Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
3 News Stories
#1 A New Tradition, Again
It’s difficult to slow down change in college football these days and the Army-Navy game is firmly in the crosshairs to be moved from its modern date in December. As a reminder, the military school rivalry has been played 2 weeks after the end of the regular season and the weekend after conference championship games.
Army head coach Jeff Monken is resigned to the change coming soon:
“I think Army-Navy is a huge part of the history of college football, and what it is today, even. Give us a four-hour block on Thanksgiving, or on Friday of Thanksgiving, or on Saturday of Thanksgiving, and give us a four-hour block, and just say nobody else plays doing this four-hour block. That’s still protecting the game.”
The current timeslot never really made any sense. It made way less sense when Army and Navy moved into the same conference. Once the playoff expands it’ll make zero sense. College football inventory is easy to figure out, this shouldn’t be hard. I’d also once again like to offer the solution that Army-Navy should become the first game of the season every year and kick things off on week 0, but nobody is beating the drum for this change.
#2 Targeting Targeting Changes
Few things will get college football fans and a good live game chat fired up more than a targeting penalty. It won’t be going away any time soon, although we are likely headed toward a future with some rules tweaks regarding its enforcement.
Specifically, the reports around the officials and schools suggest we will eventually get minor targeting and major targeting penalties broken up into two tiers. The minor penalty will carry the 15-yard penalty with no player suspension while the major penalty will continue the current rule of 15 yards plus the player disqualification (and if it’s in the 2nd half, likely being out for the 1st half of the next game as written now).
This is a sensible change, right? The data has been pretty clear that the targeting rule (while controversial when applied) has resulted in better protection for players. In that light, there’s just no going back to a world without a set of targeting penalties, and the officials have made that clear.
#3 Calendar Complete
After dropping the Notre Dame series for the foreseeable future, USC football finally completed their 2026 schedule with a week 0 game against visiting San Jose State. This will lead the Trojans to having two bye weeks within a month later in the season, one coming before a game against Wisconsin and the other before Indiana.
Okay.
With their schedule set, here is USC’s 2026 slate with FEI rankings from last year:
1 Indiana
2 Oregon
3 Ohio State
14 Washington
17 Penn State
59 Wisconsin
66 Rutgers
68 Maryland
75 UCLA
85 Fresno State
111 San Jose State
112 Louisiana
If the series was still going with Notre Dame, the Trojans would’ve faced the top 4 FEI teams from 2025. Yeah, it would’ve been a really tough schedule! But, so what? With the sport moving to a 24-team playoff in 2029 (most likely) it’s silly to shy away from a tough schedule in order to back your way into the post-season. If he’s still around, Lincoln Riley will have 3 years remaining on his contract beginning with the 2029 season. Hopefully some adults within the USC program realize it’s workable to bring back the Notre Dame series.
Uniform of the Week
My hot take this week is that Nebraska football has the largest discrepancy in the country between their standard uniforms (traditional, steady, identifiable) and their attempts at alternate uniforms (unhinged, bizarre, complicated) over the last decade and a half. You want to talk about some doozies, my goodness. They’ve had a troubled modern history with black uniforms and actually did a good job this past year with a plain black and white approach. I’d like to present a red jersey from 2014 for a game against Illinois that might be one of the worst uniforms in college football history. This was during Bo Pelini’s final season in Lincoln and he even came out dressed up in this uniform to surprise the team.
Not a single redeeming feature.
Officially called “Red Rising” uniforms made by Adidas, these are unmatched for their gaudiness. They went with metallic silver for some reason? Which juxtaposed terribly with the weird matte red helmet. This was the height of “let’s use a futuristic number typeface era” and for some reason they went with a purely black and red helmet combination that isn’t followed anywhere else on the uniform. Plus, let’s not forget the huge “N” on the hip of the pants! Disgusting.
