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

3 News Stories

#1 The Big Ten has gained some steam on the football field over the last couple years, including expanding the conference. This off-season the league seems intent to allow the rest of the country turn against them as they fight against the SEC for post-season plans and prestige. As leaders within the conference took this week to explain weakening their out of conference schedules the Big Ten remains intent on pushing through a 4-4-2-2-1 playoff model.

The Big Ten continues to try and push the SEC towards 9 league games per season.

The commissioner of the Big Ten, Tony Petitti, would prefer 4 automatic bids for the Big Ten with the additional nonsense of a major payday via a “play-in” tournament that would pit the regular season 1 vs. 2 (both automatic spots in the playoff) for the Big Ten crown on Fox with playoff spots given to the winners of games between 3 vs. 6 (on NBC or CBS) and 4 vs. 5 (on NBC or CBS).

#2 BetGM has released its 2025 college football season over/under win totals. At the top of the list is Notre Dame with 10.5 wins along with Ohio State, Oregon, and Penn State. The next group of teams at 9.5 wins include Alabama, Boise State, Clemson, Georgia, Liberty, Miami, and Texas. For what its worth, Texas A&M sits in a large group at 7.5 wins for 2025.

#3 After some curious reports that Notre Dame may be a landing spot, former BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff ultimately committed to Tulane this week. The signal caller left BYU in a cloud of suspicion surrounding an allegation of rape (charges were never officially filed) and an honor code violation that would’ve compromised his playing time in 2025 with the Cougars.

The Green Wave saw young starter Darian Mensah enter the transfer portal for Duke this past off-season. Backup Ty Thompson has moved to tight end while Tulane also brought in Ball State transfer Kadin Semonza who threw for nearly 3,000 yards in 2024 for the Cardinals.

Recruiting

Notre Dame has opened its 2027 quarterback account as Teddy Jarrard (0.9278) out of North Cobb, Georgia pledged to the Irish on Thursday afternoon. He’s played 2 years at North Cobb Christian and has transferred to North Cobb High School ahead of the 2025 season.

Edge rusher Jaquez Wilkes (0.9572) committed to Auburn.

Chaminade running back Derrek Cooper (0.9843) committed to Texas.

Quarterback Landon Duckworth (0.9670) gave a verbal to South Carolina.

Safety prospect Craig Tutt (0.9120) committed to Ole Miss.

Fort Wayne wideout Jerquaden Guilford (0.9019) is headed to Ohio State.

Defensive lineman Valdin Sone (0.9359) committed to Georgia.

Texas Tech continues throwing their weight around with a commitment from wide receiver Chase Campbell (0.9385).

Uniform of the Week

Any excuse is a good excuse to talk about Tulane’s football uniforms. Recently, the Green Wave unveiled new uniforms, although as we’ll get to this wasn’t much of a change for the program. Thank goodness they kept their standard color scheme because it’s among the best in college football. I would enjoy a matchup with Tulane, the Irish haven’t played them since 1971 which is way too long of an absence.

I’ve done the research and pretty much the only update to their uniforms is the wordmark across the chest. Last year, the program had some really bad basic font and now they’ve juiced it up with a more school appropriate lettering. It also looks like they got upgraded to the latest Nike jersey which I think are called the Vapor Fuse.

TV & Movies

If you haven’t heard of KPop Demon Hunters yet, give it some time. Out of nowhere on Netflix this Sony Pictures animated musical fantasy film dropped into my life and the Murt kids haven’t stopped watching for the last week. My dirty secret is that I like the movie and they’ve done a good job releasing several banger songs from the production, too. The animation is really neat and they nailed the Korean culture vibes.

It took 9 years to get this made and proving that they could get the mix right of story, music, and Korean culture was a big part of that delay. We featured Parasite on the site recently and KPop Demon Hunters took some inspiration from director Bong Joon Ho, as well. If you don’t have little kids there’s no reason to watch this movie but the songs are starting to make their way up the pop song charts. We might have a new animation franchise on our hands here.

Tunes

Ozzy Osbourne lost his battle with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 76 years old on Tuesday. RIP to the Prince of Darkness. I honestly thought he might be a little older than that! He seemed a lot older when The Osbournes show debuted on MTV back in 2002 when he was only 53 years old. It seems like such a long time ago now. Let’s blast some Black Sabbath, shall we?

I’d argue Black Sabbath’s catalog isn’t super deep with hits (that’s pretty tough to do for any metal group to pull off) but they will always be legends for popularizing heavy metal. “War Pigs” beginning their 1970 album Paranoid is one of those moments in music history where things were changed forever. This is one of the best opening songs to an album in rock history. It’s probably my favorite Sabbath song, as well.

We should also mention Osbourne’s solo hit “Crazy Train” might get a special moment during the next Notre Dame home game.