Welcome to another edition of 5WF.

1. Notre Dame is currently going through perhaps the most boring spring football of our lifetime. Is there something the school can do to add some buzz to this time of year? Should they be concerned with making improvements?

This is a tough call. We football fans are enormously selfish creatures. We want the most access humanly possible at the lowest price imaginable.

Yet, there’s a huge market that follows Notre Dame Football and it does feel like this section of the world are being hung out to dry a lot. For example, the FIM (Fighting Irish Media) team got off to a rip roaring start several years ago. Today, the whole enterprise feels scaled back and weakened.

Then again, maybe there aren’t as many people as we think who follow everything around the program religiously. Have you ever looked at the number of viewers on the Watch ND videos? Some of those great 7-minute practice highlights, maybe 900 views. One of the more controversial press conferences from Brian Kelly, maybe 1,600 views.

Two of the biggest things I’ve learned while running a site for the past decade is that Notre Dame fans are enormously segmented within their communities and a hilariously small amount of people actually consume a lot of the media out there. There are members of BGI, for example, who spend 99% of their time on their message boards and nowhere else. When something pops up in the news—like Kelly’s recent comments about Kizer—virtually no one seeks out the full interview, or even an article on the comments, or even the tweet that promoted the story. They’ll just wait until it pops up on the message board and weigh in without much context.

I got a little off track there but I’m not sure there’s a whole lot for Notre Dame to do. They could try some fan-friendly tactics for spring practices but I’m not sure there’s much upside. And those tactics would probably be panned for being cheesy anyway, because that’s how a lot of Irish fans roll.

The biggest issues this spring are the two long breaks in the middle of practices and the fact that there isn’t a quarterback competition or controversy. We’re never comfortable or happy during the spring without a lot of quarterback talk.

2. From the little that has been gleaned who are the 3 players having the best spring? On the flip side, whose stock has gone down the most this spring?

On the positive side I’ll pick Tony Jones, Nick Coleman, and Miles Boykin. We recently covered Jones in Reviewing the Redshirts and all indications are that he’s already moved himself into the circle of trust for offensive playmakers.

I was ready to write Coleman off as an August camp fluff piece because he was so bad in limited reps early last year. But, if he’s able to work himself into a competent starting safety that’s maybe the best off-season of anyone during the Kelly era.

You could probably go a few other avenues for the final stock up pick but Boykin seems to have moved from a guy on the periphery to someone who could be in the rotation. I’m not sure that’s huge news for anyone. Still, it’s nice to see him improving and adding depth to a receiving corps that needed it this spring.

For stock down I’ll select Andrew Trumbetti, Josh Barajas, and Jamir Jones.

We could sense this coming for Trumbetti, right? Not many could see him continuing to be the weak-side end starter and now he’s flipped over to the strong-side where he’s unlikely to flourish.

Barajas is dangerously close to falling behind permanently. The latest headline he made this spring was for missing practices due to an illness. Stretching back to August camp he’s been effectively jumped by Jonathan Jones and that’s been the case for 20+ practices now.

Nothing with Jamir Jones feels too negative it’s just we’re not hearing much about him and he’s already burned a year of eligibility. Not that he can’t be a good player down the road but this does have some “younger brother of a star recruit we’re not too bothered about how he’s developing” vibes to it at the moment.

3. A video from the construction company working on the Crossroads Project recently made the rounds on the internet explaining and showing in more detail some of the changes to the stadium concourse. Did the school undersell some of these “football only” changes, and if so why?

I think there were a couple reasons primarily that the project is so sweeping and immense that any presentation was bound to be either far too minimalistic or risk being bogged down in too many details.

However, it was pretty clear that the school was trying to sell the bulk of the project as an academic/student life endeavor and downplayed the improvements to the football side of things. For example, the video board wasn’t even part of the initial announcement and neither was a new visitor’s tunnel. The precise addition and placement of new premium seating was pretty vague and the improvements in the concourse area all but buried to a small paragraph in multiple pages of explanations.

It does seem to feed into the notion that the school is perpetually embarrassed to put the football team in the spotlight. Although, the more I think about it perhaps they are setting the bar purposely low in order to surprise fans when they show up this fall?

