We are just a few days from a NCAA Football Championship semi-final appearance, and to read Notre Dame fans on Twitter and elsewhere, one would think we’d rather eat lint. This Notre Dame Fighting Irish team has given us a great and entertaining season, and they have done so under difficult circumstances.  We owe it to this team to have a better attitude about this game.

The Situation Absolutely Requires a Really Stupid and Futile Gesture

We get it.  Alabama is an extremely difficult opponent, and the good vibes built over the season evaporated within the first hour of the ACC Championship game.  The Vegas oddsmakers don’t give us much of a chance, offering odds to win far worse than they did for Texas A&M, Florida or Georgia.

Fans have even written the unthinkable, that perhaps it would have been better had Notre Dame just gone to the Orange Bowl!

Folks, we asked for this opportunity.  Now is not the time to sulk and fixate on the difficulty of the challenge.  Let’s cheer on the win, friends! Let’s remember how good it felt in early November, and how excited we’ll be to research $2000 seats on StubHub and expensive Florida hotel rooms while the good people of Tuscaloosa scratch their heads in disbelief.

Nothing Is Over Until We Say It Is

As Notre Dame fans, and writers, we try to insulate ourselves from the potential hurt of losing by adopting a disinterested and detached veneer, as though agreeing we think the team will lose will make the inevitable “ND can’t win the big one” articles less annoying and more tolerable.

“I’ll be happy if they win, but I don’t think they have a chance”

“Someone has to be fourth, may as well be Notre Dame”

“They have thirty 5-star players, what do you expect?”

“Oklahoma survived several semi-final beatings, so will we”

And the worst:

“I just can’t”

Let us let you in on a secret, poo-pooing the Irish doesn’t make the hurt of a possible loss any less painful, and it doesn’t stop the naysayers from saying what they’re going to say. Frankly, it’s a garbage attitude to take as a fan of Our Lady’s University.

Who’s With Us?

It’s time to go all-in, people!  Take the namby-pamby attitude somewhere else. If you’re holding off so you can later deploy an “I told you so,” put a sock in it. The boys gave us a great season and are preparing to give their all on the field.  As fans and alums, we owe them the same in our support.  We spent the other 51 weeks of the year proclaiming that at Notre Dame, the only goal is a National Championship, we don’t do conferences, etc.  Well, the road to the National Championship runs through Dallas and over the Crimson Tide.  May as well embrace it.  The boys on the team certainly are.

#GoIrish

#BeatBama