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

Top News

Coach Orgeron stopped by Notre Dame practice this week. He said this team would win a National Championship and who are we to dispute this knowledge?

Tragic news struck recently as former Ohio State quarterback Dwayne Haskins was killed while crossing the highway after his car broke down in Florida.

UCF head coach Gus Malzahn was in a car accident recently but came away uninjured.

Pitt and West Virginia signed an extension to their “Backyard Brawl” rivalry. They will play each of the next 4 seasons as well as annually from 2029-31.

A former Oregon offensive lineman who was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis following controversial strength and conditioning workouts under the Willie Taggart regime is suing the NCAA for $100 million and the university for $25.5 million.

Uniform of the Week

A free years worth of 18 Stripes premium membership is available to anyone who can tell me which school this picture shows below:

If you guessed Georgia Southern you’re either lucky, cheated, or really know your uniforms. I was thinking about non-blue blood programs who have very basic uniforms and came across this home look from the Eagles. I personally like the simplicity and blue is my favorite color so it works for me. But if you’re a young program pretty much unknown to 95% of college football fans it surprises me that Georgia Southern doesn’t advertise something more distinctive for themselves.

Recruiting

2022 5-star offensive lineman Josh Conerly (0.9918) committed to Oregon over USC, LOL. Now, all of the top 100 players from last cycle are committed and signed to their schools.

Quarterback Christopher Vizzina (0.9773) committed to Clemson.

Ohio State picked up running back Mark Fletcher (0.9352) out of Florida.

One of the nation’s top corners Bravion Rogers (0.9746) committed to Texas A&M. The Aggies also picked up another corner in Jayvon Thomas (0.9556).

More corners are gone as Aaron Williams (0.9442) committed to Louisville from California.

Auburn picked up a verbal from safety Terrance Love (0.9264) recently.

LSU got a verbal from safety Michael Daugherty (0.9189).

Quarterback J.T. Daniels has found his third home, choosing West Virginia this week.

Former top 10 recruit from the 2019 class offensive lineman Amarius Mims is leaving Georgia. He’d yet to make a big impact for the Dawgs.

Former 5-star running back Cameron Wheaton has transferred to SMU from Alabama.

The Tide picked up a key transfer from Vanderbilt in offensive lineman Tyler Steen.

Former top 100 defensive end Demeioun Robinson from 2021 has picked Penn State as his transfer destination after leaving Maryland.

Louisville wide receiver Tyler Harrell led the Cardinals with 6 touchdowns last year and is transferring.

Quarterback Doug Brumfield is leaving UNLV so the Irish won’t be seeing him in the fall. Tennessee transfer Harrison Bailey is the frontrunner going into the summer.

YouTube Channel

Am I a bad person if I think the story of the Endurance while harrowing and legendary is also kind of funny? Just the sheer scenes of this crew of dudes fighting through the barring wasteland of coldness in Antarctica only to get stuck, with fruitless attempts to dislodge it, and finally watch their ship slowly get crushed by ice and sink. Did you know they had sled dogs with them and the litters that we born on the journey had to be killed once they found out they were stuck? That’s a lot less funny.

They recently found the ship! Nearly 10,000 feet below the surface way, way down there in Antarctica. That’s an impressive feat because the ship was drifting when it was packed in the ice before it finally went under which has made so difficult to find for decades. It’s an incredible tale of survival that all of these people overcame some of the most obscene cold, ice, and wind for such a long time. But also, they were able to find it recently due to global warming, so maybe that’s not too awesome for us.

Tunes

I have never been a huge fan of the metal/heavy rock bands throughout my life. I like to dabble occasionally if a band has a really good song or two but eventually I’ll politely step away. At some point in my junior year of high school I made a comment about a Godsmack song on the radio and a friend of my girlfriend said she’d give me their CD because it reminded her of her ex-boyfriend. I felt weird, but wasn’t about to turn down a free CD. Folks, this debut album from Godsmack was crazy good.

I recently went back and listened to the album. Yup, it’s still a masterpiece in its genre. Godsmack had a bunch of hit singles from this debut including “Whatever”, “Keep Away”, and “Voodoo” plus today’s featured tune “Bad Religion.” In our infinite coolness, this was one of the songs our hockey team used to pump through the PA system during warmups.

Trivia

Jack Coan threw a touchdown in every game of 2021, except one. Which game did he get shutout?

The Other Football

The Champions League semifinals are all set. Late goals saw Real Madrid hold on against Chelsea 5-4 while Villarreal stunned Bayern Munich 2-1. In the other games, Man City outlasted Atletico 1-0 and Liverpool cruised past Benfica 6-4. In the semi’s Real Madrid will face Man City and Liverpool gets Villarreal. The biggest storyline now is Man City never having won the Champions League with a possible date against English rival Liverpool in the championship game.

