Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Zack Martin (1st team – right guard), Kyle Hamilton (1st team – safety), Brandon Aubrey (1st team – kicker), and Kyren Williams (2nd team – running back) were named to the 2023 NFL All-Pro team.
Notre Dame new athletic director Pete Bevacqua starts his tenure on March 25th.
Former Notre Dame safety Ramon Henderson has transferred to UCLA. Former Irish corner Ryan Barnes committed to UMass.
Texas A&M’s Ross Bjork is headed to Ohio State to replace Gene Smith as athletic director.
Alabama has hired Washington head coach Kalen DeBoer to replace Nick Saban. The Tide are bringing in South Alabama head coach Kane Wommack as their new defensive coordinator with offensive coordinator Major Applewhite moving up to be the head coach at SAU.
The Huskies have hired Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch for 7 years at $7.75 million per season. The Wildcats are hiring San Jose State’s Brent Brennan as their new head coach.
USC quarterback Caleb Williams has officially declared for the NFL Draft.
After saying he’s leaving for the NFL, former Washington State quarterback Cam Ward is transferring to Miami instead.
Maryland quarterback Taulia Tagavailoa did the opposite to Ward and after entering the transfer portal hoping for an extra year of eligibility, he was denied by the NCAA, and will now enter the NFL Draft instead.
Alabama receiver Isaiah Bond is transferring to Texas. The Horns also added Oregon State wide receiver Silas Bolden.
Alabama safety Caleb Downs is entering the transfer portal. Tide left tackle Kadyn Proctor is also transferring.
Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy and running back Blake Corum are headed to the NFL.
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian has agreed to a contract extension through 2030. Additionally, Florida State head coach Nike Norvell has signed a new 8-year extension worth $80 million through 2031.
Harvard head coach Tim Murphy is retiring after 30 seasons and 10 Ivy League titles with the Crimson.
Uniform of the Week
Two seasons ago, South Dakota State opened the season with a brutal 7-3 loss at Iowa. They’ve since never lost again and have won back-to-back National Championships at the FCS level. Their coach for 2022, John Stiegelmeier, won the school’s first ever title and then walked off into the sunset. Their new coach Jimmy Rogers kept it rolling with another title. The Jackrabbits have now won an impressive 29 games in a row.
Jackrabbits is a cool mascot. Under Armour has done a pretty good job with their uniforms and they are yet another FCS program that doesn’t use nameplates. I don’t love the horizontal yellow stripes coming from the arm pits, that feels a little too high school-ish, doesn’t it? It might look cleaner if they removed that and just made the collar all yellow. This is the uniform set South Dakota State wore in the National Championship game, including the white helmet with the rabbit ears logo stretching to the back.
Recruiting
Notre Dame added the commitment from linebacker Ko’o Kia (0.8650) out of Punahou High School in Hawaii, little brother of Irish player Kahanu Kia.
Cornerback Tarrion Grant (0.9762) committed to Purdue.
Defensive lineman Jalen Wiggins (0.9572) committed to Florida.
Wide receiver Jamie Ffrench (0.9931) decommitted from Alabama. The Tide also lost defensive edge rusher Javion Hilson (0.9753) who then committed to Florida State.
Offensive tackle Alex Payne (0.9145) committed to North Carolina.
USC commit quarterback Julian Lewis (0.9958) is reclassifying from 2026 to 2025.
YouTube Channel
The Tuesday after New Years Day I was home with the girls (no school), randomly found some banana bread in the pantry, and decided on a whim I’d eat a few pieces (and a few other things) before tackling the Alpe d’Huez climb. In the span of 5 months I went from riding an indoor Schwinn, to mixing in outdoor rides, then back indoors on a smart trainer for winter. The progress has been amazing. Riding outdoors is great but it’s difficult to climb a lot in my area–you either have to repeat the same hill over and over or ride for 5 hours–or sometimes both. Neither is very fun.
Shortly before Christmas I rode the Col de la Madone on Zwift (10.1 miles, 2,959 feet of elevation) and that was a challenge. Ten days later, I put carbs in my body and tried Alpe du Zwift at 7.6 miles and 3,399 feet of climbing. It took 72 minutes and 41 seconds and I know I can shave a few minutes off that time easily. The people who can ride this in under 40 minutes are disgusting. I’ll be shooting for a sub-hour climb someday.
