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

3 News Stories

#1 Sun Belt, For Real This Time

Louisiana Tech’s 20-game football schedule for 2026 is no more. The school will officially be joining the Sun Belt effective July 1st and leaving the Conference USA after membership with the league since 2013. The two leagues were beginning to lock horns in the courts but as expected they were able to come to a resolution that worked for both parties. Sonny Crombie will be entering his 5th season with the program in a slow rebuilding process leading to a solid 8-5 campaign last fall. The Bulldogs’ updated schedule yet to be finalized includes:

Sept. 5: Northwestern State
Sept. 12: at LSU
Sept. 19: at Baylor
Oct. 3: Army
Oct. 10: Louisiana
Oct. 17: at ULM
Oct. 24: Old Dominion
Oct. 31: at South Alabama
Nov. 7: at Troy
Nov. 19, 20 or 21: Arkansas State
Nov. 28: at Georgia Southern

#2 Extensions at Miami

Following up their success from 2025, the Miami Hurricanes have handed out fresh new contract extensions to offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson and defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman. The latter Hetherman is particularly interesting as a future head coach in the college game. At 44 years old, he’s been on a rocket ship rise to fame after one year at Minnesota and a massive turn around at Miami for 2025.

Of course, this extension won’t stop him for leaving for a bigger job down the line.

#3 Iowa Vacates

In another edition of confessing never helps your case against the NCAA, Iowa was recently forced to vacate 4 wins from the 2023 season. The cause? Contacting Michigan quarterback Cade McNamara before the transfer portal officially opened, and thus, tampering.

The Hawkeyes wide receiver coach made 13 phone calls (that does seem a bit excessive!) and two text messages to the McNamara’s before the quarterback ultimately entered the portal and transferred to Iowa. The assistant and head coach Kirk Ferentz self-imposed a one-game suspension to open the 2024 season (a 40-0 win over Illinois State) but it wasn’t enough for the seriousness of the NCAA.

McNamara went 4-1 as starter with Iowa before a knee injury ended his season. Goodbye to those victories.

Uniform of the Week

Both the Washington Commanders and Los Angeles Rams announced slightly updated and tweaked uniforms this week. In short, they’ve each returned to more traditional looks than their previous uniform set. The next team to unveil something new this week were the Baltimore Ravens who made slightly more substantial changes.

On their standard uniforms the gold drop shadow on the numbers has been removed. Once you notice this it looks like a much larger change. It feels like the Ravens lost a little bit of their character. They’ve also added iridescent accents on the numbers and elsewhere that’s difficult to see in photographs.

They’ve also added talon wing designs to the collar and as pant stripes. Not huge or overbearing changes at first, but probably something that will eventually divide opinion over time.

The all-purple color rush uniform looks very similar to last year, except the helmet logo is now the main Ravens offering instead of their face-forward secondary logo. Also, the shoulder secondary logo is now all gold.

That secondary logo is used on a brand new all-black helmet with red Ravens eyes. That’s pretty tough. Their black pants (previous plain) now feature the same talon stripes (in purple/white) as the other pants in their closet.

Baltimore is across the chest on the white jersey for the first time, a change only Ravens’ fans will notice.

Overall, an interesting modern tweak to their uniforms. It seems pretty clear Baltimore is leaning into the black and purple and moving away from gold accents in their standard uniform. I don’t love it, especially since gold is used heavily in their main logo! Do talon marks and some shiny accents do enough to add some more character? Maybe!

Media

I had a discussion at home and then at work after watching the Masters this past weekend about how much money is appropriate to set aside for a trip inside the Augusta National merchandise stores. The conservative estimate seems to be allotting $500.00 per individual, if you’re into golf of course. For anyone who has visited, let us know if you bought a bunch of merchandise and how much you spent.

From my research, the prices are reasonable so you shouldn’t be paying $220.00 for a polo shirt. It’s estimated that Augusta moves about $10-$15 million per day in sales during the entire tournament week. With the amount of fans on the course it works out to about $1,000.00 per person. I haven’t had the chance to go but if I do I’d probably be closer to a grand than $500.00 if I’m honest.

Tunes

This week I’m featuring new singer Sienna Spiro. She broke on to the scene recently with a popular song “Die On This Hill” released back in October. I noticed on the single cover she’s wearing a long coat that has some throwback 1960’s vibes. With her name and voice my best guess was that she grew up in New Jersey. Incorrect, she’s from London. Curiously, she’s one of those women who can seem to shape-shift, she doesn’t look the same in any picture. It’s crazy. Her latest single is “The Visitor” embedded below.

I think she is comparable to Adele in the type of music she is making. With this latest single, again you’ll notice some throwback vibes to her haircut. Also, I really love the old-school Capitol Records logo on the front. This all just screams 1960’s to me and I’m here for it. Spiro released an EP Sink Now, Swim Later early in 2025 and is supposed to be releasing her debut full-length album at some point this year. She’s already on plenty of early Grammy lists.

One More Thing

So, I bought a new bottle of face wash about a month ago and it sat on my shower caddy on the wall next to the older bottle for quite some time. Literally, I’m starting at the two bottles for dozens of showers. As I’m want to do, I noticed the packaging was redesigned and I kept debating whether the visual changes were better or not. I kind of like the changes that Nivea made. Finally, the old bottle ran out. The next shower I opened up the new bottle and damn near emptied half the tube in my hand.

I went days pissed off about the situation. The previous bottle had this thicker liquid in this cool color blue and it bubbled up real nicely adding some water with just a small dot of product–hence the bottle lasting months, even being used twice per day. The new bottle was watered down, super thin, didn’t bubble up nicely, and had a super strong cologne scent to it. I was devastated over shower products.

That is, until I realized I bought the wrong bottle. If you’ve noticed by now, I bought the face wash instead of sticking with the face scrub. So much for paying attention to detail after staring at the bottles. Whoops. Although, to be fair since grabbing the face scrub again that too has been updated and changed a little bit, plus I think a while back my Walmart online order got picked wrong by an employee.