This year, Vox is taking a page from Deadspin and New York’s books and giving you a guide for rooting against each of the Hoyas’ Big East opponents. In preparation for tomorrow’s game against Notre Dame, here are three reasons to hate the Fighting Irish:

Luke Harangody

Barring a postseason meeting, Saturday will be the last time the Hoyas see the 6-foot-7 former Big East Player of the Year, and for all they know, he’ll be in a suit. Harangody’s missed the Irish’s past three games, and one report says he’s “not likely” to play tomorrow.

That might sound like a boon for Georgetown, considering Harangody is the nation’s second-leading scorer and eviscerated the Hoyas in their only match-up last year, with 31 points and 11 rebounds. But really, Harangody is just one more factor complicating an already difficult task. Game-planning for the Irish now requires the Hoyas to consider Notre Dame with and without Harangody, extra work that won’t make it any easier to prepare for a challenging opponent. Even without their best player, the Fighting Irish were still capable of blowing out No. 12 Pittsburgh 68-53. So don’t be fooled by the guy in the suit on Saturday. That’s not Gary Busey sitting courtside, it’s the player who continues to harass the Hoyas even when he can’t play.

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Last weekend, at Trinity Washington University (a small, Catholic school in Northesast D.C. with an all-women’s undergraduate program), University President Patricia McGuire used her commencement speech to upbraid the anti-abortion zealots who were protesting President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame. Here’s your chance to add a little extra oomph to her very powerful speech.

Would you let “that one” speak at your school?

Yesterday, we discussed how Notre Dame’s success in booking Barack Obama to speak at the 2009 Commencement was causing a stir among conservative Catholics. Fr. Schall gave a too-coy response to this issue and so we Madlibbed it.

Now, South Bend news outlets report that Notre Dame is sticking to its guns, and Barack Obama is still slated to be their commencement speaker on May 17. This time, another Georgetown voice is chiming in, Rev. Thomas Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center. He dismisses the controversy and tells Notre Dame to get real:

The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Washington-based Jesuit, said Monday that the “controversy over commencement speakers at Catholic universities pops up every spring along with the tulips.”

He called the uproar over the president’s visit “absurd.”

“If Cardinal Edward Egan of New York can invite Obama to speak at the Al Smith dinner in October of 2008 when he was only a presidential candidate, then there is certainly nothing wrong with Notre Dame having the President speak at a commencement,” said Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

Menawhile, the criticism won’t quit. Should Domers shut their yaps and be glad they’ve booked the President of the United States to be their commencement speaker? Or are concerns about Obama’s pro-choice and other policies legitimate?

Photo from transplanted mountaineer under a Creative Commons license.

On Friday, Notre Dame announced that their commencement speaker would be none other than POTUS Barack Obama (aAAaaw, lucky!)

It took conservative Catholics all of two days to react negatively, reminding Notre Dame that Barack Obama is “a president who has put the United States back into the business of funding abortion abroad [and] made a mockery of the very idea of moral argument in his speech announcing federal funding for embryo-destructive stem cell research” (that’s George Weigel, a Pope JPII biographer).

The National Review Online snapped into action and invited comments from Catholic thinkers re: “Should the University of Notre Dame honor our most anti-life president.” Georgetown’s own James V. Schall, SJ, was among those to reply. See if you can make out his feelings based on his response [paraggraphing mine]:

When a university invites anyone to its campus to present a commencement address, it honors the person chosen. Likewise, the invitation itself indicates what the inviting institution thinks of itself, of what it, as an institution, considers to be worthy of honor. Some people would not be invited; others would not accept. Those invited do not accept every invitation. When they do accept, they indicate that it is worth their while to give the said address and receive the said honor.

Clearly, some things are incompatible with honor, others are incompatible with truth, the purpose of a university. Aristotle says that the highest reward of the politician is honor, something more coveted than power or wealth. Honor is something the politician seeks, even covets. The academic, for his part, longs for recognition. He wants his often obscure work to be “appreciated.” The polity has its own rewards, its own honors.

The accepting of the honor to the president evidently meets his purposes. The awarding it seems to meet the purposes of the university. Some say that it is a perfect fit. Others suspect that both parties, in accepting and giving such honors, manage to demean each other in what each is, in truth, expected to stand for.

And then there are unknown unknowns. He isn’t letting ND off the hook as it tries to dissociate its invitation to Barack from their support of his positions (fair?). But is Fr. Schall a “some,” or is this his coy way of saying he’s an “other”? Let your Madlib decide after the jump!

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