Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.

Top News

Notre Dame tight end George Takacs said he’d return for 2022 but recently changed course and is now in the Transfer Portal. He ends his Irish career with 8 receptions for 78 yards and 2 touchdowns.

Georgia leads college football with an incredible 14 players invited to the NFL Combine. Notre Dame had Kyle Hamilton, Kyren Williams, Kevin Austin, MTA, and Jack Coan invited.

The Miami Hurricanes have hired Michigan’s Josh Gattis to be their new OC. The Wolverines are expected to promote tight ends coach Sherrone Moore and quarterbacks coach Matt Weiss to Co-OC and hire Vanderbilt’s Jesse Minter as their new DC.

Auburn is expanding an investigation into head coach Bryan Harsin and these things rarely go well for people in the SEC.

According to reports, the ACC is looking to get rid of its 2 divisions.

After recently missing out on the College Football Hall of Fame, former Notre Dame defensive tackle Bryant Young has been announced in the latest Pro Football Hall of Fame class.

Uniform of the Week

Last week, the Washington Football Team re-branded themselves as the Washington Commanders. The name had leaked prior to the announcement and it had been known the organization would be keeping their traditional burgundy and gold colors. So, this was largely about the layout of the uniforms. At first glance, the new logo is fine and their burgundy helmet and jersey keep a familiar look from their previous uniforms.

The black uniform and helmet is a big, big yikes. The white jersey with its strange gradient numbers and sleeves with splashes of black and no gold (except the Nike swoosh) looks incredibly out of place. There’s also no indication that I’ve seen if Washington will wear yellow pants (RIP if true), no stripes on the pants is depressing, and judging by this roll out they plan on utilizing the monochrome look quite a lot which sucks.

Recruiting

The Ivy League offensive lineman of the year Hunter Nourzad has transferred from Cornell to Penn State.

Top 100 offensive tackle J’Ven Williams (0.9568) is staying in-state after a commitment to Penn State.

Texas wide receiver Ashton Cozart (0.9326) gave a verbal to Oklahoma.

St. John Bosco safety R.J. Jones (0.9185) committed to California.

Defensive lineman Andrew Depaepe (0.9420) out of Iowa committed to Michigan State.

YouTube Channel

I chew a lot of gum. At home we keep packs of a fruity Trident in the fridge. For whatever reason, my wife has always kept gum and pasta in the fridge. I don’t know why. I’ll usually pop in a piece before going on a run but it’s when I’m at work where I am straight up crushing gum. Specifically, I prefer Orbit Bubblemint in the big 180-piece bags. I’ll go through a bag in about 3 weeks, so roughly 12 pieces a day in the office.

When I was a senior in high school at the Frederick Gunn School my parents dropped me off in mid-August equipped with a Dubble Bubble bucket which held something obscene like 350 pieces. Of course, it got raided a bit by friends but let me tell you I chewed an ungodly amount of that gum in a short amount of time. To this day, I can’t chew a piece of Dubble Bubble without thinking how much my jaw hurt.

Tunes

In doing some research, I was surprised to find out that Stevie Wonder is only 71 years old. It’s a testament to how young he was at just 11 years old when he first arrived on the music scene on Motown’s Tamla label. Today’s song comes from his 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life and is the tune that opened side two titled “I Wish.” It was the first single off the album and would reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts. I’m sure most people have heard this one in the past.

I have always thought the lyrics in the beginning are strange: “Then my only worry was for Christmas, what would be my toy. Even though we sometimes would not get a thing, we were happy with the joy the day would bring.” I know artists sometime use words to rhyme if it has the necessary feeling but no kid is excited about missing out on a gift for Christmas! That phrase has always bugged me.

Trivia (answers at the bottom of the article)

Name the only Notre Dame head coaches to be 0-1 in their career with the Fighting Irish.

The Other Football

Manchester United and Leicester City were the EPL clubs knocked out of the FA Cup 4th round this past weekend.

Senegal defeated Egypt 0-0 (4-2 on penalties) in the Africa Cup Finals to win their first ever title.

Chelsea got past Saudi club Al Hilal 1-0 and will meet Brazilian club Palmeiras in the FIFA Club World Cup Finals on Saturday.

Kurt Zouma abused his house cat, has been dropped by Adidas, fined by West Ham and faces possible jail time. True story.

Former Stoke City and Liverpool winger Xherdan Shaqiri was sold to Lyon this summer and is now headed to Chicago Fire in the MLS for a club-record $7.5 million. Douglas Costa’s contract is running out at Juventus and he will be joining LA Galaxy this summer.

AC Milan beat Inter 2-1 in the Derby della Madonnina as the latter team’s lead atop Serie A is down to just 1 point, although with a game in hand.

Streaming

Last week, I covered a Netflix show I watched during the early stages of the pandemic that was a tough watch. However, the miniseries The Last Dance was a freaking delight to watch. Maybe, just maybe, a touch overhyped and didn’t quite match the massive expectations that it had coming with it for a long time. Still, just awesome.

I was a little too young to have any recollection of Michael Jordan’s early NBA career and it wasn’t until the Bulls’ back and forth battles with the Pistons that I can remember watching on TV with the classic NBC intro music. In contrast, I’ve witnessed everything LeBron James has done from high school to today and felt myself drifting towards him as my favorite basketball athlete. But The Last Dance is a good reminder, MJ was just built different.

