Ever want to know more about the writers at One Foot Down? Well, now here's your chance! You can access this post in the future by clinking on the "about us" logo on the main page.
This site started as a one-man crew led by our Leader, the esteemed Whiskey. It then became a two-person party and later, a trio. Today, OFD's ranks have swollen to a bountiful 9 persons.
9 is an awfully fine number, isn't it?
We may be a mysterious crew, but now we're less so.
This is who we are...
*Whiskey*
Location: Southern California
Bio: Whiskey is a coach's kid who grew up on the sidelines of West Texas High School Football stadiums and tagging along with his Dad to meet with assorted college recruiters over a chicken fry. By age 10 he was obsessed with college football and like his old man, an intense Notre Dame fan. Fast forward 20 years and after the 2008 season he became frustrated with fatalistic tone of the conversation about ND football and decided to try and start a more rational conversation of his own. The scope of his original idea was broad but it eventually zeroed in on his life-long fandom for the Fighting Irish. Whiskey was a one-man show for 15 months before recruiting like-minded writers that he discovered on the interwebs. Somewhere in there OFD took off. When he isn't writing posts or managing the site, he is often travelling the globe draining the alcohol supply of assorted seedy establishments and getting into gunfights. He maintains his cover as an average SoCal family man that enjoys sports and a good cookout.
Favorite Irish Player: Kevin McDougal
Favorite Irish Coach: Lou Holtz
Guilty Pleasures: California Burritos, Cheeseburgers, Beer, and Whiskey
Favorite Soft Drink: Big Red
Nemesis: Time
*Eric Murtaugh*
Location: Western New York
Bio: Eric serves as the resident lead writer at OFD and enjoys a good op-ed piece as much as a thorough game preview. As a former hockey player, Eric brings a presence to the site that is incredibly gritty. He dislikes math with a passion but adores a variety of sports statistics. Eric considers himself a sports uniform connoisseur and is obsessed with the Beatles and classic rock in general. He is a firm believer that Eric Lindros should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer and he enjoys playing guitar, playing golf and tennis, and reading anything college football related in his free time. Eric calls the bubbly soft drink "pop" and believes that Western New York is the true gateway---or beginning---of the Midwest. He was once lulled to sleep by the hushed crowd at the 2010 Tulsa game, while the Grotto is his favorite place on campus. Eric is half-Irish (if he's lucky) with his ancestors coming from Knock, County Mayo, but he is an American and patriot first and foremost. He hates when people back into parking spaces, interrupt sentences, and talk loudly on their cell phone. He loves military history, melodic music, and a university for which he did not attend. You can find him on Twitter @EMurtaughOFD.
Favorite Irish Player: Rocket Ismail
Golf Handicap: 20
Beer of Choice: Guinness
Favorite Shoe: Reebok Allen Iverson Question (Low)
Favorite Website: Uni-Watch.com
*burger23*
Location: Pretty close to Lake Erie
Bio: Burgs (as his friends call him) is the OFD film guy. If you want to know why that play went for 20 yards instead of 2 yards, he's the guy to ask. An avid runner, burger likes to run distances that make normal people cringe. He is a giant dork, which is obvious once you notice the United States Frequency Allocation poster hanging up in his room. When he's not thinking about college football, burgs enjoys playing sports of all kind, reading a good book, and enjoying a bottle of anything from Great Lakes Brewing Co. As a Cleveland sports fan, burger is used to constant disappointment, making it easy for him to keep a level head in the post-Holtz era of ND football.
Favorite Irish Player: Golden Tate
Favorite Website: Smart Football
Favorite Offensive Formation: Flexbone
Favorite Food: Anything Italian
Favorite Sports Broadcaster: Austin Carr & Tom Hamilton (tie)
*Jim Miesle*
Location: Central Indiana
Bio: Jim is the OFD Recruiting Coordinator, a job that demands long hours of reading frivolity on the interwebs and disseminating to our loyal audience. He abhors referring to himself in the third-person, and recently took the plunge into a strange and wonderful world known as parenthood. His non-work time (formerly modified with adjectives such as "free" or "spare") used to be filled with athletic endeavors, reading several pages of text bound together into something loosely called a "book" and DIY projects of his own or better-half's design. If left to his own devices Jim would spend every fall Saturday absorbing as much college football as possible. Sadly, Jim is also a Cubs fan, so to him 15 years of post-Holtz football are nothing more than a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Notre Dame Record When In Attendance: 4-1 (home), 0-2 (road)
Favorite Notre Dame Coach: Lou Holtz
Favorite Uniform Number: 21
Favorite Website: Amazon---if they don't have it, you don't need it
Favorite Guilty Pleasure: Infomercials
*CW*
Location: Pittsburgh
Bio: CW is a 2008 graduate of Notre Dame and former member of Dillon Hall. Originally from the Pittsburgh area, he did not grow up an Irish fan, but got a quick lesson on the life they lead when he watched his first game as a student: the 2004 road loss at BYU, when Matt Payne rained down special teams death. (His first home game, the upset over Michigan, was much more enjoyable.) CW does not understand how people can prefer the NFL to college football, North Dining Hall to South Dining Hall or "Coming to Your City" to the old Bubba Sparxxx "College Gameday" theme. His twitter handle is @RakesOfMallow, the song title of the Irish jig and CW's ND blog from 2006 to 2011.
