The momentum from the run to the National Championship to conclude the 2024 season felt like it could continue for 2025 if Notre Dame football could get over a few early hurdles. Instead, the Irish paid dearly for those early stumbles and were blocked out of last year's playoffs. Now, the team picks itself up [...]
I posted this article in the third week of August last year but unlike 2025, we still have 20 days until Notre Dame kicks off the new season against Wisconsin inside Lambeau Field. That's also a Sunday night kickoff once again for the Irish, don't forget to plan your week 1 festivities accordingly. Anyway, we've [...]
I recently unleashed my pre-season Top 20 rankings for 2026 so you can imagine how today's playoff prediction is going to play out. There may be a fun surprise at the end, see below for more good vibes. #LeaveNoDoubt This is year 13 of college football using a playoff to determine a champion, and the [...]
Hey 18 Stripes readers it’s been a while! Hope everyone is doing well. Things are good up here in Canada, I am currently enjoying the 10 days of summer we get annually in the Great White North, so really can’t complain. As we all know, there is a lot of excitement heading into the 2026 [...]
Notre Dame opened up fall camp on Thursday, August 6th in South Bend with expectations plenty high and perhaps rising even further as the country learns more about this edition of the Fighting Irish. Although it's just shorts and helmets, this is always a fun time of year as we inch closer to actual football [...]
After much hemming and hawing through the media, Notre Dame and USC announced a 4-year agreement Monday to play their historic rivalry game starting in 2030. The series will start at SC in 2030 and will be played in week 1 of the first two seasons of the deal before being played at some undetermined [...]
Welcome back to the first top 20 ranking of the 2026 season. It's good to be back in this space and ready to lock in for another season of college football. As always, change continues to happen everywhere in this sport. The Pac-12 is back as a real league again (although not with power conference [...]
A while ago, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman attended a ground breaking ceremony with a hard hat on looking forward to a new football facility being built off Courtney Lane across from the new indoor practice field and sharing the same block as the Gug football and athletic building. If you've paid attention to [...]
Does the Notre Dame defense have fewer questions than the offense? We think so yes, many are expecting the Irish defense to contend for the best unit in the nation. The offense could enter that conversation (read our fall camp preview for that side of the ball HERE) but needs to develop a few more [...]
Going into fall camp last season, technically the team was bringing back more starters on offense overall (compared to 2026) and you could've made the case for decent stability. However, the program was coming off an insanely short off-season after making it all the way to the National Championship Game and would spend the first [...]
Last off-season was a quiet market for new head coaching candidates at the power program level with only 6 new jobs filled, and the focus largely spent on Bill Belichick's sucking media attention away from everyone else. Heading into 2026 we have 16(!) new head coaches at power programs, which doesn't include the resurrected Pac-12 [...]
Notre Dame football unveiled their 2026 Shamrock Series uniforms on Wednesday morning via a near 2-minute sharply produced video HERE heavily describing the ties between the Fighting Irish and Green Bay Packers NFL organization. It confirmed the leaks recently that the team will be wearing altered navy blue jerseys when the season opens up against [...]
Our last roster update came on March 30th in the early weeks of spring practice. Since then, the annual onslaught of late spring and early summer commits has happened, plus the NCAA rule book continues to evolve with a crucial new update to how rosters are managed beginning this season and definitely affecting recruiting in [...]
Ten years ago today we launched www.18stripes.com and I can't believe it's been that long. A decade, already? Some may know our background from the past. We had been plugging along at One Foot Down with SB Nation during the 2015 season when things turned sour. We'd been with Vox media for 6 years and [...]
You'll hear this a million times this year as Notre Dame opens up the season with very winnable games. In our last post covering the beginning of the second half of the season, things start to ramp up--especially with the level of opponent quarterbacks. The ending of the campaign could see some challenge at this [...]
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