Before I detail reasons and such, I want to make one thing clear. The “last season” just means no new content for the foreseeable future. I will happily keep paying the bills to keep the server and domain alive. Our Discord community will remain active as well.

If anyone wants to take over this little corner of the internet, hit me up via ndtex at herloyalsons dot com on the email machine or slide into my DMs. Otherwise, this site will serve as than an archive of over fifteen years of work–well, unless we get the urge to post something here once in a blue moon.

I’m leaving the door propped open.

Why This is Her Loyal Sons’ Last Season

It should come as no surprise that we’ve run on fumes for the past couple of seasons. Even before COVID hit, we’ve all seen our family and day jobs take more of our time and energy. While we all still enjoy creating content on our little corner of the internet, we just can’t dedicate the time we used to. In short, we know it’s time.

We didn’t want fall into a trap like setting a big milestone like winning a title/playoff game/NY6 Bowl or even something as monumental as Brian Kelly leaving. If, God-forbid, the bottom falls out of the season, we didn’t want to appear to quit in anger either. With that in mind, we announced our content creation retirement before the season started.

Our decision also gives you, the Loyal Reader/Listener/Sim Viewer, a time to celebrate and enjoy Her Loyal Sons’ last season. It gives us the extra motivation to deliver the absolute best that we have. We’ve delivered an entire season’s worth of glee for anyone that wants us to fade from the internet forever. Everybody wins!

Also, if we are completely honest, we just want to be fans again. Not fans with a platform or fans that need to figure out content strategy after a game–just fans.

Shane hasn’t been to a game on campus. The first time he goes, he shouldn’t be worried about what he needs to say on a pod after and schedule travel/life around it! I haven’t been to a game since the Cotton Bowl. The next time I do, I just want to tailgate, fire off a couple tweets, and hit the Backer without a care in world.

What’s Next for Tex

The HLS Podcast kept my blogging “career” going like an aging MLB slugger moving to full-time DH. Unfortunately, I have a fun habit of not knowing how to take on too much when I start something. Once a week turned into three times a week. Then, as if I wasn’t doing enough, I took on a charity endeavor through Extra Life.

Something had to give. If the choice is raising money to fight pediatric cancer or creating content for ND football, the choice isn’t hard.

Every year, I’ve ended up doing more and more for Extra Life and the extra time spent hits a huge return on investment. I’d like to keep that going and keep developing relationships in the Oklahoma City and Extra Life community–which isn’t easy living in Texas.

I know that I still have a desire to write and that itch must be scratched. That’s why I launched my Patreon earlier this year. For $1/month, you’ll get two posts every week (and if life is too much, I can always pause it and charges). During this final season, you’ll get some bonus podcast content from Shane and I, as well as an ad-free HLS podcast feed.

If the pandemic has taught me anything, it’s that life delivers far too many things outside my control. There’s no reason to add on to it, even if it’s a hobby as I enjoy. Frankly, it doesn’t work for my mental health. That makes things not just worse for me, but my family. My wife and kids deserve better.

That’s what made the choice to declare this season as the last for Her Loyal Sons so easy. Unlike my other retirement attempts, that’s what will make this one stick too.

I will miss HLS, podcasting, and the NCAA Sims. I will, however, not look back.

The post Her Last Season appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

With that said, the HLS Podcast will return, hitting your feeds on Monday, September 7, and the live Twitch recording stream on Sunday, September 6 at around 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT. The weekly schedule will look like this:

• Recap Pod – Stream: Sunday 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT, Podcast: Monday
• Picks Pod – Stream: Wednesday 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT, Podcast: Thursday
• HLS Sim – Stream: Thursday 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT, Podcast: Friday

There will be a couple changes to these shows. First, there will be no associated pick ’em this season with the picks pod. There are simply too many variables to track this season. In fact, Eddie and I are going to spend the first part of the pod laying the ground rules for how we will toss games from our own records in our annual Extra Life charity bet.

Next, the HLS Sim is going to be it’s own self-contained fantasy land. It will be the only show that will allow for Twitch crowd-triggered sound drops and text-to-speech tomfoolery. Get it all out of your system here!

