Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
In the News
Notre Dame has announced their new safeties coach in Chris O’Leary. The former Indiana State receiver has been in coaching since 2015 and was in a graduate assistant role for the Irish over the past 3 seasons.
In the best news of the week, and perhaps the whole year, EA Sports has announced it will be re-booting its college football video game franchise. No word yet on when it will drop (confirmed it won’t happen for 2021) but we await the news with literally the most anticipation possible in our bones.
Yahoo! Sports takes a look at the Senior Bowl winners and losers from last Saturday’s game, featuring a nice blurb on Notre Dame’s departed quarterback.
Two former college legends are heading back to their campuses as Vince Young (Texas) and Tedy Bruschi (Arizona) are now special assistants at their respective schools.
Clark Lea has hired Arizona Cardinals wide receivers coach David Raih to be Vanderbilt’s offensive coordinator. It’ll be the 40 year-old’s first job calling plays at any level.
Will Muschamp is headed to Georgia to be an analyst this season.
Aloha Stadium can’t be used anymore due to structural issues which is a bit of a problem for Hawaii football. They unveiled a plan to spend $6 million to renovate their on-campus Ching Complex to use as a home and boost seating from 3,500 to 10,000 capacity. A deafening crowd!
Clemson OC Tony Elliott was rumored for several head coaching gigs this off-season but just received a raise to $2 million per year to stay with the Tigers.
Throwback Article
Take a step into the 18S time machine and re-read the day–over 4 years ago now–that Tommy Rees came back to Notre Dame to join the Irish staff. Thanks to the NCAA allowing a 10th assistant, Rees became quarterbacks coach which led to the former signal caller becoming Notre Dame’s offensive coordinator prior to 2020.
The Portal
The most recent high-profile transfer has been tight Arik Gilbert who left LSU after one season and will join the Florida Gators. He was the top tight end in the 2020 recruiting class and No. 5 overall player nationally while catching 35 passes as a true freshman.
Former 5-star defensive back Brendan Radley-Hiles is leaving Oklahoma after 3 seasons with the Sooners. The IMG product (and Inglewood, California native) won a starting safety job as a freshman and played nickel for OU over the past 2 seasons. Worth kicking the tires to see if he wants Marcus Freeman in his life?
Also, former Michigan running back Zach Charbonnet is headed back to California and will join the UCLA Bruins. One of the top backs from the 2019 class, Charbonnet had a big freshman season with the Wolverines but fell back to just 19 carries in 5 games this past year.
Helmet Talk
Minnesota has worn a whole lot of alternate uniforms and helmets in recent years so this may not be the last time we highlight the Golden Gophers. Here’s their yellow “Goldy” offering that debuted in 2017:
Normally, I’m not a fan of the over-sized logos on helmets because it seems to be the only tool used for designers. Don’t believe me? Go and Google Image Search ‘football helmet designs’ and see how many jumbo logos you see. It’s out of control, but I do love the Goldy Gopher logo and this helmet overall.
Recruiting
National Signing Day 2021 came and went this past Wednesday (our player grades are coming soon, I promise!) and these were the top recruits to select schools:
- running back LJ Johnson (0.978) to Texas A&M
- outside linebacker Raesjon Davis (0.974) to USC
- safety Terrion Arnold (.974) to Alabama
- defensive tackle Tywone Malone (0.970) to Ole Miss
- wide receiver Destyn Hill (0.948) to Florida State
- corner Avante Dickerson (0.944) to Oregon
- linebacker Trevin Wallace (0.938) to Kentucky
Alabama clinched the No. 1 recruiting class (again) and did so by breaking the all-time 247 Composite Rankings points record. They broke Rivals’ record, too. Good times.
In the 2022 class, quarterback Nicco Marchiol (0.918) recently committed to Florida State and offensive tackle Will Campbell (0.976) committed to LSU.
House of the Week
Last week we took a trip to Bel Air, California and this week we’ll stay in the same state except move to San Francisco for today’s Architectural Digest home tour.
In common with last week, this home has a massive lot (nearly 0.4 acres) in the dense Russian Hill neighborhood in northeast San Francisco with a park-like atmosphere. The video says the house is $40.5 million but it reportedly sold in December for $27 million. Seems like a bargain!
The curvy section of Lombard Street is just a block away from this home which seems cool until you realize 2 million people visit it per year which is way less cool.
The sustainability of the property water flow feels like a project I couldn’t even begin to understand. I wasn’t feeling the yard (how many people are comfortably sitting at super long outdoor table to watch a big screen?) although that’s a nice outdoor kitchen.
The pool is worth half the price of this property, my goodness. The look through the window with the pool and bay merged together is fantastic.
As one would expect, the house and interior decoration is a little too precious for my tastes. It’s hard to warm up to a place when there’s nothing filling it out in the closets or bathrooms. I don’t think anyone will be surprised to see Jackson Pollock or Pollock-type paintings in this art gallery.
I thought there’d be more to the bat cave garage but the spinning floor is an excellent idea.
