Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Tops News
Notre Dame lacrosse player Pat Kavanaugh was named the ACC Athlete of the Year.
He’s not retiring yet, but Utah has named defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as head-coach-in-waiting for when Kyle Whittingham ultimately retires.
Following an external Title IX investigation, Utah State will be firing head coach Blake Anderson.
Oklahoma State running back Ollie Gordon has been arrested for DUI.
USC cornerback Ceyair Wright has transferred to Nebraska.
Cincinnati defensive lineman Dontay Corleone is out indefinitely after blood clots were found in his lungs.
Uniform of the Week
The summer of throwback and simple uniforms continues. This time, Adidas gets in on the action as the apparel supplier takes over the Texas Tech athletic teams. You may connect the dots that Adidas athlete Patrick Mahomes went to Tech and he was an instrumental part in bringing the Three Stripes to Lubbock. There’s not a ton to discuss with these, but we’ll take a peek.
Generic shoulder stripes, it’s so 2024 isn’t it? It looks like they used to have red numbers on their white jerseys and that’s now been reversed for black outlined in red. I think that looks much better. The black helmets used to have a red stripe down the middle, this white one outlined in red is sharper, as well. All of their jerseys used to say Texas Tech across the chest and now the red version says Red Raiders.
Recruiting
5-star tight end Linkon Cure (0.9837) committed to in-state Kansas State.
Edge rusher Mariyon Dye (0.9365) committed to Tennessee.
Defensive lineman Smith Orogbo (0.9474) committed to Texas.
Cornerback Dijon Lee (0.9873) is headed to Alabama. The Tide also added tight end Kaleb Edwards (0.9349) and linebacker Justin Hill (0.9708) this week.
Running back Jordon Davison (0.9511) committed to Oregon. The Ducks also added tight end Da’Shaan Brame (0.9466) and cornerback Dorian Brew (0.9841).
Defensive lineman Myron Charles (0.9439) gave a verbal to Florida State. The Seminoles also added safety Gregory Xavier Thomas (0.9047), as well.
Cornerback Micah Strickland (0.9409) committed to TCU.
Linebacker Tavion Wallace (0.9720) committed to Arkansas.
Edge rusher Marco Jones (0.9340) gave a verbal to Texas A&M.
Edge rusher Javeon Campbell (0.9329) committed to Kentucky.
Linebacker Gavin Nix (0.9336) committed to Miami.
Defensive lineman Maxwell Roy (0.9186) committed to Ohio State.
Wide receiver Cortez Mills (0.9552) committed to Oklahoma.
Linebacker Zaydrius Rainey-Sale (0.9459) is headed to Washington.
Quarterback Ty Hawkins (0.9390) committed to SMU.
Ole Miss picked up a verbal from corner Cortez Thomas (0.9226).
YouTube Channel
I found this mesmerizing video on how to make hard candy the old fashioned way. It looks like a lot of fun but also shows a lot of skill. You know how you can do those wine tastings while painting like couples like to do? Or maybe a girls night out? They should pair wine with making hard candy. Who says no?
I’ve grown to enjoy hard candy more as a quick, sweet pick me up instead of going for something like chocolate or a cookie. Here now are my favorite hard candies:
#10 Fireballs – Only good once in a blue moon.
#9 Runts – Almost too much sugar, only worth it in small doses. Do you pick out the bananas?
#8 Gobstopper – Always better than I remember.
#7 Jolly Rancher – Pretty much all flavors except cherry.
#6 Strawberry Bon Bon – Underrated and always delivers.
#5 Sprees – Outstanding and chewy sprees are one of my candy GOAT’s, too.
#4 Lifesaver – Classic and a lot of tasty flavors that always hit.
#3 Werther’s – I love them so much.
#2 Skittles – Particularly the purple bags.
#1 Lemonheads – I’ll never turn down one of these.
Tunes
So, Eminem has a new album coming out soon. It’ll be called The Death of Slim Shady and releases on July 12th. He just released the 2nd single “Tobey” this week but what I wanted to talk about is the first single “Houdini” which came out just over a month ago. The song hits on a couple things that bug me a lot about the music industry.