Regardless of what happens in real life, the Sim will charge ahead more recklessly with the season than the SEC could ever dream of. We will follow the ACC’s currently published schedule rain, shine, or COVID outbreak.

That wasn’t a typo, by the way. I said the ACC’s schedule. While Shane and I will do commentary for the ND games, I will sim results off-stream for the rest of the ACC. We will have a new segment in the recap pod to cover what happened in the COVID-free video game world, complete with updated virtual ACC standings every week.

While we will have these bouts of silliness, I hope no one truly expects us to ignore reality. We will still continue to track and update our COVID spreadsheet and report/talk about the situation on campus. Notre Dame having the potential to be a really good football team doesn’t wash that away.

As our friends at Notre Dame Our Blogger so eloquently stated, there is no more just sticking to sports. Neither Shane or I (or even Eddie) can dissociate ourselves from what’s going on in the world and “stick to sports” and just churn out the content like all is well. If that’s too much for you, you might just want to stick to the Sim show/pod.

We will have some more changes as I iron a few things out, but they will be good ones and some of them will also do some good through charity. Overall, we will try to do what the Notre Dame students currently are: trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

Go Irish. Beat COVID.

The post HLS Podcast Schedule, How We’ll Try to Cover 2020 appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

1. For whatever reason, Yahoo!, who we did the regular season picks with, took forever to announce they weren’t doing a pick ’em this season.
2. That whole Extra Life thing.

But never fear, we have found a bowl pick ’em that features spreads and holds the confidence points (but, sadly everything has a hook). This year’s pick ’em will be hosted over at CBS Sports and herloyalsons.com/pickem will forward you to our group invite.

Beyond bragging rights among the loyal readers, you have a chance to win $5,000 from CBS if you win the whole nationwide contest. Within our little group, a free piece of merch from the HLS Store is on the line once again this year.

PLEASE NOTE: All picks are due before five minutes before the Bahamas Bowl kicks off on Friday, December 20. So don’t delay and get everything in ASAP!

Eddie and I will be using the spreads from the pick ’em in our picks podcast (firing back up Wednesday, Dec 18). So you will get a little bit of insight into our thoughts for at least the first wave of bowl games before your picks are due!

Best of luck, and, as always, #HAILGAMBLOR!

The post HLS Bowl Pick ‘Em 2019 appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

As you are likely aware, we have a few different outlets that we are affiliated with. With that in mind, we’ve highlighted some deals below for your convenience. Every purchase made supports this craziness that we do here (read: it helps to convince Mrs. Tex that this is absolutely worth my time).

Amazon

Yes, the big box store in the cloud. Amazon has loads of Cyber Monday deals that are too numerous to list. So head on over to their home page via our affiliate link and go crazy.

The best deals are usually on their own stuff. So if you are cutting the cord and need a Fire Stick or want a good cheap tablet for your kids with a parental control timer (I may or may not be doing this myself), today’s the day.

Of course, that is all just starching the surface. Clicking that link will make sure that anything you buy in the next 24 hours gives us a small cut. So if you see a lightning deal that won’t hit until later. Don’t worry, you’re covered.

Fanatics

Easily the best option for official Notre Dame gear that supports HLS. But it’s not limited there–they have something for practically every pro (and hell, even college team) that you can think of.

So make sure to use our link and use the coupon code “MONDAY” at checkout for up to 70% off on your purchase.

Bouqs

Flowers are always a fantastic gift. Knowing that you are supporting at Notre Dame alumnus-run business is just icing on the cake.

So be sure to take advance this Cyber Monday with 25% off site wide with coupon code: MONYAY. Yes, that’s MONYAY, not MONDAY!

HLS Merch (TeePublic)

TeePublic will have everything on sale site-wide at 35% off, including all HLS merch.

Make sure to swing by and get your HLS swag. If you want to support charity, make sure to snag some “Brady for the Booth” campaign gear (buttons and stickers now in stock!). 100% of all proceeds will go to my Extra Life campaign to fight pediatric cancer.

