Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
News broke on Tuesday that backup Irish quarterback Tyler Buchner is in the transfer portal. According to reports, Buchner has visits lined up to Alabama and Auburn this week.
Notre Dame rising junior linebacker Prince Kollie is leaving the program. The former high school Butkus Award winner made 33 tackles and 1.5 sacks with 1 important punt block in his Irish career.
Georgia defensive lineman Bear Alexander has transferred to USC. The Trojans also picked up Wyoming offensive tackle Emmanuel Pregnon this week. Those are the 12th and 54th best transfers respectively that were in the portal this off-season according to 247.
Michigan and Texas have signed a home-and-home series for 2024/2027 with the Horns coming to Ann Arbor next year.
The Big Ten on NBC kicks off this season with Penn State vs. West Virginia likely slotted into the primetime game on the opening Saturday of the season.
The Central Michigan vs. Michigan State season opener has been moved up to Friday, September 1st.
The SEC really doesn’t want field storming anymore and is considering harsher punishments for schools, including heavily increasing fines or taking away home field advantage during the next meeting of the teams involved.
The Tennessee Titans are getting a new $2.1 billion stadium and it is being discussed as a potential College Football Playoff destination.
Uniform of the Week
Oh, yes. Oh, yes! Iowa State won the past week in college football uniform news as they unveiled Jack Trice Legacy uniforms. These are throwbacks to 1923. In case you didn’t know the history with Trice, he was the first black football player at Iowa State and died after playing in only his second game after being stomped on by Minnesota players, among other illegal plays. He tragically died 2 days later after doctors essentially misdiagnosed his injuries.
As the flyer states, Iowa State used to be called simply “Ames” which I may suggest would be a good informal nickname to start calling the school for the rest of the country. I don’t love the white numbers on top of the gray (Trice-era ISU didn’t wear numbers back then) but everything else about this uniform is super sharp, including the pants. Iowa State also wore Trice throwbacks back in 2013 and they were very similar, except it was all red/mustard with a red helmet. This look is far superior.
Recruiting
Defensive Lineman Hevin Brown-Shuler (0.9238) committed to Clemson.
Safety Dashawn McBryde (0.9113) committed to LSU. The Tigers also added tight end Trey’Dez Green (0.9679), too.
One of the nation’s top tight ends Brady Prieskorn (0.9687) committed to Michigan. The Wolverines also added defensive lineman Jerod Smith (0.9105), as well.
Linebacker Cayden Jones (0.9350) picked Alabama last week.
Arkansas picked up defensive lineman Charleston Collins (0.9202).
Safety Jaydan Hardy (0.9316) committed to Oklahoma.
YouTube Channel
I love me a good old fashioned archeology dig that re-writes what we know about history. So it happened with the Gobekli Tepe site in modern-day southern Turkey about an hour north of the Syrian border. This place was ‘found’ in 1963 but a real excavation didn’t begin until 1994. They originally carbon-dated things from items that were later brought to the site but eventually discovered the main structures date back to as far as 9500 BCE. It pre-dates agriculture and the domestication of animals!
That is outrageously old. It’s funny how reading up on the site, they saw farmers (this does not look like a particularly fertile place to be farming anymore!) had been kicking around the area for years moving stones here and there if they were in their way. Not knowing it’s remnants of the oldest known megalith on earth.
Tunes
Today’s song “Hallucinogenics” is from an American artist named Matt Maeson. I don’t know much about him but apparently he had an alternative rock Billboard no. 1 single “Cringe” in early 2019 that I listened to and had never heard before (I found it very forgettable). Today’s featured song was on heavy radio rotation not that long ago and it even crossed over to my local pop station. For several months it was on all the damn time.
I’ve found that I don’t like when artists, who I’m not a big fan of, use the trope of switching the loudness of the song, although just about everyone does it–especially in a chorus. Check out the 1:05 mark in this video. That’s really harsh, right? The beginning of the song has this really sweet and tasteful acoustic guitar that honestly would’ve been enough to make a great song. Then it’s like, “BAM ELECTRONIC OVERSATURATED SNARE DRUM NON STOPPPPPPP.”
