Whether it’s the mixing of academics, athletics, recruiting, evolving conferences, high-profile administrators, or over 100 years of debauched history we know college football affords fans plenty of opportunity to act with incredulity and abrasive resolve. The internet has only magnified this game’s melting pot of dumb.

Notre Dame has cultivated a massive following in this regard. A perfect storm descended upon the Fighting Irish world in the late 1990’s. Just as the internet was expanding into living rooms across the nation, Notre Dame was faltering on the football field. Just as the last generation who witnessed a National Championship as students were becoming frustrated middle-aged fans there burst this outlet to vent all of this disappointment.

For some, they carry this history with them always. Every day they wake up and log-in thinking, “I have to remain vigilant. Do not trust the administration. There’s so much wrong. I have to fight. The C2C was the greatest movement of my lifetime causing the firing of the most lame duck coach in school history.”

Hearts forever stuck in 1988, minds forever stuck in 2003.

So you can imagine the collision that has occurred with the rise of social media. No longer are press conferences and rare interviews with ESPN being parsed–now the football program speaks every day! Across numerous platforms! Schools can now promote themselves and their brand like no other time in history. As we’ll see below, this aggression simply cannot stand without rebuttals and refutations.

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Stop that Tweeter Nonsense

There are 127 FBS football teams for 2016 with Coastal Carolina currently a transitional member. Every school has a bevy of employees who tweet out positives of their program. It’s called promotion, for a reason. Most fans skim over these tidbits but dear friends not everyone.

Paraphrased tweet: “Hey, we’ve won a lot of games recently. We’re pretty cool.”

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There are real-life human beings out there, eating breakfast, driving to work, co-existing with people in the office, taking their kids to soccer practice–somehow, someway in the middle of this they’ll lose their minds over the most harmless, run-of-the-mill tweets. Here are some real comments as evidence:

It’s also unseemly and insulting to have the propaganda team at ND trumpet Kelly’s achievements as if they’re extraordinary or even noteworthy.

…when it’s obvious those ‘achievements’ are massaged statistics, it grates.

Imagine living in a world where you’re upset about positive words from your school. Where normal people doing their jobs and encouraging a positive message becomes propaganda. The closest I can think of anything of the sort bothering me is THIS and that’s only because it laughed in the face of the college football gods. Notre Dame could go 0-12 and I can’t even fathom getting worked up because someone at the school tweeted a player tallied a career-high 85 receiving yards instead of how much we suck.

That’s just exhausting to type.

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Tape the Truth!

There are a lot of humorous subjects out there but nothing, and I mean nothing, brings out the laughter like the reaction to practice videos.

Still, I don’t get the sense from seeing the few highlight clips that we get that ND and Kelly spend too much time working on the run game. Some things never change.

…the practice reports coming from ND

[are seen] as being as overly optimistic as a report from Pravda. The thought being more propaganda than truth.

ND is controlling the message.

…carefully crafted highlight video not a real practice video.

State sponsorship censorship at its finest.

This stuff is the best. It just doesn’t get any better than consternation over practice videos. To add further comic relief I like to picture crusty alums getting pissed off at university videos and commercials aimed at academics and research.

“Of course they show professor Edwards, what about professor Green? They don’t want to show that chem lab on the fourth floor, those liars. They’re promoting the 12th best school in the country like that’s an accomplishment to be proud of it’s just amazing what they will stoop to these days to put lipstick on a pig.”

But it’s sports so I guess the craziness is accepted in some quarters.

The curious part is the disbelief over the authenticity of these videos. Trickery! Full of sunshine! People might think this team is good when they are not!

[watches video]

“Oh, we’re throwing the ball in all of these highlights. Never mind this is entirely accurate.”