And this is one you can spread via word of mouth. Just tell people to hit up herloyalsons.com/store!

The post Support HLS on Cyber Monday appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Gone, but never forgotten are those six points that Elijah Shumate had to close out the 2014 tilt in wish the Irish won 37-0.

Also never forgotten, Devin Gardner getting blown the hell up, which is also properly memorialized.

Shirts aren’t the only thing available. We have coffee mugs, wall art, phone covers, baby onsies, and much more. Some of my favorite little accessories are the buttons and stickers which, in my opinion, may or may not be fantastic things to see plastered around Ann Arbor in a few weeks.

Loads of colors are available in the shirts, so be sure to pick out your favorite look. We even included yellow to allow you blend in for maximum trolling efforts.

This release is rather fantastic timing as well as everything at herloyalsons.com/store will be on sale for up to 35% off thanks to Tee Public. So now’s a great time to stock up on gear for the season and help support HLS! If officially licensed gear is more your thing, Fantatics has you covered (and yes, purchases using that link will also support HLS).

The post #RememberTheSix Merch Now Available! appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

My grandpa loved the Cowboys. He picked out his casket solely based on which one looked closest to Cowboys blue (and, in perfect irony, the casket had eagles on it). Complete strangers would become his best friend if they mentioned they were Cowboys fans. He was proud to have both his sons, and even his only grandson a couple of times, working the sidelines at Cowboys games with him.

So it should be no surprise that college football Saturdays didn’t exist in my house. While many of y’all that read HLS grew up with Lou Holtz, Rocket Ishmail, Tim Brown, and Tony Rice, I had Jimmy Johnson, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin.

Neither of my grandparents went to college. My parents didn’t either–although my mom did attempt community college when I was a kid. The first person in my immediate family to graduate college was my uncle, a proud Lumberjack of Stephen F. Austin–not exactly a strong college football tradition to brainwash your nephew with.

And yet, through a crazy sequence of events called life, this Methodist, half-Mexican kid raised by parents that didn’t go to college and only knew about Notre Dame’s existence because of Rudy ended up in the premiere Catholic University in the Midwest. I fell in love with the place after a single visit, which only happened, by the way, because I was “on the way” to DePauw University where I had an official visit scheduled from their baseball team.

I promptly cancelled said visit.

As a student, I fell in love with this beautiful and stupid sport known as college football. I couldn’t believe that I lived my life only watching two NFL games on Sunday and not gorging on as many games as possible on Saturdays. I’m still determined to make up for that lost time.

I became a student manager in the sunset of the Willingham era, where I learned what it looks like when a coach completely loses a team. That got me a front-row seat to the Weis era. There are many things that can be said about his shortcomings as a head coach, but the man knew his football. The amount I learned about the game via osmosis from being on the practice field every day was simply absurd.

My senior year, I shifted to golf, but the itch to talk about football persisted. I set up a Blogspot account under the pen name “NDtex” with a tagline of “Ramblings of an Irish Texan” and wrote as often as I could. After college, I took some of my first paychecks and bought the ndtex.com domain and continued said ramblings.

While I was all over the place on that blog, in 2011 I decided to focus solely on ND football. I left like the narrative of the team was being decided purely on knee-jerk reactions and hot takes founded on nothing. I brought in statistical breakdowns, film room breakdowns, and even created my own ranking system in which, I shit you not, involved me inputting in the box scores of every game manually and running it through a PHP script.

Ah, the life of a single, college football obsessed, 20-something.

I came over to HLS that same year and out of the gate went right after the narrative that BK’s spread offense didn’t have any semblance of power running. I began running HLS in 2012 and now, in 2019, my content…well, it doesn’t look anything like that any more.

While my love of #sportsmath and X’s & O’s hasn’t waned, my time to really dive into such things has. While I still very much enjoy writing (and you will absolutely see more of it this season), having two kids and a much more demanding job kinda kills that free time. I found that it’s much easier (for me at least) to produce a podcast.

