Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
In the News
According to reports, the NCAA has voted to allow all sports, including football and basketball, to have players transfer once and be eligible immediately effective this fall. You can read Brendan’s write up on the developments HERE.
Eddie George was hired as the head coach at Tennessee State.
The AAC is the latest conference to allow athletes to transfer with no issues within the league.
If you’re in the Los Angeles area you may be able to sneak into USC’s practice if you try.
Throwback Article
I think about THIS article all the time.
The Portal
Former Penn State receiver TJ Jones has transferred to UAB. His former teammate tight end Zach Kuntz has transferred to Old Dominion.
Ohio State offensive lineman Alex Wray has entered the Portal.
Michigan 2021 signee wide receiver Xavier Worthy (0.971) has asked for his release and will not be reporting to Ann Arbor. You see it, and you just hate it.
Helmet Talk
To my knowledge, ECU has not worn this helmet on the field. But they should! You may recognize this look from the Pirates’ mid-field logo used in recent years. It’s amazing.
In the past, ECU has paired their regular helmets with yellow facemasks but I prefer this all-purple look.
Recruiting
Notre Dame picked up the commitment of defensive end prospect Darren Agu shortly after we published last Friday’s Rambler. You can read our commit post HERE.
By the way, the normal recruiting calendar is back in effect beginning June 1st so Notre Dame’s massive official visit schedule for this month is on for sure.
As heavily rumored in recent weeks, quarterback Gavin Wimsatt (0.961) committed to Rutgers.
Alabama picked up the verbal from defensive tackle Jaheim Oates (0.939) out of Mississippi. He was infamously offered by the Tide back in 8th grade.
House of the Week
I added this week’s video because Terry Crews is an awesome human, not knowing this wouldn’t even be his actual home. What a place! I agree with him (you can’t not agree with Terry on anything really) that his wallpaper in the bedroom is fantastic. The place overall was far larger than I was expecting, too.
This man has an Old Spice computer, folks. I think if you could trade the turntables for amps and guitars with the cartoons for more sports stuff this would be the perfect space for me. Including the Fruity Pebbles and Cap’n Crunch cereal. I’d be curious to see his actual house and what kind of things he keeps there versus this office/apartment/man cave.
Tunes
I started working ‘task’ at Media Play in May of 1998 as my first job at 16 years old. Basically, I was a stock boy working truly awful hours (Thursday nights, Friday nights, Saturday morning, Sunday morning with an occasional extra day or 6-hour shift sprinkled in throughout the week) waiting for semi-trucks of merchandise to be delivered, which we sorted in the back, and then pushed out on to the store floor.
Mind you, this was a time when Media Play was selling an absurd amount of music CD’s. Just racks and racks of CD’s (the cassette section was still kicking too!) and it was my favorite job to re-stock this area. Sometimes you got stuck in books (children’s books was a nightmare area) or other multimedia or toy areas but music was the place to be. This was only 3 years or so before Napster and the iPod devoured the music industry but at the time it seemed like CD’s would be around forever. Within a couple years, my two thick CD binders would reach their peak size.
Warning: Explicit lyrics because X gonna give it to ya.Â
One day I was in the singles section working (remember singles sections!?) and I noticed this song “Get At Me Dog” from someone named DMX. I’ll never forget how intrigued I was by the name and cover of the single that you can see HERE. So, I bought it and immediately loved his voice and delivery. I told all my friends about this new rapper DMX, felt incredibly cool, and only 2 or 3 weeks later his debut album It’s Dark and Hell is Hot came out and completely blew up across the country. His first 3 albums especially were just so, so influential and dominated a lot of my rap taste right through my college years. RIP DMX.
On This Day in Sports
On this day in 1935, Babe Ruth hit his 1st National League homerun with the Boston Braves. He’d slug 5 more to end his career at 40 years-old with 714 dingers.
At the Cinema
Who among us watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks as a kid? Maybe you preferred Mary Poppins instead but I had this VHS and watched BaB (my shortened title) 100 times or more.
