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

Top News

Former Notre Dame long snapper J.J. Jansen has signed another 1-year deal with the Carolina Panthers and will enter year 16 in the NFL. If he stays healthy, he’ll pass kicker Craig Hentrich this upcoming season for the 3rd most career NFL games by an Irish alum.

There are proposed rules changes for college football to help speed up game times, including:

  • No consecutive timeouts.
  • The 1st or 3rd quarter no longer extended for an untimed down if there’s a penalty.
  • The clock will run after a 1st down except with under 2 minutes remaining in the game.
  • The clock will run after an incomplete pass once the ball is spotted for play.

LSU special teams extraordinaire coach Brian Polian is transitioning into an off-field GM role as Brian Kelly needs a new assistant coach now down in Baton Rouge.

NC State head coach Dave Doeren received a 1-year contract extension through the 2027 season.

Cincinnati offensive coordinator Tom Manning had been hired for 6 weeks but is headed to the Indianapolis Colts to be their tight ends coach. The Bearcats are hiring Virginia Tech assistant Brad Glenn as their new offensive coordinator.

Troy is hiring Cincinnati outside linebackers coach Greg Gasparato as their new defensive coordinator.

Boston College defensive coordinator Tem Lukabu is leaving Chestnut Hill to coach outside linebackers with the Carolina Panthers.

Michigan has bumped up offensive line coach Sherrone Moore from co-offensive coordinator to full offensive coordinator for 2023.

UCLA is set to hire the Baltimore Ravens’ safeties coach D’Anton Lynn as their next defensive coordinator.

Former college coach Willie Taggart is headed to the NFL to coach running backs for the Baltimore Ravens.

Former Wisconsin defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard interviewed with the Philadelphia Eagles recently but will not be joining the NFL. Instead, he will be having hip surgery and focus on his recovery this year.

The Pac-12 looks set to add San Diego State and SMU to their conference as their struggling television and media rights search continues.

Uniform of the Week

Today we have another edition of a program that has lost a lot of its character in uniform terms. Temple now uses a lot of these diamond patterns which make them look somewhat different but overall their uniforms are pretty bland and generic. That’s even with a ton of different helmets used in recent years. Since 2013, the Owls have worn an amazing 51 different helmets. Think of all the future arthritis from the student managers taking off and adding those stickers!

I’m a big fan of this late 1990’s/early 2000’s look for Temple. The flying owl logo was unique and worked really well for their sports teams. The script on the jersey and pants is fantastic, too. We are in a weird situation with uniforms these days. Teams will go wild with striping or patterns but the script is typically so boring. Especially in college football, programs need to embrace different fonts on their jerseys. Instead, Temple uses a more boring Gotham Bold font on their jerseys today. Boo.

Recruiting

Athlete Roger Gradney (0.9169) committed to Nebraska.

247 has ranked 63 players in the 2025 class (rising juniors) and from that group we have the following commits so far:

WR Winston Watkins (0.9926) – Colorado
WR Ryan Williams (0.9865) – Alabama
LB Jadon Perlotte (0.9843) – Georgia
DL Justus Terry (0.9821) – Georgia
CB Chris Ewald (0.9805) – Michigan
OT Micah Debose (0.9757) – Georgia
OT Jaelyne Matthews (0.9675) – Penn State

If you were curious, Notre Dame has offered 24 players from the 2025 class already.

YouTube Channel

I’ve been trying to think of the most incredible moment I’ve witnessed in person. I’ve written about the Clint Malarchuk neck injury at a Sabres game although I didn’t actually witness that live and was in a locker room at the rink at the time. I’ve had some close encounters with lightning on two separate occasions, which is not fun. Maybe the most amazing thing I saw was during a lacrosse game in my senior year of high school.

It was a super windy day and our lacrosse field sat directly next to a thick set of woods. The benches for each team were no more than 10-15 feet away from the edge of the woods. When players and staff came down to the field they’d walk around the edge of the field near the side of campus and right towards these woods. Just after warmups were completed on this day, an absolutely massive tree fell almost perfectly towards us and its top landed right near the edge of the field. Luckily, no one was hurt. Just a few minutes earlier, there were a lot of people walking and warming up right where it fell. I can still hear that cracking noise and fear of screams as the tree came down, pretty chilling. So we played a lacrosse game with this massive tree just chilling out of bounds.

Tunes

Things have started to modernize and change a little bit with Super Bowl halftime shows. It seemed like 15 straight years where the musical act signed to this opportunity were always well past their prime culminating in that run of Paul McCartney-The Rolling Stones-Prince-Tom Petty-Bruce Springsteen-The Who into the 2010 Super Bowl. It got me thinking, The Weeknd is one of the few artists in history to perform at the Super Bowl while in their artistic prime. Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, and maybe Maroon 5 are the only other acts to do it in recent times. Even Rhianna’s impressive show this past year comes 7 years after her last album. Isn’t that shocking, Rhianna hasn’t made an album in that long?

