Anyways, let’s not bury the lede here and let you know who our Final Four combatants are. When will voting close this time? Who knows?!

Neck Pillow Region – #1 @SlipperyFox10

Finke’s glorious tweet is, probably to no one’s surprise, had the best run of the entire tourney. The closest call was in the Round of 32 in which Finke “only” won by a margin of 24.

Yeah, it’s been a bloodbath.

But that’s to be expected when you have the lethal combination of a tweet by a ND player featuring other ND players and topped off by a perfect Photoshop job in proportion, size, and even shadow.

You’d almost feel sorry for whoever goes up against this juggernaut…

Briefcase Region – #8 @ND_Phil

Will @ND_Phil be the one to stop Finke’s domination?!

You could say this #8 seed had a favorable draw to this point. The Briefcase region was immediately thrown into chaos with the only 16-seed upset in the bracket from @bridgetgoirish, which @ND_Phil held off by just 9.

But from that point on…dominance. The creator of this tournament insanity, Irish Elvis saw his 13-seed set on fire worse than a Love-less Cotton Bowl secondary in a 44-9 beatdown. In the Elite Eight, @ND_Phil showed it was no fluke, taking out @MarkNDFan in a 45-17 blowout.

This historical masterpiece may just be the ticket to sailing past Finke. I mean, who doesn’t love America? Who doesn’t love the thought of BK gracefully and calmly dropping the deuces as America fought tooth and nail to give us the freedom of football, Photoshop, living in the online hell of Twitter, and dumbass blog tournaments?

Oh, final note: @ND_Phil tagged Finke in the original tweet. THIS WAS DESTINY.

Dark Socks Region – #12 @bridgetgoirish

You’ve probably uploaded her designs as your Twitter and Facebook cover photos. You may have even bought some sweet merch that she’s designed. You may have even stolen her design, registered a domain the same day, and then sold your design as her own.

If that impressive very online resume isn’t enough, @bridgetgoirish can now add “lowest seed to make the Final Four.”

This #12 proved to be set up as a complete unfair troll criminally under-seeded by Irish Elvis the committee when she destroyed @AlDogg44 and several other ND Athletics Communications employees in a 57-6 spanking that made somehow got Lane Kiffin fired on a tarmac all over again.

Bridget then viciously murdered one of her favorite podcasts (non-HLS division), Jessica Smetana & Charlotte Wilder of Sports Illustrated’s Most Valuable Podcast 42-12. And folks, did she hesitate, did she have pity?!

COLD. BLOODED.

Bridget then took the toughest path by taking out a 2-seed and then a 1-seed in 31-21 and 33-28 matchups.

Can her Twitter perfection of drunj ND Twitter friends making just enough room for a BK Photoshop that they never planned have enough stamina for another round?!

Sunglasses Region – #1 @1stDownMoses

@1stDownMoses is the second #1 seed to chalk through their region; however, our favorite tweeting statue had by far the most interesting run.

@1stDownMoses had to first hold off a potential 16-seed upset against..

*checks notes*

…@1stDownMoses in a 32-31 thriller.

Next, he took on my podcasting co-host @SupermanTDJesus 32-19 and then moved on to face…

*checks notes again*

…uh…@SupermanTDJesus in a 38-14 Sweet Sixteen beatdown.

Finally, in the Elite Eight he defated…hang on a second…

*checks notes thrice*

…um…@SupermanTDJesus?!

Seriously, what in the actual Jim-Harbaugh-won’t-eat-chicken-because-it’s-a-scared-bird kinda bullshit is this?! He had to beat himself and then an HLS staff member three times in a row?!

I mean, people have gotten their kids into Southern Cal doing less corrupt shit than this. Athletes from North Carolina have more valid degrees than this whole region. This is more ridiculous than every football player being granted a hardship transfer waiver simply because their name isn’t Alohi Gilman. I’ve seen more integrity out of Hugh Freeze. The SEC called and they’d like their ranking bias back.

What a damn joke.

Please vote below!

And the live bracket to keep up with the scores (or head here):

The post #BKHomeboy Madness: Final Four Voting appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Shane, Garrett, and I have our own Selection Sunday and reveal the field of 64 and break down each entry with the hard-hitting analysis that only we can deliver.