Tunes
I was picking up pizza recently (which I didn’t eat, I’m trying to be a skinny climby boi!) when this infectious John Mayer song was playing on the radio. I looked it up and “New Light” was released as the lead single to Mayer’s album Sob Rock but the single came out in May 2018 and the album wasn’t released until July 2021. That can’t be right? It would be kind of cool for an artist to drop singles every once and a while over 3 years to complete an album but it’s less relevant to do so in the streaming era.
Actually, Mayer came out with the single and decided–after recording Sob Rock through the Covid lockdown–to include the song on the album. They were born from 2 different projects. This is a really great jam. I loved Mayer’s early albums but haven’t really caught up with any of his newer stuff over the last decade-plus. I’ll have to rectify that.
Trivia
Can you name the 7 offenses from the major conferences to finish 2023 in the top 10 in scoring average?
The Other Football
West Ham lost to Bristol City in a replay of the FA Cup third round. The 4th round will begin next week with top EPL teams Chelsea, Spurs, City, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Man United all still alive.
The Asian Cup has begun with teams finishing up their 2nd games this week. We’ll have more results next week. It’s being hosted in Qatar with that country also being the defending champions from the 2019 tournament.
The African Cup of Nations is also going on in the Ivory Coast this month. Senegal are the defending champions from the 2021 tournament.
Roma have fired manager Jose Mourinho and replaced him with club legend Daniele De Rossi on an interim basis.
American Gio Reyna is expected to leave Dortmund in the Bundesliga this January transfer window.
English women’s manager Sarina Wiegman has signed a contract extension through the 2027 World Cup.
TV & Movies
I’ve grown to love Western movies and television programs but have no interest in the modern-day stuff like Yellowstone where riding horses sometimes seems so silly, among other things. I was stuck at my Jeep dealer a while back (slowest dealer for routine maintenance east of the Mississippi I’m convinced) and I found myself enthralled by old episodes of the TV show Gunsmoke featuring a young Kurt Russell. He appeared on the show as a little kid and then again as a young man in 1974.
I’m pretty sure Russell met Charles Bronson on the set of that earlier Gunsmoke show. A number of years later, Bronson became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and left us one of the best Western films ever in Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s a masterpiece in every respect. The leading role was originally given to Clint Eastwood but he turned it down. I think Bronson was a better fit, so it worked out.
A Look Back
How many of you would’ve picked CJ Stroud over Bryce Young in last year’s NFL Draft. Be honest! Eh, probably a good few of you would’ve done so. It’s not fun being on the Carolina Panthers right now and they have plenty of blame to go around, but Young just finished up a dreadful rookie season with 2 wins in 16 starts, 59.8% completion percentage, 2,877 yards, 11 touchdowns, 10 picks, and he led the league with 477 sack yards. Not great!
Stroud on the other hand, oh my goodness. He’ll surely win the NFL Rookie of the Year Award going away and is coming off a season in which he threw for 4,108 yards with 23 touchdowns and only 5 interceptions on a Texans team no one ever could’ve believed would make the playoffs. And they just won a playoff game, with Stroud looking incredible against a tough Browns defense totaling 274 passing yards with 3 touchdowns and no picks. He’s scary good already.
18S Paddock Club
Reviewing the 2023 season for each team on the F1 grid…
Alpine
Place: 6th/10
Points: 120
Pierre Gasly: 62 points
Esteban Ocon: 58 points
If you look up modern instability in Formula One you’ll see Alpine. A team notorious for being wishy-washy with their resolve in the sport has been through quite the controversial year and a half. They failed to re-sign Fernando Alonso, bungled the signing of academy star Oscar Piastri, and saw their team CEO and team principal fired in 2023.
The addition of Pierre Gasly to the team was supposed to bring some off-track drama as his family doesn’t get along with teammate Esteban Ocon’s family but things were surprisingly cool all season. If it weren’t, the team might’ve imploded and left the sport.
Gasly did surprisingly well in qualifying but struggled much more with race pace. Ocon. meanwhile, suffered one of the most unlucky seasons in recent memory being unable to finish nearly a third of the races. In an era where we’ve seen unprecedented reliability it’s crazy to see a car and driver miss out on that many points opportunities.
There were some bright spots. Ocon took P3 at Monaco of all places in one of the most surprising results of the season. Gasly also took a podium and P3 finish in the crazy rain-soaked Zandvoort race in Netherlands. However, neither driver finished higher than 6th in any other race and the team dropped down 2 places in the team standings from 2022.
