I’m all about sportsmanship and always have been. I’m not one of those “chant things at the other fans at the game” kind of guys. I’ve always been more of a “scoreboard” man — if the big lights say your team is ahead or behind, you should have nothing more to say about it. As I tweeted recently, “Winning without integrity has absolutely no meaning and should not be acknowledged, let alone tolerated. “

It’s one thing, however, to be a good sport, and another entirely to be obsequious and cloying about it. Especially when you had absolutely nothing to do with the result at hand.

In the aftermath of #10 Notre Dame’s 23-17 loss to #3 Georgia last Saturday, social media is replete with the usual “be happy with what we have everyone else cheats no one else wants to coach here” contributions, and we had our almost swallows-to-Capistrano-like appearance of the “you guys aren’t happy enough after a loss” new poster who wants to drop his particular aroma of wisdom on everyone on the site who can stand it. That’s the standard fare in situations like this, nothing we haven’t seen before.

But this time, in the legendary words of Nigel Tufnel, we’ve gone to 11

This week, the readers of the Athens Banner-Herald were treated to full-page advertisement, courtesy of Notre Dame alumnus / trustee / name-on-a-dorm Jim Dunne, ensuring the Bulldogs and their fans understood what great hosts they were. This was a “very special weekend”, and gee whiz and willikers, next time “hopefully the results will be different.”

I’ve always heard the phrase “I just threw up in my mouth”, but never had the opportunity before.

As I said, I’m no stranger to sportsmanship. But last time I checked, the people who had to show it were the young men on the field Saturday night. As usual, there was nothing to fear on that front — Notre Dame’s players gave everything they had and battled up until the final gun, and when it sounded, they looked the Georgia players and coaches in the eye, congratulated them, shook their hands, and returned to South Bend. That’s the sportsmanship Notre Dame has always shown, which is why unlike some others, I’ve always been proud to be a Notre Dame alumnus.

But hold on thar, Baba Looey, because apparently that isn’t enough anymore. People who weren’t on the field feel the need to chime in and reassure the Bulldog masses how awesome they were and what a privilege it was to lose our 18th game in 19 tries against top-10 competition in their stadium. It was ever so swell to leave the field in defeat at your school, so we absolutely had to make sure you knew it.

The uncontrollable desire some Notre Dame fans feel to show the college football world how happy we are in our place of not offending anyone and taking our losses like champs grows commensurate with the bile in my stomach. When it’s done in such a public way by people who were students on campus when great things were being done athletically and should be comfortable with what kind of place Notre Dame is, it makes me want to break things.

I’ve been watching Notre Dame football for decades. I don’t remember any Michigan trustees talking about how nifty it was to have their national championship hopes dashed so early in the season. I must have missed Jimmy Johnson’s treatise on how hospitable we all were in 1988.

Why don’t I remember them? Because they didn’t happen. Know why they didn’t happen? Because intelligent people realized how weird and inappropriate it would be.

Of course the Georgia fans like it and think it’s “classy”. Their team won, and is now 3-0 versus ND lifetime (granted, by a total of 14 points, but whatever). They can afford to pat us on the head and tell us what good little fans we are and how wonderful our ad was for them to read.

Here’s the real question: How do you think that ad would have gone over after a 24-23 last-second just-like-we-used-to-do-it Notre Dame victory? Would they be using the word “classy”, or would they be telling us what to go do with ourselves? Or a better question — would any of us give a damn what Georgia people thought since we’d be too busy talking about a potential CFP berth? I put it to you we would not.

Back in the yesteryear, we knew what “classy” was — magnanimity in victory, maturity in defeat. The Sportsman’s Prayer so loved by Ara Parseghian was the roadmap. Play the game, win or lose, and move on. Pontifical approval-seeking was both unnecessary and unwelcome, because our foes will pretend to like us as long as they’re beating us. Throw a few Irish wins together, you can be damn sure the mackerels will start snapping.

A fair number of fans out there like to talk about the conditions they allege make it much more difficult for Notre Dame to win a national title in football again. Some of those conditions are valid, some overblown. But to me, the prioritization of showing our opponents we think there are more important things than winning over actually beating those opponents is doing far more to reduce the possibility of future success than all the rent-a-players, online courses, or comely coeds in the universe could ever do.

Want to show Georgia how much we appreciated playing down there? Spend less time bowing and scraping, get them on the damn schedule and get one in the win column.

Meanwhile, let’s keep our inferiority complex out of the newspapers. It’s embarrassing.

Tell Mike what you think in the comments below