Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.

3 News Stories

#1 Back in March, Maryland lost its athletic director Damon Evans to SMU in the ACC. Ouch. The Terps have picked themselves up and hired Evans’ replacement as James Smith takes command of the AD office starting in July. That’s a nice grab for Maryland as Smith has a pretty extensive and impressive background. He’s coming directly from the Atlanta Braves as the vice president for business strategy and before that he was with the Atlanta Falcons as their chief marketing officer and revenue office vice president and chief marketing officer. Prior jobs include working with the MLS team Columbus Crew as the general manager, plus he has experience working at Ohio State in their athletic and alumni office while also running a consulting business.

There’s not much actual athletic directing there, but perhaps that is the way of the future for these positions.

#2 This week, ESPN college football reporters set out to pick their top 10 coaches in the game and good news Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman came in at no. 4 overall. It’s been a pretty awesome run since that Northern Illinois loss, right? The entire top 10 for your perusal:

#1 Kirby Smart
#2 Ryan Day
#3 Dabo Swinney
#4 Marcus Freeman
#5 Steve Sarkisian
#6 Dan Lanning
#7 Kalen DeBoer
#8 James Franklin
#9 Kyle Whittingham
#10 Matt Campbell

Not a bad list, although I think most would probably slot in someone else besides Matt Campbell in the 10th spot. I’d also argue that Lanning should be ahead of Sarkisian at the moment. Of the coaches who are in the top 10 in FBS winning percentage but not included on the list from ESPN we have: Jon Sumrall (Tulane), Curt Cignetti (Indiana), Lincoln Riley (USC), Spencer Danielson (Boise State), and Jeff Traylor (UTSA). Both Josh Heupel and Brian Kelly sit just outside the top 10 in winning percentage. Would you include either coach?

#3 We have Shamrock Series news. The Irish will open up the 2025 season on a Sunday and will do so again for 2026 as the Lambeau Field game against Wisconsin will be played on September 6th. The game was previously scheduled and then put off during the 2020 pandemic season in which Notre Dame played exclusively in the ACC and won the league title.

After not playing each other for 57 years, the Irish defeated Wisconsin back in 2021 at Soldier Field–a crazy game that saw the Badgers leading 13-10 in the 4th quarter only for a Chris Tyree kickoff return for touchdown and a pair of pick-sixes to book end a 41-13 victory. Next year’s game at Lambeau Field will be a Notre Dame home game and will be televised on NBC. Cue the Curly Lambeau throwbacks?

BONUS NEWS!

Late in the news day on Thursday the reporting dropped that the College Football Playoff will switch to straight seeding for the 2025 season. There was unanimous approval from the CFP committee to make the rule change which has looked like the most likely difference to the post-season for this season. No other decisions yet were made, specifically on auto-bids.

This was bound to happen and I’m glad they got rid of the rule giving the top 4 conference champions the byes. If you can’t easily explain the playoff format to someone who doesn’t follow college football, it’s a bad rule. I’m not sure if this will ultimately lead to the end of conference championship games but for the first time…ever…there seems to be real momentum toward these greedy conferences dropping the games. It’s in their best interest now anyway. No. 1 Ohio State won’t be happy about playing no. 2 Oregon in the Big Ten Championship Game, the conference will hate that. Plus, a 2-loss team beating an undefeated team in the conference time and snagging that first round bye. No fun. However, I think you can sell these teams on the extra money from a conference championship game and very likely hosting a first round playoff game–those are fun!

Recruiting

Notre Dame has 2027 quarterback Teddy Jarrard (0.9209) on tap for a visit, perhaps a name worth paying attention to for the future. The Georgia signal caller has an offer from the in-state Bulldogs in addition to Ohio State, Miami, Auburn, and several others so far. The Irish have yet to offer.

Also in the 2027 class, the Irish offered the Composite no. 1 cornerback John Meredith (0.9983) who comes out of Trinity High School in Euless, Texas. In ’27 the program has also offered offensive lineman Mark Matthews (0.9951) out of St. Thomas Aquinas, linebacker Deion Jackson (0.8833) from Fort Pierce in Florida,

Back in the 2026 class, Notre Dame offered Servite tight end Luke Sorensen (0.8759), tight end Preston Fryzel (0.8750), and tight end Brayden Fogle (0.9309). Tight ends everywhere.

Michigan added the top player in Montana and tight end Matt Ludwig (0.9189).

Illinois is keeping one of the state’s best in town as wide receiver Nasir Rankin (0.9252) committed to the Illinis. He’s set to play basketball for Illinois, as well.

Edge rusher Zach Groves (0.9105) committed to Tennessee.

Uniform of the Week

Last week I caught a few minutes of the NCAA softball regionals and noticed Southeastern Louisiana facing LSU. These schools are separated by 45 miles and there has to be some sort of rivalry going on. How many players on SLU wanted to go to LSU? Anyway, the Lady Lions (lions vs. tigers!) beat LSU 4-3 and then 8-7 to advance in the tournament. They have really sharp yellow and green uniforms–who wouldn’t want the state of Louisiana outline on their batting helmet?

The bad news is that Southeastern got dismantled by Nebraska in the next round by a combined score of 22-1 ouch. The Huskers aren’t even ranked despite a 42-13 record, it’s a tough world out there in college softball. Nebraska faces Tennessee this Friday in the Super Regionals in Knoxville.

TV & Movies

A small change today as I present another Animagraffs video. A few weeks ago, he put up an extensive look at how the Hoover Dam was built and it is so, so good. It’s 66 minutes long and if you’re at all interested in the modern marvel engineering aspect it is so worth an entire watch. Also, if you’re really committed, he has a follow up video that is 49 minutes long that details how he constructed the Hoover Dam video in 3D. Really cool stuff.

There are so many aspects to the project that continue to amaze me. They did all of this for only $800 million in today’s dollars!? I’ve been watching the new Buffalo Bills stadium being built for the past couple years and that costs over $2 billion. Is the price difference down to salaries of the workers? Also, over 100 workers died during the Hoover Dam construction, that’s not great. Still, the ingenuity and attention to detail in so many aspects is so awesome to learn about–it’s an American marvel.

Tunes

The list of 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (how long until this institution is re-named the Music Hall of Fame?) inductees came out recently including Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, Soundgarden, the White Stripes, and Outkast. I’m a little surprised that the White Strips got in already but no one understands the voting process or how any of this works. They didn’t become internationally famous until the middle of 2001 and recorded “only” 6 albums total before being done by 2007. Not against the decision, just point that out. However, super pumped to see Outkast get in because they are the best.

I was wondering what the most popular song from Outkast is and by a wide margin it’s “Ms. Jackson” with “Hey Ya” a distant second place. Commercially, they are the most successful songs and highlight Andre 3000’s diversity as a performer. His uniqueness is what drove Outkast to be so different, but also prevented them from continuing on as a group as I don’t think he had the same long-term goals in music as Big Boi.