Can Alpine be anything else besides a mediocre midfield team? They are one of a handful of teams that have publicized a full car rebuild for 2024 and that’ll be interesting to see the results in the coming weeks. Also, the team completed a $200 million Euro sale to a group of investors including Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, Rory McIlroy, Anthony Joshua, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Juan Mata.
Will we see Taylor Swift in the Alpine paddock next year?
Trivia Answer:
LSU, Oregon, USC, Oklahoma, Georgia, Notre Dame, and Kansas State.
I wonder if Downs and Procter will actually leave or will the new coach be able to recruit them back.
Was Procter a late flip/commit to Bama over Iowa? 247 has projected him to Iowa and I swear we and others lost out on him to Iowa since he’s from there, but clearly I stopped paying attention at some point.
Yeah, I believe he was an Early Signing Period flip from Iowa to Alabama.
Since I’m mostly a basic bitch, I enjoy JM’s catalogue. Born and Raised (’12) [I enjoy story songs – I think “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test” might be my favorite] and Paradise Valley (’13) [A couple snoozers on here] are both really good ‘sitting by a fire outside with a beer at dusk in October’ albums. The Search for Everything (’17) is really solid – “Emoji of a Wave,” “In the Blood,” “Roll It on Home” standout to me. Sob Rock (’21) is a very quick and easy listen, most of it sounds like it came out of 1987 – “Last Train Home” is a banger, “Shot in the Dark” is solid and “I Guess I Just Feel Like” scratches an itch.
What’s your weight loss goal for the winter ? I’m trying to take off ten lbs. As my brother in law joked, it’s the best upgrade I could make to my bike.
Goal achieved! I roughly wanted 160 lbs. (from 188) and am sitting at 147 right now.
147 ! Wow, I’m looking at 185 for spring and another 5 after that.
What was your hockey playing weight ?
I’d get up to a bulky 152 during the summers and then probably played around 148 during winter.
What !? Were you one of this little waterbug type pricks ?
So, 147 is probably a good overall weight for you. You don’t want to look like a pro cyclist. They look emaciated.
People said I was Paul Coffey or Scott Niedemeyer, just 4 inches shorter and 50 pounds lighter lol.
I like the fit all-arounders like Evenepoel who looks really athletic with big legs. Still just 5-7 and 135 pounds but he looks bigger to me.
I just saw a video about him today (weird) . He was a hell of a soccer player. That accident he had was a close call. Don’t do that.
Tough to play D at 150.
If you’re a climber, then you’re just a glutton for punishment. Then again, we’re all Notre Dame fans so I guess that’s baked in.
All true.
The New Light music video is pretty funny, too. The song is so catchy that I end up re-watching the video every couple of months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ055hHdxbE
I definitely would have taken Stroud over Bryce Young. Too many QBs similar to Young have not succeeded or have limited upside – Kyler Murray, Justin Fields, etc. I just liked Stroud better and the fit with the Texans was perfect for him.
Lance Leipold turned down the HC job at Washington who are now at sixty-three scholarship players including the incoming 2024 class. Even one of their walkon QBs, Alex Johnson who was a transfer from a Community College has entered the Portal. Washington reportedly is looking at NM St’s QB Diego Pavia. The Huskies now have no starters on Offense returning and only two starters on Defense returning. Kansas’ 2024 recruiting class is ranked fourth in the B12 and fortieth nationally just ahead of Washington’s at forty-one.
Jalen Daniels returns to Lawrence as their starting QB backed up by Cole Ballard. Jason Bean, who replaced Daniels after his injury, threw for 449 yards and six of his touchdown passes in an exciting matchup with UNLV’s Jayden Maiava. Maiava is transferring to USC where one of his new targets will be WR Jaden Richardson from the Tufts Jumbos (D3).
Former number one recruit, Korey Foreman, is transferring to Fresno State after three disappointing years at USC .
Shane Bumgardner, Center from the D3 Tiffin Dragons, is transferring to KU. Bumgardner won the Rimington Award for D3 Centers. Idaho’s former QB, Gevani McCoy, who was the Big Sky Conference’s 2023 first-team QB and one season after he earned the Jerry Rice Award (which goes to the FCS freshman of the year) transferred to Oregon State a month ago or he may have been a target for Washington. Over the last two years for the Vandals McCoy threw for a combined 5,629 yards and 42 touchdowns to 15 interceptions.
Pavia committed to Vandy.
