10 Things I Like About You: Bye Week!

First things first: while you’re enjoying the bye week tranquility, go listen to this week’s edition of the Rakes Report featuring NDOB!

1. It’s the best week to hang out and eat cheeseburgers! Yes this is a Charlie Weis reference but it’s also literally true, I’m gonna eat some cheeseburgers this weekend, hell yeah.
2. Sleep. Shoutout to sleep for being the best. Bye weeks remove the possibility of an ND kickoff before noon Pacific, which we are truly grateful for.
3. College football is chaos, plain and simple. It is wholly nonsensical and erratic, but we love it all the same. It is the Gritty of competitive sports. Every single week, good teams lose to bad teams, important players get injured, and stress levels rise. This will not be one of those weeks (yes I’m currently knocking on wood to prevent any injuries during practice, ok, chill out).
4. More than halfway through the regular season, this might seem like a distant memory, but I am willing to bet you have family and friends — maybe they are people who would like to hang out with you in a context other than drunkenly yelling at the teenagers beating each other up on TV! Every chance we can get to reconnect with the outside world during college football season must be treasured.
5. Speaking of which, a mid-October break is a perfect time to enjoy the best season, fall. I mean, I live in LA, so I’ll be spending my Saturday on a boat in the sun, but most of y’all are in prime pumpkin patch/apple cider/etc weather. Get at it.
6. Welcome back, Jafar Armstrong and Troy Pride! (fingers crossed)
7. There has been a lot of (rightful) consternation about the scheduling and travel the Irish have to endure this season, particularly in the coming five weeks, but at the very least we can be grateful this open date comes immediately prior to facing Navy’s triple option attack.
8. I’m happy for the players! Midterms suck, and fall break is great. Say what you will about ND and its ever-present academic rigors, but the fact that they give a week-long break like a month and a half into the school year is tight.
9. With one fewer potential win to complain about, NDNation is forced to calm down a bit. There’s even an active thread titled “Some midseason love for Kelly” and it isn’t sarcastic. What the fuck!!!!!!!
10. Mostly, I’m just thankful for a week without football-related anxiety. A couple top 25 wins in a row were exhilarating, to say the least, but after spending last Saturday with a pit Pitt in my stomach, it feels nice to keep the blood pressure at a reasonable level. Enjoy the cheeseburgers, get in the pool, just relax. See ya in San Diego.