The HLS Sim was born from my desire to do something different. In the vast sea of Notre Dame podcasts, I wanted to do more than stand out. I wanted to do something fun but also avoid our show being seen as a parroting of more popular Irish podcasts.

So I sent a message with a wild idea to Shane: let's go on Twitch and stream a CPU vs CPU matchup of the week's Notre Dame game using a decade-plus old video game as our "preview". To my knowledge, no one was doing this (at best, they were playing NCAA '14 themselves) so I figured it was worth a season to experiment.

The next thing I knew, the sim created a string of running inside jokes and we had people that legitimately made the sim appointment live viewing. Even though there were days I came to the stream completely exhausted and/or fighting a severe bout of depression, the sim always kicked me out of it. Something unbelievably stupid and hilarious would happen without fail--multiple times.

Whether you watched live, on demand, or listened to the podcast, I can't thank you enough for making this a thing. The joy and laughter you heard was always geniune...as was my utter disgust when virtual Notre Dame lost.

The Fiesta Bowl sim was a perfect send off. I couldn't have asked for anything better. I hope you enjoy the final entry as well.

Five Wide. DRINK!