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

3 News Stories

#1 Sorsby Injunction 

Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby is doing his best to try and play in the 2026 college football season. This past Monday, the Red Raiders transfer acquisition filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in a Lubbock district court requesting a judge (who might as well be Red Raider in his free time) grant an injunction so Sorsby can be eligible this fall.

From Yahoo:

The former Cincinnati QB has been seeking treatment for a gambling addiction. Per NCAA rules, Sorsby could be banned from the upcoming season — his final year of eligibility — for betting on sports. Sorsby placed a bet on Indiana when he was a redshirt freshman for the Hoosiers in 2022. According to the NCAA rulebook, an athlete can lose eligibility permanently when placing a bet on his or her own team. In an affidavit attached to the lawsuit, Sorsby detailed how and why he placed bets while he was at Indiana, saying that he rationalized them to himself by saying he wanted to feel connected to the team while he was redshirting.

I’m not sure how much sympathy Sorsby will earn for having a gambling addiction. Maybe Connor Stallions should’ve claimed he had a sign stealing addiction so everything is okay? As usual, a high profile attorney and plenty of money might be all that matters as Sorsby seeks a way to play one more year of college football.

#2 Stanford Extension

Notre Dame and Stanford will meet for the 40th time this fall, making it the Fighting Irish’s 8th most played opponent in history. That number will continue to grow by a little after the school’s announced a two game extension for 2027 and 2028. Notre Dame will finish the 2027 season in Palo Alto and the Cardinal will come to South Bend during their customary mid-October slot in 2028.

Notre Dame also announced an October 2nd date in 2027 against Kent State in a first-ever meeting against the Flashes. The press release discusses Kent State as the alma mater of Lou Holtz and Marcus Freeman’s first assistant stop in his career, so expect something pre-game between the schools I’m sure.

That will leave Buffalo, Eastern Michigan, and Ohio (plus incoming new member Sacramento State) as the only MAC teams not to have faced Notre Dame yet. Also, Akron was only faced once way back in 1910.

#3 Ed O Returns

Lane Kiffin is rarely out of the news these days and made waves once again by bringing Ed Orgeron back to LSU recently. The former LSU head coach–who was fired and replaced by Brian Kelly remember–comes back to Baton Rouge as Kiffin’s special assistant to recruiting and defense. He’ll be making $100,000 in this role, which it must be said, could be a steal for the Tigers?

Orgeron had not been coaching over the last 3 seasons since being let go by LSU. For certain, he’d been enjoying the fruits of his $17+ million buyout from the school.

Uniform of the Week

Has anyone been checking out the UFL? They’re in their 3rd season of this current iteration of the league and while I can’t say I’ve watched any snaps I did see a quarterback get absolutely blasted on a scramble in a highlight package recently. It was one of those situations where the quarterback was trying to find time outside the pocket and didn’t see a defender coming from behind him, and then turned right into the tackler. It was a near decapitation. When the QB popped up I thought, this team has some nifty uniforms!

This is the Louisville Kings, a new expansion team in the UFL for 2026. They join the Columbus Aviators and Orlando Storm as new expansion franchises in the league this year. Feel the excitement! Anyway, I kind of love these gray uniforms for the Kings. They’re kind of like the Oregon Ducks a bit. I thought their helmet was black but my research shows it’s actually dark green. The thing that caught my eye during highlights was the lime green really popping on the field. Almost the exact opposite of the far too dark Houston Gamblers uniforms in the background.

Did you know Kevin Sumlin is already back with Houston in his second stint with the franchise?

Media

A while back, 31-year old Kenyan long distance runner Sabastian Sawe (Flo Sports, one of the worst media companies in world athletics misspelled his first name in the YouTube video below) became the first person to break the 2-hour mark in an officially sanctioned marathon, with a time of 1:59:30 in London. Poor Ethiopian runner Yomif Kejelcha came in 11 seconds later to be the second person to break the 2-hour mark, only to settle for silver. Do we suspect doping? The crazy cushioned carbon-soled sneakers? Interestingly, Sawe has an insane pronation when he runs with his ankles collapsing like crazy, but it works and is fast!

World record marathon speed is mind-boggling. Who among our readers can run a single mile under 5 minutes? I haven’t ran in a while and I don’t think I could get one mile that quick. Sawe ran 4:33 miles on average across an entire marathon. In mile 24, he ran a 4:12 mile, the fastest ever mile ran in an official marathon. His second half split was also a stupefying 59:01 time. Another nugget of information I saw is that Sawe is so springy that each of his strides covers the length of a refrigerator, or about 6 feet. Yet, I still suspect doping–he broke his previous personal record by 2 minutes and 25 seconds, or around 5.5 seconds faster per mile. The temperature got up into the high 70’s too, not much of this record makes sense.

Tunes

Sometimes I hear something and I really ponder the process of how a song got made, or at least how a certain part of a song got made. Today, I’m talking about Swedish pop star Zara Larsson and her song “Midnight Sun” off her album of the same name that came out back in September. Last week, I mentioned Noah Kahan’s extremely long album but this offering from Larsson is just 31:58 in length across ten songs. Back to the song, though. This is a fine pop tune, with some pretty catchy elements.

It sounds like a song that should be on a FIFA soundtrack, that’s a compliment. I’m a sucker for a really well-placed pre-chorus and this song has a great one. If I were writing songs I’d be doing pre-choruses all the time. But at the end of the chorus proper we get the prolonged singing of “sun” that cracks me up. “Another ending midnight suUUUUuuuUUUUuuUUuuUuuuuuuuUUUUUuuuuUUn.” The song was written by 3 others in addition to Larsson. Whose idea was this?

One More Thing

Back to Texas Tech, they have obviously become the poster child for the college football program in the NIL era that has jumped up in exposure and is quickly gathering haters from all corners of the country. The folks down in Austin certainly seem to be upset at the goings on in Lubbock. Joey McGuire’s been running his mouth about the schedules of other teams, including Notre Dame, so I appreciate this grenade lobbed by Steve Sarkisian on Thursday.

This got me thinking, who will be the next team to move up in the college football world using deep pocketed boosters launching the program into a new stratosphere, particularly a team that hasn’t traditionally been a power?

There has to be an opportunity for someone in the ACC to make a move. I feel like it could be Duke, maybe? They’ve tasted just enough success in recent years to feel like football is a thing to invest in right now and there should be plenty of wealthy donors circling the program.