Trivia
Michael Mayer is a 1st round hopeful tonight in the NFL Draft, can you name the previous 10 picks to go in the 1st round from Notre Dame?
The Other Football
Matt Crocker is the new sporting director for the U.S. soccer federation and is leaving his role as director of football operations at Southampton.
Manchester City and Arsenal met on Wednesday night in a game that will maybe determine the league title. City took it comfortably 4-1 and now sit just 2 points back of Arsenal with 2 games in hand. Out of their remaining 7 games, City do not play a team higher than 8th in the current EPL table.
Chelsea suffered their 5th straight loss under Frank Lampard and technically are not safe from relegation. Just 39 points from 32 games for a club as wealthy as Chelsea is mind blowing. There are reports that Mauricio Pochettino will be signing a contract as manager next week. Poch no, don’t do it!
Tottenham lost 6-1 at Newcastle over the weekend, fired interim manager Cristian Stellini, while the players decided to pay for refunds to the visiting Spurs fans in attendance. It’s going great!
Barcelona have secured an eye-watering $1.5 billion Euros to renovate Camp Nou.
Streaming
My middle kid is banging out episodes of Henry Danger at an alarming rate. Over the past several months I’m pretty sure she’s watched the 5 seasons 3 times over already. The show is called Henry Danger, yet the boy in the show, Henry Hart, is called Kid Danger. It bugs me. There was also a spin-off series called Danger Force which further complicates matters. Anyway, Henry Danger aired from 2014 until 2020 and all things considered it’s a pretty fun watch with younger kids.
One of the funny parts to the series is how Captain Man always tries to flirt with Henry’s mom and that she’s oblivious to the approaches even though it bugs Henry. The actress, Kelly Sullivan, isn’t in the show a ton, though. But she’s a big reason for me to watch. She was also featured on The Young and the Restless but like many characters on that soap opera I think she was killed off the show.
A Look Back
It seemed like there was a lot of respect for the Manning name throughout the recruiting process of Arch Manning. But, you didn’t have to look very far to see people who were critical of him being the Composite no. 1 overall player in the 2023 class and tied for the 18th best recruit in the 247 Sports all-time rankings. I’ve read some scouting reports that thought Arch probably would’ve been outside the top 10 of the quarterbacks in the 2023 class if he had a different last name. After the Texas spring game a couple weekends ago, some doubt is starting to creep in for the 5-star quarterback’s hype.
Manning finished 5 of 13 for 30 yards in the game while looking extremely average at best. Many have noted that the arm talent just does not seem to be there for someone who was this highly rated. It’s early of course, but it’s not only that Manning is sitting behind starter Quinn Ewers, but also that redshirt freshman Maalik Murphy looked really good in the spring game (9 of 13 for 165 yards) and has quite a bit of arm and athletic talent. I think there’s a 30% chance Manning finishes his career at Texas, maybe even lower.
18S Paddock Club
Finally after a godforsaken long break Formula 1 returns to action this weekend picking things up on the western shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan. Is it a European race? Is it an Asian race? No one really knows or cares, we’re just here for the 90-degree turns, street track drama, and that super long straight for the cars to bomb down.
As mentioned last week, this could be the second to last race ever in Azerbaijan if F1 doesn’t sign a contract extension. But, the government currently pays $55 million per year to host the race (tied for the highest in the sport) so perhaps there is plenty of incentive to go back in the future, even though the race doesn’t make money (it has some of the lowest attendance figures in the sport and isn’t set up well for fans) and no one in the sports really likes making this trek to a remote part of the world.
