Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Howard Cross (DT), Xavier Watts (S), and Jayden Harrison (KR) made the Phil Steele Preseason 1st-team All-American team. Mitchell Evans (TE) made the 2nd team.
Les Miles is suing LSU after vacating wins will keep him out of the College Football Hall of Fame, potentially.
Maryland and Under Armour signed a contract extension through 2036.
Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner signed a contract extension through 2025.
The Ole Miss-USC game for 2025 is cancelled.
Houston has fired athletic director Chris Pezman after 7 years with the school.
Uniform of the Week
The Minnesota Vikings recently dropped a new alternate uniform. This is a franchise that has been one of the more sneaky conservative NFL teams with uniforms over the years. Like others, they’ve introduced throwbacks and an all-purple Color Rush uniform–but their standard hasn’t changed very much over the years. That all changes in 2024 with the introduction of an uniform called “Winter Warrior.”
This will probably look fine from afar and it’s certainly a bold look for the Vikings. Once you look at it up close the details aren’t great. The silver trim with the purple looks pretty dumb. Why put the Vikings script in barely legible silver? The larger silver trim on the helmet, shoulder, and pants (the latter you can’t see well from this picture) looks really weird. Interesting try here but it needs some tweaks for the future.
Recruiting
USC lost a pair of recruits from Georgia as defensive lineman Justus Terry (0.9971) and edge rusher Isaiah Gibson (0.9792) left the Trojans class this week.
Offensive tackle Jackson Lloyd (0.9290) committed to Alabama.
Cornerback Jahmir Joseph (0.9234) committed to Penn State.
Offensive tackle Carius Curne (0.9487) committed to LSU.
Defensive lineman Malcolm Simpson (0.9027) committed to Nebraska.
Offensive tackle Demetris Dean (0.8950) is headed to Houston.
Linebacker Christian Thatcher (0.9013) committed to Utah.
In the 2026 class more quarterbacks are off the board…
Brady Hart (0.9574) committed to Michigan and Dia Bell (0.9924) gave a verbal to Texas.
YouTube Channel
I used to love golf madly and then not playing as much as an adult combined with the realization you’re never going to be that good without tons of practice zapped my enjoyment of the game. I don’t feel bad about it and certainly things could be worse, like if you’re Rory McIlroy at the moment! The poor guy coughed up a great opportunity to win the U.S. Open on Sunday. Anyway, it got me thinking about my worst experiences on a golf course…
Delaware Park – This “course” sits inside the Frederick Law Olmstead-designed park in north Buffalo and remains controversial. Proponents will say it allows access to golf for beginners and underprivileged. Other will argue it’s a blight on the park. I played it once many years ago and it was incredibly not fun. People are constantly in danger of being hit by balls, or walking through the course, and there’s little attempt to actually design holes. It’s just a bunch of land with terrible greens plopped all over the place. One wayward drive and you’ll be likely to hit to the wrong green.
The Vineyards – A local course in my area, they basically bought some farm land and did the absolute bare minimum to maintain 18 holes. Golf is not enjoyable on really terrible courses.
La Toc – This was the 9-hole course from our Honeymoon in St. Lucia. I was apprehensive to begin not having my own clubs. It was a nightmare. It got sweltering hot the further away from the coast we got, they forced us to play with a caddie, and I literally could not hit off the large coarse Bermuda grass. Of course, the caddie demanded a fat tip. We were supposed to play the 9-hole course twice but gave up at the turn.
I also had a friend–due to leisurely walking and zero sense of golf code–who caused numerous 6+ hour walking rounds on our college campus course. Brutal stuff. I was also +2 through 13 at Wicked Stick in Myrtle Beach once before a thunderstorm ended the round, I weep to this day that I couldn’t bring that one home.
Tunes
St. Louis artist SZA just wrapped up her tour supporting her album SOS that was rated among the best in recent memory. I mentioned a couple weeks ago it was #72 on Apple Music’s best 100 albums of all-time, high acclaim indeed. It looks like her 3rd studio album Lana is coming sometime in 2024 with an exact date to be announced in the future. However, the first single from the new album “Saturn” is out and continues SZA’s successful run.
She’s working with some fantastic producers and they keep laying down some really terrific beats and sounds underneath her unique voice and vocal delivery. I’m guessing this new album will be fantastic and be on the Grammy’s shortlist in several categories. I don’t know if many in my age cohort over 40 know SZA that much, but she could be the next huge star in music over the next 3-5 years.
Trivia
What are the original 5 colors that Mars introduced for M&M’s in 1941?
The Other Football
Host country Germany is already through to the knockout stages in the 2024 Euros with a 5-1 win over Scotland followed up by a 2-0 win over Hungary. A big game on Thursday night saw an own goal sink Italy 1-0 in defeat to Spain. The Spanish have won both of their games so far. England dropped points in a 1-1 draw to Denmark, as well.
The Copa America kicks off tonight at 8 PM ET in Atlanta as Argentina takes on Canada.
The Premier League transfer window opened up back on June 14th.
We haven’t check in on MLS in a long time. Inter Miami lead the entire league with 38 points and a healthy +16 goal differential.
