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

3 News Stories

#1 Our first story this week concerns the recent settlement between the ACC and Florida State/Clemson with a new deal regarding revenue distribution and exit penalties being put into place for the future. ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said this after the agreement was signed off: “Today’s resolution begins the next chapter of this storied league and further solidifies the ACC as a premier conference.”

I’m sure that quote won’t look stupid within a few years (Phillips doesn’t care he’s cashing those checks and will move on with his life after this all collapses).

The new changes that were agreed:

The grant of rights penalty for leaving the conference remains through 2036 but drops down to $165 million in June 2026, drops by $18 million per year for 5 seasons, then levels off at a $75 million fee in the 2030-31 academic year and onward. As the media have astutely pointed out, the exit fee drops down to $75 million as the Big Ten and College Football Playoff deals will be expiring.

Reasons to smile, for a while. 

The new ACC “brand initiative” will be based on a 5-year rolling average with 60% of overall television revenue going this way and an additional weight towards recent viewership numbers. The other 40% will be evenly distributed between the ACC schools.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this as it pertains to Notre Dame but interestingly, Pat Forde at Sports Illustrated had this very important piece about upcoming scheduling:

“In another appeasement move, the ACC has agreed to schedule its top teams more frequently in the annual matchups with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The current plan is an annual Notre Dame–Clemson game, with Florida State and Miami rotating. That leaves three other ACC–Notre Dame games parceled out for the other 14 league members.”

You may be thinking, isn’t it weird that the ACC is lowering the exit fee AND creating a new distribution model that guarantees Florida State and Clemson can gather more funds for said exit fee at the expense of the other schools in the league? As Forde quips: “Thus the league has created a self-fulfilling prophecy, boosting the ratings of the Tigers, Seminoles and Hurricanes more than the others by giving them more games against the high-profile Fighting Irish.”

#2 You’re going to get a double dose of Bowling Green football today and it really came about by accident. First up, we have another college football head coach leaving for the NFL as Bowling Green’s Scot (with one t) Loeffler has agreed to join the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles as their quarterbacks coach. Perhaps 10 to 15 years ago this would’ve been an insane move. Today, maybe not so much.

The Cradle of Coaches doesn’t seem to be cradling as much anymore, and worse, the salaries in the MAC have not been keeping up with the rest of the country. Loeffler was one of the lowest paid head coaches in the sport and was earning a little over $500,000 per year with the Falcons. And that’s after a couple new contract negotiations and completely turning around BGSU from the doldrums to a respectable FBS program.

I can’t find any information on his new salary with the Eagles but position coach’s in the NFL have been creeping towards $500,000 anyway so he’s probably close to even and now free of the chains of college football. Nice career move, Scot with one t.

#3 Our last top news bit of the week comes from the hardcourt. The Irish women lost back-to-back games before coming back to form with a regular season finale 72-59 win over Louisville in South Bend. Ultimately they lost the league #1 seed and ACC regular season championship belt but the good news is that sophomore Hannah Hidalgo has been named ACC Player of the Year for her efforts in 2024-25. She joins Jewell Loyd (2014-15) as the only other Notre Dame player to win the award.

Hidalgo is averaging 24.2 points and leads the nation in steals per game for the 2nd straight season. She’s in the running for the National Player of the Year, as well. The Irish begin their ACC Tournament journey tonight at 5 PM ET against California, a team that they beat by 39 points just under a month ago in South Bend.

Recruiting

More offers are out from the Fighting Irish recruiting department. We’ll start first with Sierra Canyon (you may know this school through Bronny James) cornerback Havon Finney (0.9547). He recently reclassified from 2027 and is immediately a top 100 prospect in the 2026 class. Michigan and Ohio State were recent offers, as well.

Notre Dame also offered another cornerback in Jaziel Hart (unrated) out of Roanoke, Virginia.

McDonald, Pennsylvania safety Matt Sieg (0.9267) was offered by Notre Dame and Alabama on the same day. He’s been committed to Penn State since November 2nd of 2024.

Western New York stand up! Notre Dame has offered Rochester receiver Messiah Hampton (0.9391).

Montana offers are about as rare as they come. Billings native and tight end Matt Ludwig (0.9186) picked up a Notre Dame offer this week.

One of the country’s best running backs KJ Edwards (0.9812) was offered by the Irish. He comes out of Carthage, Texas.

Uniform of the Week

More from Bowling Green this week. This past season, the school held a logo design contest for kids (I would’ve been all over this when I was little) for a game against Northern Illinois. As I read this story, I thought maybe they’d have some tee shirts printed for the fans or something like that. Nope, not only did they move forward with announcing a winner…they announced two winners. Not only that, the school made the decision to use the logos as helmet decals.

3 logos for one game

I had to check the actual game to confirm and it was true. The Falcons wore their regular logo on the right side of the helmet and then the offense wore Ida’s design and the defense wore Tegan’s design above. Has this ever happened before? I can’t think of another situation that was similar to this with a team using 3 different logos. Although, maybe the military academies have all worn different logos on their helmets in the past?

TV & Movies

I went on a Google deep dive and apparently the weight of Timothee Chalamet isn’t really known, although some sites throw around the 68 kg (150 lbs) as an approximation on his 5’10” frame. I was watching The King recently and full props to Chalamet for knocking this role out of the park but my goodness he is THIN and his size makes it so hard to believe he would’ve been such a masterful swordsman and military fighter during this era when swords weighed roughly 30% of his weight (I totally made this up).

Robert Pattinson as Louis the Dauphine of France steals the movie in his brief handful of scenes, though. Historically, this movie doesn’t portray things accurately with him. In fact, he wasn’t even at the Battle of Agincourt and therefore (spoilers) doesn’t die in a muddy pit after being stabbed a bunch of times because he can’t even move in his heavy armor. It’s been several years and unfortunately I don’t think we’re getting a Dauphine spin-off of this movie from Pattinson.

Tunes

Since their debut as major artists back in 2008 I don’t think there have been many bands as good, full of quality, and successful as Cage the Elephant. Their first 4 album stretch–taking them through 2015–was phenomenal and brought us a ton of hit singles. Then, the band went quiet for a while. They released the live album Unpeeled in 2017 and while it’s very good it’s expertly recorded and produced to the point where it almost doesn’t feel like a live album. Then the 2019 offering Social Cues won a Grammy for best rock album, their second straight release to win that award.

Then we hadn’t heard much from the band and they went on another extended  break until last year. After a wait of 4 years and 1 month they finally came out with another album Neon Pill that I spent this week listening to during this week’s Rambler formation. It’s a good album, and it sounds like the band as they’ve kept true to their style of making music. I’ve included the title track today as it was their first single from the album.