Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
The Notre Dame student newspaper The Observer reported this week that due to declining student interest and safety concerns interhall tackle football will be discontinued.
The SEC released its 2024 football schedule on Wednesday highlighted by Alabama at Georgia, Georgia at Texas and Oklahoma at LSU. Plus, Texas at Texas A&M.
The Big 12 announced their “Big 12 Mexico” plan that will see men’s and women’s basketball games played across the border and the hope is that they will use Monterrey’s soccer stadium for a future bowl game.
Stanford won the 2022-23 Learfield Directors’ Cup for the first time since 2018-19 when they won the award 25(!) years straight.
Texas Tech will be inducting the late Mike Leach, in addition to Kliff Kingsbury, into their Hall of Fame.
Former Florida State receiver Travis Rudolph was found not guilty of murder.
Incoming Arkansas freshman defensive tackle Dion Stutts died after an ATV accident.
Michigan running back Isaiah Gash had career-ending knee surgery.
Uniform of the Week
In the 30-ish year history of Black for Black Sake uniforms very few teams have been as suited to the trend as the Duke Blue Devils. I believe the basketball team debuted black uniforms for 2001-02 season if a quick Google search can be trusted. I know they’ve had a tortured history for the hoops program but I like most of their attempts from a visual standpoint. These black football uniforms though?
We see this a lot in modern football where an alternate helmet is created but not with any sort of wider connection to the rest of the uniform. The alternate helmets are made to be worn (and not necessarily fit in or look good) with a variety of different uniform combinations. At the very least, the striping on the helmet, shoulders, and pants all need to be matching to make this work better.
Recruiting
Former Notre Dame commit Brandon Davis-Swain (0.9242) committed to Colorado.
Former Notre Dame commit Owen Wafle (0.8925) committed to Michigan.
USC has picked up the commitment of tight end Walter Matthews (0.9463).
Safety Jaylen McClain (0.9146) committed to Ohio State.
Irish safety target Paul Mencke (0.8942) committed to Duke.
Running back Chauncey Bowens (0.9232) flipped from Florida to Georgia. The Dawgs also added defensive lineman Jordan Thomas (0.9490) this week, as well.
Boston College has a verbal from wide receiver Keondre Henry (0.9192) and he becomes their top rated recruit of their class by a country mile.
Stanford gained the commitment of edge rusher Dylan Stephenson (0.9323) and he is their top rated recruit, too.
Linebacker Gabriel Williams (0.9216) committed to Virginia Tech.
Offensive tackle Ellis Davis (0.9197) gave a verbal to Texas Tech.
In the 2025 class, running back Gideon Davidson (0.9707) committed to Clemson.
YouTube Channel
I was recently reading a thread on the amazingness of the B-2 Bomber, aka the Northrup B-2 Spirit, aka what most people called it when these came out when I was a kid, the Stealth Bomber. In military naming history this has to be a top 5 name, maybe top 3 in any classification. It’s cool sounding and it’s descriptive. I don’t have a ton of plane knowledge, certainly not miliary planes, and it’s crazy the width of this beast (172 feet!) and how many bombs it can carry. The planes are so ridiculously expensive to make and maintain, too.
The United States is currently developing a replacement for the B-2 Stealth Bomber. Sometime this year the B-21 Raider will be making its first test flight and they are scheduled to enter service in 2027. All for a cool $700 million apiece, which is really well over $1 billion when you factor in the training and maintaining. As I was reading a thread on these machines of death someone commented, “Cool, I want healthcare” and it made me chuckle darkly. A comment like that really changes your perspective very quickly. I can’t say I disagree.
Tunes
It would be a few more years until Ronnie Wood joined the Rolling Stones but the song “Stay with Me” from Faces 1971 album A Nod Is As Good As a Wink…to a Blind Horse might have sealed the deal for the guitarist to eventually replace Mick Taylor. The guitar on this track is just nasty. Filthy. Dirty. It was like Wood was trying to audition for the Rolling Stones.
Faces is one of those bands that we talk about a lot from this era that I wish could’ve stayed together longer. But, you look at what the members of this group were doing at the time, the acts they’d been in before, and it just wasn’t meant to be long lasting. Their first 2 albums weren’t that good but their last 2 were very good and showed a ton of promise. Also, check out Ronnie Wood using the famous Ampeg See-Through guitar in this music video. The body was made of plexi-glass, and very cool, but also heavy as hell and not something you’d want to play on stage for very long.
