Shane Gillis never attended the University of Notre Dame.
He was initially recruited to play football at Army but transferred a month into his first year at West Point. Gillis then moved on to Elon, where he spent one season on the football team before being leaving and, eventually, getting a degree at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.
But none of those facts have stopped him from becoming one of the program's most loyal supporters — and, more recently, its most famous celebrity fan.
Gillis' family ties to Notre Dame fuel passion for program
That's because his family roots in Fighting Irish football run deep.
Frank Gillis, Shane's grandfather, played on Notre Dame's offensive line in the late 1930s; Ryan Gillis, Shane's cousin, was there during the early 2000s.
Shane specifically recalled watching Ryan's Fighting Irish squad when it took on Oregon State in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl, a postseason matchup that resulted in a 41-9 win for the Beavers after they scored 29 unanswered points in the third quarter.
"I was so excited. And then they got killed,” he told The Athletic's Pete Sampson. "I remember going to bed because they were getting blown out. And I told my dad, ‘Wake me up if they come back.’ And I just stayed awake. He never came in to wake me up."
More than two decades after watching that gut-wrenching defeat, Gillis' passion for Notre Dame football has remained, even as he transitioned from a Honda salesman (and, later, an English teacher in Spain) to one of the premier faces in comedy.
His knowledge of Notre Dame has shocked some close to the program. Former quarterback Ian Book said Gillis is "always talking football"; former guard Chris Watt claims Gillis can name every quarterback he played with while he was in South Bend.
"He knows the players, is one of those diehards who lives and dies with Notre Dame football," Brady Quinn, another former quarterback who is now a college football analyst, said. "If you asked him, I’d bet he’d say he’d give his left testicle for Notre Dame to win a national championship."
Gillis' admiration of the program isn't just limited to private conversations with past players. When ESPN's College GameDay headed to South Bend for Notre Dame's first-round College Football Playoff matchup against Indiana last winter, Gillis was there, too, donning a blue-and-gold jacket as the episode's guest picker.
He also appeared in a three-minute promotional video for Under Armour that not only featured his father, Phil, but also Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman.
"You know, Shane’s an awesome human, right?" Freeman said. "He’s got a lot of notoriety just because of who he is and the way he really performs his craft. We appreciate him and the support he gives our program... Makes us kind of cool, I guess."
Gillis admitted that being one of the Fighting Irish's most public faces isn't always easy, but he will be forever grateful to represent the team he and his father would travel eight hours from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, to see when he was a child.
"It makes me slightly uncomfortable because people are like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?' But I think I represent a good Notre Dame fan," Gillis said. "Of everything I’ve been lucky enough to have happen to me, this is probably easily the coolest. And it’s definitely the coolest with my family."