TV & Movies
We had Quarterback feature on Netflix and now it’s time for the receivers to get their turn. George Kittle (49ers), Justin Jefferson (Vikings), Deebo Samuel (49ers), Amon-Ra St. Brown (Lions), and Davante Adams (Raiders) are included in this documentary. It’s interesting to include two players from San Francisco when Kittle also isn’t a receiver. Maybe this is one of those further turning points where we basically believe tight ends are receivers now.
Traditionally, receivers are pretty out there, absurd at times, and prone to be divas. The trailer for this from Netflix really makes all of these players look and feel like totally normal and well adjusted individuals. Maybe this will be the defining review from the show? Receivers are normal dudes now! So which position in the NFL is the most crazy these days? Cornerback? That’s my vote.
A Look Back
iOS 18 is coming out in September, which unless you’re a weirdo on a non-Apple phone, looks to be giving us some big changes to our daily lives. As of this writing, Apple has a market cap of $3,290,000,000,000 which is so ridiculous and needs to be typed out fully for major effect. Nearly 3.3 trillion! Nevertheless, there’s constant grumbling about the future of the iPhone and what Apple can do next to keep people engaged. Plus, you know the whole slowing down your phone so you buy a very similar but much more expensive version issue. Here are some of the iOS 18 updates coming:
Scheduled texts – I’m not sure many will use this.
Lock apps with Face ID – This is pretty cool, especially if you have kids.
Photo App redesign – I’m all for this, the current app has always felt bad.
Calendar & Reminder functions – This year I’ve fully embraced my Google calendar and all functionality improvements here are welcome.
Home Screen editing – I’m big on visuals and these changes look very cool.
Control Center updates – Cool changes.
Safari improvements – How many use the reader function?
Notes function – About once a year I try to use notes a lot for stuff and then I just can’t be bothered to keep using it.
18S Paddock Club
We are now beginning a triple header for F1 this weekend. First up is Spain, followed by Austria and then Great Britain. Barcelona has tried to keep itself in the good graces of F1 with some recent track changes but the sport seems eager to move on. First, they dropped the pre-season testing in Spain in order to keep things in Bahrain before the first race. Now, a new track is being built up in Madrid.
It’s highly unlikely Spain continues to host 2 races each year in the future.
*There’s talk of possible illegal flexiwings on the front wings from a couple teams. We’ll see if the FIA will look into things or if it’s just sour grapes from opponents.
*Max Verstappen has won the last 2 races here in Barcelona and most expect the Red Bull car to excel at this track.
*Taking a look at close points battles among the drivers. Lando Norris is 7 points behind Charles Leclerc for 2nd. Sergio Perez is 1 point behind Carlos Sainz for 4th. George Russell leads teammate Lewis Hamilton by 14 points for 7th.
Trivia Answer:
Red, yellow, green, brown, and purple.
I clearly don’t eat enough candy because I went with red, yellow, orange, brown, and blue
My guess was red, yellow, orange, brown, and green.
I remember the big news about adding blue in the 1990’s.
Between the new color vote for M&M’s and the Who Shot Mr. Burns? mystery with Butterfingers, early 90’s candy marketing was really poppin
Proceeds to list a bunch of features Android has had for years.
The Vikings are such a mediocre franchise (I say this as a fan of a gutter franchise, the Bears). Never won a Super Bowl. Ran the first great gunslinging QB out of town for his prime years, only to re-sign him for his aging years. Let the 2nd greatest WR of all time leave town, only to watch him put up 23 TDs in a season. Refused to pay their best coach a top 5 salary, so he just retired. But seemingly never have a truly awful season.
These uniforms are perfect for them. They’re fine with the potential to be fantastic, but it seems like they just completely forgot to put the finishing touches on them.
That is a deeply personal burn.
I’m jumping on the Inter Miami bandwagon as my hometown franchise of STL City is not doing well. City got nothing but good luck last year as and expansion team with average talent, and now they are getting nothing but bad luck.
Inter Miami is an interesting story though. Defense is not good, but with Messi they can always outscore you. And speaking of luck, start at 2:40: here’s Miami down 2 (!) men, they steal a pass, make one great pass to get behind the defense, and pull out a win. Without Messi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lVU_Vbh-4Q
Friday news dump.
Aiden Gobaira and Tyson Ford both put on medical scholarship.
Oof, not surprising about Ford but that’s depressing about Gobaira
I don’t ever remember reading Ford being hurt, just not able to find the field and bouncing around a lot. Gobiara was at least hurt for last year, and it lingered through spring.
Both were passed by younger guys this spring.
I would not be surprised to see either miraculously recover at another school next spring, if not sooner.
That gets us to 86 so there is one more medical to go.
Message board chatter is there is a yet-unnamed additional medical redshirt so we’re at 85 now.
Honestly, I appreciate the roster management approach here. So long as these kids are going to ND for free for four years after they sign, I’m fine with the school gently nudging (or shoving) them off the football team.
I agree with this. With the players being able to leave/transfer at any point, this is the next evolution when it comes to roster management. And still allowing those students to stay on scholarship and graduate seems like the right thing to do
Oh no you hate to see it
Surely the good Lord would never disrupt the best game of your life!
But at least he’ll receive total consciousness on his death bed!
I was an avid golfer into my 50’s . I haven’t played more than 4 times in the last dozen years. Like you. I have no interest in playing bad golf and it’s too much work and time, to be any good. I’ll go to the range a couple times each summer, just to be able to tell myself “ya , I could do this if I wanted.”