Both of the second leg games in the CONCACAF Champions League were draws which means Pumas and Seattle Sounders will face off for the championship beginning with their own 2-leg match later this month.

The Europa League semifinals are in place, too. Leipzig defeated Atalanta, Frankfurt upset Barcelona, West Ham easily beat Lyon, and Rangers got past Braga. We’ll see Leipzig vs. Rangers and Frankfurt vs. West Ham in a couple weeks.

Let us not forget about the first year of the majestic Europa Conference League! Roma will face Leicester City and Feyenoord will play Marseille starting on April 28th.

Streaming

I knocked Squid Game out over a few nights after my kids went to bed back in the doldrums of winter. More on this later. I really enjoyed most of the series, especially the first half to two-thirds of the episodes. The script is obviously interesting and out there in its audacity while the set pieces are super memorable. Later in the series I found it to be too much of a slog and almost as if they weren’t sure what the ending was supposed to be or if the story was going to be sewn up. It’s confirmed they are coming back for another season, which makes sense I suppose. I didn’t enjoy the ending and probably won’t watch the new episodes.

Anyway, my oldest daughter watches a lot of YouTube videos which I’m sure is something many parents are dealing with these days. Within days of finishing Squid Game she is watching all of these parody videos and telling me we have to play “Red Light, Green Light.” A lot of the videos displayed way too much violence and that led us to finally enabling a ton of parental controls. But, she didn’t really pick up on the violence part (at least not to the murderous level in the show) but still wanting to color the famous doll from the show and it’s all she talked about for a couple weeks. Parenting is weird.

A Look Back

Six straight losses to Boston College. It’s among the grossest and most unforgivable periods in Notre Dame football history. The 2009 team said, no more! I love how the first play in this highlight is Armando Allen slipping untouched on that grass field. The good old days. I totally forgot about that called-back botched field goal turned into a touchdown–the holder was so pumped, poor guy.

This Irish offense was completing 8 yard pass after 8 yard pass with Golden Tate seemingly catching nearly all of them. It’s really noticeable in this game which is why, despite pretty good numbers, this passing game and offense overall could be a major slog. Also, notice how important coaching can be with the struggles of Harrison Smith in this game. He’s still going on a 9-figure NFL career.

18S Paddock Club

We saw a wild qualifying in Melbourne featuring several crashes (including a doozy between Lance Stroll and Nicholas Latifi during out laps no less, plus a painful one by Fernando Alonso after a purple sector 2 in Q3) as Charles Leclerc secured his 2nd pole of the year rather comfortably over Max Verstappen. Prior to Saturday, the FIA removed the 4th new DRS zone and with Ferrari’s strength in the slower 3rd sector it led to a clean lap from Leclerc being more than enough to grab the top of the grid.

Thanks to their crash in Q1, Lance Stroll was set to begin from the bottom of the grid due to a 3-place penalty but officials were unable to extract the necessary amount of fuel from Alex Albon’s car, so he was disqualified and started 20th.

Australia GIF recap. 

Leclerc’s strength in qualifying more than carried over to a superb race pace as he jumped out to a sizable lead after the first corner only to see his teammate Carlos Sainz (having a tough week after qualifying 9th) spin and get beached on the 2nd lap. Again, Leclerc drove away from Verstappen on the re-start. Perez in the Red Bull would pass Hamilton’s Mercedes right before Vettel’s Aston Martin crashed in sector 1 triggering our 2nd Safety Car of the day on lap 23. Hamilton’s teammate Russell was the beneficiary and got in a quick pit stop to move up to 3rd place.

Perez would chase down and pass Russell, although disaster struck again for Red Bull as Verstappen retired his car on lap 39 with fuel issues yet again. Stroll would pit twice under the 1st early Safety Car and nearly snatched some points but was passed late by faster cars. Albon charged all the way from 20th to finish 10th after racing all but the last lap on his original hard tires.

It was a very positive weekend for Mercedes and McLaren who both improved upon their speed and race pace, although both teams have remained pretty humble that they’re well off the top. Thanks to the retirements, Mercedes came away with more points (Russell’s 1st podium with the Silver Arrows) than Ferrari and McLaren’s 5th (Norris) and 6th (Ricciardo) place finishes brought the same points as Red Bull with Perez in 2nd place.

Leclerc’s 2nd victory of the season has to make him feel awfully good about taking an early stranglehold on the championship. He’s now 46 points ahead of his perceived main rival Verstappen, and maybe more important in the short-term given his poor luck in 2021, establishes himself as Ferrari’s unquestioned No. 1 driver.

Fantasy Update: Team 46&2 led the way in Australia with 210 points, congrats!

Formula 1 is off this weekend and we’ll have a preview of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola next Friday.

Trivia Answer:

Cincinnati.