It’s weird to think about 1988 little me watching this movie released in 1971 and how it felt like from six eras before I was even alive (I think the Britishness doesn’t help in that regard). Now, thinking about my oldest daughter watching a movie from 2004 and that generational gap in the look, feel, clothing, etc. of a film is absolutely gone. It’s an example of how generations are kind of blurring together this century. Also, I just found out that Angela Lansbury is still alive at 95, good for her!
Hot Take
Men should focus more on contrasting pants and shirts while wearing a darker tie than their shirt. We can make exceptions but let’s get back to fundamentals. Unless you’re supremely confident (and likely incorporating a jacket or blazer) and stylish/smart with your accessories you should not be wearing a black dress shirt, either.
Trivia
Can you name the teams who have never appeared in the Super Bowl? Can you name the NFL teams who have never won a Super Bowl?
Texans, Jags, Browns and Lions as the non-Super Bowl participants, no? (Though to me that’s an asterisk for Browns 1.0 as Ravens kinda invalidates that even though the franchise technically left their history in Cleveland)
Chargers, Panthers, Titans, Bills, Bengals, Falcons, Cardinals, Vikings as making it to the SB but not winning….Might have missed one or two there.
Nailed it.
One I finally could get.
Here’s fun, who is the next one off the list? 16-18 months ago, it might have seemed like Houston, before O’Brien devastated them and the whole Watson stuff coming to light…
Maybe the Browns or Bills? But they have to get by the Chiefs in the AFC. Maybe the Jags if Lawrence is the real deal and Urban hits as a best case scenario?
With the chiefs dumping their two starting tackles, maybe the cracks are starting to form under the cap weight of the mahomes contract?
If buffalo upgrades their pass rush, I’d love to see them in the super bowl; rust belt (ish) team, rad unis, underdog mentality, hearty tough area, it’s like my home state lions, but with actual upside!
Maybe…I think Mahomes still has like a $7m cap hit still even next year on the last year of his rookie deal, I looked it up a while back. NFL salary cap is a mystery anyways and I’m sure they can just move money to signing bonuses or find ways to add some players. I think the cuts were more because the old tackles were old and injury prone and they didn’t think they would do well.
And besides, they’ll get Eichenberg to help shore up the line here soon anyways…Hopefully a run on tackles so they feel inclined to take him 31 🙂
Media Play. Holy crap. I haven’t thought about that store in probably 12+ years. There was one near South Bend that I spent a fair amount of time in until it shut down.
Great place to shop for music but I hated working there.
There was a place in Concord mall in Elkhart named “Supersounds” that was awesome. Had a massive bootleg section. Thats a little far from campus but the drive would have been worth it. I miss that place. I spent way too much money there.
The Wimsatt commitment makes me sad. I actually like Angeli as a prospect and think that he can be a very good college QB. However, I watch Wimsatt and I think with the proper coaching and talent around him he could be borderline “elite” after a year or two of adjusting to college.
To think that we missed out on Wimsatt with him going to Rutgers doesn’t inspire me with confidence for the future of QB recruiting. If he had gone to Kentucky I could buy that, staying with the local team, but Rutgers…We certainly should have been beating out Rutgers in this recruitment.
Did Wimsatt not make the cut academically or did he really just prefer Rutgers(!?!) to ND and just about any other major school?
Yeah, the fact that he chose Rutgers is a huge red flag to me.
Exactly.
I’d be bummed if he went to some other top school but the fact that he went to Rutgers seems to indicate *something* else was going on.
Not sure. I am not obsessed with recruiting but I never heard anything about academic problems. ND seemed to be recruiting him right up to when they accepted Angeli’s commitment so it would appear that he legitimately prefers Rutgers to others.
Yeah, I agree. I could see how a young person could be swayed by a guy like Schiano who is intense and personable.