Favorite ND Games Attended: 2004 Michigan, 2005 USC, 2006 @ Georgia Tech, 2006 Penn State, 2006 UCLA, 2010 Yankee Stadium vs. Army, 2010 @ USC, 2004-05 basketball vs. undefeated Boston College
Least Favorite ND Games Attended: 2004 Purdue, 2006 Michigan, 2007 @ Penn State (and basically every other game that season other than Duke and even that wasn't exactly fun), 2010 Michigan
Preferred Nickname for Michael Floyd: St. Michael
Favorite Bowl Location: New Orleans
Favorite South Bend Bar: Finnies/The Viw (tie)
Favorite South Bend Pizza & Burger: Rocco's and The View
*alstein*
Location: Lansing, MI
Bio: Alstein is contractually a basketball writer for OFD but will dabble in some football because few things rev his engine quite like good offensive line play. He graduated from Notre Dame into shocking underemployment and is predictably in grad school now at a rival school. Alas, he joined OFD just a few months too late to literally be a blogger living in his parents' basement, which really damages his credibility. He studies strategic management in grad school, which he will tell you is more interesting than it sounds. He is cynical about pretty much everything in life except for sports, which he just constantly finds ways to enjoy, even when end results are less than desirable.
Notre Dame record when in attendance: Not great. Went to ND for Weis years 2-5. Since then, BK and I are 5-2.
Favorite Uniform Number: Anything ending in 4. Weirdo.
Favorite Notre Dame Individual Season: In 2007, Trevor Laws recorded 112(!) tackles. As a 3-4 DE. He out-tackled each AA defensive lineman that year by at least 32, including more tackles than Vernon Gholston had in his college career. Absurd video game numbers.
Lifelong dream: Be a contestant on Jeopardy, go into Final Jeopardy winning in a runaway, see a sports-related category come up, bet all my money even though I could play it safe, and nail it.
Favorite Guilty Pleasure: Seriously? Where do I start? Cartoons, HGTV, syndicated game shows, making Excel spreadsheets, NPR...
*fishoutofwater*
Location: South Bend, IN
Bio: Fish is the latest to join the writers at OFD. She has been at Notre Dame since 2008, when she nearly ran over Jimmy Clausen in the C1 parking lot. Fish does a lot of reading and a lot of writing when not following the Irish (a lot of reading and writing), but also does a good deal of cooking, running (so long as it's over 7 degrees F, which is never a given in good ol' South Bend), and things generally out-of-doors. With no television in the house, Saturdays in the fall are spent in places with large TVs watching Irish football and trying not to draw too much awkward attention (that off-field equivalent of the yellow flag) for either excessive celebration or unsportsmanlike conduct.
Notre Dame record when in attendance: 3-1 (the sole loss was in 4OT and the 3 wins all involved loads of rain)
Favorite Notre Dame play in 2011: Robert Blanton's interception and return against MSU
Favorite uniform number: 10
Favorite thing to do that you can't do in South Bend: Swimming in the ocean
Favorite guilty pleasure: Reading parodic Twitter feeds
*4pointshooter*
Location: Currently Fort Lee, NJ (Will Be Arlington, VA in August)
Bio: 4pointshooter is a basketball writer for OFD and is a Notre Dame alumnus of the class of 2010. When not covering Notre Dame roundball for OFD, 4pointshooter will be burying (or at least should be) his head into law textbooks over the next three years. He is also a fan of the Orlando Magic which has taught him to hate all dominant big men who use the moniker "Superman" as their nickname.
Notre Dame Record When In Attendance: 16-10 (as a student) 1-0 (as a alum)
Favorite Uniform Number: 17
Favorite Notre Dame Basketball Player: I have a feeling it's going to be Cameron Biedscheid, but for now it's Tim Abromaitis - thanks for the "A-" in Macro the summer of '08 (A)bro!
Favorite Website: Facebook - I admit it...I'M A FACEBOOK WHORE
Favorite Guilty Pleasure: Late 90s Pop music...I'M SO SORRY
*Mouth of the South*
Location: Whereabouts unknown, but The Mouth has been spotted as far southeast as Delacroix Island, Louisiana, as far North as Notre Dame, Indiana, and as far west as Fort Worth, Texas.
Bio: The Mouth covers... what exactly does the Mouth cover for One Foot Down? Maybe it would be easier to delineate what The Mouth doesn't cover. His scope isn't hard-hitting analysis. That's more Murtaugh's milieu. He doesn't cover X's and O's. Such falls squarely within Burger's bailiwick. The realms of recruiting and roundball? Reserved for Messrs. Miesle and 4PointShooter, alstein, and CW, respectively. Beautiful verse, elegant prose, and visual wizardry? Nay, those are Fishoutofwater's forte. Pithy commentary and rapier witticisms laced with perhaps a little too much reliance upon the cultural dross of pop culture references and specious pseudo-intellectualism? The Mouth would never flatter himself so....
Favorite Notre Dame Shoe/Sock Combination: Black shoes with white socks and white spats.
Favorite Fictional Role Models/Mentors: Atticus Finch, Dr. Gonzo, Tom Hagen, Michael Clayton, Jack McCoy, and Ron Swanson.
Favorite Website Not Named One Foot Down: One Foot Down is second, with OFD and One Foot Down in a close tie for third. Coming in at fifth is Listverse. I caution you do avoid Listverse, however, because between OFD and Listverse you will never accomplish anything again.
Favorite Irish-Related Movie: Fifty Dead Men Walking. It's about the other Irish, the ones from across the pond. It has Ben Kingsley and it's about the IRA. See it now.
Favorite Hobbies: Writing for One Foot Down, reading, retreats and quiet meditation, maintaining peak physical fitness for fisticuffs that inevitably ensue when angry commenters come calling, eating all things edible (which considerably impedes the prior hobby), playing chess on Chess.com iPhone app, shoes, enjoying the blues, and last but most importantly, preparing for the birth of his first child.