Trivia
Which year and opponent did Notre Dame last throw 4 interceptions in a single game?
The Other Football
Well, Manchester City were simply inevitable. On Saturday in Istanbul the Sky Blues won their first Champions League with a 1-0 victory over Inter Milan. In the process, they completed a historic treble becoming just the 2nd team to win the Premier League, FA Cup, and UCL in the same season.
According to sources in the media, City manager Pep Guardiola will not sign a new contract with the club and will only coach 2 more seasons in Manchester.
Uruguay won the Under-20 World Cup on Sunday night, beating Italy 1-0. Uruguay had beaten the United States 2-0 in the quarterfinals.
Get your mind right for the Gold Cup where the United States looks to defend its title. Qualification for the tournament begins this week and the U.S. faces Jamaica on June 24th at Soldier Field.
The Premier League released the 2023-24 fixtures led by Liverpool visiting Chelsea in Pochettino’s first game as manager.
TV & Movies
This week I started the new Netflix documentary Tour de France: Unchained which is next in line after the success of their Drive to Survive series that has popularized Formula 1. I haven’t watched the tennis or golf shows in this same vein yet and haven’t heard quite as good of recommendations for those, though. However, count me in on the drama of elite cycling!
My dad used to cycle when he was very young and then got back into it when he was in his 60’s. Unfortunately, major back surgery has put the squash on attempting 80-mile bike rides any time soon. This documentary is my first real exposure to the Tour de France (other than watching clips of stages back in the day on Sportscenter). The 2nd episode chronicling Fabio Jakobsen’s sprint to the finish to win the 2nd stage of the tour was inspiring and made me want to buy a bike and cycle so damn hard. The episode showing Jonas Vingegaard’s win in the 94-mile mountain 11th stage was amazing television, as well.
A Look Back
Here are a bunch of rambling thoughts on the game that won Notre Dame its last National Championship. As of this writing it’s now a depressing 12,582 days ago. With my modern sensibilities the daytime overcast (in Arizona, no less!) has always made this game look unspectacular. How long has it been since a championship deciding college football game was played this early in the day?
It’s wild not to have Rocket Ismail returning punts, but that’s what happens when you also have Ricky Watters. Tony Rice was so fast and strong as a runner. Bold decision to go for it on 4th & goal from the 1-yard line. That made it 10-0 early for the Irish. Receivers out wide in 3-point stances is never not jarring. They flash on the screen that West Virginia led the country with 8.4 yards per play (higher than any team in the country from 2019-22!!) and their offense looked like garbage for most of this game. Once it got dark towards the end of the game it finally looked like a “big” game on TV.
18S Paddock Club
Formula 1 is back this weekend visiting Montreal on Notre Dame Island for the park-infused street circuit named after former Ferrari driver Gilles Villeneuve. Last year, we had a wet qualifying bring some interesting results including Fernando Alonso in his Alpine finishing P2. This year in an Aston Martin, he will be hoping to finish that high strictly on merit in the dry weather.
This is one of my favorite tracks on the calendar. It has a decent amount of history, provides some overtaking possibilities with several straights, and gives us the tighter walls and potential for driver mistakes and flags. I hope this circuit stays on the calendar for a long, long time.
Round 8 of 22
Canadian Grand Prix
Date: June 18th
Race: 2:00 PM ET
Location: Montreal, Canada
Circuit: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Laps: 70
Tire Compounds: C3, C4, C5
Track Evolution: 5 out of 5
Asphalt Abrasion: 2 out of 5
Mercedes has already been downplaying their new upgrades working well in Canada with Toto Wolff saying the circuit doesn’t suit their car particularly well. Will Ferrari be able to get back on the top of the midfield?
Aston Martin is supposed to be bringing a large upgrade package and they will be a fascinating team to watch this weekend. Maybe even Canadian Lance Stroll can have a good weekend in front of his home crowd? Track evolution is massive on this lightly used track, so that’s something to pay attention to this weekend.
Bienvenue!
Rain is looking likely to disrupt FP2, FP3, and qualifying could be fully wet just like last year. The race could have a bit of rain, as well. Montreal is the toughest place on the calendar for the car brakes (pray for Yuki in that AlphaTauri) as the cars all bomb down straights into slow turns 1, 8, 10, and 12 with tremendous g-forces and heat coming into the wheels.