Media
I just binged watched Pluribus recently and I didn’t like it at first. It’s a slow burn, then it grew on me. The biggest critics have written about the weird pacing and I agree. At times, the story drags as you watch mundane scene after another. I knew there were only 9 episodes and after a few it felt like the story wasn’t progressing enough. I heard great things about the show and stuck with it. I ended up really enjoying it. First off, elite acting job by Rhea Seehorn to carry so much screen time on her own. She’s a sympathetic figure and yet difficult to like at first. And then maybe difficult to like as much at the end. This felt like an intentional human exploration by the writers. In roughly 8 hours of run time she’s acting by herself without talking for at least 100 minutes or more–and it’s some of the best stuff in the show as she tries to piece together what is happening and how to fix it.
At times, the show feels like The Last Man on Earth, especially some of the funnier scenes before things get darker and at times very sad. The biggest issue I had is determining the powers of the hivemind Others in the show. They seemed to know what Carol was doing most of the time, but not exactly all of the time. They used drones for surveillance, but at other times they didn’t seem to need them? When it was convenient, they knew things. The last episode dealt with this a little bit, but it would’ve been a huge for being in those shoes as a surviving human. How much could you get away with without the Others knowing?
Tunes
Readers of these articles will know that out of all the modern music I despise country more than any other. It’s a genre that’s completely lost its soul and become over-produced catnip for a generation of listeners scraping the bottom of the barrel. We don’t need to get into Beyonce’s foray into country music again, either. However, once and a while something comes a long that hits just right. Today, we’re talking about “Choosin’ Texas” by Alabama artist Ella Langley. I hadn’t heard of her, although doing some research her song from a couple years ago “You Look Like You Love Me” was one I recognized. She’s getting ready to release her second full length album this year and has been releasing new singles since later last year.
This is a nice song. I like a really long chorus if it’s well done. This one is 57 words! Lyrically, Langley smashed this song out of the park and it has a nice mixture of modern and old school country, too. I’m always interested to see if hit songs are written solely by the performers but it’s super rare these days. This song comes from a story by Miranda Lambert, who also helped Langley write the tune with the help of a couple producers. I’m guessing this new album will do some big numbers.
One More Thing
USA Hockey did the double in Italy. First up, the American women won gold for the 2nd time in the last 3 Olympics and the 3rd time overall. They’ve never failed to medal across the 8 Olympic games and I think it’s safe to argue (7-1 aggregate score over Canada in 2 games while in Italy) the United States is inching ahead as the superpower in the women’s game.
While both sides beat Canada in overtime, the men had a far tougher time. But still got that dub, the first gold medal since 1980’s “Miracle on Ice.” A few thoughts…
I’ve re-watched the play by Zach Werenski so many times. He makes a rather insane one-handed shovel pass to Jack Hughes and flubs it enough to make Canada’s Cole Makar jump up to intercept. This was such a risky pass! Makar loses his edge pivoting forward and loses his balance just enough to miss the puck before Hughes pokes it past him. Otherwise, it’s a 2-0 with Makar and McDavid the other way and likely game over for USA.
Canada cried about losing and being the better team. Yeah, whatever. American goalie Connor Hellebuyck stood on his head and was insane. Still, look at the mistakes by Canada on this fateful play. McDavid tries to hero ball a 1 vs. 3 situation, when we saw possession was outrageously important in this 3 on 3 format. We talked about Makar’s pinch that didn’t work. Neither McDavid or Makar backcheck hard enough. Plus, Nathan MacKinnon (who missed a wide open net earlier in the game!) puts in a terrible effort losing the puck and getting bumped away in his own end as Werenski plays the puck to Hughes for the game-winner.
The choice to go to 3 on 3 in overtime was bold. As a traditionalist, it was tough to watch. From a pure entertainment standpoint it’s pretty intense. But, both gold medal games for the men and women were action-packed enough where a switch from 5 on 5 wasn’t needed. It’s too bad, maybe 4 on 4 for the next Olympics is needed as a compromise.
