(Last year's edition is here.)

So, in anticipation of kickoff tomorrow, I am, in fact, going to go through the Notre Dame catalog again. Last year, Hammes gave me a lot more to work with. That right there is like Pedro's '99 season. It's possible to top it (see: Pedro's 2000 season), but it's going to be very hard. This year, we've got screen caps from the online catalog, because my CS3 can't bother to learn how to work with my scanner. (Actually, since I wrote this, I learned that not only is there this catalog, but there's two sub-catalogs that came in the mail yesterday - got home late and didn't check on Wednesday night - that are just brutally fucking awful. I will be doing one each the next two weeks, and I am really excited for them. Seriously, I can't wait. I was disappointed when I found out they'd already been mailed out because I thought I was the only one that would know about them, since they're kind of on an obscure part of the ND site.)

Leading things off, we have WWE superstar John Cena wearing three logos. There's a fourth on the shorts that he's wearing, but the weird .pdf browser that the Bookstore sets you up with won't let me read it. I still hate the WB shield logo, but I do approve of placing the models in front of a weird soft sun light instead of a still photo of the stadium, like last year.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I heard you say, 'Hey, sexy,' and turned, assuming you were talking to me. I'll just keep walking this way."

or

"Da-yum, lookit her *ass*!"

Little known fact: Notre Dame is sponsoring a NASCAR team this year.

The funny thing is that Play Like a Champion Today works for two of these, and the third would be better served by ganking Big Ben's shirt. Is that a can of *Sprite* in there? Oh, man, lame.

"TO BE IRISH IS a WAY of LIFE." To dot your 'i's with a shamrock with an interlocking ND in it is lame. I'm also super-jazzed about the shamrock with the three stripes. Exactly what I was hoping would happen when we dropped Champion for Adidas.

Now onto the hats, which are, as with everything else, not as brutal this year. Except for these:

I always thought blue and gold were too pedestrian. You know what we need? A green-navy-dark gray-light gray color scheme!

This one's a fucking award winner. Yes, that is "khaki mesh" on the side and back panels. If this hat weren't trying so hard, I'd say it's something you'd find on a guy filling gas tanks wa-a-a-a-a-ay Upstate; since it's trying so hard, I'm going to say it's something you'd find at a Dave Matthews Band concert.

They did it! They found the one way to make this cartoon leprechaun even lamer. What next, 3D modeling? Lord. And that raised monogram logo on the brim - what is that, so after your asshole buddies put it there when you pass out on the couch and then take pictures of you and post them on the internet, you have something to grip the hat with when you're taking it off your head and throwing it at you?

Not content with Game Day t-shirts, now we have Game Day hats. Which aren't horrid, I guess. I like that the Duke one is khaki - it's like we're especially pandering to the Dookies that may come to campus. I imagine that Duke is the only place on earth with a higher concentration of khaki than Notre Dame's campus.

On to the lady collection:

Actually, I like this shirt. I've said it before, but the women's wear department does an overall pretty decent job. Expect to see Jen in these someday.

More of them.

Remember what I said about khakis? Well, nowhere on earth are Mardi Gras beads less likely to have their desired effect than at Notre Dame. Why even bother making these things?

See, the Game Day shirts are just generally crappy instead of actively offensive this year. The Irish-Eagles one is probably the worst, and a lot of that is because it has BC's Sam the Eagle logo on it.

I really dislike this year's Shirt.

And now, the finale, the coup de grace of awfulness:

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Seriously, these things? It is only OK to wear them if you're under the age of seven, or an emergency room doctor where you need something that hoses off easily. That's it. Ugh, awful. I'm sure this is a best seller, too, that's the most depressing part of it.