I bet if you asked the average Notre Dame they’d tell you a video board, premium seats, and perhaps a new press box are the extent of the improvements. Yet, when you think about it and read about everything they are doing the school has essentially renovated the entire stadium throughout the Crossroads project.

4. You’ve been fairly outspoken in favor of the Crossroads Project. What do you think are going to be the loudest criticisms once the doors are open so to speak later this year?

There will be a few that I believe will be pretty constant throughout the football season. Last I checked not every part of the project is set to open in late August right before the season kicks off. So, I’m sure we’ll see some backlash from students who aren’t able to enjoy their new perks just yet.

That complaint from the students should fade away as too will the price tag of the project, or at least the effect of the money complaints. For the past few years it’s been an easy target to call the project a boondoggle…before thousands of people get to enjoy the benefits of the project.

It’s pretty obvious the biggest complaints are going to come down to personal taste. The music is too loud, the food choices in the student center are poor, the buildings are ugly, there’s too much of this and too little of that, etc. This type of criticism will happen with any project.

5. What is the worse driving behavior that needs to be eradicated as soon as possible?

The easy answer is cell phone use and texting while driving which continues to injure and kill Americans at an alarming rate. However, I think we’re a few years away from breakthroughs that are going to make using technology in the car enormously safer.

For me, bad left lane drivers are an epidemic that needs to be addressed. I drive about 30 miles on a 2-lane highway every day and here are the 6 worst type of left lane drivers:

The Speed Sheriff

These despicable types are sticklers for rules and hold one rule above all else: speeding. I’ve done real research on this and these people actually exist and will tell you so. They will park themselves in the left lane right at the speed limit so no one else can speed.

They do it in the name of safety falsely believing that speeding is the most dangerous aspect to highway driving, and even worse, actively breaking other rules to enforce their one obsessive speeding rule.

The Oblivious Driver

Perhaps the most popular, and it’s not just old people either. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve passed college aged people of all colors drifting along aimlessly in the left lane.

This also seems to afflict a lot of business people, particularly in work vans with minimal to no windows in the back. They are typically only on the highway for a brief amount of time, clearly in no hurry to get to their destination, and usually chatting with a co-worker in the passenger seat or even on the phone.

The World’s Slowest Semi Driver

I will say that the vast majority of semi drivers know what they’re doing because their livelihood and lives depend upon driving properly. However, there seems to be some sort of magical force that prevents some 18-wheelers from passing quickly by another semi.

My soul dies a little bit every time I see a semi switch lanes to pass another semi going 66.7 miles per hour. Of course, the passing semi will go 66.9 miles per hour to do so because he’s towing the world’s heaviest load.

The Feel Safe Driver

This is the type I’ve encountered in person more than any other when discussing left lane driving. In my neck of the woods the highway medians are almost always wide, relatively flat, and for the most part without many trees. The right side shoulder is often far less wide, a steep drop-off if not a ditch, and there are more trees, fences, and houses in the way.

In the event that someone slides off the highway they simply feel safer being on the left side. They also don’t like all these vehicles blowing by them while sitting in the (dangerous!) right lane.

The Can’t Be Bothered Driver

This is the only group I sympathize with, although there are some who take this to worse extremes than others. A common set up on the highway is when you have vehicles spaced out every few car lengths in the right lane and then a caravan of cars packed together in the left lane.

Now, you’re at the mercy of the vehicle at the head of the caravan. You may be going 72 mph in a 65 mph area and passing the cars in the right lane. For a lot of people (especially those leading the caravan) this is perfectly fine. But, very few people will move over into the right lane because they’re afraid of either getting stuck in that slower lane, or not being able to pass in the left lane quickly, or being forced to move to the back of the caravan if they do switch back to the left lane.

The Own the Road Driver

This group is overwhelmingly populated by pick-up truck drivers. You know who you are. You know what you’re doing. There’s nothing in your bed, you’re going 62 mph in a 65 zone, and you’re not moving over for anybody.

I blame the NASCAR and rural mentality that views driving in the right lane as a weakness and a lack of manliness. Utter stupidity.