Voting is now live here (and embedded at the bottom of the post). Vote early. Vote often.

Yes, this might just be the dumbest thing that we’ve ever done, but you can’t spell “dumbest” without best. Therefore, the best thing that we’ve ever done.

Podcast

Twitch Broadcast

Watch #HLSRecapMadness #BKHomeboy Edition from herloyalsons on www.twitch.tv

(Apologies for the audio quality at the beginning…and the end. I’m clearly out of practice, but I promise, the majority of the stream has the audio working properly)

Round of 64 Voting

Live Bracket!

The post HLS Podcast: The Madness Returns appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Well hello, Loyal Readers! In case you haven’t heard, this is March and that means the Madness is back. If you are disappointed that Selection Sunday will not include nearly enough Irish this St. Patrick’s Day (or don’t want to wait for Selection Monday for the start of a national title defense), do we have just the really dumb and stupid thing for you!

Because we can’t just let the #HLSRecap and it’s crazy offshoots really ever truly die, we’ve created a new zombie in the form of a bracketed tournament. But this time around, we aren’t just choosing any old Twitter snark like previous #HLSRecapMadness incarnations. This year, we are focusing on the glory that is #BKHomeboy.

Sure, no one knew that this was going to be a thing, but is that going to stop us? Hell no!

So on this Selection Sunday, March 17, at 10pm ET/9pm CT, we will be live on Twitch unveiling the bracket. We promise that the selection process will be just as fair as your typical college admissions process, but only slightly less absurd than being recruited to play lacrosse at Southern Cal.

So be sure to head on over to our Twitch channel, give us a follow (and a sub if you’re so inclined–especially if you are an Amazon Prime member and can do it for free [and even if you have done this, remember it expires every month so do it again!]) and you’ll get an alert when we go live. The tourney/voting will go live as soon as the show goes off the air, so keep an eye on HLS for the ballot.

This. Is. Gonna be a disaster March!

The post #HLSRecapMadness Is Back: #BKHomeboy Edition appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

The post Brian Kelly Goes Viral appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

As Tex pointed out recently, this will be our final #HLSrecap installment. I hope this news doesn’t rob you of yesterday’s joy (after all, this isn’t Nautica sweatpants from the UP Mall), but allow me to walk down memory lane for a moment as we consider the illustrious history of #HLSrecap (no one but me would use this adjective). I promise we’ll get to the Citrus Bowl eventually.

Some time back in 2011-2012 I noticed ND fans gravitating toward Twitter as a real-time game discussion platform and thought, “Huh. I wonder if a collective fan voice can do something for ND Football that broadcast announcers cannot.” After all, we ND fans recall the heady days of complaining about Tom Hammond (pun DEFINITELY intended), and our families/friends/loved ones grew bored with us diagramming the Charlie Weis Screen Play Offense in the kitchen during commercials. Hypothetically.

So I asked the HLS-Powers-That-Were if I could come aboard for Brian Kelly’s 2012 season and flesh out this Twitter experiment. Foolishly, they said yes and #HLSrecap was born in Dublin for the ND-Navy game. Some of my favorites, in no particular order:

• 2012 USC – the game that capped an undefeated season
• 2012 Pitt – a 3OT thriller that drained everyone’s cell phone batteries and prescription medication reserves
• 2014 Michigan – a shutout win for the ages

From there, I tested how the twitter format functioned apart from fall Saturdays, with mixed success. We lost our minds when the Shamrock Series clean whites were unveiled, we trolled our own fanbase as new Stadium renderings were announced, and when we realized that ND fans on Twitter loved competition, we (with @andrewwinn’s help) tallied every #HLSrecap tweet ever and released a weekly Top-25, and gave away whiskey for good tweets. We found some time to be clever at the expense of other fanbases, like the time Mississippi State posted every hashtagged tweet to their Jumbotron regardless of content, or when Boston College asked Twitter for suggestions on naming their new mascot. Largely, our finest work was directed inward, when ND’s social media folks asked for submissions for Brian Kelly’s weekly radio show…or when offseason suspensions beget the ND Fan’s Stages of Grief. In all cases, the #NDtwitterati was happy to oblige.

