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

Top News

As reported last Saturday after the Weekly Rambler was published, Notre Dame’s 5th-year senior center Jarrett Patterson tore his pectoral muscle and is expected to be out through summer.

Jarron Jones was selected 7th overall by the Tampa Bay Bandits in the USFL Draft.

Kirk Herbstreit is expected to secure the bag and be hired by the NFL to do the Thursday Night Football games on Amazon. He will still continue his college football duties for ESPN and ABC.

The NCAA Oversight Committee is recommending teams can challenge any 2nd half targeting call and is thinking about some sort of penalty for faking injuries.

LSU is expected to have violations coming from the NCAA for basketball and football. The football team has already self-imposed by skipping the 2020 bowl season with the penalties expected to be harsh for the hoops program.

Oklahoma will be unveiling a Baker Mayfield statue at their spring game on April 23.

Ohio State offensive lineman Harry Miller is retiring due to mental health.

Deion Sanders had two toes amputated following complications from blood clots.

Uniform of the Week

I’m torn on the Kansas State. They seem to be going on 30 or maybe even 40 years without significantly changing the style of their uniforms. I think they’ve worn a couple different white helmets for very brief alternate looks but otherwise have never participated in the ever-changing looks that have permeated most of college football. I like purple too, probably more than your average dude. In a vacuum, I like their uniforms.

Still, the lack of any updates has been super boring. Like their Big 12 brethren TCU we know there are some cool things you can do with purple. I guess I don’t have anything critical to say about the Wildcats other than I do wish we’d see something different once and a while. So far, without Bill Snyder on the sidelines that hasn’t been the case yet.

Recruiting

After surprising a lot of folks and leaving Arizona State, quarterback Jayden Daniels has landed in LSU to play for Brian Kelly.

Jacksonville State All-American defensive end DJ Coleman is transferring. He has 17 sacks in his career.

Arkansas State wideout Corey Rucker is transferring after posting 14 touchdowns in 20 games.

Tulane linebacker Darius Hodges had 16.5 tackles for loss last year (t-18th nationally) and is leaving the Green Wave.

Rice wide receiver Jake Bailey is transferring. The rising senior led the Owls with 56 catches and 714 yards last year.

Florida State has picked up a verbal from North Carolina defensive lineman Keith Sampson (0.9212) over the weekend.

Interior offensive lineman Antonio Tripp (0.8953) committed to Miami.

YouTube Channel

Welcome to Dorktown and Secret Base! If you haven’t checked out this YouTube channel co-created by SB Nation’s Jon Bois what are you doing with your life? In addition to being a cheeky and funny Twitter follow, Bois really does a fantastic job putting together these videos, including several long series of videos. One of my favorites was the history of the Seattle Mariners and today we feature the history of the Atlanta Falcons.

I’ve always had this memory hole about the early years of the Falcons. They seemingly never crossed paths much with my local Buffalo Bills and for me the franchise always felt like the Orlando Magic in that they arrived in the early 1990’s with Shaq, in this case for the Falcons it was with Deion Sanders just a couple years earlier. That’s part 3 of the amazing 7-part series, by the way. It’s long but worth your time.

Tunes

Some of you may know the story surrounding Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song “That Smell” written by lead-singer Ronnie Van Zant (3rd from left below in the album cover) and guitarist Allen Collins (far left) about guitarist Gary Rossington (second from left) crashing his car into a tree after a night of booze and drugs. The band recorded the song in the summer of 1977, released their album Street Survivors on October 17, 1977, and their chartered flight crashed in Mississippi 3 days later killing Van Zant and guitarist Chris Gaines (center). In a twist of irony, Rossington is now the only surviving member of the band today.

I think Skynyrd is in the running as the best American band of all-time, certainly in the rock edition. But I really feel passionately about “That Smell” being perhaps the best American song. It’s an all-time great intro and ending, literally perfect in every way. There’s like 5 guitar solos that fit in so well and don’t seem like it’s just a bunch of solos. The guitar work is just sensational. The lyrics are so perfect for the excessive 1970’s rock lifestyle. Epic backing vocals from the women. Such a perfect song. It sucks that the band never got to play this song live after releasing their album and it makes me wonder how much of a cult following it would’ve achieved like “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” in comparison.

Trivia

Who is the highest selected Notre Dame defender from Renaldo Wynn in 1997 until the 2021 NFL Draft?

