Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
In the News
Notre Dame has scheduled a home game against Central Michigan for the 2023 season. That season will feature the 3 annual rivals in USC, Navy, and Stanford plus 5 ACC teams (Wake Forest, Pitt, Duke, Louisville, NC State), with Ohio State and Clemson in addition to the newly added Chippewas. Just one more spot remains open.
After several accusations of impropriety were uncovered in his days at LSU, Les Miles was fired as head football coach at Kansas. He’ll be receiving just under $2 million to go away. The school also fired athletic director Jeff Long, too. You may remember Long as the first chairman of the College Football Playoff Committee.
Extension SZN: Tom Allen at Indiana got an extra year with a pay bump while Randy Edsall at UConn also got an extension. You may recall, UConn didn’t play football in 2020 and Edsall is 6-30 in his return to Storrs. I guess no one wants to coach there, huh?
After a 10-sack season in 2020, the Detroit Lions will not use the franchise tag on Romeo Okwara who could’ve made up to $17.7 million per year in 2021. He’ll now be a much sought after free agent with the overall NFL salary cap going down slightly.
Bill Connelly is searching for the programs who line up to be the “Next Clemson” and your Notre Dame Fighting Irish come in at No. 2 in the list.
According to Matt Brown, EA Sports is planning on releasing their new college football game sometime in July 2023. Circle. The. Month.
BuzzFeed ranked all Division-I college football helmets. Do you think Notre Dame made the top 10? (It’s an absolute trash list as you may expect).
Throwback Article
Did I ever tell you about the time a NHL player almost died on the ice and I was skating right over the injury spot mere minutes later?
The Portal
Arizona safety Jarrius Wallace is leaving Arizona for a 6th year elsewhere, although he hasn’t played much football over the past couple of seasons.
Former top 150 wide receiver recruit Puka Nacua has struggled with injuries through 2 seasons at Washington but has 319 yards in just 6 career games. He’s transferring to BYU, and so is his brother Samson who is coming over from Utah.
Andrew Clair has run for nearly 2,000 yards at Bowling Green and is now headed to Northwestern.
Once a 5-star recruit and the No. 5 overall player from the 2019 class, Antonio Alfano is leaving Colorado after one year at Alabama. He’s yet to see a snap of action on the field.
Lance Dixon was a top 200 linebacker recruit for Penn State but is leaving Happy Valley for West Virginia after making just 13 tackles in his career thus far.
Helmet Talk
I know most of us prefer Colorado in their classic gold pants, black jerseys, and gold helmets. It’s a somewhat familiar look for Notre Dame fans. It almost looks like Colorado is Evil Notre Dame when they stick to this traditional style.
If I’m being honest I do love most of Colorado’s options with a black helmet, though. They are one of the few schools where more black fits them really well, and how can you argue against this Ralphie logo? The only nitpick is that this shiny gold-leaf logo is difficult to see during games and from a distance. It could maybe use a little touch of white trim.
Recruiting
Notre Dame reached into Louisiana to pluck wide receiver Amorion Walker (0.846) who lives in between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Commit post is HERE.
One of the country’s top tight ends in Keyan Burnett (0.917) out of Servite High School committed to USC late last Friday.
As expected, Penn State picked up quarterback Drew Allar (0.921) this past Monday.
Oregon has found its quarterback in Alabama native Tanner Bailey (0.918) who committed to the Ducks earlier this week.
Fayetteville receiver Isaiah Satenga (0.913) joined Texas A&M’s class on Tuesday.
House of the Week
You know your house is remote when the Google Map van hasn’t made it to your location to take pictures yet. So it is with today’s House of the Week in Edwards, Colorado about 2 hours drive west of Denver and tucked into the mountainous terrain just southwest of the Vail and Eagle Creek ski resort areas.
The top YouTube comment: I hope this place sells soon, so he can buy a better mic. Doing this over Zoom maybe was not the best idea.
To recap: 439 acres, 32,000 square foot main home, 25,000 square foot Coyote Lodge (with helipad and soccer field!), fully-equipped cabin, 2 yurts, and 2 wild west apartments (including a prison cell!??). Lest I forget the 200 foot long viewing deck! I don’t say this lightly, it’s too damn big. I love how at the end he’s like, “There’s room for 5 additional properties on the land!”
Part of me thinks (with the terrible Zoom in the back of my mind) that this home is just a computer rendering and not actually sitting out there in the woods of Colorado.
Tunes
This is my favorite weird song, perhaps ever. I was hoping that the Punch Up the Jam podcast (RIP) would cover this song but it never happened. Such a missed opportunity.