We even experimented with a March Madness-style bracket to crown the season’s best tweet, with the winners posted below (featuring, as it turns out, voting shenanigans that would foreshadow the 2016 Presidential race).

Notre Dame tackles like Patrick Swayze in Ghost. Or like Patrick Swayze now. Like both.

— Ramzy Nasrallah (@ramzy) September 8, 2013

What though the odds be great or small, we're gonna need some hard alcohol.

— bridget (@bridgetgoirish) September 26, 2015

In Memoriam

We lost many brave souls these past several years, from Oak (not dead, just off Twitter) to Poot (the rare distinction of getting blocked from NDfootball’s official Twitter *and* by the HLS Editorial Board), and still others to parenthood or other Real Life Commitments (here’s where yours truly falls). Numerous staff members have grabbed the #HLSrecap Banner to keep it going, and countless tweeps have chipped in as well. One of the dearly departed, Fake Swarbrick, has agreed to return briefly to say a few words:

As I sit here retired and alone in the Brick Cave, where at one time shots of whisky were served as freely as shots of penicillin, I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of #HLSrecap.  It’s 2018 and we can have a jumbotron but not this.  What a world.

Of all the things to come along and kill the Recap, “tech issues” would have been at the bottom of my list.  Like most of you, I naturally assumed we’d all eventually run out of jokes about #NDFBIsDeterminedToKillMe.  Leave it to the most neurotic fan base in all of college football to keep coming up with alcohol-fueled zingers season after season.

And it was a hell of a run.  For years #HLSrecap was required reading after every major Notre Dame event, usually football, and was the place to get noticed if you were an attention-starved fan with a Twitter handle.  It can rightly be said #HLSrecap birthed the #NDtwitterati, for better or for worse.  You know who you are.

If anyone cares about what your humble Director of Athletics has been up to it’s pretty much the same as before.  I’m still trying to get Frazier back on NBC, and I return Jim Delany’s calls only when I know he’s unavailable.  Being a dick to that guy never gets old.

Thank you Elvis and the entire HLS crew for all of the hard work!  One last time, especially after an Irish bowl win, permit me to grant each of you #VictorySex.

As we mentioned earlier, Storify, the platform that houses every #HLSrecap, is shutting down in May. If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re taking the Citrus Bowl opportunity to try and crash their servers one final time (as we’ve done so many times previously). The good people at Storify tech support have always been responsive, and they’ve told me they look forward to new installments with a mixture of glee and dread. My goal has always been to edit for humor, PG-13 language, and length, but for the last dance everything stays in. MAXIMUM INCLUSION PLAY ALL THE SENIORS LET’S RIDE.

We’re wrapping up the #HLSrecap Era with a 21-17 Irish victory over LSU in dramatic fashion. Brevity filter: off. Language filter: off. Fun conclusion: ON.

https://storify.com/IrishElvis/notre-dame-football-vs-lsu-a-citrus-bowl-twitter-s

The post #HLSrecap is Dead. Long Live #HLSrecap. appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Storify, the platform we use to power the #HLSRecap, will pull the plug on May 16, 2018. Unfortunately, the Adobe overlords that now oversee the platform plan to bundle “Storify 2” into their Livefyre premium services. You may recall a brief period of time when Livefyre powered the comments here, until that too got the premium bundle treatment.

Simply put, I cannot justify an investment into Livefyre at this time for a feature we only run a few times a year. While we will look for another platform that we can use, I’m not overly confident that I will be able to find one as easy to use as Storify, especially for the volume of tweets we like to pump in.

The Citrus Bowl could very well be the swan song for the #HLSRecap. I want to go out in a big, glorious clusterfuck that only the #HLSRecap can.

