The Shaloobyist IU Football Sandwich Article You Will Ever Read

The Rise of Bloomington's Hit Resturant, "Shalooby's", & The Professor Behind The Mission

The Indiana Hoosiers Football team has not only had one of its best starts in decades. The team has also garnered national attention in many major ways.

Besides the success on the football field, this attention is focused on not just a single team but a single restaurant that has now become an internet sensation loved by players, fans, and coaches alike.

For further insight about the restaurant and its connection to the IU Football team, let us explain.

To start, the Indiana Hoosiers have been on a run for the ages.

Led by former James Madison University football head coach Curt Cignetti and Quarterback Kurtis Roarke, along with an additional 27 transfer players, some from James Madison, the Hoosiers will be featured on College GameDay for the first Saturday in school history and the first time since Ohio State played IU on a Thursday in 2017.

This moment is so historic in facts, in his 15 years as an adjacent IU Media School professor, Jeff Lafave, who goes by the username at btownmoose on X/Twitter, said there has never been so filled with so much excitement yet so much anticipation for a single college sports team in the history of his time at Indiana University.

at btownmoose on the X/Twitter page gained attention after tweeting just any normal tweet a few days before FOX Big Noon Kickoff was coming to town that weekend when IU was set to match Nebraska.

“I was researching pictures of IU homecoming last week, in advance of the big game, the big weekend,” Lafave said. “I found some AI-generated photos for an article about IU Homecoming that had not just very poor quality images but invented on its own a fake restaurant in Bloomington called Shalooby’s, and it was right next to two standout actual existing restaurants farm, Bloomington and the Chocolate Moose. Great establishments. So, I ran with it, and it started kind of making jokes.

Professor Lafave, or Moose, created a Photoshop generation featuring a golden sign posted on the now-closed Café Pizzeria building on Kirkwood Avenue near the IU Bloomington campus.   

He spoke about how he wanted to contribute to the “fake lore about the Bloomington restaurant” by adding his humor and some creative thinking to create what many call the greatest meme so far during the great IU football season.

Before opening the restaurant on Thursday, October 17, he never would have imagined how far this joke would go.

The first post wasn’t about the idea of making up a restaurant based solely on an internet joke, but it started as a photo of an Indiana University cup and a caption reading, “Bad weekend to be an ice-cold beer at Shalooby’s in the Indiana pint glass.”

One former student commented on the post which started a chain reaction across the web, “Alumni here. wtf is Shaloobys and how do I get in?”

The restaurant and its emphasis on selling “sloppy sandwiches” spread like wildfire through Reddit, X/Twitter, and Instagram. It even made its way to signs featured that weekend on FOX Big Noon Kickoff. The restaurant became even more of a hit when the Hoosiers beat Nebraska 56-7.

After the game, IU Football Center, Mike Katic, and IU Bloomington’s official school social media pages even gave a shoutout after the Cornhusker beatdown.

It even gained traction with fans and alumni alike on Google Reviews, where they post daily memes about the restaurant and all the disgusting restaurant items that go beyond selling sloppy sandwiches.

Other food items are featured in the reviews, many of which look out of sorts or resemble grotesque food that belongs in the dumpster.

This is all a part of the humor, according to Professor Lafave, “I'm a big fan of these guys. They probably don't know I exist and that's just fine by me, because their job is to play football, and my job is to shut up and watch.” He said, “… if everyone's just getting a laugh out of it, that's all I really want. Modern times can feel very scary. There's a lot of unfamiliarity in the uncertain. So why not give us a little something to laugh about between like election season, the middle of the semester and a high stakes football season.”