The first Five Wide Fullbacks of the off-season is upon us. In today’s article we are discussing the National Championship Game locations, next year’s top quarterbacks, new uniforms for Notre Dame, NIL woes, and consecutive games against ranked opponents.

1) Straight to the point, what is going on with Notre Dame’s NIL efforts and how big of a problem is it that Chad Bowden is leaving for USC?

I have 2 macro-level thoughts when it comes to these issues.

First, with NIL I’m not sure how game changing it really is for Notre Dame when those “negatives” of academics, culture, and weather still exist. I don’t think this is something money can mostly solve. There’s talk about it leveling the playing field in recruiting terms and I’m not so sure.

Being able to boost the money to current rostered players, especially the stars, and throwing some serious money to at least one or two high quality transfers are the positives of the NIL era. Notre Dame is on board with this aspect of things but basically every program is doing the same thing. Even in a world where Notre Dame was able to outbid everyone at all times that still doesn’t factor in cultural fits and/or players actually wanting to make the leap to South Bend in their career.

We know Notre Dame isn’t going to be reckless and drop egregious bags for high school recruits in the name of NIL. I was thinking about the reporting about the Irish NIL roster at $8 million vs. $15 million and if I were constructing the payments to the roster how would that look?

Is Jeremiyah Love making $4 million or $2 million? Who else on the team could command anything close to this type of money? I think a $15 million roster makes sense if transfers like Malachi Fields and DeVonta Smith are eating up hundreds of thousands in the budget with while rising stars like Greathouse, KVA, and Bryce Young are tripling their NIL figures.

I have a hard time believing players are getting $300,000 more pretty easily for showing promise on the field while the average player not seeing the field is being paid $100,000 as well. That’s how you get to a $15 million roster and most of this set up doesn’t seem real to me.

Secondly, we’re going to need further clarification on what this general manager role is doing for Notre Dame. I think we’re less than 10 years away from coordinators making under $1 million and now a non-coaching GM position is being paid this today? That seems ridiculous.

Are we talking about responsibilities of dabbling a little bit in roster numbers, payroll decisions, planning recruiting visits, and largely working on social media to make connections with recruits and potential transfers? I’m not saying that’s not important but this work isn’t $1 million important.

Many are concerned with the quick changing nature of college football in this new era and the need for a GM role. I’d agree, but if that job isn’t directly scouting or coaching then someone needs to explain why that job is so important that it would command such a large salary.

2) Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas has been announced as the National Championship Game venue to conclude the 2026 season with Hard Rock Stadium in Miami hosting this upcoming season’s title game. Will we ever see an outdoor cold-weather title game?

All 16 of the BCS National Championships were in warm weather states and we’ve seen all but 1 of the recent National Championship Games (2022 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis) in similar warm locations. The NFL has been a little more adventurous, though. The 2014 Super Bowl in New York was controversial–and they lucked out with a snowstorm dropping 8 inches just afterward.

Part of me loves the idea of the title game being played on campus somewhere up north. There’s reporting that the Superdome will host the 2028 National Championship Game–that would be their 6th hosting since 2000, how boring!

Although I’m not sure how the bidding process for on campus games would work with all the money involved for the school’s and their local communities. Plus, there would be the usual complaints about lack of space for a National Championship-level circus coming to town.

Autzen Stadium, Camp Randall Stadium, Folsom Field, Michie Stadium, and Notre Dame Stadium would be my picks for the ultimate fun college experience for the sport in colder locations.

3) If Notre Dame is able to open the 2025 season with victories over Miami and Texas A&M, where will this run stretching back to the end of 2024 rank in the history of Irish football?

I’m going to assume Miami will begin 2025 ranked by the pre-season AP Poll (the Sporting News Composite rankings have the Hurricanes 11th nationally). The Aggies will open up against UTSA and Utah State, both at home, and will probably be a top 20-ish ranked team when they visit South Bend in week 3.

By most accounts, Notre Dame will have a bye in week 2 after the trip to Miami Gardens.

This means if the Irish start 2-0 in 2025 they will have faced 6 straight ranked teams going back to 2024 and gone 5-1 over that period. It would be 8 straight ranked opponents if not for USC (of all teams historically!) ruining the streak.

