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

3 News Stories

#1 Sac State MACtion

Could a public university go bankrupt trying to join the MAC? One school out west may try and find out! Over this past weekend reports came out that Sacramento State is joining the MAC in football only, effectively immediately for the 2026 season, with a bunch of financial figures being bandied about that don’t seem real.

  • $18 million entry fee to the MAC, $6 million being paid up front this year
  • $5 million fee to the NCAA for moving from FCS to FBS
  • No distribution funds from the MAC for 5 years
  • It’s only a 5-year deal for Sac State right now
  • Covering airfare costs for all traveling MAC teams to Sacramento

Clearly, the Hornets are betting big on themselves. The university looks to be on board with this move up in football as an attempt to transform a fairly large school (nearly 31,000 students) in the 20th largest media market in the United States. Will they shoot for another higher conference by 2030? Who knows, maybe they’ll surpass Stanford in the northern California region. Fingers crossed!

#2 A 24-Team “Compromise”

If the Big Ten gets its way, we are slowly moving toward an eventual 24-team playoff. The league has been distributing plans for a larger playoff field several years down the road. As it stands, the league looks like it’s trying to find a compromise where there’s expansion to 16 teams but then a further expansion to 24 teams. The rumored proposed idea:

  • 16-team field for 2027 and 2028
  • 24-team field for 2029 through the end of the TV contract in 2031
  • Elimination of conference championship games
  • 23 “best” teams with 1 G6 spot minimum and no automatic qualifiers
  • The top 8 teams receive byes
  • First and second round games on campuses
  • First round begins in the second weekend of December avoiding NFL games
  • Quarterfinals on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with semifinals the following weekend
  • No regular season rematches allowed in the first round

Man, I have to say there’s a lot to like about this proposal. Damn it, they did a really good job putting this together in a way that could be palatable for the whole country.

But…

For years I was leading the charge that a playoff could enhance the regular season and a 24-team officially kills the regular season. Many worried this would happen and they were right. I really didn’t think college football would embrace such a large field–and certainly not within ~15 years of adopting a playoff to begin with.

It’s good in the sense of Notre Dame having to stop worrying about scheduling for the future. So many problems with independent Notre Dame go away. It’s just the regular season would become so incredibly low stakes in a way that’s far worse than the NFL in comparison.

#3 NIU Reorganizing 

The Huskies of Northern Illinois decided this off-season to move from the MAC to the Mountain West for reasons. It’s a bold decision, but one that barely stays in the news for long in these crazy times we live in now. They’ll now do so without their head coach.

Thomas Hammock, you remember him for beating Notre Dame and telling Marcus Freeman to keep his head up, etc., is off to the NFL. He’s going to coach running backs for the Seattle Seahawks and before taking the NIU job had been the RB coach with the Ravens for 5 seasons.

The Huskies will turn to defensive coordinator Rob Harley as their interim head coach.

Hammock had just signed an extension last year ahead of 2025 and was reportedly making $700,000 with NIU. Reports from the NFL state he’ll be the highest paid running backs coach in the league which I imagine will move him over $1 million per season.

Uniform of the Week

Maybe more teams are going to be willing to move up to FBS because teams like Delaware showed signs of life in their first season in the Conference USA in 2025? Sacramento State got ideas! The Blue Hens stepped up and finished 7-6 in their debut season, including beating UConn and later Louisiana in their bowl game. Many know the story of Delaware adopting the blue/maize winged helmets in 1951 after a former Michigan player became their coach. I was looking this week and the Blue Hens had been using that helmet in every single game (to my knowledge) until this past season when they debuted a different look in 2 separate games.

Looks like the Michigan prison team.

They had worn black uniforms before, but never a black helmet like this. Delaware called this their “Midnight” uniforms and predictably many of their fans didn’t like it. “Our colors are blue and gold!” they screamed. Well, they look a lot less like Michigan which is a win in my book. Less of a win is number 0 above with the black leg sleeves over white tights. Straight to jail.

Media

The F1TV app moved to Apple TV in the United States which means I finally got the chance to watch F1: The Movie recently. Hoo boy, buckle up for my review.

The cinematography and the way they incorporated APX GP into the G1 grid was really well done. Oscar nominations for best visual effects, best sound, and best film editing make sense. But, this movie getting a best picture (!!!!!!!) nomination is an abomination of the highest order.

The plot line of a 60+ year old returning to F1 after a 35+ year absence who then goes on to explain how to fix everything about the team is annoying. Pitt rocks up to a test at Silverstone, does one warm up lap, spins and ruins his tires, crashes the car at the end of his hot lap, but meets his self-imposed target of being within 1-second of his soon-to-be new teammate who is the slowest driver on the grid. Insanity.

Brad Pitt spends literally the entire rest of the movie just crashing the whole time. Crashing and miraculously holding up leaders illegally to give his teammate an advantage. This would never work in real life and he’d be banned. The cool racing scenes are ruined with F1 commentators voicing over the ridiculous “strategy” being employed. At no point do we see if Pitt is a good driver, and then he wins at the end due to his teammate using the magic pixy dust of crashing. The cars look cool but there’s no real racing! Why did they go through all the trouble of making immersive APX racing on track only to waste real racing opportunities?

There’s no qualifying shown in the movie. The APX car is supposed to go from s-box to capable of winning races and yet they start at the back of the grid all the time (probably because that was easiest to film).

There’s a dramatic scene of Pitt’s teammate crashing after trying to overtake at Monza’s last turn where no one ever overtakes despite Pitt telling him to overtake at turn 1, the most common overtaking spot on the F1 calendar. Pitt gets blamed? Then his teammate “realizes” later to overtake into turn 1 in the simulator. It’s like watching a basketball movie where the side character takes a full court shot with 10 seconds left only to later realize it’s better to move up to the three point line instead.

The acting was god awful. Some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a modern movie. Everyone sounds like robots, it was like watching little kids in grown up bodies acting out a sports movie, especially everyone on the pit wall reacting to the stupid racing scenes. They made a woman head of aero development, only to be told how to change the car by Pitt and then sleep with him, too. Pure garbage.

Tunes

Kevin Parker’s solo project Tame Impala rose to fame back in 2015 with his album Currents and followed that up after a bit of a wait with The Slow Rush in 2020. He’s been open about his quest for different types of music. Is he electronic inspired? Rave scene? Psychedelic? Pop rock? Something else? Back in October, he released a new album Deadbeat and has since released several singles over the winter.

One of the singles “Dracula” is gaining a lot of traction this year. I don’t know what’s going on in the music video but everyone looks to be having fun. I don’t think I love Tame Impala, or at least not as much as I used to enjoy his music back in the day when it was definitely a whole vibe. Something about “Dracula” feels like pulling me back in to his world again, though.

One More Thing

The Carolina Panthers signed long snapper J.J. Jansen again which will extend his current lead of 277 games played in franchise history. If he plays all of the 2026 season, Jansen should move up to 16th all-time in the NFL games played list.

Some random bits about how long ago Jansen started his football journey…

Jansen was a part of Notre Dame’s infamous 2004 recruiting class. Maybe the worst ever in school history. Maurice Crum, Terrail Lambert, and Darius Walker were the only quality players from that cycle. Plus, Jansen himself!

I’m barely older than Jansen and was heading into my senior year of college when he arrived at Notre Dame. Dreams of having a football blog were still a few years away.

Facebook was launched in 2004 and had yet to ruin the world.

He was signed by Green Bay in 2008 as an undrafted free agent, didn’t play, and was traded ahead of 2009 to Carolina. 2008 was Aaron Rodgers’ first season of starting with the Packers.