Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Wide receiver Deion Colzie will be out a couple weeks after having his knee scoped. Fellow wideout Jayden Thomas is questionable this weekend with a hamstring injury suffered against Ohio State.
The Notre Dame-Ohio State game was NBC’s highest rated game since the 1993 Florida State visit to South Bend.
An article from South Carolina journalist Gene Sapakoff cites a discussion with a school administrator that an announcement of Clemson (and potentially FSU, North Carolina, and maybe more schools) leaving the ACC coming soon. Possibly within the next month.
According to multiple reports, there is a push to change the 2024 and 2025 college football playoff entry to a 5+7 system in which the 5 highest ranked conference champions, plus the next 7 highest ranked teams are guaranteed access. However, with the collapse of the Pac-12 conference, the mid-major commissioners prefer the agreed upon 6+6 format. However, it’s expected for 2026 that the 5+7 system will be instituted.
Michigan State has officially and formally fired Mel Tucker.
Texas A&M quarterback Connor Weigman is out for the rest of the season following a foot injury.
Pittsburgh captain and starting left tackle Matt Goncalves is out for the rest of the season with injury. Quarterback Phil Jurkovec is questionable for this weekend.
Oklahoma State starting safety Trey Rucker was arrested on Sunday for DUI.
Uniform of the Week
How many years has it been since repping your area code really became a thing in American culture? Based on my experience, I’m going to say it started happening in the late 2000’s and really picked up steam in the early 2010’s. In my town, 716 is used freaking everywhere. Nine years ago, the Bills/Sabres owner opened a massive bar/restaurant downtown and named it, yup, 716. They’ve since sold it and it’s a location for Southern Tier Brewery. Different name, still a cool hang.
Florida International has been using 305 on their uniforms, even going with a combo 305 and Panther logo on the helmet in addition to the front bumper. I wonder how “Mr. 305” the legendary singer Pitbull feels about this appropriation? Also, check out the Panther eyes on the shoulder sleeves. That’s kind of creepy, FIU.
Recruiting
In the 2025 recruiting class, Notre Dame picked up commitments from defensive lineman Joseph Reiff (0.880) out of Elmhurst, Illinois. The Irish also added edge rusher CJ May (0.9095) and running back Daniel Anderson (0.8959) for 2025, as well.
The nation’s top overall tackle Brandon Baker (0.9878) committed to Texas.
Wide receiver Ny Carr (0.9722) has left Georgia’s recruiting class.
Back to the 2025 class with more verbals in recent weeks…
Elite 5-star defensive lineman Armondo Blount (0.9986) is staying local and committed to Miami. The Canes also added athlete Waden Charles (0.9155).
Alabama added defensive lineman Antonio Coleman (0.9205).
Linebacker DJ McClary (0.9540) committed to Penn State.
Top tight end Ethan Barbour (0.9305) is headed to Georgia.
Running back Waltez Clark (0.9359) committed to Florida.
Cedar Rapids offensive tackle Nick Brooks (0.9508) committed to in-state Iowa.
YouTube Channel
I’m a little embarrassed to admit I’ve only been to Washington, D.C. once in my life. Growing up, Washington felt a little too far away and a little too southern of a city but it’s “only” 7 hours via car from where I live in Western New York. On a road trip down to Florida several years ago we made a pit stop for half a day in D.C. and tried to hit a handful of tourist landmarks. My biggest memory was that I was not prepared for how long the National Mall was and how much we’d be walking. It was very deceiving.
We parked in the Penn Quarter area by the Capitals/Wizards arena and walked west to the White House, south to the Washington Monument, then west again to the Lincoln Memorial, and all the way back to our car. Google Maps says this is only a 5-mile round trip walk but it felt far longer. Maybe I was just really out of shape at the time!
Tunes
Every time I hear The Guess Who I think about the scene in Almost Famous where Philip Seymour Hoffman rips The Doors and says it’s the Canadian band who at least has the courage to be drunken buffoons. As a massive fan of The Doors it’s always pissed me off. No slight towards The Guess Who though, because they were an awesome band in their time. Maybe one of the most underrated from the late 1960’s and 1970’s.
In terms of musicianship, this was a really tight band. Today’s featured song “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature” starts off slowly and really gets into a rollicking groove. This was the B-side to the band’s biggest single “American Woman” that topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 3 weeks in 1970. What a cool voice Burton Cummings has, one of the best in rock history.
Trivia
Notre Dame has forced 9 fumbles through 5 games this season. How many have the Irish recovered?
The Other Football
The North London Derby ended in a 2-2 draw on Sunday. In other EPL action, Newcastle dominated Sheffield United 8-0, Liverpool beat West Ham 3-1, Aston Villa shutout Chelsea 1-0, Man United beat Burnley 1-0, Everton picked up a much needed win 3-1 over Brentford, and Man City remained perfect with a 2-0 win at Nottingham Forest.
The Carabao Cup started back up this week highlighted by Newcastle beating Man City 1-0 and Chelsea beating Brighton 1-0.
Messi Mania remains grounded as the Argentinian is still out with injury and Inter Miami lost the U.S. Open Cup Final to Houston 2-1 on Wednesday night.