A Look Back

We’ve got some stiff competition for the least visually appealing Notre Dame game on NBC although this 2014 matchup against Stanford may take the cake. I know we’ve had readers weigh in before that this game was a truly miserable experience inside the stadium. It’s like watching a game from inside the ruins of Stalingrad. Just bleak and depressing. Cold and damp, yuck.

But what a great ending (miss you, Everett). And we witnessed one of Jaylon Smith’s 4.5 sacks too. Look at me getting all nostalgic, I’m sort of missing the times when Stanford was a tough opponent. Actually no, I rather like them being terrible. Which other throws beat this Golson game-winner in Notre Dame history?

18S Paddock Club

Car unveilings have begun with Haas kicking things off this past Friday, releasing a 3D rendering of an “early developmental phase” of their 2022 car according to team principal Guenther Steiner. The car features extremely wide sidepods with smaller intakes, a very skinny rear body, and a short and square nose.

The Haas VF-22.

The suspension looks to be the standard pushrod in the front taken from the FIA show cars, although it’s expected Haas will adopt the pullrod suspension in the front like quasi-parent team Ferrari is rumored to be using. The Haas livery colors are only slightly tweaked for 2022. The Russian flag colors are a little less pronounced, the shark fin is now black, while the driver number is now ridiculously small.

Red Bull unveiled their 2022 livery on Wednesday, fooling no one in the process with essentially a replicated FIA show car and not their real car.

The Red Bull RB18 new livery.

Oracle is now the team’s lead sponsor (signing a 5-year, $500 million deal) and moves to the main sidepods with the smaller Red Bull script placed above it. With Honda no longer “officially” making their engines, their name is now relegated to the HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) near the exhaust on the body while removed from the end of the nose and the rear wings. In its place on the rear wing they have Red Bull in the front and Oracle in the back. Also note, the outer wheel rim covers are red.

Aston Martin unveiled an actual real-world 2022 car yesterday! The pink trim is gone and replaced by a more visually appealing yellow, while Saudi oil company Aramco is added as a sponsor to the front wing, back of the rear wing, and on the air box.

The Aston Martin AMR 22.

The front of the car has a very high front wing, shorter nose, with pushrod suspension. The first wing element is separated from the nose being attached to the second wing element, while the second wing element blends heavily into the nose. A big floor edge wing sticks out behind the front tires with very small square engine cooling inlets pushed towards the front, including a fake outside intake that could possibly be opened up depending on the track conditions. The sidepods are enormously flat and high-waisted through to the back of the car, while the blister bulge on the engine cover remains from the 2021 in common with the Mercedes engine. With 15 cooling gills on each side, it allows the bodywork to narrow considerably at the back.

We have our first look at a functional DRS, too. On the actual car and renders the rear wing is quite low with a very scooped angle. As expected, many parts of the car point to sealing the floor in the back, especially directing air to the beam wing.

Livery unveilings to come:

McLaren 2/11 (we’ll cover this next week and it’s dropping later today)
AlphaTauri 2/14
Williams 2/15
Ferrari 2/17
Mercedes 2/18
Alpine 2/21
Alfa Romeo 2/27

Scuderia AlphaTauri (6th place, 142 points)

Led by a career year from Frenchman Pierre Gasly it was a solid year for AlphaTauri who integrated volatile rookie Yuki Tsunoda into the team. Tsunoda really struggled with consistency but did flash a high ceiling like finishing 4th in the final race at Abu Dhabi. Gasly heads into 2022 with his stock incredibly high again following his disappointing 12-race run with Red Bull back in 2019 and is in the last year of his contract while the pressure is on Tsunoda to prove he should remain on the grid.

As the sister team of Red Bull it’ll be interesting to see how AlphaTauri handles the new regulation changes and the small tweaks to the Red Bull Powertrains engines. Opinions are all over the place on Tsunoda’s future while Gasly has the chance to prove he belongs in a stronger car for 2023.

Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team (1st place, 613.5 points)

Lewis Hamilton lost his bid for a record 8th world driver’s championship but Mercedes still came away with their incredible 8th straight constructor’s title to reign supreme during the turbo hybrid era. The team was also some bad luck (Bottas’ crash at Imola, Bottas’ wheel not coming off at Monaco, Verstappen driving on top of Hamilton at Monza) from breezing to the team championship. In the final year of the Hamilton-Bottas pairing that lasted a fruitful 5 seasons, the Silver Arrows notched 8 wins and 29 combined podiums.

Although it feels like Hamilton’s title was ripped away illegally (we still await changes to the race-day operations) Mercedes should feel good they didn’t waste nearly as many resources as Red Bull in 2021 and should have a big jump on their 2022 car. George Russell comes over from Williams and likely offers a higher ceiling than Bottas and you’d expect Hamilton to be on the war path this season. Pretty much the only concern moving forward is if Mercedes can continue improving the reliability of their engines which were rumored to be turned down to start 2021 and degraded quickly when turned up at certain races.

Trivia Answers:

Kent Baer and Marcus Freeman