Mike Bunting is not missing this game.

Even if that means flying in from Austin with his pregnant wife Breanna after work on Friday. Even if it means hopping in a car and getting on the road back to Texas as soon as the game ends so they’re both home for work on Monday.

“I’ve been looking forward to this game since September 12th of 2015,” Bunting told CavsCorner by phone this week.

That is the date, of course, of the last time Notre Dame visited Scott Stadium. Bunting was in the front row of Section 105 that afternoon. It was the day that Bunting became a meme that, to his chagrin, represents an era of UVa football.

The day Bunting became “Sad Virginia Fan.”

A lot has changed in the six years since ABC’s camera caught him draped over the ledge in front of Section 105, moments after Notre Dame evaded an upset with a last-second touchdown pass. He was a fourth-year at Virginia that fall, trying to make the most of his final UVa football season as a student. Bunting has since graduated, gotten engaged and eventually married, moved to Texas, bought a house and switched jobs. In early January, he and Breanna will become parents for the first time.

Much has also changed for the football program since that disappointing day. That 2015 season was the sixth and final with Mike London as head coach. His replacement, Bronco Mendenhall, has guided the Hoos to three bowl games in the five full seasons thereafter. At 6-3, this year’s team is eligible for another postseason appearance.

Bunting was at the 2018 Belk Bowl in Charlotte to watch the Wahoos shut out South Carolina. The following season, UVa won the program’s first Coastal Division title and appeared in both the ACC Championship and the Orange Bowl for the first time.

“Even though we lost those two games, we still went to those games,” Bunting said, “which was a stark change from when I was a student during the Mike London era.”

In 2011, London was ACC Coach of the Year after leading UVa to eight regular season wins and an appearance in the Chick-fil-A Bowl—while Bunting was a senior in high school. The Wahoos won a total of 15 games in the four years that Bunting was enrolled at the university, never more than five in a season.

Just one of those wins came against a ranked opponent: Louisville was No. 21 when the Cards lost 23-21 at Scott Stadium early in the 2014 season. Bunting was among the students who stormed the field afterward to celebrate that victory.

A year later, Notre Dame was ranked ninth nationally when the Fighting Irish visited David A. Harrison III Field for the first time ever—but trailing the home team 27-26 with less than two minutes left after a go-ahead touchdown from UVa’s Albert Reid. In Section 105, Bunting was surrounded by fellow students preparing to again hop over the wall and sprint to midfield once the clock ran out.

But amid that anticipation, Bunting and friend Dagoberto Valladares remained intently focused on the game. Bunting’s grip on the ledge grew tighter with each first down as time grew short and the Irish made their way down the field. When DeShone Kizer lofted a pass down the left sideline to Will Fuller for the deciding 39-yard touchdown, Bunting was struck by a “visceral disappointment” that he still recalls vividly.

“As soon as the synapses in my brain fired and I recognized that a touchdown was just made with 12 seconds to go and there was no hope of us winning,” he described, “my body just kind of went limp.”

Sure enough, as Kizer sprinted to the end zone to celebrate with his Notre Dame teammates, ABC’s national telecast cut to the soon-to-be infamous shot of Bunting slumped over the ledge. Despondent over the 34-27 loss and without cell phone reception in the stadium, Bunting wasn’t flooded with push notifications until well after the game had ended.

“It went viral first on YikYak,” he recalled, “may it rest in peace.”

Valladares’s future wife Tara was the one who showed Bunting the image on the now-defunct social media platform while saying, “Mike, I think you might be famous.”

She was right.

As the meme blew up from there, Bunting was getting interviewed by national outlets like ESPN and Grantland and Sports Illustrated, plus local media outlets in both Charlottesville and South Bend.

“Jimmy Fallon impersonated me at one point on his show,” Bunting added. “He was drooped over his desk, and it was a nod to winter weather coming or something like that.”

That initial excitement eventually subsided—but the meme lived on. A few months after the Notre Dame loss in football, UVa fans used it to taunt their Wake Forest counterparts following Darius Thompson’s buzzer beater that took down the Demon Deacons in basketball. But more often, it would resurface following other disappointing Virginia defeats, most notably the historic men’s basketball loss to UMBC in the 2018 NCAA Tournament.

“It kind of is this bittersweet thing,” Bunting admitted, “where a lot of fans had fun over the fact that it became a viral meme, but it also represents sadness and defeat, and the sting of losing.”

Beyond that stigma, Bunting has little to complain about when it comes to life as a meme, though he admits that it’s been made easier by the fact that, since he's facing down toward the wall, he’s virtually anonymous in the image. The only person to ever identify him was his mother, who was watching the game live and recognized the birthmark on the back of her son’s head as he hung face-down on national television.

He has other stories he’s happy to share. There was the time Bunting was just a few days into the new job at National Instruments in Austin that prompted his move from Charlottesville. Testing had proven a piece of hardware for a product unreliable, so it had been adorned with various memes depicting disappointment—including “Sad Virginia Fan.”

For Bunting, it was an instant icebreaker with his new coworkers.

“It was just the weirdest moment,” he said. “What are the odds, 1,200 miles away, in a random lab in Austin, Texas, the meme was waiting for me?”

Then there was the recent church retreat that a 2020 UVa grad also just happened to be attending. Bunting had previously told his pastor about his secret identity. One morning on the retreat, he watched from across the room as the pastor approached the 2020 grad, and the young alum’s expression changed to “complete disbelief” as the two talked. The grad then rushed over to Bunting, pulled out his phone and took a picture “like I’m some sort of zoo exhibit.”

“He’s like, ‘Dude, I can’t believe you’re the Sad Virginia Fan,’” Bunting recalled with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘How do you even know about that? It happened before you were even a student.’”

Bunting had hoped to travel to South Bend for UVa’s 2019 visit but couldn’t get the time off. He couldn’t find a Virginia watch party in Austin either, so he wound up watching the game at a Notre Dame watch party at an Irish bar—in the same Hoo Crew shirt he was wearing in the meme. No one recognized him that day.

Later that season, Bunting was in Scott Stadium to see Virginia clinch its Coastal Division title by snapping the program’s 15-game losing streak against Virginia Tech. He was again among the sea of fans who flooded the field afterward, even stopping for a moment at a friend’s suggestion to make a video of “Sad Virginia Fan” again drooped over the ledge, only to rise like a phoenix and celebrate the victory. It was the last time he’s been able to watch the Wahoos in person.

That will change on Saturday night. Bunting and his wife had to make their elaborate travel plans to get back because they’d just driven 20 hours from Texas for a weeklong getaway in Virginia earlier this month, first for a baby shower before an extended ‘baby-moon’ spent driving back roads and visiting small towns. They’d used all of their available time off for that trip, forcing the couple to get creative in order to make the game this weekend after flying home last Sunday.

But there was no question: Bunting is not missing this game. Though their seats are in the upper deck, Bunting hopes to work some connections and end up back in that same Section 105 where he became quasi-famous. Notre Dame is again a top-10 team, this time ranked No. 7 in the country. He’ll probably be in that same Hoo Crew shirt. It all sets up for what Bunting calls “the true rematch.”

Just don’t expect any meme-making moments on national TV this time around—unless the Wahoos complete the upset this time. In that case, Bunting would be okay with one more appearance from “Sad Virginia Fan.”

“I already had the 15 seconds of internet fame back in the day,” Bunting said. “It comes back every now and then, to the point where it makes me smile and it makes me think back on my time in college. But if I had it my way, I would never see it televised again unless it’s emphasizing where the program was then to where it is now. Focusing on the positive.”

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