One would think Red Bull will be practically untouchable this weekend, this is maybe one of the strongest tracks of the season for their car. Last year, Verstappen had just enough traction coming out of the turn 10 hairpin to keep a charging Carlos Sainz from making the overtake in his Ferrari for the win. This year, Red Bull should have great traction and they’re even faster on the straights. That’s not a great combination for the rest of the grid, although rain could make things spicy.
Trivia Answer:
Arizona State, 2014
That Arizona State game was a nightmare
And somehow, to me at least, not even half as aggravating as what was to come with the Northwestern game that season.
Golson’s coughing up the ball like free candy + BVG defense (and a ton of injuries too, right?) = such nightmares
Those two games were in the same year… those. 2. Games. Were. In. The. Same. Year.
Oh yah, along with the florida state game with the first offensive pass interference call in like 50 years
I went back and looked and it actually went ASU then the NW the following week. THE VERY NEXT WEEK. Just a freakin circus by that point. Sad times, bad times.
I was at that Northwestern game and would have fired Kelly on the spot if I was given the power to do so. And I generally fell on the very pro-Kelly side of things.
I was ready to get rid of him too. Had some salty exchanges with fellow writers about it, in fact.
The next week after THAT was the extremely frustrating loss to Louisville, and after THAT was the utter beatdown to USC that is probably the only ND game I’ve ever turned off before halftime.
For all the props Kelly gets, 3 out of the 4 seasons following 2012 were highly disappointing.
When Clemson beat Alabama with that same play I thought I was going to have a stroke
The 2014 ASU game is quietly one of the craziest games of the decade. ND was down 34-3 before halftime, got it to 34-31 with almost 7 minutes left, and then lost by 24 points. We essentially played three entire football games within one game.
And that is why BVG is coaching in high school now.
Do I need to get my tin foil hat out of the closet to go down a HUGE BVG tirade?
That dude will forever be my Vietnam
From assistant coach at West Bloomfield HS all the way up to Defensive Coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons back down Defensive Coordinator at Gulf Shores HS. The rise and fall of BVG. Unfortunately ND caught him on the fall side.
Please do!
The trivia question frustrated me for two reasons.
1) I got it right but for got which State it was (in my head it was NC, not Arizona)
2) The announcers talked about how genius ASU was for dropping linemen into coverage and getting at least one major pick from it, while BVG did it all the time and it just led to wide open receivers.
I was at the West Virginia game. I got tickets through Sunkist so I sat with a bunch of orange distributors. They didn’t care much one way or the other.
One might say, they had no juice in the game.
I get it, but the end of interhall football makes me very sad. RIP Battle for the Chapel
In other news, the IRS may have sunk many NIL collectives that are registered as 501(c)(3) non-profits Lynne A. Camillo, deputy associate chief counsel overseeing exempt organization and employment taxes for the IRS, wrote the memo that ruled “Consequently, it is the view of this Office that many organizations that develop paid NIL opportunities for student-athletes are not tax exempt and described in section 501(c)(3) because the private benefits they provide to student-athletes are not incidental both qualitatively and quantitatively to any exempt purpose furthered by that activity,”
That blows a hole in any contributions or donations that were being written off as tax-deductible. It’s estimated almost twenty NIL collectives have 501c3 status. Some may still meet the IRS criteria. Initial speculation is that Brady Quinn’s FUND 501c3 may qualify if the majority of donations are primarily for charitable purposes.
Lots of people are calling their attorneys and accountants and some previous links to those collectives are not working or are on hold. Two hundred million dollars has been donated to NIL collectives with Tennessee’s one of the largest at twenty million. Imagine a donor who has given megabucks to reduce their taxes and suddenly finding out it’s not. Or a recruit expecting a NIL payout hearing that will need to be re-evaluated should donations be drying up.
Jason Belzer, the co-founder of Student Athlete NIL who manages several for-profit collections, has been one of the loudest critics of nonprofit collectives.
“I think it’s a bad business model,” Belzer told Sports Illustrated recently. “I’ve been long on the record to say the majority of collectives are doing it as a way that is disingenuous. They are using it to get a tax writeoff to pay student athletes. The IRS may grant it and then come back a year later and say, ‘Wait, what the f— is going on? The kid promoting the charity is driving around the Mercedes and tweeting about how great this charity is!?’”