But it does seem weird that a great young QB prospect from Kentucky had almost no offers/interest from SEC schools…Was that him not interested in them or them not trying for a reason? Feels like about 5-10 years ago he would be going to Bama, UF or Miami or something like that.
Would make more sense if he went UK or Louisville or Cincy as something local. Rutgers is a very, very random destination. Will be interesting to see how it works out.
I realize that Schiano has been recruiting very well, but Wimsatt committing there should probably make everyone rethink his value and potential relative to Angeli. I’m pretty sure we’re not looking at Deshaun Watson reincarnated here. There’s a good possibility that his ratings on Rivals or wherever are a bit stale and/or aggressive.
Honestly the “Wimsatt chose Rutgers so he’s probably not so good” things seems like a massive cope. He could just like Rutgers more, they probably sold him on being *the guy* which I imagine is pretty hard for ND to do at this point. But whatever the pitch was, that’s besides the point. Looks like we lost out on him to a lesser program. Not the end of the world, but we don’t need to thumb our noses and say “actually we didn’t even want him that much”
My guess is there’s something that scared teams away. I thought Louisville and Kentucky were on him the hardest (the pull to stay local was supposedly massive), with ND mildly chasing him, then a rather sudden Rutgers commit. Pretty weird.
It does look weird though Schiano and Rutgers’s step up in recruiting this year makes a little bit of sense why he might go there. Maybe we’ll find out there was some red flag for whatever reason that made us and others back off but until then trying to play it off like he isn’t the better prospect looks like sour grapes to me.
I’m no huge fan of PB Angeli but I’m not real sure Wimsatt is the stone cold lock better prospect. At least, I don’t know anyone who thinks he’s the 89th best player in the country.
But, I don’t think it’s really about him being a better prospect, just that he’s one of I think 4 players in the Top 100 committed to a non-blue blood-type school and Rutgers is way, way down the list in terms of relevance, plus his recruitment got a bit strange.
Watching his film it looked like he was playing vs. 7th&8th graders. Maybe the competition made schools question him? I don’t think there’s any “sour grapes” recognizing how this ended up.
There’s two different things. One is how/why Wimsatt ended up at Rutgers over Notre Dame, which is a legit question because its weird on its face. The second is whether Wimsatt or Angeli is the better recruit prospect. Notre Dame fans convincing themselves Angeli is actually the better prospect when at this time the recruiting rankings all say otherwise is what seems like sour grapes. Who knows how it’ll pan out, as we’ve talked about here even five stars are pretty crapshoot-y.
Correction: ESPN does have Angeli higher
If this past year had been normal I think there would be more trust in the recruiting rankings. Also, due to a good QB a couple years ahead of him, this past season was Angeli’s first as a starter.(IIRC) I think that limited his exposure to the recruiting websites.
Agreed. Rutgers is actually looking like they will put together a fairly decent class this year and likely finish mid-pack in the Big Ten. None of their 4 star recruits are from NJ. I think it’s likely that we wanted him and just lost out on him.
Never played
Cleveland
Texans
Jaguars
Detroit
Never won
All of the above plus:
Chargers
Bengals
Bills
Titans
Falcons
Panthers
Vikings
Cardinals
This guy NFL’s.
Man jack nickel decommitting didn’t even make the recruiting section. Was it that expected?
Either way I took it as a positive sign for offensive recruiting after being pretty critical of where offensive recruiting stood a month ago
Wow, I totally forgot about Nickel.
I pulled up BaB on Disney+ 2 months ago to show my kids…no one even made it to the cartoon segment. I still can’t believe how much they hated it.
Also, I didn’t think I could like Terry Crews more, but this video did it.
Well Tyler Morris just committed to scUM. I think that he was scheduled for an official visit to ND in June but not sure if that will still happen. Maybe if it happens he could be a candidate for a flip, especially if Michigan sucks again this year.
Tough to lose a top 100 kid from the Chicago area that ND really wanted. WR recruiting is really not looking so great. I know that we had quality classes at WR the last two years but this class is looking like we might get any impact talent at the position.