So here’s what we’re gonna do:

• If you want to partake, hit me up on Twitter via mention or DM, or use the hashtag #HLSRecap to volunteer your favorites as tribute. We will include all of them.
• The only editing I plan to do is ordering the favorited tweets by time (oldest to newest). I don’t care if Tweets are duplicated or you managed to favorite something from another game or another topic–it’s staying.
  • That being said, I will do a quick sanity check through favorited tweets before I add them. If there’s something just absurdly vile in there (e.g. violent, racist, sexist, etc. type bullshit), it’s all getting tossed. Note: I don’t expect this to happen.

In short, I want to make this the largest, most insane, and completely incoherent mess as possible. If this truly is the swan song for something that’s brought us this much joy, I can think of no better way to send it out.

Bonus points if we manage to completely crash the Storify servers in the process.

In the meantime, while we look for another avenue to potentially salvage this thing, we will work on archiving and preserving previous recaps before the May deadline. And if the recap truly is sent to the great Twitter 404, maybe we’ll resurrect something like the Recap Madness as a final eulogy…

But until then, when it comes to the #HLSRecap, winter is coming.

The post The (Murky) Future of the #HLSRecap appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Fair warning, Twitter decided to flat out not work for half of the game and it was impossible to tell which tweets I did/didn’t favorite. Still, that’s not going to stop me from putting this thing together so let’s get right to it!

A Twitter Summary

https://storify.com/HLS_NDtex/notre-dame-vs-wake-forest

The post #HLSRecap: Notre Dame vs. Wake Forest appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Simply put, it’s been a damn good week.

Now, before we hit the recap, I must warn you in advance, this one will be quite different. That being said, let’s get to it:

Notre Dame was so impressive today, I wonder if anyone has ever run a retraction on an ad.

Any idea, @SBTribune or @NDSMCObserver?

— Pete Sampson (@PeteSampson_) October 28, 2017

Do not adjust your screen. That’s the entirety of the recap. No, we aren’t punting this week either.

At it’s core, the #HLSRecap has always been about telling a story of the game through tweets. Pete’s not only did that (with a fair amount of snark, another hallmark of the recap), but perfectly painted a picture of not just this season, but all the angst that the God-forsaken hellscape of 2016 brought as well. So all of us at HLS felt taking this recap in a radically different direction was absolutely warranted.

We aren’t flying any “Mission Accomplished” banners around here quite yet. There’s still a lot of football left to be played and if the 2017 season has shown us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected and watch chaos reign.

Still, I’ve mentioned throughout this entire season on the podcast that ND fans were looking for key boxes to be checked off that have been vacant throughout the BK era. The biggest of these has been quite a valid complaint: “win a big games against ranked opponents.” ND has checked that box off three times this season against teams currently ranked in the CFP Top 25 and will have multiple chances to do so again this season.

Their lone loss is a single point (possession?!) to #1 Georgia. So, yeah, we’re enjoying this ride thus far.

Now, if you happen to find yourself among those that not only supported the ads, but further find yourself convinced they helped the turnaround, I, respectfully, will have to agree that we will forever disagree on that. 4-8 spurred those changes. Full stop. Brian Kelly, a coach that never fires anyone, jettisoned Brian Van Gorder before the calendar even flipped to October last season. That’s how bad things started and the Irish hadn’t yet found their lowest point.

But regardless of what side you wish to take in that argument, every last Irish fan should agree that an Irish team that is as dominant as this one is what we’ve all wanted. Further, I think we can all also agree that we all want more than #3 in the first CFP ranking.

Keep on (#33)trucking, Irish.

The Irish have knocked off top-15 opponents in back-to-back weeks by 20+ points for the first time since 1944. #GoIrish #BeatWake pic.twitter.com/zfFjbcT8mg

— Notre Dame Football (@NDFootball) October 31, 2017

I lied. Two tweets.

The post #HLSRecap: Notre Dame vs North Carolina State appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

The good news is, unlike the Irish, we are totally allowed to continue celebrating this one until Notre Dame kicks off against NC State. So, without further ado, TO THE TWEETS!

A Twitter Summary

https://storify.com/HLS_NDtex/notre-dame-vs-southern-cal-2017

The post #HLSRecap: Notre Dame vs. Southern Cal appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

https://storify.com/HLSrecap/notre-dame-football

The post Notre Dame Football vs. Miami (OH): A Twitter Summary appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.