Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
3 News Stories
#1 We’ll start the week’s top news with Notre Dame moving quickly to replace Deland McCullough who departed for the Las Vegas Raiders. Reports have the Irish close to a deal with Penn State’s Ja’Juan (pronounced like Juwan) Seider. The soon-to-be 48-year old played quarterback at West Virginia and Florida A&M before entering the high school coaching world. Since 2010, he’s been coaching running backs at Marshall, West Virginia, Florida, with the last 7 seasons at Penn State.
On paper, this is about as an impressive poach of an assistant coach as you’ll see Notre Dame pull off. As you’d expect for someone who was entrenched at his job in Happy Valley with plenty of talent to work with, the Irish reportedly opened up the checkbook to sign Seider and bring him to South Bend.
#2 This wasn’t supposed to be how it happened. We were on track for Ryan Day to get fired! Instability and chaos at Ohio State–something they’ve basically never experienced outside very brief off-field scandals in modern history–could’ve been happening as we speak. Michigan and Ohio State in shambles, and Notre Dame could’ve been coming off a National Championship and a prime beneficiary of it all. Instead, Ohio State wins the title and the Buckeyes awarded Ryan Day with a fresh new 3-year contract extension which takes him all the way through the 2031 season.
Perhaps there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Receivers coach Brian Hartline got the offensive coordinator duties back this off-season but the more interesting piece of news is Ohio State finalizing a deal with…Matt Patricia to be their next defensive coordinator. Yes, that guy! The former failed Detroit Lions coach (13-29 record and fired during his 3rd season in Motown) ran back home to the Patriots as a special advisor for a couple years, spent 1 year with the Eagles as a senior defensive assistant, and apparently wasn’t actively coaching football in 2024. Let’s hope this is the disaster it appears to be.
#3 A new company called Pathway Sports has been formed to monetize college athlete rights and immediately moved to pool together NIL for video game likeness (where all this NIL business began not long ago in the court system). According to Yahoo Sports, the company has signed up more than 450 players from over 100 school so far. The players will receive a $1,500 upfront fee with a royalty pay structure to be determined at a later date.
They expect this to generate more than $20 million, making it the largest commercial NIL deal in history according to Yahoo. The funny thing is this still seems so wild to my brain stuck back in 1998 but 50 years from now these type of deals may seem ridiculous quaint.
Recruiting
After a long wait, those anxious Irish fans were right. Texas Tech’s GM James Blanchard will not be coming to Notre Dame and turned down the opportunity in favor of staying with the Red Raiders. A couple years ago, this might not have made much news nationally. Earlier this week, I logged on to the ESPN College Football homepage and a story on Blanchard was front and center.
We move forward.
Well, isn’t that nice. I’m sure this was a bit of a shock for Notre Dame to have to move on to their other targets. The good news is that until March 2nd we’re in a Dead Period for recruiting so there’s some time to work on the GM job and get it right. The bad news is that when the Quiet Period opens up then leading to the Contact Period in April we’ve seen an increase in commits during this timeframe as Early Signing continues to push the decision making process up earlier. Let’s hope Notre Dame is ready.
BREAKING NEWS: This morning, Adam Schefter reports Notre Dame is finalizing a deal for the Detroit Lions’ Director of Advanced Scouting Mike Martin as the new GM in South Bend.
Notre Dame is finalizing a deal to hire Detroit Lions Director of Scouting Advancement Mike Martin as the school’s new general manager, per source. Martin was part of Detroit’s initial front office staff that helped rebuild the Lions’ roster. Now Notre Dame HC Marcus Freeman is…
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 14, 2025
Martin played defensive back at Vanderbilt and has held various scouting positions with the Titans, Buccaneers, Texans, Panthers, with his last 4 seasons helping to rebuild the Lions roster.
By the way, Notre Dame remains at 7 commits for the 2026 class, 3 of whom are on the offensive line.
In other recruiting news, with the acquisition of running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider looking likely, attention is turning to Penn State running back commit Messiah Mickens (0.9490) who is one of the top players in Pennsylvania. He attends Harrisburg High School, the alma mater of Micah Parsons, so this will not be as easy flip by any means.