During the season, the pod is where you will find most of my work–three times a week to be exact. Sundays (or immediately after ND night games) you will get a recap episode. Wednesdays are picks against the spread around college football with my buddy Eddie. Thursday will be our own unique take on previewing Irish games: the NCAA ’14 Sim. All of these stream live on Twitch as well at 9pm CT/10pm ET on recording days.

I spend much of my efforts on the podcast because I love the improvisational nature it leans into. It’s crazy what thoughts pop into your head in the middle of a segment or even mid-thought. Adding in the live elements like chat creates an awesome interaction dynamic that I just can’t replicate with a post. Finally, giving all control to an XBox for video game football perfectly mirrors all the absurd and random things that I love about this sport.

And so my unique path continues, attempting to cover a team I love all the way from Texas with no credentialed access, sources, or even the ability to watch a full game without a distraction or twenty from one of my kids.

The only other thing that I take one with as much gusto, outside of my family of course, are my charity efforts with Extra Life. My path there is no less unique, raising money in memory of a Aven, the son of my wife’s college roommate. Despite the Space Balls sounding relationship, his passing had such a massive impact on me that I use this platform and following of mostly ND fans to help raise money for a hospital located in Oklahoma City.

I hope that you continue to join me, and the rest of HLS, on this crazy path that I can’t seem to ever veer off of.

The post (Re)Introducing the Ramblings of an Irish Texan appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

via GIPHY

Did I ever introduce myself the first time?

I’m a placeholder persona for the zany intersection of the general college football landscape and the very particular ethos residing under the Golden Dome. My first act on this glorious site stemmed from the belief that Twitter was the World’s Best Sports Bar and sent #HLSrecap careening down the tracks to a land of lost productivity. To paraphrase the sage football pundit Ron Burgundy, “Sixty percent of the time, I’m serious every time.”

College athletics is one area of life to be taken lightly serious, and I appreciate our little corner of the Internet that appreciates Notre Dame’s past and present contributions. To wit, this football season I’ll be writing updates each week on Notre Dame’s schedule strength (the creatively named “Opponent Watch”), which is my humble contribution to the “Notre Dame plays nobody!” and “Well [Conference X Participant] deserves a playoff berth!” discussion. If you’re second-screening you’ll likely find me on Twitter or Discord, generally playing the Kool-Aid Man to any HLS planning session. But Tex asked us for a self-scouting report, so here goes:

Strengths

• Good in 280 character snippets
• Master’s-level pun proficiency
• B+ in animated gif usage

Weaknesses

• Struggles to show Christian charity to Michigan fans (Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner)
• Too-frequently engages the logically-challenged online
• Trouble discerning between sandwich and non-sandwich food items

A Quick 2019 Preview

Notre Dame’s Schedule

Y’all, we are on the cusp of some really excellent football storylines this year, the likes this fanbase hasn’t seen since the early 1990s. If your fandom doesn’t stretch that far back that’s fine too; our memory’s not what it once was so bygone days have a distinctly rose-tinted hue. Let me quickly outline what we’ll likely be talking about for the next two months:

• Week 1: Opening Weekend at Louisville
• Week 2: Spend your bye week watching Jim Harbaugh’s real-time sideline reactions to a quality Army option offensive
• Week 3: The Return Of The Davie
• Week 4: Georgia
• Week 5 Highlights of Kizer-to-Fuller during Virginia game
• Week 6: THE VANGORDERING INTENSIFIES
• Week 7: Can we make Lynn Swann and/or Clay Helton quit at halftime?
• Week 8: Another bye week, inexplicably
• Week 9: Michigan

Schedule Strength Quiz

As I conclude, please peruse the following list of teams, and answer a simple question:

• Fresno State
• Stanford
• BYU
• Utah
• Washington
• Notre Dame
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Oregon
• Arizona State
• California
• UCLA

That list is USC’s 2019 schedule. Can someone point out their guaranteed wins? My dark and decrepit heart may grow three sizes by Christmastime if things break correctly (and I do mean “break”).

The post (Re)introducing Irish Elvis appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

I saw the live-streaming platform branching out into non-gaming endeavors like the NBA G-League and even Pro Wrestling. So why not college football? I’m definitely not the only one that felt this way as a certain society of banners recently did the same thing.