Round 4 of 23
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Date: April 30th
Race: 7:00 AM ET
TV: ESPN/F1TV
Location: Baku, Azerbaijan
Circuit: Baku City Circuit
Laps: 51
Tire Compounds: C3, C4, C5
Track Evolution: 5 out of 5
Asphalt Abrasion: 1 out of 5
The highlight of this weekend is the debut of new *revised* Sprint weekend rules. For the previous 2 seasons, Friday’s sprint weekends started with free practice 1 followed by qualifying which set the grid for the sprint race. On Saturday, cars were under parc ferme for free practice 2 followed up by the sprint race, the results of which set the grid for the Sunday grand prix. A lot of people didn’t like it.
This weekend, F1 will be ditching the free practice 2 on Saturday morning (rather meaningless with cars in parc ferme and unable to work on setups) and adding another qualifying session.
The Baku castle section is always a highlight.
After free practice on Friday, the teams will go through a full qualifying session to set the grid for Sunday’s grand prix. On Saturday, the teams will go through another shortened qualifying session (now called a “Sprint Shootout”) to set the grid for the sprint and then commence the sprint race later that day.
Essentially, Saturday is its own contained Sprint Day™ now.
With one practice session on Friday this could be a weekend where things get really spicy in qualifying and a bunch of drivers are not comfortable on the track–in the tight street circuit of Baku, no less.
Trivia Answer:
S Kyle Hamilton
DT Jerry Tillery
OG Quenton Nelson
OT Mike McGlinchey
OT Ronnie Stanley
WR Will Fuller
OG Zack Martin
TE Tyler Eifert
WR Michael Floyd
S Harrison Smith
Moments after publishing, Tyler Buncher has committed to Alabama:
https://twitter.com/tylerbuchner/status/1651607562322673665?t=_CIN_keeV8wiXirvBr7Zxg&s=19
Unreal, what a world.
Losing Buchner, Kollie, and Styles all off the two deep in a week is sobering. Buchner will probably be a backup in Alabama. Styles will probably be a backup at tOSU. Really annoying to have our depth blow up to other contenders benefit.
Respectfully, I don’t think any of this is correct. Bama has issues at QB and I doubt Buchner would transfer to be the backup. Our depth has not been blown up by any stretch of the imagination, and I think it’s very much an open question whether Bama is going to benefit from this.
We’ll see. Buchner is out of the frying pan as having distance between himself and the number three guy at Notre Dame and into the fire being in a dogfight against a super hyped five star at Alabama plus Alabama’s number two from last year.
Maybe he wins the job, but I think his odds of taking a meaningful number of snaps were higher as the clear number two at ND than as the underdog to be the starter and one of four competing behind Simpson for the backup roll.
Our backup QB was a guy who put up 330 yards and 5 TDs in a bowl game and is now a guy who has thrown 0 college passes.
At WR, we now have a converted RB, 3 freshmen, and Matt Salerno who will be filling out our 2-deep.
I agree with gambit, that’s a massive hit to our depth.
I mean, Buchner also has more pick sixes than starts.
It is a hit to our depth. Massive is an overstatement.
I don’t love having to rely on a true sophomore and freshman as back ups but it’s not like Buchner is bringing a ton of experience anyway. Backups rarely do
He’s played in 13 games and has over 1,400 career yards. I would say that’s quite a bit of experience for a backup. I would feel a million times better about him coming in for a quarter in a meaningful game if Hartman gets hurt than Angeli (or Minchey) coming in.
“played in 13 games” is doing some real leg work when you realize it’s 118 passes. Yeah that’s pretty good for a back up, I made the point that he has more experience than a SO and FR would, but he’s also not really a multi year starter other than in the loosest sense.
118 passes is more than the top 2 QBs on the OSU depth chart and the top 2 non-Buchner QBs on the Bama depth chart. It’s a significant amount of experience. I don’t think anybody was claiming he was a multi-year starter.
Ohio State and Bama had two QBs who might go #1 and #2 in the NFL draft tonight, I wouldn’t expect their back ups to have much playing time.