In extremely Italian Serie A news, Napoli striker Victor Osimhen is threatening legal action against his own club after the team posted a TikTok on Tuesday mocking his missed penalty from their Sunday 0-0 draw against Bologna.
Megan Rapinoe played in her final game with the United States after defeating South Africa 2-0 in a friendly this past Sunday. The 38-year old winger scored 63 goals in 203 appearances for the USWNT.
TV & Movies
The movie Nice Guys was released over 7 years ago and I have no recollection of this being made or promoted. It recently popped up on my Netflix and I did a little research. This came out right before La La Land for Ryan Gosling so it’s easy to see why it got swallowed up in the hysteria of that film. It’s been a weird run of lesser known movies for co-star Russell Crowe since Nice Guys came out. I guess he’s not a super big movie star anymore.
Gosling seems to do the super serious action guy really well, but he also excels in the comedic relief role, too. We saw that a little in The Big Short and it came out especially in the recent mega-hit Barbie (in which I think he carried the movie). He’s super funny in The Nice Guys and this type of role is something he should pursue more often.
A Look Back
For a quick minute back in the 2022 off-season Notre Dame was linked to Arizona State wide receiver transfer Ricky Pearsall. He was a solid player for the Sun Devils and finished with a pretty good 2021 season before landing at Florida. Since then, Pearsall has been much more productive and already has 362 yards through 4 games in 2023 with the Gators. That is 6th best in the SEC right now. This past weekend against Charlotte, Pearsall came down with an insane catch of the year nominee:
I mean, sheesh. The skeptic would argue Pearsall didn’t need to go up with one hand and should’ve high-pointed the ball with both hands. But that wouldn’t make it a circus catch, would it? I am flat out amazed that Pearsall was able to bring this in, get it into his body with superhuman quickness, and then take a massive hit without dropping the ball. This is an all-time catch for me, wow.
18S Paddock Club
The Max Verstappen beatdowns will continue until morale improves. Coming off a dismal weekend that ended his 10-race win streak, the Dutchman scorched the entire field in qualifying by grabbing pole over Oscar Piastri by an impressive 0.581 seconds.
We ended up having a really interesting and wacky race on Sunday, but up at the front Verstappen would cruise easily to his 13th win of the season. With 6 races remaining in 2023, he sits 3 behind Alain Prost for the 4th most wins all-time and if Verstappen wins out this season he’ll pass Sebastian Vettel for 3rd all-time. Only 3 more wins and Verstappen breaks his record from last year for most grand prix victories in a single season.
Other notes from Japan:
They’re going to kiss!
- Red Bull clinched back-to-back Constructors Championships and their 6th team title overall.
- No thanks to Sergio Perez who had maybe his worst weekend in F1. The Mexican caused a collision on the opening lap, picked up a penalty for illegally passing under Safety Car, picked up another penalty for a terrible lunge on a Haas that spun the car around (see above), then retired for 40+ minutes after 2 front wing changes, only to come back out and drive around for a bit to serve more penalty time just to retire for good a second time.
- McLaren finished P2 and P3 solidifying themselves, on the right track at least, as maybe the 2nd best car on the grid late in the season. What a turn around for the team. Oscar Piastri became the first rookie since 2017 to make the podium.
- Lance Stroll retired with a rear wing failure and Fernando Alonso only finished P8. Once the second best car and 2nd in the team standings, Aston Martin is now 55 points behind Ferrari for 3rd and McLaren is quickly catching them just 49 points back of 4th place.
- Logan Sargeant is making it really difficult for Williams not to cut ties with him for 2024. The American demolished his car in qualifying forcing his team to serve a penalty for illegally building a 3rd car prior to the grand prix, only for Sargeant to collide with Valtteri Bottas on lap 5, picked up a penalty, and then ended up retiring later with car damage.
F1 is off this weekend and travels back to the Middle East for a race in Qatar on October 8th.
Trivia Answer:
Zero 🙁
I have a small quibble with your Perez summary: he did not cause the first lap collision. That was caused by the Ferraris.
That’s fair, he got squeezed by Sainz and Hamilton and contact from the former broke off Checo’s front wing.
Maybe a school has found a novel legal approach that will finally breach that to-now impenetrable ACC grant of rights. I highly doubt that school will be Clemson.
What are the chances that the mentioned schools only allowed Cal, Stanford, and SMU in because they had a under the table deal that they would vote to disband the conference allowing 1) The schools that want out, out 2)The restructured ACC has to pay full media share to all new conference members.
Clemson, FSU, and UNC didn’t allow the new members to join the ACC, they voted against expansion and were outvoted when NC St flipped to provide the needed 12th out of 15 votes for admission.
Part of the logic of adding the three teams is that if three teams manage to escape, such as Clemson, FSU, and UNC, then the league will still have 14 football members and prevent the TV contract from being thrown into automatic renegotiation that would occur if the league dropped below 14.
Uhh, what receivers are left?
Greathouse/Tyree in the slot
Merriweather on one side
Does Flores take over the other side for Thomas?
And then…. who? Is James ready to play? Seems like he’s going to have to or we’re going to use even more 2TE sets.
