Nope. Not this year. Good job, everyone.

Citing an overwhelming negative response from message boards, social media, and the occasional hand-written letter threatening to withhold donations, Notre Dame has decided to cancel the annual Blue/Gold Game after previously announcing it would be an invite-only event. Jack Swarbrick released the following statement this morning to explain the decision:

Fans of Our Lady’s University, we hear you loud and clear. Ever since we announced that the final spring practice, commonly known as the Blue & Gold Game, would be an invite only event, we have received constant complaints both directly and indirectly from alumni and fans.

We worked hard to convince our partners at NBC to once again allow Notre Dame to be one of the few schools to actually televise their glorified spring scrimmage and we figured that would satisfy everyone. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

After the Fighting Irish Digital Media team released TV broadcast information on Facebook, I did something that I had never done before: read the comments. I was shocked to see that people were still angry about the situation. There were comments of the broadcast not making up for our initial decision, anger that families now couldn’t afford to go to a game, and one gentlemen that said he’d be cleaning his toilet instead.

Quite frankly, I am ashamed that I have not listened to the fans sooner. Therefore, we are doing the only thing that we think that is fair and plugging the plug on everyone. Instead of the Blue & Gold Game, the football team will have a secluded practice in which no fan or media will be allowed to attend. It’s a shame too because Coach Kelly was excited to debut his run-heavy offense that features some odd position called a “fullback” in front of everyone.

We want to thank the world’s greatest fans for opening our eyes on this matter. Please be assured that we are now examining absolutely everything that we are doing here at Notre Dame based on your comments. Please continue to make your voice heard!

Obviously, with such a shocking statement, we immediately tried to reach out to Swarbrick to find out why the internet changed his mind and what else could be changing. We were very surprised to receive a near immediate response:

[All the terrible Facebook comments] just really got to me, you know. I was so surprised to see unhappy people on this announcement and dug back into previous announcements that we have done.

And I’m talking everything here–Campus Crossroads, switching to Under Armour, the Shamrock Series Uniforms, and putting down field turf. I couldn’t believe that quite literally everything that we’ve done made some people upset. And there are just so many negative responses. It’s incredibly overwhelming.

So I’m going back to the drawing board on everything, placing priority on items with the biggest amount of outrage, especially if such outrage contains comments along the lines of “Notre Dame has lost their way as a Catholic university” because those cut the deepest.

Our new policy here is to make everyone happy. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a mindset of trying to please everybody?!

I sent a reply back to Jack pleading that he should never, ever read the comments but have received no reply. I’m not sure what kind of brave new world we are about to enter here, but I’m absolutely terrified of the possibilities.

And I will certainly be at the ready on Facebook for when it goes down.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Ryan Ritter

Editor-in-Chief
Texan by birth, Irish by choice.

First-generation Domer and a former student manager, HLS podcast host, HLS Sim creator, Extra Life streamer, and technical problem haver. You can find more non-Notre Dame related writing on his Patreon.

Latest posts by Ryan Ritter (see all)

• Epilogue - January 3, 2022
• HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
• The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021