Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Notre Dame came in at no. 20 this week in the College Football Playoff rankings with Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan, and Florida State in the top 4 spots.
In the continuing drama from Ann Arbor, the NCAA has come out and said Ohio State head coach Ryan Day has no connection to the Michigan sign stealing fiasco.
Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers is back from injury and will start this weekend against TCU.
LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels is a game-time decision this weekend against Florida.
NC State quarterback MJ Morris is out for the season and will take a redshirt.
According to reports, USC is targeting current Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski to replace the recently fired Alex Grinch.
Underclassmen are now eligible for college football post-season all-star games, like the Senior Bowl, which seems dumb.
Colorado is adding a new 100′ x 36′ video board to Folsom Field for 2024.
Delaware football is interesting in joining Conference USA.
Uniform of the Week
Now that some time has passed since the pain of the loss to Clemson I’m ready for a more thorough review of the white pants. I liked it, although as I mentioned in the game review I wish college football made a concerted effort to avoid color clashing and maybe even enforce some level of color contrast among teams. For example, this would lead to Alabama having to wear something other than white pants if they are playing at Texas and I realize this would be highly controversial for many traditional programs. Whatever, I think it’s worth a look.
I’ve been banging this drum for a while that the gold trim should be dropped from the road uniforms and seeing the white pants on this set makes me wish that even more. If you squint you can kind of envision that look. I saw some comments that doing so would make Notre Dame look too much like Penn State. I don’t see the concern, primarily because the Irish helmets are so different. Plus, Notre Dame has the monogram on the sleeves and not a player number. There’s just something off about the gold outline (it seems…weak to me?) and I’d rather see the solid blue.
Recruiting
The top JUCO offensive tackle recruit for 2024 Markel Bell (0.8819) committed to Miami from Holmes Community College.
Colorado also reached into the JUCO ranks to sign top tackle Issiah Walker, Jr (0.8644).
Georgian wide receiver Joseph Stone (0.9047) committed to Louisville.
YouTube Channel
My brain is so broken that whenever I see the topic of best college towns come up I think about the obsessive nature of Rock’s House and Notre Dame’s scheduling vis-a-vis the amenities offered by the communities surrounding football stadiums across the country. I’ll provide today’s YouTube video and the list of awesome college towns according to this fellow. Note, he is not including certain places if the student population is under 25% of the general population (which rules out really big places) or if the campus is too suburban.
#10 San Luis Obispo, CA
#9 Corvallis, OR
#8 Charlottesville, VA
#7 Ann Arbor, MI
#6 Boulder, CO
#5 Amherst, MA
#4 Davis, CA
#3 Burlington, VT
#2 Ithaca, NY
#1 State College, PA
Where is South Bend?? 🙂
Interestingly, West Lafayette got an honorable mention which I was not expecting. From the list above I’ve been to 8, 5, 3, 2, and 1. I can see the appeal for Penn State but not quite to make it tops on the list. I think that’s colored by the fact that State College is an absolute nightmare of a drive for anyone coming from a reasonable distance away. I’ll vouch for Ithaca as one of the best places to visit in the country, college town, or otherwise.
Tunes
Last Monday, the Beatles released their ‘final’ song titled “Now and Then” after much anticipation. It shot up to no. 1 on the Billboard Digital Song Sales chart which now means the band’s 31-million selling album 1 needs an additional 28th track added. I have pretty mixed feelings about the song and how we got here, if I’m honest. For the past 10 years we’ve been going through all of these 50-year milestones for the groups albums and songs while “Now and Then” was released in part because the epic greatest hits double albums 1962-1966 and 1967-70 are hitting their 50th anniversary and they wanted to package this all together. Sadly, it’s probably the last major milestone that we’ll see the Beatles surpass while Paul and Ringo grace this earth.
I don’t think the song is that good. A critic in the New York Times wrote, “Its existence matters more than its quality” and that’s so true. The song was finished from a late 1970’s demo from John Lennon (so, essentially a solo Lennon song to begin with) and abandoned during the 1995 Anthology project when the group began an attempt to finish the song. To me, it sounds too much like the dad rock that we’d hear from Paul McCartney on his 1997 solo album Flaming Pie which also had its routes around the same time the group was messing around with “Now and Then” during that era.
