Quite frankly there has never been, in human history, a more obvious, unmistakable, and 100%-certainly true, definitely-the-case act of pandering than this business with returning to and reviving the practice of going to church services on Saturday morning right before the game, the 'player's walk', I guess is the lingo for it...
As blatant as any nervous new emperor hastily preparing some additional bread and circuses for the always-restive Roman mob, to kick off the new reign. Just without any question whatsoever. As opposed to the alternative, that our new coach truly thinks that this inarguably disadvantageous circumstance he has brought back, of his own volition, is actually the astute or judicious thing to do, on the basis of, shall we say highly preposterous reasoning or rationale. Or perhaps even worse than that, he's just such a personally religious soul, as well as deep, deep respecter of sacred tradition generally, wherever it lay and of whatever form it may manifest, that he can not help himself and is simply compelled to uphold miscellaneous traditions willy nilly, no matter the situation. That tradition itself is it's own reward, and you just gotta stick with them, because that's just how you live life. But Roman emperors took the opportunity to bask in their largesse, whereas MF has to feign some sort of vague solemnity about it....
So I think pretty clearly this is entirely a political move, and NOT a matter of either sheer stupidity or reckless piety. Whether this is shrewd on MF's part, or folly, I suppose time will tell. It's a bit of a gambit in any event, and maybe the team will imperceptibly perform worse than they might otherwise, but it won't cost us any games. But there's no doubt that the notorious ND fan base has - predictably - responded rather favorably thus far to the gesture. Which of course was the whole point and sole purpose behind the move.
But if we drop a home game to Cal or something, it will definitely be a bad look, I would like to think, and hopefully will be quietly abandoned in short order. I feel like the singing of the extremely downbeat, melancholic alma mater after the game is more than enough for the players to have to attend to on that score. Anyway, I'll shut up now. I think it's a stupid, at least slightly and somewhat self-destructive thing to do, and that MF is only doing it to get in good with the hardcore fans, as it is more or less indefensible/inexplicable otherwise, that you would ever needlessly do such a thing, when this ritualistic practice had apparently already been allowed to lapse....
