Notre Dame Recruiting 2026 Early Signing Day: The Launch Pad

In the past, Notre Dame had lightly knocked on the door to a breakthrough recruiting class. Maybe a couple taps one year, or a solid early tap or two that never came good. As the 2025 regular season has concluded, the Fighting Irish have finally put together something within shouting distance of the best recruiting [...]

By |2025-12-02T11:01:21-05:00December 2nd, 2025|Recruiting|29 Comments

The 18 Stripes Top 20 Poll: Okay, They’re No. 1 Now

Just a few more games remain until Notre Dame finds out if their 10-2 record with 10 straight wins is enough to make the playoffs. The way things have shaken out lately it's going to make Irish fans sweat until the very end. That is, unless we receive some blessings during conference championship weekend. Here's [...]

By |2025-12-01T07:39:41-05:00December 1st, 2025|Football|2 Comments

Nothing to Do but Wait: Stanford Instant Reaction

Today was far less about Notre Dame/Stanford than a bunch of other games with playoff implications for Notre Dame. Almost every single one went badly except for the Irish's game, an easy win that sent ND into whatever postseason it ends up in on a 10-game win streak, each of which with a 99.4% or [...]

By |2025-11-30T02:30:52-05:00November 30th, 2025|18S Reads, Football|3 Comments

2025 College Football Week 14 Picks: Goodbye to the Regular Season

It leaves a bad taste in your mouth when it's the regular season finale and a weekend full of great rivalry games only for Notre Dame to face a 4-7 Stanford team with an interim head coach. That this game kicks off at 10:30 PM ET is even more insane. As you'll see below, the [...]

By |2025-11-25T20:03:03-05:00November 26th, 2025|Football|1 Comment

Mike’s Notre Dame CFP Rooting Interests: Rivalry Week

At long last, the best college football week of the regular season has arrived!  If I had told you on September 14th that Notre Dame would be on the right side of the CFP bubble at this juncture, you would surely take that series of events.  But nothing is locked up yet!  The Irish need [...]

By |2025-11-25T21:12:38-05:00November 25th, 2025|Football|4 Comments

The 18 Stripes Top 20 Poll: Ducks Move into Position

An expected quiet weekend unfolded exactly like that, very little chaos happened over the past few days which isn't great news for Notre Dame but also not the end of the world, either. So this won't be a very interesting set of rankings, and I don't expect the College Football Playoff committee to have a [...]

By |2025-11-24T08:00:46-05:00November 24th, 2025|Football|4 Comments

One More Guaranteed: Syracuse Instant Reaction

I thought about writing up a draft of this post earlier this morning, assuming it would just be a matter of filling in some details. But then my kid wanted to watch the Knuckles series, so that went by the wayside. The Knuckles series had far more drama than Saturday's game, as Notre Dame utterly [...]

By |2025-11-22T19:36:26-05:00November 22nd, 2025|18S Reads, Football|2 Comments

Syracuse Game Preview: The Peanut Butter-Free Scouting Report

A Syracuse team coming off a 10-win season with Notre Dame transfer Steve Angeli at quarterback returning to South Bend on Senior Day looked like it was going to be a spicy matchup back in August. Fast forward a few months and things have changed to the point where Notre Dame is simply trying to [...]

By |2025-11-20T14:52:48-05:00November 21st, 2025|Football|11 Comments

Mike’s Notre Dame CFP Rooting Interests: Week 13

Hello 18S!  Quick intro: I’m Mike, and as my handle suggests, I graduated from Notre Dame undergrad in 2011, and stayed on for three more years at Notre Dame Law School.  As a tax attorney, I enjoy scenario planning and risk-adjusted thinking, and that’s what brings us to the topic of this article: what’s best [...]

By |2025-11-19T09:30:58-05:00November 19th, 2025|18S Reads, Football|4 Comments

2025 College Football Week 13 Picks: The Quiet Before the Storm

We have a couple certified bangers coming up but week 13 is largely the "play a FCS or super easy opponent before the rivalry regular season finale" portion of the season. Notre Dame is also on an active bye week, yes let's call it that, as massive favorites over a depressed Syracuse team. It's not [...]

By |2025-11-19T08:26:11-05:00November 19th, 2025|Football|2 Comments

The 18 Stripes Top 20 Poll: Alabama Falters at Home

Notre Dame took care of business this past weekend with a smackdown inside Acrisure Stadium (among the top 5 worst named stadiums in North American sports no doubt) against Pittsburgh. That was the most important part of week 12. Across the rest of the country, things didn't quite break in Notre Dame's favor. Even with [...]

By |2025-11-17T09:33:21-05:00November 17th, 2025|Football|9 Comments
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