one-off, again, they’re all welcome here. We’ll see if they ever take us up on it…
The thing BGS had that we really envy is the man-power. These days it’s basically Biscuit and Myself as “regular” contributors, and then Fr. Birdonell as a weekly contributor. The trick in trying to increase our manpower is that we’ve always been written by old college buddies from ND, so bringing in someone from outside that circle seems a bit foreign to us/me. I really started the site just to keep my college buddies connected a bit more, doing something together, since we’d scattered across the map after graduation. But that manpower, dedication, and analytical ability the guys at BGS had really made them excellent. Until we can get manpower like that, it’s tough for one of us to spend a full week on an analysis piece. This place would get to quiet. And while I started the site to keep my friends connected a bit, we’ve managed to build enough of a community on HLS with our readers that I don’t want to just have a site that isn’t updated fairly frequently. The community might die off a bit if we did that.
Mark G
Like Nate, I visited BGS every day (though he did it from a foreign land, facing guys who were trying to kill him, while I did it from an office tower in Chicago). HLS is now my BGS substitute. Guys, thank you. Without you, I would have to put in a full productive day at work!
Trey
Im not trying to suck up here or anything, but why ‘do we all agree BGS was the gold standard’ over HLS? Ive been a regular here for about 3 yrs but to me, BGS was too stat-heavy and number driven. Most of what i like here is that it’s way more personal and discussion-driven.
Mq, how about extending a column offer to Brad? If this post doesnt prove he can write witty and entertaining content, I donno who does.
Nate
BGS had quality analysis, number crunching, pertinent human interest stories, humor, the works–all stuff that HLS has as well, and does a good job with considering that they don’t have 10 people writing like BGS did. More importantly, though, was the community that BGS became. HLS is getting there, and is a fun place to come during game day (especially with the Shoutbox, that’s awesome), but it’s nowhere near approaching the 1000+ comments (100ish of which were crapola, but 900ish of which were fun entertainment during the game) during a gameday thread. Personal opinion here, of course, but for me, especially being in Afghanistan last year (and in Japan for the previous 6), the BGS comment threads were how I connected to the ND fanbase as a whole while watching on AFN or the computer, or listening to an online radio broadcast. Shoot, last year half the time I wasn’t able to even get that due to crappy Afghan internet, and relied on BGS commenters to give me play by play so I knew what was going on in addition to the witty commentary. Brad, DayBreakBoys, DomerinFlorence, JimMasterson, OCmj, Voice, DanaPayne, and a host of others were my virtual ND gamewatch every week. I love watching games with my wife, but we both loved reading the comments in the BGS game threads while we watched, and helped us feel like something bigger than just the two of us getting up at 4 AM to see us lose to Michigan State.
I guess one of the main reasons I like HLS so much is that with the Shoutbox, it’s got the potential to fill that void for me. Everywhere else in the Irish Blogosphere is either insane (NDNation) or quiet (everywhere else). HLS is awesome, and I’ve enjoyed reading Biscuit and DMQ from the beginning. Hopefully they can keep doing what they’re doing, and the old gang who spent Saturdays over at BGS in the past can pop in over here more regularly.
The Biscuit
HAPPY to have all you guys. Would love to get a true gameday thread going again, but it was costing DMQ money (he fronts all the costs for this fiasco) so we had to shut it down. But hopefully we can come up with a substitute, or the shoutbox will suffice. We would love to have more manpower, and maybe we’ll get there at some point. But, we also like our little home here as it is…so we’ll see how things evolve. Thanks for joining us.
Mark G
I always thoroughly enjoyed the exchanges between Nate and JimMasterson. The exchanges between and among readers that Nate refers to, which we are now seeing on this site, did form a virtual community of ND alums and fans. Made me glad to be wasting time at work.
E-Man
Maybe there should be a “So where are you from?” posting. I’m ex-BGS too, swung over here just once in a while when BGS was active, but now this site is my primary blog stop.
I wonder how many ex-BGS’ers are here… they must have had a 80-90 regular posters over there.
Erik '04
I’m here as a result of BGS shutting down. Trey, while BGS had a lot of stats and numbers, it was the analysis that drew me to them. Clashmore Mike and others have “statistically speaking” posts each week and other lengthy posts, but none come close to the well-written analysis pieces they had at BGS. I’m glad to find out it’s mostly due to the size of their staff. I liked the community aspect of BGS, but I learned more from them in the past 3 years about ND football, the game of football itself, our opponents, and more than from anywhere else online or otherwise. HLS is now my first stop, and I’m glad for the posts you guys are able to put out each week. Thanks for being here!
domer.mq
Clashmore Mike is a great site for stats stuff. I don’t always agree with their statistical methods, but if you want some great, quantitative stuff on ND Football, you should be reading Clashmore.
The Biscuit
If you want opinion-laden sarcastic rants, we’re here!
Brad
Awesome!
E-Man
Having cinged my hand/arm hair and perfected the raspy hungover/day-after-cigar-mouth/yelling-since-9am salesmanship on a ladder with the ND KoC for four years, I completely disagree with the statement that their steak sandwichs being anything less than the pinnacle of outside vendor supplied game-day food.
Might not match whatever goodness you can bring from home, but runs CIRCLES around those Resident Hall stands. I would put it up against the BBQ on a stick at Camden Yards, or a Usinger Brat at Milwaukee County Stadium (ahem, Miller Park) with the “Secret Stadium Sauce” that is practically by itself drink-worthy.
I laugh at those who think the fish tacos at Petco Park are anything more than a cruel prank, so don’t bring that weak sauce around me.
The Biscuit
I’m not saying they’re NOT good. I’m saying that they’re probably over-rated, simply bc the competition (those dorm bbqs) isn’t high quality fare per se.
TLNDMA
B-man thanks for the Boddington’s tip last week. I had a smily face from them last friday night.