Thanks 2015, now my poor girlfriend probably needs therapy.
Wait, you know what? Let me back up and start from something closer to the beginning of this mess.
In the late summer of 2014 I was starting what would turn out to be a complete mess of a job, and absolutely hated it pretty much from the start. On my second day I met a girl who we will call Alejandra. Alejandra and I were an instant match. We shared more than a lot in common, but perhaps one of the most significant aspects of her personality was her sizable love for sports (to every guy in the room: I KNOW! /fist pump). She grew up, like many of us latinos do, watching soccer, and in particular the Mexican national team. Being a considerable USA fan my whole life, this was quickly a fun point of contention between the two of us fresh off the end of the 2014 World Cup in late September.
2014 all in all was just an odd sports year for me. I watched the World Cup from multiple bars and pubs in Dublin, Ireland (awesome), had to suffer through every local South Florida sports talk radio host whine about why LeBron hated Miami (annoying), and deal with one of the most disappointing seasons of Notre Dame football in recent memory (totally not awesome). Alejandra was not oblivious to the emotional sports distress I was in, and so she decided early on that she wanted to be a part of this emotional roller coaster in an effort to help me through what she figured would likely become more future suffering of this nature. Her thought process: “I want to know stuff about sports! I want to be happy and mad when you are happy and mad too! It seems like fun!”
Oh you poor, poor, sweet, innocent child…little did you know you would not have to wait long…
October 19th, 2014 is a day that will forever live in Notre Dame infamy. The “Pick Play” game. The “Panhandle Pilfer” game. The “Tallanasty” game. Whatever it ends up going by, it was pretty much the worst experience i’ve had as a Notre Dame fan. I know that may sound like hyperbole, but allow me to condition this with a few key factors that altogether add up to my worst-ever ND fan experience:
- It was a GAME WINNER that was wiped away after we (Notre Dame fans) had all joined together across the globe to experience one massive moment of jubilation thinking we had defeated the “big, bad, defending national champs.”
- T’was a call of a nature that what one might identify as “TowThål BoolSheet” if I may say so myself.
- We…we went to the game together.
Oh, it gets better: Notre Dame-FSU 2014 was her FIRST EVER college football game. To top it all off, I had gotten a hook up on the tickets on the condition that we sit in the FSU SEASON TICKET HOLDER SECTION. Fun times.
I admit that we did not watch another game in 2014 after that debacle, save for the second half of the USC game. A lot of good that did us.
2014 had gone so poorly for me by then that I sat down with my Notre Dame fandom, and we actually decided to take a break and see other people. Notre Dame had its millions of other options (fans), and I had Alejandra. Instead of watching football on Saturdays, I kept us up-to-date on scores I would get from my phone, and we went out on dates and the like. It was still early in the relationship so I felt this was the appropriate strategy both for the courtship and my sanity.
Fast forward to September 5th, 2015.
“ITS FINALLY HERE! ITS FINALLY FOOTBALL DAY!” Those were the words ringing through my living room as the 2015 Notre Dame football kicked off against Texas. Alejandra had put in a TON of work during the offseason. She knew names, numbers, what positions did what things on the field, who was a Defensive player, who was on Offense, who the captains were, what “RTDB” meant, who the hell BVG was, and what was up with our obsession with Brian Kelly’s nipples. She had it all down. She even had her favorite player.
It was Malik Zaire. Of course it was Malik Zaire.
To be fair, I had spent the entire offseason hyping up Zaire as the quarterback that would change the pace of this offense and finally lead this team to consistent 30 or 40-point performances week in and week out. Alejandra loves scoring in football above all else, so this was TOTALLY up her alley.
So began her first full season as a Notre Dame fan…
…and now she might need therapy.
The 2015 season was perhaps the worst possible season for someone in her position to become a new Notre Dame fan. Expectations were sky-high, as usual. Zaire and the Brian Kelly offense came in highly touted as being this possible “world-beater” (gee, thanks Sports Illustrated, ‘preciate the kind [curse] words), and holy shit they delivered on opening day!
But then the worst-possible scenario struck, and Alejandra’s then-“bae” Zaire was lost for the SEASON against Virginia. I remember her repeating over and over how horrible she felt and slightly tearing up, looking to me for comfort. In retrospect, I am somewhat ashamed to admit that she was not met with any form of comfort whatsoever. “How could I comfort her,” I thought to myself, “when it’s only going to get worse. This is Week 2 and I’ve already seen this movie before.”