There is a rumor among Panthers fans, of which I am sadly one, that the Panthers initially trading up thinking they wanted to draft Stroud but David Tepper’s wife was charmed by Young and pushed for him. Stroud also did poorly on some cognition test that Young did well on: https://athlonsports.com/nfl/s2-cognition-test-bryce-young-leads-qb-class-cj-stroud-struggles, which the Panthers were also said to put a lot of stock in.
In any case it’s insane that they traded up for the #1 pick without knowing who they wanted to draft, which basically nobody disputes! And it is turning out to be one of the worst trades in modern NFL history – it maybe would have even been an overpay if they drafted Stroud.
Ryan Poles has done a terrific job in Chicago except for acquiring Chase Claypool for a second round pick. Now he may trade Justin Fields to someone like Atlanta for more high picks and take Caleb Williams as their QB of the future. Plus they have $50 mill in cap space for free agents and their rookie pool. With plenty of picks he could trade up from the ninth pick to grab Joe Alt as their LT of the future. He did draft Mahomes while at KC.
I’m trying to think of teams that have traded up in the 1st round for a qb and have had it work out for them in recent times. The Chiefs traded up for Mahomes in 2017, but no one else immediately comes to mind.
Jordan Love, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff (maybe?), RGIII had potential, Joe Flacco, Michael Vick
I’d actually forgotten that Buffalo, Baltimore, and Green Bay traded up for Allen, Jackson, and Love! Those count for sure
DeShaun Watson. In addition many of QBs sat for a year or so.
This makes me sad, I was looking forward to an AZ vs KS Big 12 championship game.
For me, Once Upon a Time in the West has possibly the greatest/most satisfying ending to any movie. It’s a slow burn but well worth it–love that harmonica theme!
Ohio State is hiring Bill O’Brien as Co-OC, which is, uh….interesting.
Between them getting a new AD and Day making some very strange decisions, I think ND better be prepared for a fight to keep Freeman soon.
Apparently Julian Sayin is likely going to transfer there to play for O’Brien, which is, um, a choice. And of course Caleb Downs, who to me is clearly the best transfer this year and might be the best player in the country next year, just committed to them.
As far as I know, Notre Dame has avoided the situations of the new Bagmen that have had major influences on programs through NILs and coaching salaries. As an example of one is Humberto Lopez, a real estate magnate, with Arizona. After the season, he met with HC Jedd Fisch to get his promise to stay with Arizona.
Lopez is now working to keep their stars as Fisch tries to lure them to Washington and trying to lure back those Washington players who have entered the Portal. Fisch has hired his seventh former Wildcat assistant to Washingon. New Wildcat HC is bringing many of his former staff to Arizona.
One of those players who appeared with Lopez courtside is their RB, Jonah Coleman, Coleman a few days later entered the Portal and has now filmed himself entering Washington facilites. Arizona’s athletic department recently announced a budget deficit of $240 million making them more reliant on boosters/bagmen like Lopez.
Quotes from: Who is Humberto Lopez, and why is he a major influence in retaining Arizona star football players in the transfer portal?
Lopez is working to keep stars like Noah Fifita and Tetairoa Mcmillan in Tucson while Fisch would love to attract them to Seattle along with all of the Wildcats’ offense assistant coaches. Among others, Washington lost its talented ’23 QB commit, Austin Mack, to DeBoer’s Alabama money and after being released from his NLI a top ranked ’24 Edge Noah Carter possibly to Alabama or Ohio State.
I don’t think that a four year education is a primary draw for retaining players. At least three players who transferred into UW appeared in uniforms on the Husky sideline for the NC and lasted a little more than a week there before they re-entered the Portal.
We’re absolutely dropping the bag on transfers and retaining players – how do you think we got Hartman and Leonard? From outward appearances it seems like FUND is not focusing as much on high school recruits as other schools’ collectives, but that appears to be a function of strategy rather than principle – and it may be the right one for ND.
ND is in the nice situation where they’re not going to be reliant on one guy like some other schools – a bunch of rich alumni is a nice problem to have – but, let’s not delude ourselves, we’re now playing the game too. And, IMO, that’s a good thing and plays into some of ND’s relative strengths (i.e., rich alumni).
I was listening to Room for Squares the other week in my car when my wife got in, saw who was playing, and goes “John Mayer? Doesn’t he make music for women?!” I told her sometime, and people like to think that, but he is genuinely one of the top guitarists of our generation, and he just makes good tunes.
Makes music for women, wow.