It’s Salerno time, baby.
Wasn’t he injured too? Is he back from injury?
Yeah, I think he’s still injured.
He wasn’t putting weight on the injured leg last week, so I’d think still at least weeks away.
I’d rather play with 10
MOAR 21 and 12 personnel. Thomas has mostly been a possession receiver, we have two TE that are cromulent pass catchers. And we seem to be doing well with two back sets, and we certainly have the backs to do it.
Maybe Styles will transfer back
Learned a new word today, not something that happens in any forum.
I learned it on the Simpsons, so thank Matt Groening I guess
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/what-does-cromulent-mean
Beat me to it
Ha, this is why it wasn’t in the lexicon I studied for the ACT/SAT. Also, once again shows my lack of awareness of pop culture.
Never too late to embiggen your mind
James will have to play. So will the walk-on. I imagine though we will Greathouse getting snaps out wide and Tyree on the field more. Greathouse seems to be a pretty precise route runner.
I just have a feeling that Hartman trusts Flores and Greathouse more than Merriweather.
Are there any P5 teams other than Auburn who need another game next year? Lots of schedules are missing all their conference games but I didn’t see anyone else interesting with an empty OOC slot. Army would be the next most interesting.
There are several, according to FBSchedules.com.
Cal has an extra spot available now because the ACC (this is gonna be weird for a while) only plays 8 league games and they had been scheduling with the expectation of 9. Other non-ACC teams with open spots include: Utah, which scheduled two Big 12 teams OOC but now will be playing in the Big 12; BYU, which has the same issue Utah does with the Holy War now a conference game (although they could just keep it as a non-league game); TCU, but they’re already playing 2 OOC road games and ND needs a home game so that’s not happening; Northwestern; Indiana; and Houston (again, they need a home game, so needs don’t match up).
The Army rumors have yet to be confirmed (and I don’t want them to be, playing 8 freaking P5 opponents would be embarrassing), but I could see ND throwing the ACC a bone, given our vacancy is the result of an ACC team canceling on us anyway. NC State, Duke, BC and our new buddy SMU all have vacancies in addition to Cal.
At least there are still a few other good options. It would seem to me like we could play a one-off neutral site [Shamrock Series] game too, since we have 6 home games.
I’d greatly prefer Auburn, either at home or in a place like Nissan Stadium, or TCU in the Cotton Bowl to a home game against Army or Northwestern.
He’s bigger than an area code – he’s Mr Worldwide
Dale.
The area code thing became popular in the early to mid 2000s; I remember it becoming a thing when I was in high school and Reggie Bush was wearing his area code (619) on his eye black at USC, plus Rey Mysterio Jr using it for his “619” move.
who can forget the 2001 Ludacris song “Area Codes”. Think that really put it on the map – i’ll see myself out
Much to my dismay, I had the trivia answer correct. Our turnover luck this year has sucked. If we got just one vs Ohio St, how does that change things?
Depends, is it the one where DJ dropped the INT that would have iced the game for real, or the tipped pass that their TE somehow managed to convert a 3rd down on leading to a scoring drive?
Yes
Oh, I thought you meant the INT in the first half DJ dropped in the end zone. My bad.
Or how about a hypothetical one, where we get a strip sack on that 4th&1, instead of the turnover on downs, and then everything else plays out exactly as IRL.
In order for the Playoff format to be changed it requires unanimous consent of the CFP members, who include ND, ACC and the G5 members. The Pac representative was the Washington State AD, I believe. The G5 is guaranteed 20% of media money and would oppose any format in which their top team was not included. A 5-7 format would affirm the ACC champion place, which would run counter to the rumored ACC teams leaving the conference. Replacing Bill Hancock as Executive Director is high on the list for the Committee. Many candidates have been speculated upon, including Swarbrick. CFP media partners were included in the meeting which did not come to any decision until conference membership becomes clear. The Oregon State AD says with the Pac changing their athletic revenue will decline by 44%. Suddenly their future scheduling is severely impacted and may take steps to protect their interests.
Now aTm just has to figure out a way to get rid of Jimbo.
Can’t wait for the TexAgs posters to try a honeypot scheme on Jimbo so he can be fired for cause.
Irish lacrosse added two more defensemen this week to fill the last needs of the class. 4 five stars and 8 top fifty players is the best class ever according to Inside Lacrosse beating out, for instance, Maryland’s 2024 class after their 2022 title of 3 five stars and 5 top fifties.
Of the two defensemen committed this week, which has the better highlight music track?
Chris Iiliano – Can’t Stop
Kellen Gardner – Kickstart My Heart
The nice guys is one of my all time favorite movies and I just watched it on tuesday funnily enough
Colorado’s MLB, Juwan Mitchell, is among the Pac 12 leaders in total tackles, tackles per game and tackles for loss. Mitchell is a graduate transfer in August to the Buffs from Arizona State after being dismissed from the team. Colorado is his fifth collegiate team since graduating in 2018. Colorado plays USC on Saturday.
Well-traveled LB Juwan Mitchell making immediate impact with CU Buffs
Hey, someone has to make a tackle on that defense.