While I’m not sure if we were the first college football podcast or site to try their hand at Twitch, I’m about 80% sure we were the first Notre Dame-centric one. I’m definitely sure that we are the only ones that decided use the NCAA ’14 video game as our medium to preview upcoming Notre Dame games.

The NCAA Sim quickly took on a life of it’s own. It became appointment viewing to the point that I’ve been asked repeatedly when the 2019 Sims would start back up. Loyal Viewers have even asked for a Fall Camp Sim. In response, I’ve joked that all Sim practices are closed to the media.

And then a buddy of mine said he’d be willing to purchase a “media pass” via a donation to something near and dear to my heart, Extra Life.

If you click on the “Charity” item in the main menu above, you will be directed to my Extra Life page, Gamin’ 4 Aven. If the name Aven sounds familiar to you, it’s because I requested the help of the Notre Dame family for donations to the Savin’ Aven fund as he fought Leukemia.

Aven lost that battle on October 10, 2015. He was two years old.

Fast forward a year later and I decided to do my first ever Extra Life campaign in his honor to benefit the hospital that cared for him. That’s the short version of this story, the longer one can be found here.

I raised $856 that first year. Last year, this happened:

So, yeah, this means quite a bit to me and my goal is to raise $6,000 this year. Any opportunity to drum up donations is absolutely of interest to me.

Here’s what we’re going to do: starting this morning, any donation of $5 or more to my Extra Life Campaign will grant you an exclusive “media pass” for a Fall Camp Sim, airing live Thursday, August 22 at 9pm CT/10pm ET in a private YouTube stream (since we aren’t cool enough for Twitch VIP streams yet). If you can’t make that date, no worries, the video will remain on our channel exclusive to donors only.

Emails will be sent out prior to kickoff for the link to the stream.

The top ten donors will receive VIP status on our Twitch channel. Beyond getting the use of our subscription-only emojis, you get the satisfaction of a badge of honor in the chat that will remain for the rest of the year.

As far as who virtual ND will play, that’s up to donors as well. Make a comment on your donation for the opponent you’d like to see. Every dollar counts as a single vote. If for some reason, you want to throw down $100 to watch Notre Dame stick it to Lane Kiffin and FAU, then by all means, let’s get weird.

If that all isn’t enough incentive, keep in mind that I drink absolutely terrible things for every $500 raised. As of this writing, I’m $482 away from $2,500 raised. If we hit it, I’ll do the next drink on my list on the private stream…and then I will have to do it again on my next public fundraising stream.

Let’s raise some money to help kids kick cancer’s ass and have some virtual ND football fun while we are at it. Go donate, spread the word, and let’s the sim hype train rolling.

The post Sim for Charity appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Indeed, if I reflect back, I have a difficult time pinpointing the moment I became an Irish fan. There’s no obvious reason for it. I am a born and raised southerner. My parents are from the northeast. Sure, they’re Catholic, but my Dad’s a BC Alum…oh…that’s right. I’ve been a contrarian dick for quite a while!

Revising my last paragraph: I can say my earliest Irish memories are the result of (1) convenience – since their games were always on, (2) being a spritely short dude, I can relate to a leprechaun, and (3) it was an easy way to gently sports jab the old man. I became a self-aware Irish fan somewhere around the mid-90’s. I can’t reflect on the Tony Rice/Tim Brown/Raghib Ismail/Jerome Bettis days because they pre-date my “fandom” as it were. (Interesting side note: I did have a Raghib Ismail Toronto Argonauts trading card that I would not trade for anything because I just thought it was the best thing ever he was nicknamed “The Rocket.” Had no concept at the time he was an ND guy. Oddly, I did not have the same affection for Roger Clemens).