Uniform of the Week
Notre Dame hockey wore some spiffy blue and light blue uniforms, inspired by the city of Chicago flag, for their outdoor Wrigley Field game last month against Penn State. They’d go on to win in a shootout. Those were nice uniforms but what I really want to talk about is the program using gold pants and gloves with the standard uniforms during this hockey season. As far as I’m aware this look has not been used before in program history. Can someone confirm this?
To gold or not to gold?
This mirrors how I feel about the football uniforms, I think the white road jerseys look sharper with the gold pants. It looks a little more normal whereas with the home blue it has a more throwback dress up feel to it. The all blue the team usually wears is one of the more underrated looks in college hockey.
TV & Movies
Season 2 of Six Nations: Full Contact was released on Netflix recently and I’ve finished it up. A lot of the same players were featured again from season 1, although there were a couple new faces. This entertainment works well because there aren’t that many teams to know and you get an intimate feeling of the tournament. I have a bunch of assorted thoughts to discuss. Spoilers, of course.
They didn’t focus much on Ireland except with the aging Peter O’Mahony who looked by far the least athletic player in the tournament, and yet the Irish won the cup again anyway. I’d like to submit “Le Crunch” as one of the coolest rivalry names in sports, for the England vs. France matchup. The drama (“national heroes!”) for Italy merely winning one game, sorry test match, in the tournament was beautifully Italian. All of the players’ wives and girlfriends looked the same with the exception of the large Italian guy who got married.
Tunes
Alert! Alert! There is a Radiohead song that I like. To be more accurate, a Radiohead song after their first 2 albums. It was on the 1997 release OK Computer where they started to lose me. This has been mentioned on the Rambler a few times, I’ve tried and tried to get together with Radiohead from the late 1990’s onward and just can’t do it.
However, kudos to “No Surprises” from OK Computer:
After listening to the album again I think my issue is Thom Yorke’s vocals. He’s interesting in small doses, kind of good at what he does best, and he’s definitely a big part of their sounds. I’m also 100% positive I would like Radiohead a lot more, particularly their more ambitious work, with a more traditional rock voice working with the band.
It makes sense why this song hits for me, though. Radiohead said they were inspired by the Beach Boys and the song combines one of my favorite ingredients in a pop song–namely delicate and sweet music with surprisingly desperate and depressing lyrics. This is a perfect example of where Yorke’s vocals DO work so well. You could’ve easily used this melody to write a love song, but nope. This might be my favorite overall Radiohead song.
Counterpoint: Each of Radiohead’s albums has been better than the prior. A Moon Shaped Pool is as good as it gets.
How a rock fan cannot like There There (Yorke has called it their best song) makes little sense to me. The guitars are amazing. Most rock critics have little love for Pablo Honey (Creep) but if you’re a fan you can hear the promise of what’s coming later. The Bends, Ok Computer, and KidA are outstanding records. After that, I lose track of what’s on each album but, it’s great songs aplenty.
E….., USA – Can. Sat night. Should be a beaut . THurs. in Boston for all the “BEANS” if they meet again.
It will be interesting to see how Day does without the short term rentals of Kelly and Knowles. They will still probably be the most loaded team, but not the level as last year.
Maybe the only game he wins is Scum and he gets a 10 yr $100million contract for finally beating them.
I thought everyone should see this from Al Golden as he departs.
“People ask me all the time in this age of transactional sports, what it’s like to coach at Notre Dame?” he said. “And I’ll say this, it was the greatest 1,000 days of my career to be associated with and to wake up and coach those young men every day.
“Because there’s a place in Northern Indiana where young men go, that still think it’s important to be great in the community. They still think it’s important to be awesome in the classroom. They still think it’s important and vital to have a spiritual component in your life. And it’s all fostered by a head coach that provides a culture.
“And I was just blessed to be a part of that for just a brief moment, and for that I’m grateful.”
Golden showing a lot of class.
Absolutely. It will be interesting to see him back in the NFL.
Thanks so much for posting this, I just saw it and was thinking many folks, not just us on this site, really should read it.
If there’s a reason Notre Dame football is still worth following, it’s just what he says.
And a huge tribute to Coach Freeman. We’re still trying to square that circle, and these words of Coach Golden — who has seen a lot in his life, I went and listened to his whole acceptance speech — are one of the best testimonies to that current effort I have seen.