It’s wild that this song hit No. 1 in several countries (no. 2 in the US) and is maybe the most unique song in pop music history. The Wiki page on the production is fascinating: “[Band member Eric] Stewart spent three weeks recording Gouldman, Godley and Creme singing “ahhh” 16 times for each note of the chromatic scale, building up a “choir” of 48 voices for each note of the scale. The main problem facing the band was how to keep the vocal notes going for an infinite length of time, but Creme suggested that they could get around this issue by using tape loops.”
On This Day in Sports
On this day exactly one year ago, the NCAA cancelled both the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments as the Covid-19 pandemic began to rampage across the United States.
Old Video Game
There was no more frustrating Nintendo game than Top Gun. No other game even comes close. I was going to link to a different YouTube video that captures the essence of the game so well but it is laced with so many profanities that I thought better of it.
We usually rented new games and played them for a few nights but I’m pretty sure my best friend when I was little bought this one sight unseen. Bad decision. Not only was it impossible to land a plane it was perhaps the most boring game in the entire NES catalog.
Hot Take
This has been my corner for several years and I’ll bring it up again. College football games should be played every 2 weeks. The most difficult part to this plan would be potentially starting in early August before students are on campus and navigating bye weeks.
Trivia
Alabama quarterback Mac Jones led the country in passer rating for 2020. Can you name the other 4 quarterbacks from the Power 5 that finished in the top 10 in this category?
There are already enough weeks during the College Football Season without an interesting game. There is no world in which I want more bye weeks, definitely not every other week. There’s almost never a time where I am annoyed because there are just too many good games on at the same time for me to watch.
I’m thinking more in terms of player health. I think future generations will look back and think it’s insane games were played every week.
Also, selfishly as a writer it would be so much better.
I think future generations will look back and think it’s insane we played football to begin with.
But yes, you’re right, I suppose more time between games would be better overall for player health. I just wonder if stretching the season out even further makes it tougher for players to be good students. If we’re not going to pay them, I at least want to make sure they’re able to actually get an education.
I think the pandemic showed they can be really flexible about academics these days.
I remember when people used to say surely we couldn’t have a playoff because that could interrupt more classes or exams.
True. The interview Ian Book had in the Athletic today was pretty interesting, in terms of just how difficult the schedule is for ND players. If they’re going to extend the season, they would need to find a way to do it that reduces, at least slightly, the amount of hours that are allowed for practice.
I think that could be a major selling point. With 2 weeks between games their daily time for football could be reduced.
Trivia: I’ll be shocked if Kyle Trask didn’t make the top 10.
If JT Daniels had enough pass attempts to qualify then he’s probably up there. Georgia’s offense looked a whole lot better once he started playing.
Spencer Rattler had some mediocre outings early on and I kinda stopped paying attention to Oklahoma, but they started mauling teams about halfway through the season. He may have clawed his way into the top 10.
Outside of 1 notable game (ahem) Sam Howell lit up the scoreboard fairly consistently. I’ll say he made the top 10.
I don’t think either Fields or Lawrence made the cut. Fields had some wildly great outings but he also had some massive clunkers, which probably kept him out of the top 10. Lawrence was mostly fine but honestly kind of underwhelming for much of the season, at least statistically.
Trask (6th) and Howell (8th) are correct answers!
Holy God, was that helmet ranking awful. It must have been specifically designed in a lab to elicit outrage.
Yup, I was worried and concerned when Tulane was near the bottom and by the time I got to No. 1 I was ready for murderous activities.
I swear I didn’t look but I’m guessing it was Clint Malarchuk getting cut ?
Yup!
I’ll go Kyle trask for sure and I guess Matt corall from sec, Sam Howell from acc, and now it gets really tough. Don’t think fields or anyone from big 10 was good enough. Don’t think Slovis was good enough. Hell I guess I’ll go Brock purdy. Think rattler was too bad to start the year
So trask, corall, Howell, and purdy
Oh man Brock purdy was just a terrible 4th guess. One of these weeks I’ll get this. Keep getting close.
Thanks for doing these though, I have come to enjoy them
Trivia Answers:
Kyle Trask, Florida (6th)
Sam Howell, UNC (8th)
Matt Corral, Ole Miss (9th)
Justin Fields, Ohio State (10th)
That home has some nice features but no soul.
Counterpoint: Based on the greatest movie of the 80’s (as an airplane nerd). Actually used the fantastic Top Gun Anthem from movie. F-14s. I rented this game many times, and beat it many times over. Landing on Aircraft carrier was satisfying once I got it. Sequel game was pretty cool because you could shoot down friends. Aerial refueling has a banger of a tune (crank volume and fast forward to 9:00 – 9:53 minute marks). Aerial refueling taught 10 year old occtipus how to make sweet, sweet love to a woman (crank volume and fast forward to 9:00 – 9:53 minute marks).
This got weird.
It would take me almost a decade to implement skills learned from this game.