Trivia
Which program not named Georgia has the current longest winning streak in FBS?
The Other Football
The Champions League results from this week:
Atletico 6-0 Celtic
Lazio 1-0 Feyenoord
Dortmund 2-0 Newcastle
Milan 2-1 PSG
Leipzig 2-1 Red Star Belgrade
Man City 3-0 Young Boys
Shakhtar 1-0 Barcelona
Porto 2-0 Royal Antwerp
Bayern 2-1 Galatasaray
Coppenhagen 4-3 Man United
Arsenal 2-0 Sevilla
PSV 1-0 Lens
Napoli 1-1 Union Berlin
Real Madrid 3-0 Braga
Real Sociedad 3-1 Benfica
Inter 1-0 Salzburg
Man United blew a 2-0 lead and now sit in last place in Group A. With the Red Devils 8th in the league I’m not sure manager Erik ten Hag will be around much longer.
Man City moved in to their familiar 1st place in the Premier League after a 6-1 smashing of Bournemouth. Thanks to 2 red cards and multiple injuries, Spurs fell 4-1 to Chelsea and are now dropped down to 2nd place. The Champions League spots remain very tight as 6th place Newcastle sits just 7 points back of 1st place.
Tough times in MLS where St. Louis City FC topped the Western Conference standings in their debut season only to lose both games in round one of the playoffs to Sporting Kansas City. Ouch.
Charlotte FC have fired manager Christian Lattanzio.
TV & Movies
I kept missing or not having time to really sit down to watch and fully digest the movie Whiplash until this past week. I knew it had some really intense scenes and wasn’t disappointed! There’s no doubt that J.K. Simmons earned every bit of his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the film. I was in love with how much of a cruel villain Simmons is in this movie.
As a fan of drumming I thought so many parts were interesting but I don’t like everything being condensed down to tempo and the need or desire to play faster. One of the themes of the movie is how jazz doesn’t matter as much as it used to but I struggled with the craziness of playing faster and harder as a sign of ‘good’ drumming. Especially in jazz, quieter and being in the pocket are just as crucial. Of course, that doesn’t make for such an intense and thrilling movie, does it?
A Look Back
Due to his high profile nature, Caleb Williams is getting a ton of criticism for USC’s demise from a playoff contender even though last weekend the Trojans offense passed for 312 yards and ran for 203 yards (the 5th 300/200 game of the Williams era at USC) at freaking 8.17 yards per play and they still couldn’t beat Washington. Such is life. However, in the game against the Huskies they ran one of the coolest flea flicker plays in college football history.
What the hell is even that?? Lincoln Riley has always been good at drawing up big pass plays from these tight and bunched formations. On this play, he has freshman Zachariah Branch motion from the slot for a handoff to the boundary. After several rewinds it does seem curious that Branch makes zero attempt to get upfield. Instead, he stops and heads up toward the middle of the field from where he came, almost like he’s reversing field after not liking the blocking. But, no! Williams sells it perfectly and then backpedals quickly to receive the delayed flea-flicker. After a quick throw, it’s an easy touchdown pass.
18S Paddock Club
The Sao Paulo Grand Prix brought the last sprint weekend of 2023 which meant qualifying on Friday for the final time this year. Overcast clouds threatened for most of the session before a biblical rainstorm descended on the Interlagos circuit causing a red flag with 4 minutes remaining in Q3.
For the 11th time in 2023, Max Verstappen was on pole.
Lando Norris would take pole after the sprint qualifying the next day but was overtaken by Verstappen during the sprint race as these drivers finished 1-2 on Saturday.
It got dark quickly at the end of qualifying.
Mercedes won this race last year and the 2023 grand prix will go down as one of the worst of the season after George Russell retired due to engine overheating and Lewis Hamilton struggled to a P8 finish.
Of course, Verstappen won his record-breaking 17th win of the season and clinched the all-time F1 record for winning percentage in a season set over 60 years ago by Ferrari’s Alberto Ascari. Norris followed up in P2 as he continues his charge up the standings since summer but this race will be remembered for the multi-lap battle between Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez for the final podium spot, won narrowly by 0.05 seconds from the former driver.