The Other Football

The Champions League was back this week. Bayern Munich smashed RB Salzburg to move on to the quarterfinals while Liverpool held off Inter to do the same. Manchester City didn’t need to do anything up 5-0 to cruise past Sporting. It was an awful Wednesday night as PSG blew a 2-0 lead to allow 3 straight goals against Real Madrid sinking yet another UCL season for the French club.

City blasted United 4-1 in the Battle of Manchester this past weekend to take a 6-point lead atop the Premier League.

Roman Abromovich wants close to $4 billion for Chelsea with Americans Woody Johnson (NY Jets) and Thomas Ricketts (Chicago Cubs) among a group of nearly a dozen potential buyers ready to submit offers for the club. In the short-term, the UK government has sanctioned Chelsea and won’t allow the club to buy new players, agree to new contracts, sell new tickets, sell new merchandise, and they want to control the sale of the club with no proceeds going to Abromovich.

Streaming

Okay, so this week we have a bit of a pre-streaming era look at television. I stumbled across this video recently and it was right in my sweet spot for the start of my television experience beginning in 1986. A couple things jump out right away. Obviously, the viewership in the 1980’s oh my goodness. The Cosby Show is over 60 million to start the video and in the 1990’s no one got over 50 million except Seinfeld very briefly.

The beginning is important for me because I’ve always viewed CBS as the “old people” channel and seriously uncool channel. Almost the entire late 1980’s they only have Murder, She Wrote on this list before Murphy Brown shows up! This has caused me to almost exclusively tune out CBS from my brain. Even in the mid 2000’s when CBS was killing it with ratings I can honestly say I’ve never watched a single series on this channel. I’m Googling Without a Trace and I have no recollection of this show being on television. None of those actors look even remotely familiar and I’m pretty sure the show was fake. Also, Game of Thrones made HBO so, so much money. Nearly 60 million in modern times is absurd.

A Look Back

This week we’re headed back to Tallahassee for the 2021 opener. This game feels like it was played 2 seasons ago. Do you remember how worried and pissed off so many were during this and especially late when Notre Dame nearly coughed up a victory? I remembered this being a tight game throughout but didn’t specifically recall the Irish leading 38-20 into the 4th quarter, though.

More specifically, think about the reaction then to Marcus Freeman’s debut as defensive coordinator to then being named head coach 4 months later. It’s pretty funny, right? Well, so long as Freeman’s tenure at Notre Dame works out. *laughs nervously*

18S Paddock Club

The grid is officially set for real this time as Haas did end up sacking Nikita Mazepin in favor of bringing back Danish veteran driver Kevin Magnussen who has 119 starts under his belt. It’s a solid pick by the American team and Magnussen will offer some crucial competition and comparison with young teammate Mick Schumacher.

The Russian Grand Prix has been cancelled with F1 looking at alternative tracks for the September 25th race. Portugal, Turkey, Qatar, and Malaysia are in the running as well as a possible 2nd race at a place like Bahrain on the outer track.

Max Verstappen signed an extension with Red Bull through the 2028 that is worth a reported $53.3 million per season, according to Dutch sources.

Teams have agreed to a 3kg weight increase for the cars in 2022.

Aston Martin is open to building their own engines with the new regulations coming in 2026. That could potentially shake up the grid as rumors continue to swirl that the Volkswagen Group is poised to join the sport in the same year with Porsche aligning with Red Bull and Audi with McLaren.

The 4th season of the popular Drive to Survive drops today on Netflix. Elsewhere in media, Apple TV have secured the rights to an upcoming Lewis Hamilton documentary while Apple Original Films are working on a F1 movie starring Brad Pitt and directed by Jerry Bruckheimer.

The biggest buzz of Thursday’s testing in Bahrain was Mercedes unveiling a new body and floor design. The so-called “zero sidepod” design features extremely shrunken down cooling inlets with some extra packaging up top near the engine cover. They’ve also used the side impact structure for their mirror mount with tons of aero bits in and around the area. Will it work for the defending constructor champions? It certainly seems like it’ll be controversial and possibly flagged as illegal by other teams.

Formula 1 will be staying in Bahrain for 5 days before Free Practice 1 begins this time next Friday to kick off the 2022 season. Make sure to sign up for our fantasy league before then:

*Sign up for our 18 Stripes F1 Fantasy League*
https://fantasy.formula1.com/
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Trivia Answer:

Jerry Tillery 28th overall in 2019.