One, it’s okay to sample songs especially in the world of hip hop. This Eminem song samples Steve Miller Band’s song “Abracadabra” and it feels weird at how heavy it’s used throughout the song. Maybe it’ll grow on me, but it just feels really weird. Secondly, I hate when artists release song titles that are already popular songs from another artist. Just 8 months ago, Dua Lipa released her own hit song “Houdini” why would you title your song this, Eminem??
Trivia
Which current FBS head coach has the highest winning percentage for their career?
The Other Football
Chaos and disappointment for the USMNT as America crashes out of the Copa America after the group stages. Panama upset the US 2-1 shortly after last week’s publication and then that was followed up by a 1-0 defeat to Uruguay. Tough times for manager Gregg Berhalter.
The Copa quarterfinal matchups to come:
Argentina vs. Ecuador
Venezuela vs. Canada
Uruguay vs. Brazil
Colombia vs. Panama
Outside of Italy losing (and maybe how you feel about Turkey) it was a pretty chalk-filled round of 16 in the Euro Championships:
Spain 4-1 Georgia
Germany 2-0 Denmark
Portugal 0-0 Slovenia (Portugal wins 3-0 on penalties)
France 1-0 Belgium
Netherlands 3-0 Romania
Turkey 2-1 Austria
England 2-1 Slovakia
Switzerland 2-0 Italy
In the quarterfinals we will watch Spain/Germany, Portugal/France, Netherlands/Turkey, and England/Switzerland.
TV & Movies
Against my better judgement I sat through the Neflix series on Bernie Madoff this week and the sadness that resulted from all of this ridiculous financial corruption. Like many of these documentaries on financial crimes you really have a hard time swallowing how incompetent and corrupt the people charged with uncovering this stuff were for freaking decades. Even in the pre-internet era you would’ve thought someone easily finds out Madoff was a fraud. But, nope.
A guy quickly found out it was all fake in 1999 and it still took another decade for Madoff to be put under the spotlight and finally charged with crimes. For example something like this: “On occasion, they slipped up and dated trades as taking place on weekends and federal holidays, though this was never caught.” That’s infuriating. It’s really sad what Madoff did to the Jewish community, too. So sad.
A Look Back
Full disclosure I’m not consuming as much Notre Dame media as I used to. Back in the early days of the Kelly era I would look forward to stuff like “Irish Connection” dropping and always thought they were entertaining looks inside the program. When I think back to 2012 particularly, there were so many awesome videos released as the team kept winning and winning.
Remember a big part of the stadium upgrades for Crossroads was developing a better area for the media wing of the athletic department. I’m not sure if things are better today, but the videos do seem more built for entertainment and a younger crowd. There’s better production value but the “Irish Access” videos don’t do it for me that much.
18S Paddock Club
The drama is so back in the F1 world. It was a sprint weekend and the sprint qualifying saw a rather mundane Max Verstappen pole followed by both McLaren’s. During the sprint race, there was a brief fight at the beginning but Max would win with the McLaren’s switching places to round out the podium.
Verstappen took the grand prix qualifying rather easily and seemed poised to cruise to an easy race win. However, Lando Norris in his McLaren hung around, Red Bull had an uncharacteristically bad pit stop, Max was on used tires at the end, and Norris had a decent pit stop time for new tires. What happened next set the media landscape on fire.
After several aggressive attempts from both drivers to pass and defend, the two ended up banging wheels on one of the more innocent looking maneuvers at turn 3. The damage ended Norris’ race and forced Verstappen to pit. The latter received a 10-second penalty for the collision, as well.
The winner, George Russell in his Mercedes who shot through the two wounded cars and ended up with his 2nd career victory.
The drama could continue this weekend in Silverstone where British driver Norris will be racing on his home turf. Will there be boos in the crowd for Verstappen? More notes from Austria this past weekend:
*The struggles for Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull continue. Even with Verstappen’s late car damage and penalty, Perez still finished 17 seconds behind his teammate and picked up just 6 points.
*Rough, rough weekend for Charles Leclerc who had an engine problem in qualifying and could only finish P11 after an early front wing change.
