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

Top News

Notre Dame has named their football captains for the 2022 season. They are Avery Davis, Bo Bauer, Jarett Patterson, Isaiah Foskey, JD Bertrand, and Michael Mayer.

Marcus Freeman has mentioned in a recent press conference that he prefers to defer at the coin toss. National Championship cometh?

Kevin Austin, Ian Book, Dexter Williams, Isaac Rochelle, Jack Coan, Nick Martin, Daelin Hayes, Isaiah Pryor, and Drew White all didn’t survive making NFL rosters this week while Romeo Okwara remains on the Lions PUP list and Khalid Kareem is on the Bengals IR list. Book was recently claimed by the Eagles while Austin, Matthias Farley, Micah Dew-Treadway, and Myron Tagavailoa-Amosa were signed to practice squads. Tony Jones, Jr., Miles Boykin, and Kurt Hinish were all borderline players to make their teams’ 52-man cut. In New Jersey, the Giants made Julian Love one of their approximately 47 captains.

But actually no “C” on their chest in the photo, weird.

Jim Harbaugh has announced Michigan will play both of their quarterbacks this season, with Cade McNamara starting the first game and J.J. McCarthy starting the second game. Best of luck!

California defensive lineman Brett Johnson will miss his second straight season after suffering a lower leg injury in practice.

Haynes King has won the quarterback job at Texas A&M.

Tennessee wideout Bru McCoy had his NCAA waiver approved and he’ll be in the lineup tonight for the Vols opener.

Ohio Stadium’s field now has a sponsor and will be called Safelite Field. Down in Tennessee, Vanderbilt Stadium sold its right and will now be called FirstBank Stadium.

Notre Dame alum Allen Greene is stepping down as the athletic director at Auburn.

The College Football Playoff Board of Managers is meeting on Friday and could adopt a 12-team playoff for the last 2 years of the current contract in 2025 and 2026.

Multiple reports say the Big 12 is entering early negotiations on a new TV deal with ESPN and Fox.

The NCAA Board has approved the 45-day and 60-day transfer windows but did not approve unlimited transfers in the recent proposal.

Uniform of the Week

Florida A&M had 20 players ruled academically ineligible right before their trip to North Carolina this past weekend. No disparagement meant towards FAMU but that has to be something crazy to happen in late August for a bunch of football players. Did they grab guys off the street back in the summer and realize 20 of them weren’t even registered for school. Turns out, it was possibly a clerical error. That’s a big oof for someone in that office.

Anyway, the Rattlers (great nickname) were feisty for a while closing the gap in the 2nd and 3rd quarters before bowing out in a 56-24 loss. I love their green and orange colors which could very easily give off too strong of Miami Hurricanes vibes, but they don’t. It does feel like they are missing something with their helmet, though. I like the shade and finish of the orange but their snake logo is also orange. Why isn’t the snake green anyway? You can’t even make out a helmet logo at all in most pictures.

Recruiting

Offensive tackle Monroe Freeling (0.9704) was targeted by Notre Dame and committed to Georgia on Tuesday.

Elite safety Makari Vickers (0.9615) committed to Oklahoma.

Key & Peele alert as receiver Daquayvious Sorey (0.9148) gave a verbal to Auburn.

Edge rusher Desmond Umeozulu (0.9315) committed to South Carolina.

YouTube Channel

We humans love to build us some monuments and we humans love to tear us down some monuments. We’ll try to stay away from political debate but safe to say for the majority of the world things aren’t looking too great for old Mother Russia these days. Back in 1985, the Baltic nation then under Soviet rule erected this massive 260-foot tall concrete and steel obelisk as a memorial to Soviets killed during World War II. Latvia would gain its independence within 6 years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. That’s bad foresight.

This beast of a monument came tumbling down last week. I’m always up for a really great demolition and in terms of monuments this one was elite. You know there was some engineering study done to take it apart in smaller bits. Ultimately, awesomeness won out and they decided to chop this thing down and complete it with a giant splash from the surrounding moat.

Tunes

Today’s song is from the Orlando indie-band Sales called “Pope is a Rockstar” which blew up on social media this year, a full 6 years after it was released. Welcome to the social media era of music. Now, I’ve been exposed to it through Instagram stories vis-a-vis Tik-Tok because I’m an adult. It grew because everyone was mishearing the lyrics as “Go little rockstar” which to be fair is very easy to do is you listen to the song.