Tunes
This one takes me back to my senior year of college. I’m pretty sure this song was featured on some X Games promos in this 2004-05 range and the band The Music caught my attention. So, I ended up buying their album that year.
That decision was largely a mistake, although now that I think about it this might’ve been my final CD purchase in my life. The drummer’s 16th notes on the hit-hat always reel me on and were a big reason to explore the rest of this album, only to find out, that this dude uses that hi-hat style on pretty much every song. The singer also looks like the son of Geddy Lee.
Ugly Apparel
I had to do a double take on this week’s featured ugly apparel. This one comes directly from our friends at Under Armour and can be found on the Hammes Bookstore site.
What is this?
Cut the sash at the seam by the armpit and you have a fine shirt. But, I don’t understand the wrap-around down the left sleeve. Why? Who knows, I almost wish to see both sleeves part of the wrapping.
On This Day in Sports
In 1989, Kareem Abdul-Jabar became the first NBA player to score 38,000 points. He’d score 387 more points in his career finishing his 20-year run in the league as the top scorer in NBA history. Since he shows no signs of slowing down, LeBron James is averaging 25 per night this year and at this pace would pass Abdul-Jabar for the all-time record likely sometime in the first month of the 2022-23 season as a 38 year-old.
Book Nook
Who among us has read War and Peace? I tackled it somewhere in the 2009 range and tried banging out 20 to 30 pages a day. I think it took me about 2.5 months with a handful of days skipped thrown in there. My recollections are as follows:
I had a small paperback edition that was about 8 inches thick. It took sneaky finger strength to keep the book open for hours and hours.
Last week, I talked about quitting All the King’s Men and I felt that urge with War and Peace too. But, I soldiered on and actually ended up enjoying most of it.
I watched the 1956 movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda after reading the book. I couldn’t get into it because watching it is so confusing dealing with all the various families in a way that’s easier to digest with a book.
Hot Take
Local media and beat writers should absolutely be allowed to view 3 or 4 spring practices this year. Of course, I understand the desire to keep things 100% safe from outside media, but at the same time, there’s real progress being made with vaccines and I don’t see why Notre Dame can’t accommodate 15 to 20 socially distanced reporters to view some practices when they allowed 10,000 fans into football games this past fall when the pandemic was far worse.
It’s even more puzzling if they move ahead with no media when they have the option of practice inside Notre Dame Stadium or inside the brand new indoor practice field. Both options offer more than enough space to safely bring in a small amount of media.
Trivia
Which year and opponent did DeShone Kizer set the Notre Dame school record for passing yards in a single game in an Irish victory?
As joyous as the EA news was, there’s several reasons for trepidation:
–they’re going to have to build the game on a new generation of consoles, do they get lazy and port over the Madden engine that gets so much criticism? This is EA we’re talking about and effort for anything other than microtransactions and online play in the last 5-8 years (since the time NCAA football died, coincidentally enough)…Quality has been a huge issue and what made NCAA so great was the differences to Madden. And now Madden has only gone downhill, so how are they going to make the game?
–Do they also successfully recreate recruiting/dynasty modes? Should be a slam dunk, but again from above, I have real fears and doubts about how EA does this. Ari Wasserman in The Athletic had some awesome ideas about recruiting — like if you’re Colorado State or Eastern Michigan you should have way less time/points to recruit than Alabama or LSU and make it more of a challenge that you can build a program up. That would be great if they get so in depth.
I’m excited but they have a decade of hopes and dreams and expectations to fulfill, so my hopes aren’t up. Ideally the NIL stuff is hashed out and we get a release in July 2022, I wonder if they’ll kick it down a year further if necessary if they can’t license the actual players. I know the release said they plan on creating a game without the real likenesses of the players, but I don’t believe that’s the real strategy. Surely for them it would be much better if NIL are able to be licensed and they include that in the game.
All valid points. I remain hopeful, though.
1) I think any game is going to feel amazing for the first couple years. I’m slightly less concerned about the engine than most but I can definitely see it being a much larger problem after the novelty of the game being back wears off a few years down the road.
2) I have to imagine since the engine and gameplay was different than Madden in the past that they will keep it that way for this re-boot. EA has plenty of money and has a team that’s been dying to bring this game back. I’d be surprised if they skimped on this.
3) My guess is dynasty mode will be roughly similar to how it was in previous versions, give or take. Knowing EA they will trot out a couple “new” features and then go into their cycle of making larger dynasty tweaks every 2 years.
4) I agree about the NIL stuff, too. I have to imagine they are thinking that’s hashed out over the next 18 months and they target an August/September 2023 release.
5) The NIL stuff looming over the game also brings up another fear…will they pimp a college football Ultimate Team mode? I stay the hell away from it with FIFA so I’m not an expert on how it would work but it would seem to be a little trickier to pull off with college players? I’m not even sure. Either way, this is my biggest fear that like other EA games dynasty mode takes a rather substantial back seat to UT mode.