BC 1993. Bama 2012. Tulsa 2010. Almost all of 2002 . ALL OF 2007!!
I had been through enough disappointment and utter defeat with Notre Dame over the short time I’d been alive that I had developed the ability to cope with bad things happening to Notre Dame by pretending it was nothing new. And in part, it wasn’t. Not up until that point. For Alejandra, however, this was her first taste of Earth-shattering, gut-wrenching, emotionally scarring disappointment at the hands of Notre Dame football. We did not handle the Virginia game well. At least not until the Fuller bomb to save the game, decisively crowning Will Fuller as Alejandra’s newest “bae.”
The Virginia game perhaps best encompasses what her experience as a new Notre Dame fan in 2015 must have been like. Turning on the game expecting to watch another sound demolition of an inferior opponent, fresh off a nice win against a traditional power team, drink in hand and full of excitement. Then the first quarter or so doesn’t go at all as expected, including some seriously scary defensive deficiencies and a lack of consistent play calling or production. Heading into the half concerned, and somewhat angry, not knowing how to feel or whether there is reason to believe the team will right the ship. Disaster striking in the form of yet another injury, this time to a starter. A deep pass to Will Fuller for a touchdown to save the season and live to play another day. Elation. Relief. DRINKING.
With Malik Zaire lost for the season, in came DeShone Kizer. Kizer’s was a name Alejandra had never heard a single time before the Virginia game, and her concern over this fact was palpable. All her homework and all her offseason time spent reading up on the team was suddenly worthless. She asked me for answers where I had none. She suddenly found herself having to process a new quarterback’s style of play, personality, and athletic ability all without preparation or guidance. This was a trying time for her. Alejandra ultimately warmed up to Kizer over time, but she couldn’t avoid the fallacy of using Zaire as her benchmark for what a Notre Dame quarterback should be. Learning to get over this hump would eventually happen, weeks down the road when Kizer demolished Pitt to near perfection.
The 2015 season did not do Alejandra any favors when it came to easing her into the concept of week-to-week performances in College Football and especially at Notre Dame. In typical Irish fashion, the team never quite managed to look the same two weeks in a row. One excellent game (Texas) would be followed by one shit game (Virginia), and then that game would be followed by another great game (Georgia Tech), followed by the best offensive performance of the year (UMass), only to then lead to a game against Clemson where Alejandra literally asked me four or five times, “Why do they just seem bigger and stronger than us on defense? How are they just smacking us around?” Consistency was not the name of the game for Notre Dame in 2015, and poor Alejandra never got a change to recover from the weekly highs and lows.
Alejandra’s full exposure to Notre Dame football in 2015 was simultaneously fortuitous and greatly unfortunate. A 10-win season is nothing so scoff at, as they are certainly few and far between at Notre Dame in recent history. When I tell her about 2007 and how lost we all were as a fanbase in that dark, dark year, she still looks at me in disbelief. When remembering those days on the Army base in Arizona where I was completing training at the time, wondering when the season would be over, and why the f*** South Florida was ranked #2, I start to sweat nervously thinking that such was ever the state of Notre Dame football. For me, getting to 10-wins was excellent in 2015, and the two losses were close so I have faith in the team’s future now more than ever! But for Alejandra, the 10-2 record really only served to spoil her immediately. Now for her it’s 10+ wins or bust for Notre Dame Football. I have tried countless times to warn her that things are not always guaranteed in College Football. We shall see in future years whether she heeds this warning. I fear for her sanity already.
2015 must have really sucked for my new Irish fan. Notre Dame took my girlfriend under its wing, built her up by smacking Texas, beat her down by taking away Zaire, showed her how to stop the Triple Option, gave her all the bombs to Fuller, drowned her in a monsoon, gave her a punt-block-returned-for-TD and two INTs in a win against Southern Cal, scared her on Halloween, crapped all over the traditional “Pitt plays ND close” narrative, had the seniors say goodbye to her, let Kizer show her why he considered baseball over football at Fenway Park, and killed her dream of #4 Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl at Stanford.
What a hell of a year to become Irish.
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KyNDfan
This is your best piece yet. That pick play last year probably saved me from having another kid. From elation to anger in 2.5 seconds. Great story about the roller coaster ride that is ND fandom. What’s worse is if we beat OSU, we will have legit national title expectations next year.
SupermanTDJesus
Hahaha love the line, “That pick play last year probably saved me from having another kid.” Thanks a lot! When did we ever think we would be saying that having national title expectations would be a thing that falls under the “what’s worse” category? lol