Next weekend the penultimate race of the season brings us the much-anticipated return to Las Vegas. I’ll have a lot of coverage of that ground breaking race.
Trivia Answer:
Washington, 16 games
Wait what is florida states win streak at? it’s got to be 16 or close
Anyways by far the best michigan outcome is they lose to penn state and ohio state maybe even getting their ass kicker in one of the games, rendering their 3 year run totally fraudulent. THEN the big ten or ncaa hammers them, vacates all win, harbaugh gone and then some. Which of course means none of that will happen
Looked it up, apparently they’re at 15 games
Close!
Sadly we’re talking about James Franklin in a big game. I’m taking Michigan, even if Penn State knew Michigan’s plays. But agreed, I would laugh for hours if Michigan loses to Penn State, especially after part of their argument to the Big Ten is that they are dominating teams even more aggressively post-Stallions.
Except they’re not really. I had michigan covering vs purdue and the only reason they got close was late pour it on touchdowns. They by no means dominated them the way michigan usually dominates bad teams. It was a struggle vs purdue even if the final margin was technically more
The white pants have really grown on me despite the Gold/White/Gold being my favorite ND uniform combination (mostly probably out of bias because that’s what I’ve seen them play in 99% of the time) and I totally agree with the gold stroke being weak now
I don’t know why ND hasn’t stuck with something like the 2018 CFP uniforms or what they wore in Ireland this year with a shinier more obvious gold stroke
I wore the Ireland jersey for the first time for a game in the stands of death valley on Saturday and the moment I took it off (it was hot as hell on november 4th good lord) we outscored them 17-7 so sorry guys
2023 records:
In gold/blue/gold or gold/white/gold: 7-1
In anything else: 0-2
(eric will ban me for this)
i really REALLY want to see how the new green jerseys work with the gold pants
maybe in the bowl game
why do you want to lose a bowl game
well we’re gonna play utah in the holiday bowl anyway so as long as we’re going against the head coach who has never lost a game before………..
Those are the facts.
While we’re getting our uniform opinions out in a safe space (not a single downvote in this subthread, nice), I equate full whites with a white flag. I would feel the weakest running out in full whites. I don’t like it. It doesn’t look like a football uniform to me.
I didn’t like the Vegas Shamrock Series uniforms at first but gave them a little bit more of a pass because it was a special occasion. And it seemed apropos to wear full whites against BYU.
I didn’t say my opinion makes sense, it’s just how I feel.
White on white didn’t really do it for me either. Give me some gold tops with blue pants.
I’m just gonna let you guys cook.
White Pants. Green Jerseys. Can’t Lose.
Dress like Baylor, play like Baylor.
My immediate thought with the release of the Beatles song was how much money does McCartney need to chase? Of course it’s a Lennon song. He clearly was the most creative and had the biggest impact on our culture. Whatever.
Considering all the transfers in, Senior Day at Boulder should be interesting both in the number and fan engagement. Three OL starters, for interest, are Senior or Grad Transfers and one is a Redshirt Junior Transfer. As for OL backups, one is a Senior Transfer and two more are Junior Transfers. Early PT must be a recruiting pitch. Is you are Shedeur do you want to play next year behind a new OL with more transfers in?
With Colorado, Utah and Arizona State remaining, could Arizona go 9-3?
Blake Corum says he had no business relationship with Connor Stalions after a LLC established by Stalions in Wyoming with Corum as a “co-organizer” came to light in a WSJ article. Corum has “my attorneys” working to dissolve his involvement. If Corum shared in the profits, wouldn’t Michigan have played someone ineligible or is that allowed?
Shadeur Sanders is going to have such a difficult decision. Stay at Colorado, keep playing for your dad, keep building something that could potentially be special (but has huge bust possibility). Maybe you work your way into a Top 10 NFL Draft pick in 2025.
Or just go get that big payday. So many teams likely need a QB; Patriots, Jets, Giants, Commanders, Raiders, Bears, Packers, Vikings, Falcons. Maybe Steelers, Broncos, Saints, Buccaneers, and Rams too? I know this QB draft class is strong, but coming back and risking injury (especially behind a mystery offensive line) seems like a massive risk.
Random thought: are we allowed to admit that the best thing for ND football as pertains to this season’s CFP is for Michigan to win it under the current cloud of suspicion?