6) BUT…college football is the one video game where generations of fans are attached to dynasty mode in a way that has never been rivaled by other games. FIFA and Madden, kind of were in that ballpark once upon a time but one-on-one games between friends also drove a ton of those games’ popularity. It’s my experience that college football was intensely driven by dynasty mode, so I do wonder if they just keep this as part of the DNA of the game. I’m sure there will be a huge pull for the under-20 crowd for UT and microtransactions but at the same time everyone 20 years or older are clamoring for dynasty mode. The backlash would be enormous if UT dominated, I think.
Good points. Honestly, I don’t follow enough to know if the backlash is severe or just people complaining, but it seems EA does get a lot of complaints on especially Madden. But it hasn’t had them change their ways.
Def think you’re right about the uniqueness of college football, which might be a saving grace. But I also see a big problem. We haven’t had NCAA for probably a decade by the time it comes out. The Ultimate Team will be made up of guys like Joe Burrow, Chase Young, Quenton Nelson, Patrick Mahomes, Trevor Lawrence, etc who never appeared in NCAA. Thus, it kind of becomes more like Madden in NCAA clothes, which I think everyone would agree is the worst case scenario.
Of course, people who don’t care about UT can ignore those modes, but the problem is, especially for the NHL game that’s all EA cares about. The hockey franchise mode has been more or less the exact same for 5+ years. The bulk of the attention and focus of the developer in all sports is on UT. That doesn’t give me a good sense of the future NCAA’s but we shall see.
“we await the news with literally the most anticipation possible in our bones.” Heh, bones.
I was pretty sure I knew the trivia answer but looked it up to make sure.
Got itttttt.
Big first half too, 14 of 21 for 356 yards.
I’m surprised there isn’t more discussion on the new safeties coach? Is it just because he’s fairly new to coaching (not coaching itself, but to a formal role that will include both coaching and recruiting)?
I agree on the large helmet logos — I’m not a big fan but this one is okay.
I’m a little sad that ND was not in at all on any of those recent highly rated signees — Diggs was a good addition, but we want more 4 and 5 stars.
That indeed is an ugly shirt.
War and Peace was OK. But for my money Dostoyevsky is far superior to Tolstoy.
With FD you actually care what happens and they are kind of page turners (admittedly sometimes just turning the page to end the 50 page detour to a philosophical discussion). But come on. FD has excitement, murder, intrigue. LT is better at exposing readers to the plight of the Russian peasant, but outside of that he’s like a long winded Jane Austen with a few action scenes thrown in.
For the record, I’ve only read Brothers K, C&P, Anna Karenina, and W&P. Maybe their other novels change things. But that’s 1,000+ pages of each, which I feel is enough data to draw statistically significant conclusions.
I would agree. Crime & Punishment is probably my favorite Russian novel just edging out The Master and the Margarita.
M&M is so good! M&M is such a different novel than FD and LT, so I seldom even think of it as a Russian novel.
I probably liked it more than C&P just because it was so wonky. I love novels that incorporate a little bit of the supernatural without making it feel that it’s a fantasy/sci-fi novel. Although you could maybe argue this one fits into that genre. Of course the whole soviet thing sort of precludes “fantasy genre” from its literature.
Is there an official 18S goodreads account or book club that I can follow?
We need to start one??
Currently on my docket:
*Ron Chernow’s bio on Grant (200 pages to go, it’s a slog at times)
*Steve Jobs
*Arctic Dreams
*Inverted Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics
I read almost 0 non-fiction. I got into reading post college (was a math major and hated reading until my fried convinced me to read Harry Potter) so I’m still working to catch up on many of the classics. I find them to largely be awesome (outside of Jane Austen, my novel nemesis), but understand why people HATED reading all these giant books in HS (I somehow managed to skip them entirely).
I also find the writing in non-fiction just isn’t as engaging. I think there’s a reason that most books people read more than 20 years later are all fiction, and a few memoirs, usually by incredible authors. Ya know, like Eat Pray Love.
On my up next I’ve got Vanity Fair, The Portrait of a Lady, a couple Morrison novels, the second half of The Queen’s Thief series (a literarily prestigious YA series), and The Mothers by Brit Bennett. A truly random set of Christmas books. Arctic Dreams sounds pretty awesome though, might have to get myself a copy and move it up the list.
I’m fairly non-fiction heavy, myself. I’m going to try and sprinkle in more fiction along the way.
The Arctic Dreams author was a ND alum and he just passed away. I figured it’s time to read it. I’m hoping it’s very similar to Bill Bryson’s books, although with less humor I’m guessing. Bryson is one of my favorite writers ever.
Yeah, he is pretty good. Does a great job of creating an interesting story. I wouldn’t have even thought of him as non-fiction, even though it seems so obvious now. You’ve got me questioning my whole position on it. Maybe I’m just grouping all of the non-fiction that I like into fiction as like a confirmation bias.
Holy shit, someone else listened to The Music!
There’s at least two of us.
Breakin is a fucking banger.
I had the same thought about Ridley-Hiles. That would be a significant pickup for a definite weakness we have.
Kick those tires! Amen. Our grad schools ought to be attractive.