Nature of the beast these days, I suppose. Juniors that aren’t going to play probably aren’t going to stay if they have alternatives.
To that, Alabama has had 17 players enter the portal themselves (almost all of whom went to P5 schools, and big ones at that), perhaps to start but that’s a lot of their own depth out the door too. So much churn these days.
Sucks though for Notre Dame that it more or less only goes one way (losing players) and rare to replace or add via the portal.
I mean, we just got what will probably be our best QB in decades via the portal.
There’s that, which is the only reason Buchner was lost as well. Counts for something. ND can thrive with the grad transfer market leading to valuable additions, but I’d think compared to the standard football factory the portal is (or will) hurt more than help.
Most big schools, they get 15+ guys going out the door and it’s barely noticed because they can just backfill accordingly right back up to the limit. As we know, not quite the case here.
We’ll see how it goes, but at this rate it’s possible/probable that yet again ND will be running light of 85 by August, as is the annual tradition. Would be a lot better if there Buchner/Styles/Kollie types around for depth and come in at 85, despite it not being make or break for the individuals.
We’ll see. Trying to get up to 85 was more of an early 2010s thing. IIRC we haven’t had that problem in a while.
All in all, I don’t think Buchner/Styles/Kollie leaving will have much impact on this team as a whole.
What I was thinking is that ND (as currently operating) is never going to get a Bear Alexander transfer-in to use an example above. But they sure as hell lose guys like that with multiple years left that could eventually be starting-caliber players. That’s the tough part of the portal equation.
It’d be a lot better if they could add, say a rising junior DT and S that were former top-100 prospects that have had some flashes but lacked opportunity and playing time at their first program. (ie: what they lost at QB, LB and WR/CB).
“All in all” you’re right that the 3 cases of what was lost shouldn’t matter too much, but in the bigger picture for team-building, it’s a lesser group and disadvantage.
I do think they run light regularly, ala giving scholarships to Salerno and Sherwood. Prob would be ideal to keep them in the walk on category and add scholarship athletes instead.
Yea not being able to take transfers of that quality that have more than 1 year of eligibility makes it much harder to have an even roster.
Maybe we’ll get lucky that we can churn through a bunch of grad transfers to fill holes but that’s a lot more limited every year.
We are definitely playing on an uneven playing field where the undergrad transfers really only go one way.
others have said it before but it absolutely bites that we got our ace recruiter HC right as mid-career transfers became as big of a deal as HS classes
Agreed
“Decades” is a bit much IMO – he’s not better than Quinn/Clausen. But he is better than anybody BK had, and getting him and losing Buchner is a trade you make 100 times out of 100.
buddy wait until you find out how long ago 2005 was
Ha, I suppose I view “decades” as 20+ years, whereas “over a decade” is 10-19 years ago, but perhaps that is too pedantic.
And Diggs! This is what’s weird to me – these guys were all going to get significant playing time. If you believe the coach speak, Buchner was still competing to start. Hate to lose players who were actually going to play for us
Listen if Buchner works really hard this offseason I feel confident he can finish next year with more career starts than pick-sixes.
There’s just so much to this. The story at ND starts with Tommy Rees/BK mis-evaluating Buchner vis-a-vis JJ McCarthy, and ends with Tommy recruiting a grad transfer QB over Buchner… and then taking him at Bama! Absolutely wild.
I think I’m gonna turn on Finebaum today.
I think Tommy expected Hartman to follow him to Bama and told Saban that would happen.
Whoopsie.
Finebaum has gotten super lame since going corporate. It’s just another ESPN show. I wanted to hear angry Bama fans for 3 straight hours!
Update: second hour of the show was what I was looking for. IT’S OVER FOR SABAN PAWL
Would be kind of cool if Rees actually did bring about the downfall of Saban. Maybe this is all part of a long con to bring ND back by taking down the king.
Best of luck to Tyler! Hope your best days are ahead of you.