Are no other scenarios (like Michigan losing!??) on the table in this insane hypothetical?????
A 6 week bout of chronic diarrhea, where everyone comes out healthy afterwards, perhaps?
I think the only other possible winner there is even a case for is UW. But Michigan winning with nobody in the world viewing it as legitimate may be optimal for ND: (1) shows a midwestern team other than Ohio State can win the national championship in the 21st century; (2) Harbaugh is very likely going to leave and/or be hit with a show-cause after this season, so UM will not keep any momentum as a program for winning it; (3) people will view it as tainted in real time, which, again, affects the possibility that there’s any real momentum as a result; and (4) it’s probably going to get vacated, which would be very funny. Also Michigan is generally less of a recruiting rival than one might be inclined to think given the similarities between the schools, so even if they did maintain some momentum I don’t think it would really be all that harmful to ND and might be net neutral if they mostly take from Ohio State.
#1 is very important IMO and, assuming ND isn’t the team that was going to do it, it happening to a rival that nobody believes is on the up-and-up has high entertainment value. This whole Stallions thing has already been hilarious and them winning it all while it’s ongoing is straightforwardly the funniest outcome possible.
I mean come on this stuff is hilarious: https://twitter.com/ScottSteiner/status/1723225611961798898
Are you secretly a Michigan fan? What is happening here!?
Michigan winning it all is the absolute worst result. While there may be a significant presence online of people who are entertained by this and think it’s funny, there’s still a huge swath of college football fans and media all over the country who don’t view the sign stealing as that big of a deal.
I think it’s vastly overestimated how many people would think a Michigan title is illegitimate.
And then, we’d have to rely on hope that the Big Ten or NCAA actually come down with a meaningful punishment…which I’m not sure that’s the clubhouse leader at this point.
There’s no way it’s the worst-case scenario: even without this all going on it would be better for ND football for Michigan to win a title than Ohio State winning a title. Ohio State winning is the absolute worst-case scenario regardless. They’re our #1 recruiting rival and it would further establish that they’re far and away the premier non-SEC program and nobody else is close. That would be really bad for ND.
UW or Oregon winning are pretty neutral I suppose. But, like, can’t really say I can see a Pac-12 team winning even if they’re in the mix now.
Maybe it’s too online but I don’t really think there’s much sympathy for Michigan on this outside of Michigan fans. E.g., the commenters on The Athletic are usually fairly reasonable on the whole and they’re almost entirely lined up against UM. I think people view their last couple years as tainted. Maybe a fair point that Michigan winning out after getting caught/presumably not cheating any more would remove some of that though.
Also fair that you can’t trust the NCAA to do anything right. But I still feel pretty confident that Harbaugh is done at UM after this year regardless (why put up with all this when you can make $20M a year coaching the Bears?), so I’m not super worried about UM’s success negatively affecting ND in the long term if they were to win this year.
Sheesh, now you’re going even further!
I get that you’re baking in all these bad things happening to Michigan as part of the premise but come on. It’s like UM can win a title but then a dozen of factors are gonna suddenly fall ND’s way as a result and I don’t like the odds.
OSU beating Michigan (while all these bad things can still happen to UM afterward) would be delightful and no problem whatsoever.
I’m not sure I even understand the argument for it being better for ND if Ohio State wins as compared to Michigan. OSU is the single biggest program hurdle for ND to potentially move into the top tier of college football! Them falling off a bit is almost a pure necessity for ND having a shot at competing for titles. We should cheer for them to lose, even against ND rivals imo.
But Michigan losing to Penn State in their first big game after getting caught would also be very funny.
Also, STFU about Jimmy heading to the Bears
If your argument for OSU winning the title is bad for ND because of recruiting, I fail to see how the 2nd best recruiter against ND winning is good. If you were suggesting that Wisconsin, Iowa or KState winning the title is good for ND, that would be more logical.
There are 100 other things holding ND back that have nothing to do with Ohio State.