*Look out, but Alpine look comfortably stronger than Aston Martin now.
*Huge weekend for Haas with Hulkenberg in P6 and Magnussen in P8 for a beefy 12 points from the grand prix. That gives Haas a comfortable 10-point lead over Alpine in 7th place.
Trivia Answer:
Ryan Day, Ohio State, .875
It’s funny because arguably no one has had more talent and less to show for it than Ryan Day.
The fact that we are 0-2 against that meathead really grinds my gears.
Are skittles a hard candy?
Strong agree with #1 though. Lemonheads are perfect. No attempt to be a full hard candy session of sour, just a quick punch at the beginning and then a long sweet apology.
Only 3 of those are hard candies. But I imagine that’s the debate! Whatever the order of any sort of candy list, Werther’s is dead last.
Also Jolly Rancher’s sour apple is the best.
Ohhhh, spicy werthers take, those are just a real nice treat!
But I also enjoy rasainets and black licorice, so I might be the crazy one here.
100% concurrence on sour apple jolly ranchers though, those little bastards got me through many a blowout loss HS varsity football game when I was little fella.
Skittles kept popping up on hard candy lists. But, thinking about it more I guess they really aren’t….
Watching them pull and fold the candy is mesmerizing.
I am pretty sure that the Hot Pot candy assistant is Weird Al.
Yes, I do separate out the banana runts because the banana Runts are the best Runts. More surface area for flavor and less white stuff. Grapeheads are 100% better than Lemonheads. Still has a sourness, but then great grape flavor.
Grapeheads, great call.
Oh man the Icon videos of 2012 were awesome. they release a short one sunday or monday then the 8 minute one later they were awesome. Definitely felt integrated Into the specialness of that season.
Been watching more and more soccer the last few years but hardly an expert, but the US just isn’t good. They’re nowhere near the level of the upper echelon south american or european teams. Having the euros on as same time as some copa america matches is a rough comparator. its like when iowa purdue is on at same time as lsu bama
USMNT is in a really weird place right now.
Same place they’ve been in for 30 years.
I am surprised that people are surprised.
The USMNT, Brazil’s economy, and Texas A&M: just look at all this upside, we’re going to be incredible in five years
Despite some talent, the USMNT lack cohesion and struggles with creativity. I don’t see us scoring against any major team right now.
Also with the euros running, I’ve been struck by how inconsistently run the Copa has been: narrow fields, bad camera placement, questionable turf, and woeful officiating. The ref allowing Uruguay a restart while he gave a card was hilarious. I hope the organizers are taking notes, or we’re going to have some grumpy European teams when we host the world cup.
Agree the USMNT is just bad. I’m sure some of it is coaching but definitely not all of it. It seems unlikely that they’re going to look good in 2026, whoever is coaching them.
Tech’s black jersey should have red numbers with white outlines. Missed opportunity.
Agree about Eminem — way too much repetition of the sampled song
That Maryland game from 2011 is one of the few I have absolutely no memory of. I remember that it happened, and I know I watched it, but without seeing that highlight video I couldn’t tell you anything that happened in the game.
What a weird season that was.
I always remember he-who-shall-not-be-named having his baselayer stretch about 15 yards when a Terp grabbed it.
Same here. I would have sworn the last time we played them was with Ty as the coach.
I just finished rewatching that season and I truly can’t decide if it was the best bad team or the worst good team I’ve still ever seen from ND
gobs of talent that really showed at times and then you have dicktripping every 2 seconds along with like 20 redzone turnovers
It’s probably a good thing they didn’t go to a BCS game and play against like OKST
I just think of Tommy Rees throwing egregious interceptions, which would have been more had Michael Floyd not made a habit out of snagging passes headed right for defensive backs.
I kind of was the younger crowd back when the original gameday videos were made, and that 2012-y style was and is way more appealing than the generic hype stuff they make (other than the Duke last-drive video last year, which ruled).
The hype videos have been really good (I especially like last year’s style with the boombox)
That Duke video holds a very special place in my heart after being at that game on my 21st lol