YouTube was created a few months after Charlie Weis was hired at Notre Dame and the first video uploaded to the site came in late April 2005. So, it’s been around a while but in the grand scheme really not that long. Every once and a while I’ll take a look at Notre Dame football content on YouTube in an attempt to find something interesting or historical I haven’t watched before. The other day, I looked at the most viewed videos relating to the Irish football team.

Did you know there are Notre Dame 83 videos with at least 100,000 views? That’s 13 more than Michigan football but 40 fewer than Alabama football. Presumably it’s good for YouTube when you’ve been a hyper successful college football program over the last 15 years.

The most-viewed Notre Dame video–by over 900,000 views–is THIS 2-minute clip of the “Rudy Play” which is a slightly misleading title because there are a few plays before you actually get to the famous walk-on’s sack. Think of all the idiots who have watched this over the years trying to determine whether Rudy was offsides or not. Totally worth the view.

Rudy is fairly popular. The first, third, fourth, sixth, eighth, ninth, and twelfth most-viewed Notre Dame videos are Rudy related.

Twenty-two videos chronicle specific Notre Dame victories, hooray! Any guesses on the most-viewed win? It is the 2018 win over Michigan from NBC Sports. That’s a good one to watch, especially if you’d like to forget the trip to Ann Arbor this past season.

Going back to that successful program note above, the ’18 win over Michigan only clocks in as the 33rd most viewed video. Sadly, there are 24 videos relating to specific Notre Dame game losses and the following are listed before the first win:

2016 Texas (5th most)
2011 Michigan (11th most)
2005 USC (12th most)
2018 Clemson (17th most)
2011 Michigan (19th most)
2012 Alabama (21st most)
2019 Georgia (23rd most)
2017 Miami (25th most)
2017 Miami (27th most)
2015 Clemson (28th most)
2019 Georgia (30th most)

That’s a lot of pain, don’t watch it.

Looking at some other categories there is one pep rally video, one recruiting video, two Irish Connection videos, eight pump/hype videos, one campus tour video, two off-season workout videos, seven videos on the Victory March or Band, as well as several pretty random videos like the “Enter Sandman” intro from the Virginia Tech game two seasons ago that is remarkably the 17th most-viewed video after a little more than a year since being uploaded.

Here’s a look at a few of my favorite videos in the bunch:

I am assuming that the vast majority of our readers have watched this video in its entirety. If you have not please sit down and take the half hour of your time and enjoy the ride.

It’s well worth it. Especially because it was uploaded in December 2012.

The title on this video is hard to beat. Also, KnuteSchoolFools uploaded a lot of videos while stopping 5 years ago and I’d just like to say I appreciate the half Michael Jordan/Everett Golson avatar.

This video screams mid-aughts so damn hard. The grainy footage. The music. It’s a great time capsule.