Basketball Fandom at a Football School

An interview with Joey Dwyer of Breaking Down Brey's Boys

Based on Notre Dame’s brand, it is only natural to assume that I am a football fan first, with all other athletic programs falling behind as a distant afterthought. My strongest sports allegiance, however, is to Notre Dame men’s basketball.

This dedicated fandom is a combination of my upbringing in the Syracuse area, home to a university that is as much a Basketball School as Notre Dame is a Football School, the dominance of the recently retired Muffet McGraw’s women’s program, and the intoxicating appeal of rooting for a perennial underdog. When Notre Dame football loses by 27 to Clemson, not a single soul feels pity for Fighting Irish fans. Notre Dame basketball, on the other hand, competes in the Atlantic Coast Conference formerly the old Big East), regularly dueling with the Dukes and North Carolinas of the world, who are given no pity themselves. If Notre Dame men’s basketball has a strong year, chances are the team is led by plucky three stars from Indiana who will never sniff the National Basketball Association. Simply put, the men’s basketball program is lovable.

Finding other members of the Fighting Irish family who care equally about the basketball program, either men’s or women’s, is a challenge unto itself. As a student, I frequently attended half-empty men’s games (the women’s team is a regular sellout and holds 150 or so first-come first-serve seats for students, while students must reserve a ticket to men’s games ahead of time) on dark, below-freezing December evenings alone, unable to wrangle up another fan to make the ten minute walk across campus to Purcell Pavilion. Fighting Irish sites such as Blue & Gold Illustrated and IrishIllustrated, the 247Sports page for Notre Dame, don’t even have specific messaging boards for basketball.

🏀ND Hoops Recruits @NDHoopsRecruits

ND finally stepped up with the new hoops practice facility. It's time for Blue Gold Illustrated and Irish Illustrated to step up with a dedicated message board for the 2nd highest revenue sport at ND.

So when Joey Dwyer, one of the voices behind the Notre Dame men’s basketball podcast and website Breaking Down Brey’s Boys, agreed to give IBT its first interview, I was thrilled.

I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. If you are a fan of ND hoops, be sure to give Joey and his podcast follow on YouTube, Twitter, or Spotify.

A quick note: I lightly edited the interview for clarity and readability. It took place on December 23rd, a week before Notre Dame’s fifth agonizing loss at the hands of Virginia.

Do you come from a Notre Dame family?

I became a Notre Dame fan because of my dad. I used to live in Illinois, so Notre Dame was the only good team around, shade at Northwestern, Illinois, and DePaul intended.

No one in my family went to Notre Dame. I don’t think they could afford it, nor did they have the grades. I’ve always just been a fan. I started out with football, and then I remember the first Notre Dame basketball game I watched was the five overtime game against Louisville. The Jerian Grant game.

We were listening to Jack Nolan call that game on the radio. It was the third overtime when we turned it on and everyone else was going crazy in my family group chat. I remember guys like Jack Cooley, Eric Atkins. I think that’s how I got started.

And now I like Notre Dame basketball more than football.

What are some challenges that come with covering basketball at a Football School?