There have been quite a few instances where Notre Dame faced 3 straight ranked opponents. Much to my surprise, we have 10 other streaks in Irish history with at least 4 or more straight ranked teams faced.

The 4 Straight Club

1943 – A dominant 4 wins in a row as the season was concluding, although they finished it off with a loss to Great Lakes, but still were named National Champions. Those were the days!

1957 – A brutal 1-3 stretch in the middle of this season that featured the classic 7-0 win at Oklahoma stopping the Sooners’ record winning streak.

1985-86 – The end of the Faust era saw the team lose the last 3 in ’85 then drop a brutal one to Michigan by 1 point in Lou Holtz’ first season.

1990 – The last 4 in this season were all against ranked teams, with the Irish going 2-2. How did this team end up losing 3 games!??

1992 – Another season that ended with 4 straight ranked opponents, this time Notre Dame swept them all.

2000 – 3 straight home games against ranked teams (including no. 1 Nebraska) followed by a trip to ranked Michigan State. Notre Dame would go 2-2 across these games.

2023 – Marcus Freeman was on College GameDay in back-t0-back weeks (vs. Ohio State, at Duke) in the middle of this season against 4 straight ranked teams as they’d go a disappointing 2-2 overall.

The 5 Straight Club

1986-87 – Holtz went 1-2 against ranked teams to finish his first season then opened year 2 with wins against ranked Michigan and Michigan State teams.

1989-90 – A tough loss at Miami prevented a clean 5-0 sweep against ranked opponents to complete 1989 and begin 1990.

The 6 Straight Club

1978-79 – Six straight has happened once before, ending ’78 with a 2-1 record and then opening the next season with the same 2-1 record against ranked opponents.

4) What will be the next new look for Notre Dame football uniforms in 2025?

The latest scuttlebutt is that Notre Dame will play Stanford at the Rose Bowl this year as the Shamrock Series game celebrating 100 years since the January 1, 1925 appearance in the bowl game against the Cardinal. I’m not sure there’s a throwback uniform from that era worth looking to unless you like plain blue jerseys and nothing else.

I think we have a few directions that make sense for 2025:

• Gold pants with the green jerseys. How has Freeman still not done this yet?
• Shiny gold accents–similar to last year’s Shamrock Series game–except on green jerseys.
• White jerseys with green numbers and accents. Although, I think this is a bigger deal to fans and less so for the school.
• Blue pants, especially outside of the Shamrock Series. The team wore white pants 3 times last year and using blue pants outside of any special uniforms seems like the next logical step.

5) On3 has released their top 20 quarterbacks heading into the 2025 season. How much is there to nitpick with this list?

No Irish quarterbacks? CJ Carr disrespect! Peanut Butter Angeli disrespect!

Leavitt as no. 1 is interesting. These lists have to have some shock value, right? He did really well late in the regular season and you’d have to be buying his ceiling for the future–something I’m not convinced at all about. Plus, he’s coming off a pretty average or worse performance in the playoffs. If that’s where the bar is set then…

I will go ahead and sell Allar being no. 2 on this list. Aren’t Penn State losing a lot of weapons from this past season? I like his offensive coordinator but I think 2025 will be the ultimate nitpick season for Allar.

Lagway is fun to watch but he turned the ball over a lot in under a full season last year.

I’d imagine Arch Manning will do pretty well in that Texas offense so an unproven starter placed that high is fine by me.

In reality, I’d drop Carson Beck lower after a disappointing 2024 and he’s coming off a pretty serious elbow injury. I’m all over any bets that he won’t even finish the year as Miami’s starting quarterback.

I’d put Klubnik, Nico, and Sayin higher relative to their rankings. Klubnik’s numbers last year were really outstanding and given his experience I’d argue he should be no worse than top 3 from this list. In his second year, I bet Nico takes a big step forward in Tennessee’s offense. And when was the last time an Ohio State quarterback didn’t flourish in Ryan day’s offense? Yeah, their standards are high but there’s no way Sayin won’t be well inside the top 15, unless they are factoring in someone else winning the job in Columbus.