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

3 News Stories

#1 Mickens Make a Move

While it’s no surprise to anyone, Notre Dame assistance coach Mike Mickens finally decided to leave South Bend and is headed to the NFL to work for the Baltimore Ravens. He’ll join the staff of new head coach Jesse Minter who was signed from the Los Angeles Chargers where he was defensive coordinator in 2025. Minter was a graduate assistant for Mickens’ final 2 seasons as a college football player at Cincinnati, so there is a past between the two coaches.

Mickens takes the role of defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator with the Ravens, the same job as at Notre Dame.

Six years with the Irish for Mickens, what a legacy. While it stings a little bit for a lateral position, even if it’s the NFL with a presumed small pay bump, I’m sure Mickens didn’t want to be the next Tony Alford always in the running for a coordinator position that never comes. Moving on to the NFL at least broadens his resume for the future. Best of luck to one of Notre Dame’s best assistants in recent memory.

#2 Sticking at 12 (For Now)

As expected, the powers of college football couldn’t come together and agree on a playoff expansion plan for the future. The extension granted by ESPN passed this past January 23rd so for the 2026 season we’ll keep the 12-team playoff field. This upcoming December 1st will once again be the deadline for any future changes to the playoff format.

The Big Ten continues to lobby for a 24-team playoff field which would open up more broadcast rights for their conference partner Fox to buy. Most of the country (and SEC) seems to favor a 16-team field but who knows how or when this impasse will be settled.

There will be some small tweaks for 2026, though.

All Power 4 conference champions will get into the playoffs (Duke would’ve been in this past year) and Notre Dame is in as long as we’re ranked in the top 12. The Group of 6(!) highest ranked team (not conference champion!) gets in, which will include the new-look Pac-12 with 8 members including Washington State, Oregon State, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Texas State, and Utah State.

Miami would’ve missed the playoffs in 2025 under this new arrangement.

#3 Set Schedule

Notre Dame’s 2026 football schedule is finalized, well at least the opponents and their placement on the calendar is concerned. Kickoff times will have to wait months to complete the puzzle. It was the back half of the slate that held the most intrigue. Ultimately, the Irish will pack in the bulk of the season into a 6-week run from BYU through SMU.

A bye week comes after BYU and before Navy, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, although jumping from Navy to what is expected to be the most anticipated game of the season versus Miami could pose some challenges.

Speaking of Miami, the lawsuit between quarterback Darian Mensah and Duke University was quickly settled and the signal caller immediately enrolled with the Canes this week. He’ll also come with wide receiver Cooper Barkate who had 113 catches at Harvard before 72 receptions, 1,106 yards, and 7 touchdowns this past season with the Blue Devils.

A receiving duo of Barkate and Malachi Toney is going to be a tough test for Notre Dame.

Uniform of the Week

Missouri State has been playing football since 1909 and moved up from Division II to FCS in 1982. They spent the next 40+ years at that level and made the move up to FBS in the Conference USA ahead of this past 2025 season. It was a wildly successful first season for the Bears who placed 5th in their league, had a nice 5-game winning streak, and finished 7-6 overall. Half of their losses did come by one score or less, too. Although they did open their season with a 60-point loss to USC. Here are their home uniforms:

Mo State is FBS now.

They look like Mississippi State alternates. They’ve incorporated “Mo State” into their branding and on some of their uniforms which is a nice touch. With these standard jerseys it’s tough to make it look nice with 13 letters across the chest. That’s why Mississippi State looks bad too, they spell out the whole name stacked above the numbers. You either have to go with something shorter like Bears or nothing at all. I’m assuming they’ll never use “Mo State” full time although it would be the cool thing to do.

Media

Last week, we featured an upcoming Matt Damon vehicle trying to be a summer blockbuster. Back on January 16th, Netflix released The Rip where Damon teams up with Ben Afleck again as members of the Miami-Dade Police Department specialized unit Tactical Narcotics Team. It’s 113 minutes long and the suspense makes the movie fly by, and they waste no time getting into the story either.

The movie is supposedly based loosely on a real life story of a policeman in Miami, too. Looking back, I like how much of the movie takes place inside the stash house. They did a really good job of focusing the bulk of the movie at the house without feeling like the story wasn’t progressing and getting bogged down. I’d highly recommend this as a new movie.

Tunes

I don’t think it’s wild to say that Nick Mason is probably the worst drummer of any of the top 100 rock bands of all-time. Certainly among the titans of rock and the best bands from Britain. Maybe worst drummer isn’t the correct term. He has a laid back style that is relatively easy to play, let’s say that. Something about their 1979 song “Mother” off the mega double album The Wall has always sounded a bit different to me.

That’s because as I recently learned, Mason was having trouble with the tricky time signature changes of the song and the band called in famous studio drummer Jeff Porcaro to get the job done. The Wikipedia entry states that the band was hurrying to complete the album and thought it would be easier to hire Porcaro instead. That’s tough for Mason, they decided it was quicker and easier to fly someone from the U.S. instead of giving him time to learn the part.

One More Thing

I grew up in the 1980’s in a time when car colors were having the time of their lives out there, but it wouldn’t last. Unless we see major reversals in trends (direct to consumer custom paint may be one such way) throughout the car industry those days may never come back. This blog is ready mostly by men and we tend to be more conservative with our color choices. I love colors though, I miss the way the roads used to look. I live on a street that is about a mile long and I can only think of two unusual colored cars among my neighbors–a bright green Jeep Wrangler and a yellow Ford Mustang. That makes sense because the Wrangler (I work with a woman who has a bright pink one) and sport car communities probably account for 65% of all non-standard colors in the U.S. vehicle market.

Things are boring.

Of course, I’m a hypocrite and haven’t bought anything out of the ordinary myself. I’ve had 2 black cars, 2 white cars, and a navy blue one. However, I will say I do not like gray/silver cars pretty much at all. If I was at a dealer looking for a car I wouldn’t pull the trigger on that color. I also don’t like red (unless it was a bright Ferrari then of course) so that’s out for me. The browns and the beige/clay colors are making a comeback which is nice. The lack of green is more puzzling. It seems like we’re more likely to see a bright green car (sports car most likely) than a darker green. What happened to the green cars??