It’s a really good song. The slow, lazy beat and melancholy feel gives you that sense of FOMO about…something. The writer has said there’s really no meaning to the lyrics, other than seeing the pope on a magazine in a grocery store, but for me it takes me back to the early 1990’s in a weird sense of longing. I’m also a sucker for a really bright and loud guitar. We don’t have enough of that in music these days.

Trivia

Over the last 10 seasons (2012-21) name the 4 quarterbacks to throw at least 50 touchdowns in a single season.

The Other Football

It was the weekend of major blowouts. Liverpool trounced Bournemouth 9-0, Celtic demolished a bunch of farmers at Dundee 9-0 in the Scottish Premier League, while in Ligue 1 Montpellier beat Brest 7-0.

Bournemouth responded by firing manager Scotty Parker.

Back in the English Premier League, City fell behind Crystal Palace 2-0 but a 2nd half hat trick from Erling Haaland spurred a 4-2 comeback victory. We had mid-week games and Haaland scored a hat trick again on Wednesday against Nottingham Forest. This Norwegian machine has 9 goals in the league in just 395 total minutes. If he stays healthy he’ll have 33 games to score 26 goals and break the single-season English record.

Your top 4 still include Arsenal, City, Tottenham, and Brighton. I’m rather enjoying Leicester City in last place with just 1 point from 4 games.

In this house we respect Transfermarkt player market values. Twenty-two year old Brazilian forward Antony has scored 18 goals with Ajax in just over 2 years of service. Transfermarkt has him valued at $38.5 million but Manchester United are set to sign him for $95 million.

West Ham are set to sign Lyon midfielder Lucas Paqueta for $50 million.

Chelsea are looking to sign Leicester City defender Wesley Fofans for $85 million and want Mexican midfielder Edson Alvarez for $50 million from Ajax.

Streaming

No director seems as hit-or-miss as Guy Ritchie. Of course, Snatch is among my all-time favorites and one of the most rewatchable movies in history. Then he went almost a decade before giving us the two Sherlock Holmes movies which were excellent. Recently, I sat down and started watching The Gentlemen on Netflix and it seems pretty good so far. I don’t love how often the Hugh Grant and Charlie Hunnam parts take up with the storytelling although I see Grant’s performance was good enough that he’s being featured heavily in Ritchie’s upcoming movie Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre coming some time next year.

I find the premise that this marijuana grower could keep all of these sites hidden in the UK pretty funny. Absolutely not given the story we are told. They go into detail about how difficult it is to trace the business and yet there’s just a trailer, directly on a path, where you could walk directly into a massive growing basement. Geez, you fooled the entire island!

A Look Back

Recently, former Notre Dame quarterback Phil Jurkovec made some comments about not really have all that much fun while he was in South Bend. Today’s game features Jurkovec’s most playing time with the Irish in the 2019 blowout of Bowling Green. This was a fun game featuring a healthy 9.4 yards per play average for the Irish on offense. Jurkovec would pass for 79 yards and run for 42 yards in the 2nd half after Ian Book threw 5 touchdowns.

This is the only game since the classic New Era Pinstripe Bowl back in 2013 that I didn’t get to watch live. We were getting ready for my brother’s wedding and I distinctly remember seeing the 21-0 score early in the 2nd quarter and thinking it wasn’t good enough. I have to fly out to California this fall for a cousin’s wedding and I get lucky again as that’s the UNLV game week.

18S Paddock Club

Nearly half the grid took engine penalties this weekend on the fast Spa track which should’ve opened things up if it wasn’t for the continued Red Bull dominance. Max Verstappen set the pace all weekend in practice before finishing with a blistering sixth-tenths poll lap lead over Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. With the penalties, Verstappen started 14th next to Charles Leclerc (both brought ERS upgrades and full new power units) in 15th with most expecting Verstappen to fight his way near the top if his pace was real.

It was very real and it would not take long. On the opening lap Alonso and Hamilton made contact, retiring the Mercedes driver after a brief attempt to keep driving. With a Safety Car deployed, Verstappen was already in 8th place and hilariously had a visor rip-off land in Leclerc’s front right brake which caused overheating and an early pit stop. By lap 8, Verstappen passed George Russell’s Mercedes for P3 and after Sainz went for new tires it was on lap 12 when Verstappen got past teammate Perez for the race lead. It took just 12 laps!