I know the Weeknd isn’t for everyone but you have to respect his run over the last 9 or 10 years since his debut as a major artist. You could definitely make the case that he’s in the running for the top musical artist since he released Beauty Behind the Madness in 2015. I particularly liked his switch to new wave a few years ago (at times really leaning into a Michael Jackson-type of sound and singing) with “Save Your Tears” being my favorite song in his catalog.

Trivia

In January 1997, this single became the first debut from a British musical act to top the Billboard Hot 100 since the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in 1964. Name the group and song.

The Other Football

MLS commissioner Dan Garber says the top cities for league expansion are San Diego and Las Vegas.

The United States defeated Brazil 2-1 on Wednesday to win the SheBelieves Cup for the 4th straight year.

The UK government has released a report confirming its attempt to appoint an independent regulator over English football clubs. Per ESPN: “Once made law, the government says the independent regulator would have statutory powers to license and sanction clubs, oversee the financial sustainability of the game and prevent unscrupulous owners buying clubs.”

The other side of the Champions League 1st legs of the Round of 16 finished up this week:

Inter 1-0 Porto
City 1-1 Leipzig
Napoli 2-0 Frankfurt
Real Madrid 5-2 Liverpool

That’s an oof for Liverpool who took an early 2-0, by the way. Napoli continue to have a dream season. The Little Donkeys have a 15-point in Serie A which would be their first Italian championship since 1989-90.

Streaming

The strangest thing happened to me earlier this week. I have never watched a full episode of Tru Blood nor could I tell you anything about the show other than it’s about vampires and blood. Years ago, I must have caught the beginning of an episode on HBO and then moved on with my life. Recently, I was watching the NBA All-Star weekend and the dunk contest. Immediately after Matt McClung dominated the proceedings, an episode of Tru Blood came on TNT.

As luck would have it, I watched the beginning of the same exact episode. I’ve watched 10 minutes of Tru Blood and it’s the same 5 minutes of 1 episode. Actually, if my research is correct it’s 5 minutes of the same opening episode to the first season. Warner Brothers just syndicated Tru Blood and it debuted on TNT this past weekend.

A Look Back

Iowa, man. What a program. Kirk Ferentz has been head coach here since 1999 and hasn’t won the Big Ten in any of the last 18 seasons. Nearly 2 decades without a league title at a big Midwest school and he just keeps on surviving with no end in sight to his tenure. The Hawkeyes did win the Big Ten West in 2021, though! However, last year was a whole new recipe for the inept offensive era in Iowa history. Truly a football masterclass on how not to score points. I don’t know how anyone involved with any skill position on offense wants to go to this place.

I checked and Iowa didn’t sign a single nationally ranked (top 900 or so) skill player on offense in 2023, which makes total sense. This past season, Iowa treated us to this real special opener against South Dakota State in Iowa City. Neither team could average even 2 yards per carry on the ground. A total of 30 incompletions were thrown. No touchdowns were scored. Iowa scored not one but two safeties. The funniest part, to me at least, is this masterpiece took 3 hours and 32 minutes to complete–the 3rd longest of the season for Iowa which includes their severely weather delayed game a few weeks later against Nevada.

18S Paddock Club

F1 started their 3-day testing this Thursday and we’ll have a preview of the Bahrain Grand Prix next week. Before the season officially kicks off it’s time to discuss the regulation and rule changes for 2023.

Top 12 Changes to F1 2023
  1. The China Grand Prix has been cancelled and will not be replaced. That means there will be a near month-long break in April.
  2. The minimum car weight was supposed to be reduced by 2 kg but due to extra sensors and re-formulated tires (see below) the FIA has kept the same weight as last year.
  3. There’s a mandatory 7th camera “helmet cam” on each car.
  4. Sprint  weekends will be increased from 3 to 6 this year at the races in Azerbaijan, Austria, Belgium, Qatar, Austin, and Brazil.
  5. Team will get an increase from $150,000 to $400,000 in budget cap deductions for each sprint weekend. However, the flat $100,000 fee for car damage has been removed.
  6. During 2 yet-to-be-determined races there will be a revised qualifying format where drivers need to use hard tires during Q3, medium tires during Q2, and soft tires during Q3.
  7. The outer edges of the floor have been raised by 15 mm and less flexible to combat porpoising from last year.
  8. Rear-view mirrors are now 50 mm larger.
  9. Tire blanket temperatures are remaining at 70 degrees Celsius but use is reduced from 3 hours to 2 hours.
  10. Pirelli is introducing a new tire compound to make it 6 to choose from overall. A new C1 compound will be grippier while the old C1 from last year is now being called C0.
  11. Pirelli is also introducing a new formulated rubber to improve bite in the front tires and reduce the amount of understeer from 2022. They also will introduce a new wet weather tire from the Imola GP that will help reduce spray and will not require tire blankets.
  12. Cooler fuel is now allowed. Fuel cannot be more than 10 degrees Celsius below ambient temperature but the fuel temp can be as low as 10 degrees Celsius at any time (reduced from 20 degrees Celsius).

Trivia Answer:

“Wannabe” by the Spice Girls