Well that is absolutely true. My point, though, is “Ohio State succeeding” is currently distinctly more of a problem for ND than “Michigan succeeding” and it would probably take another 5+ years of Michigan outpacing OSU to displace that, which is even less likely than the assumptions I made above re the fallout from the Stalions stuff. I get the Michigan sucks thing and if you want to say you never cheer for a rival fair enough, but my view is I just want ND to win a natty and it follows that, right now, the team I like seeing lose the most is Ohio State (given that, thankfully, it doesn’t look like Lincoln Riley is going to build a juggernaut at USC).
I take the point that I may be being a bit optimistic about the fallout from Stalions killing any UM momentum and it’s probably safer from the ND program perspective to just cheer for the southern-school-dominance stasis of Georgia winning or something, assuming UW or Oregon can’t do it.
You’re suggesting that it’s a binary “Michigan is good” or “OSU is good” when in reality in your scenario, it turns out both “Michigan and OSU are good even if one, or both, of them don’t win a national championship this year.”
How having two stronger programs near ND makes sense in your head isn’t working for anyone else, regardless of how many paragraphs you put out.
Insert Happy Gilmore gif
I just now realized you said “Happy Gilmore,” but not sure what gif that was supposed to be. In my head you were alluding to Billy Madison’s “Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” And I went ahead and purposely posted a different Billy Madison gif as a joke.
That’s actually what I meant, I just got it wrong because all Adam Sadler movies are abject trash except for Uncut Gems.
(You’re Bradley Whitford in this scenario)
The entire Big Ten can eat a steaming bowl of turd soup.
The best result here is Michigan getting exposed and embarrassed in a semifinal (again), Harbaugh leaving, and the NCAA whacking them with serious sanctions.
Here’s something that doesn’t take multiple paragraphs to say: Michigan sucks.
What similarities between the schools? The gigantic, 50,000 student state school and the 8,000 student religious school?
“ND and Michigan are alike” is a line that only Michigan people say. Think about why.
Rooting for Michigan, much less a Michigan team that has been proven to be cheating, is unacceptable in all cases.
I went to ND over Michigan. I get that they’re not literally the same school, and, at least with respect to undergrad education, ND is better in every way imo. And also I get that we as a football program have higher standards than they do – they literally took a recruit who didn’t meet our requirements this year. I get all that. But, notwithstanding the size of the school, as a football program it’s just obviously true that more alike with them than we or they are with Ohio State (or, frankly, any other top-~15 college football program), which is essentially an SEC school in Ohio.
My point with respect to Michigan specifically is simply that it would not be unhelpful for ND to have a proof of concept of “a relatively high-academic Midwestern school that is not just like an SEC school in Ohio can win a natty in the 21st century.” Would be approximately a bajilliondy times better if we did it, but it would still give us hope that we too could do it. Whereas Ohio State winning is just more of the same, but worse.
Anyway I’m just going to otherwise stop engaging on this as my view is obviously a very unpopular and minority one, but based on all I’ve seen from the pushback I definitely remain entirely unconvinced that it would be better for the ND football program for Ohio State to win a natty than Michigan. (And just to say it, as a non-Midwesterner I don’t have to deal with Michigan people much so Michigan winning would not be super annoying to me in my personal life, which I realize is not the same for many ND fans, so I certainly have some sympathy for that.)
One last point as I failed to address it: the “they cheated and don’t cheer for a cheater” view is also totally fair but also I guess w/r/t college football I guess this is making clear to me that the categorical rule I personally follow is just “is this good for ND football?”, but I realize one’s mileage may vary and “no cheaters” is an entirely fair and reasonable rule that obviously scopes out UM (because come on they totally cheated).
What? No.
It is never in ND’s interest for Michigan to win anything. What is wrong with you?
There’s been a lot of questions about Freeman’s in game decision making, the passing offense, and whether our QB is even good, but I just watched Penn State and realized it could be so much worse.
It pains me to say this but we are basically the same team as Penn State.
All well done, and most welcome reading on a depressed bye week weekend. Thanks Eric, and all who posted.
In the matter of Paul McCartney bashing, I sort of understand. Then again — I highly recommend checking out his really solid bass line on “Bite My Head Off” from Hackney Diamonds. That’s the Paul I recall from the early years. Indeed, my first good bass guitar was a Hohner that I bought hitchiking around Germany with my ND roommate, inspired directly by Paul. Granted, I liked Bill Wyman better, but let us not deny that Paul played a mean bass.