Then comes 1993, “College Gameday,” Beano Cook, and the promise of multiple Heismans for some guy named Ron Powlus. There was no Internet. No 247 Sports. Just. Beano. And by God, I was going to witness this. I was going to record this. After being bitten by a radioactive spider and trying my hand at Superhero-dom for a while, I settled on being a stat nerd. Faithfully for the better part of 3 seasons, I would sit down and record every single throw of Heisman Ron’s. It was rudimentary — pass #, complete/incomplete, yards, TD?, Int? but it was there. I wanted to have the play-by-play data in my little red notebook to memorialize Ron’s numerous Heismans. Some day, on my death bed, I was gonna sit there with my grand kids and regale them with play by play information of how the Heisman was renamed the “Powlus.” I don’t mean to spoil things, but that Heisman moment never came.

In the meantime though, I watched and came to love Autry Denson, Marc Edwards, Joey Goodspeed (Heisman caliber name), Pete Chryplewicz (He lead the 1996 team with 27 receptions and 4 TD catches), Derrick Mayes (favorite all-time receiver), and my favorite defender of all time…Allen Rossum. No one will ever assign this as the glory days of Notre Dame football, and yet for me, this is the era of the players I still love the most.

By the time the Powlus era came to an end, I was hitting high school. I didn’t have the statistical evidence of the greatest QB to ever play for Notre Dame, but now I wanted to attend Notre Dame. As a student! For college credit! Weird thing happened…After joining a lot of clubs, learning a lot of math that I’ve long since forgotten, and forcing myself to actually read books and not just buy the Cliff’s Notes, I made that dream come true. It’s probably the last time I really cared and sought out to do anything so grand and long term. I’ve never regretted that for even a day. Well….being a student during the final year of Davie plus the Willingham years, it’s dishonest to say I never regretted it, but I feel generally confident in my decision.

Somewhere along the way of scribbling down Powlus’ throws into my notebook, I gained a morbid interest in charting offensive plays. I’m a small guy. Not Hobbit sized per se, but not not-Hobbit sized either. Suffice it to say, playing football wasn’t really in the cards. Charting plays, learning tendencies, and trying to absorb the strategy was my way of relating to the sport. Around 2010 or 2011, I started to on occasion write posts on a loosely formed blog called “John Lynch’s Dad” that I authored with a buddy of mine. The topics, content, and general quality were both sprawling and disorganized. As the years passed, several ND blogs have afforded me the opportunity to be equally random with slightly greater readership. I get the added bonus of occasionally having in-depth #snacktalk.

I started at HLS as a staff writer. Then, during Tex’s first or second semi-retirement, I stepped up to an assistant editor position. I lacked the bandwidth to make that work, and fortunately Tex is a far more hopelessly addicted ND blogger/vlogger/podcaster/simulator/tweeter/responsible adult than myself. So, I get to return to the fold primarily to return to my passion for #sportsmath, statistical breakdowns, and to finally record Powlus’ breakthrough season. I look forward to the tens of you who will read my work. To the rest of you – congratulations on having a life.

Consubstantially Yours,

Moons

The post (Re)Introducing Moons (Ugh) Moons appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

This latest iteration of HLS has by far been my favorite. Granted, we post less now. Our desire is to keep this at an obsessive hobby level so we don’t lose our day jobs, family life, and sanity. However, that doesn’t mean the passion and desire to talk Notre Dame has waned.

We still take loads of pride in what we deliver and are always looking to do things just a little bit different. But, with all these changes, including multiple expansions and contractions of staff, we felt that it would be best to re-introduce ourselves.

So, instead of serving up yet another practice recap, we are going to spend the fall camp period doing just that. Staff from HLS will be dropping in to tell you a little more about ourselves, the content we plan to bring you during the season, the particular brand of crazy that drives us to do this, and when you can expect to click on such content throughout the season.

Here’s a quick summary of what to expect content wise from us this season:

• Weekly Stats & Sports Math
• Podcasts (three per week) – both live on Twitch and traditional podcast feeds
• Yes, one of those podcasts is the NCAA Sim
• Opponent Watch/Strength of Schedule Breakdown
• Playoff Polls & Rankings
• Pick ‘Em (with prizes)
• Highlight Videos
• Charity

We’ll have more details and such in the coming weeks. Needless to say, we are all very excited for the season and to both entertain and inform as only we can.

The post (Re)Introducing Her Loyal Sons appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.