One AD has said he is sure glad they did not go the 501c3 route on their collective and now have to clean up that mess. Another thinks the IRS could potentially do more. It could conceivably tax the previous donations made and potentially even charge the donors and the collective with penalties.
The NIL bill Tommy Tuberville and Joe Manchin are putting together is worth watching as they are listening to all parties Tuberville’s intent is clear though;
Tuberville’s Auburn teams had graduation rates around 55%. And that number was propped up by walk-ons. At one point, 100% of his white players graduated, while only 49% of his black players did. 18 players on his national championship team were allegedly in a fake sociology class. He snuck out of a restaurant in the middle of a dinner with recruits to take another coaching job. He’s not exactly the person who should be talking about the “sanctity of college sports.”
In all fairness, he should not be the person taking about a lot of things, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ha, politics aside like the 2 times a year that bozo makes the news I literally laugh out loud remembering that Tommy Tuberville is an actual United States Senator. Then it gets sad remembering that Tommy Tuberville is an actual United States Senator.
Here’s a list of the bills introduced by various members of Congress on NIl.
and that bill from Tuberville and Manchin
and of NIL collectives lobbying to influence the bills
Another tidbit – with the release of both the Big’s schedule and the NFL’s schedules with possible schedule or expansion implications, USC and UCLA will average 2,336 miles. and 2,240 miles respectively in 2024. USC will visit Maryland, Penn State, Purdue and Northwestern. UCLA will travel to Rutgers, Michigan, Iowa and Indiana.
Those average distances would put USC and UCLA behind only twelve NFL teams’ travel distance. Of those twelve NFL teams, four are traveling internationally. Subtract those and USC and UCLA in 2024 will average traveling more than twenty-four NFL teams this year. Of course, players in the NFL do not have any academic courseload nor the possibility of Big conference championships, CFP games in 2024-25 should this trend continue.
That would argue for the Big to expand to more PAC 12 teams and brings up the question of the continuation of future USC-ND games if the Big does not expand and the PAC stays intact.
so same as USC/UCLA
Nice one. With telework/online and all, I wonder if the conference would ever set the Cali teams up out east for a week or two and save some trips. Not sure which would be more cost efficient. I know some east coast NFL teams (like the Pats) will stay out west if the schedule lines up for 2 weeks in a row out there. Might as well do the same for the college kids since they’re basically all getting paid to play now anyways.
I think the travel is going to hit SC and UCLA much harder than they realize. Fans of those teams that I know have kind of hand-waved it, like, “Oh well yeah but Seattle and Boulder are far too so it’s the same,” but I don’t think it’ll be that easy.
The good news for ND is that we may be facing some very tired and beat up SC squads in LA in even years. I can’t remember the last time we really played a good, complete game at the Coliseum. Maybe 2000?
It is way harder to change time zones than just travel far. I think there’s some numbers out there that show west coast NFL teams generally do poorly when playing 1pm east coast games.
Yep, and the LA teams are going to have it rough on both ends — if they’re on FOX, they kick off at 9 a.m. Pacific. If they’re on NBC, the game ends at midnight local and they’re getting back to LA at like 5 a.m.
There’s a reason Saban absolutely refuses to travel.
The glorious return of Body Clock(TM)
Then there are their other athletic teams – basketball and the “minor” men and women’s sports. Those minor sports split scholarships. All will also make those trips instead of in the same time zone to return soon after.
Without West Coast expansion, a potential USC or UCLA recruit in football may think about that travel factor – or jump into the Portal after experiencing a season of playing four or more times two or three time zone changes a season.
The attraction to transfer to a PAC 12 team like Oregon or a Washington, etc might be great in playing only few games outside of the Pacific Time Zone, a conference championship in Vegas, and an arguably better chance to get to the Playoffs as that poor play by the end of the season from travel by USC/UCLA shows itself in losses.
A devil’s bargain.
Those were always going to be the big losers. Football and basketball have the revenue and the pull to get schedules moved around and direct flights chartered across the country, but everyone else is in trouble. Good luck getting the tennis or softball teams from Los Angeles to State College, PA in a reasonable fashion.