Sainz re-gained the lead once Verstappen switched to medium tires but at the end of sector 1 on lap 18 the lead was snatched back for good. Three laps later, Perez zoomed past Sainz and the Red Bull 1-2 was complete. There wasn’t much drama near the top (Verstappen’s lead was so big he stayed in 1st after his last pit stop for medium tires) except Leclerc putting on soft tires with 1 lap remaining in an attempt to get the fastest lap point. However, he came out in the traffic of Alonso, didn’t even get the fastest lap, and was dinged 5 seconds for speeding in the pit lane due to a sensor issue failure caused by the overheated brake to finish in 6th place and 2 fewer points.

Prior to that last pit stop, Leclerc was over 52 seconds behind Verstappen after starting next to each other on the grid. Ferrari 2022 pain continues.

Elsewhere, nice day for Alpine picking up 16 points while McLaren didn’t pick a point for the 4th race this season. Sebastian Vettel had a nice day finishing 8th with Pierre Gasly coming in 9th despite a pit lane start and Alex Albon picking up a point in 10th for a very strong weekend.

Dutch GP Preview: Okay, the championship is over. The twisty and high downforce setup of Zandvoort should advantage Ferrari where for months most expected Leclerc or Sainz to take the victory in Netherlands. But with Verstappen in a rocket ship this past weekend perhaps we shouldn’t be so sure anymore. What we do know is Leclerc needs to win and really needs Verstappen to not finish with a wreck or mechanical failure.

Dutch Grand Prix
Circuit Zandvoort
FP1 9/2 6:30 AM ET
FP2 9/2 10:00 AM ET
FP3 9/3 6:00 AM ET
Qualifying 9/3 9:00 AM ET
Race 9/4 9:00 AM ET

Last year, Verstappen cruised to an easy victory in his home country on this circuit. This year, his car isn’t necessarily set up as well on the 2.6 mile Zandvoort track where there are just 2 short DRS zones (although they will be trialing an extended DRS zone through the sweeping final corner) and minimal areas to make overtakes. Typically, the Dutch Grand Prix puts a premium on qualifying, although we thought the same at Hungary (a very similar tight track with few high speed areas) and the new regulations worked really well for overtaking there.

The bank is open in Netherlands. 

We can’t forget about the banking turns on this circuit, either. Last year, it really bothered Mercedes and even caused a power loss for Lewis Hamilton during practice. Some cars just do not handle the lack of balance very well. The sweeping NASCAR-esque turn on to the main straight is one challenge but the tighter turn 3 shown above can ruin an entire lap if you make the smallest mistake.

3 Questions for Netherlands:

1) Are we witnessing history with Verstappen’s recent run?

The Dutch reigning champion has won 9 out of the last 11 races and could secure back-to-back titles as early Singapore in a few more races. He also has Michael Schumacher’s record of 13 wins in a season within his sights, too. The F1 record of 9 straight wins (set by Sebastian Vettel in 2013 with Red Bull) will enter the conversation if Verstappen can pull off a win this weekend.

2) What strategy mistakes will Ferrari make this weekend?

The off-camber and bumpy Zandvoort track will likely cause Ferrari to raise the ride height of their car which (as we saw last week in Belgium) can nerf the speed of the F1-75. However, if it’s not too bad their mechanical grip and strength on high downforce circuits should see them well above Mercedes if not inching past Red Bull.

Last year, a one-stop worked well with teams prioritizing track position. This year, it’s expected overtaking will be a little easier (just 23 total overtakes last year) which opens the door to more strategy decisions and possible failure on Ferrari’s part.

3) Will we get any silly season news this weekend?

We are still waiting for news for seats next year at Alpine, McLaren, Alfa Romeo, AlphaTauri, Williams, and Haas. Oscar Piastri to McLaren looks all but done, it’s just a matter of how much McLaren may have to pay Alpine. Recent rumors suggest Pierre Gasly could jump from AlphaTauri to Alpine. Ferrari is also dropping Mick Schumacher from their academy and he’s not likely returning to Haas. We think Alfa Romeo brings back Zhou Guanyu for a second season. Will Yuki Tsunoda get another shot at AlphaTauri? Nicholas Latifi is probably out at Williams which could offer the seat to plenty of young drivers.

Trivia Answer:

Derek Carr, 2013, 50
Dwayne Haskins, 2018, 50
Joe Burrow, 2019, 60
Bailey Zappe, 2021, 62