Bama needs to hire our OC and our second string QB to compete with an ex-Irish HC’s team in their division.
HA! SEC, who’s your Daddy?
Some way this Portal process needs a compensation mechanism (outside of grad transfers) if college football has become semi-pro. Contracts, formerly known as scholarships. Trades. A piece of a transfer’s NIL.
Or maybe we see Buchner transfer to USC next year, playing in the Biggie.
I hope our B1G friends have a copy of the Necronomicon to seal Tom Hammond if he appears during NBC broadcasts.
Isiah Canion just committed, so that’s cool.
https://twitter.com/CanionIsiah/status/1651617064434515968?t=ZC5HOuuFKkyCf-yGbGzHuQ&s=19
Makes the Styles thing less painful. If you’re Styles and looking at this year’s freshmen receiving class, and the odds that Cam Williams may be eating your lunch as a freshman in 2024, the transfer makes a lot sense.
ETA: also Morrison, Mickey, and the 2023 freshmen DB class
Weekly other other football MLS update: it’s staying crowded at the top. Only two points separate the top six teams, with the Revolution and Cincinnati at 20 out east, Seattle and St. Louis at 19 out west, and LAFC and Atlanta right behind at 18.
To even out this glut at the top, somebody has to suck. And I will happily report it’s St. Louis’ cross-state
rivallittle brother Sporting Kansas City, who have somehow managed only 3 points in 9 matches.The Fighting Toasted Ravs of STL Provel were outplayed on the road against Colorado and still eked out a draw thanks to otherwordly play in goal by Roman Burki (the highlights are worth a look). They bounced back to destroy Omaha 5-1 in the US Open Cup, and host struggling Portland this week as they look to get back on top of the table.
Logan Diggs now in the portal, too.
https://twitter.com/logandiggs3/status/1651713807557746688
Cool, cool, cool.
Not happy about this but it’s felt like he’s been one foot out since he committed
Can we borrow from F1 and call this the silly season?
Yes!
Wtf is going on….seriously?
I’ll be the “get off my lawn guy” — I hate the path college football is on.
Wait til you hear what’s going on at Colorado.
I know….I should’ve prefaced my comment was not limited to Notre Dame. College football is in trouble.
Colorado transfers out have exceeded fifty. Three players who transferred in after Prime was hired in December have recently transferred out, possibly to beat the end of the silliness April 30.
Then there’s….
Colorado’s Travis Hunter signs NIL deal with Phil Long Ford
I don’t love the current transfer environment. But for someone like Diggs — the rules should force him to stay at ND because….why? I can’t really answer that beyond, “Well I want him to stay at ND.”
I feel like a lot of ND fans are categorically against transfers, incoming or outgoing. I sort of get where that attitude comes from, but it’s just not realistic, and I don’t think it’s very fair to players either. Not saying you feel that way, it’s just a vibe I’ve noticed among the fanbase lately.
Obviously what’s happening at Colorado is extreme and should not be allowed.
Diggs leaving seems odd as it not that he wasn’t going to play. He was certainly #2 if not 1A. He certainly had become a better player while at ND. I’m purely guessing but, I’d bet it’s more than FB related.
Crystal Ball on 247 shows him going to LSU, which is not surprising. Like I mentioned above, seemed like we got rumors of him leaving since before he even got here, so it stings but him wanting to go to LSU if the door is open is not shocking whatsoever.
Exactly. Apparently had to be talked out of transferring last year. And barely seemed interested in Notre Dame in the first place, still can’t get over him wearing a USC jersey and putting it on social media while a student at ND. Not really all that tied to this place. Stinks, but what can ya do. Hope Price’s legs are ready in the fall.
This makes sense. He isn’t going to get more playing time anywhere else, and more playing time wouldn’t actually help his NFL career.
150-175 carries is probably a sweet spot for wear and tear and it’s not like 50 more carries will help him showcase anything more for the NFL.
Yep. And frankly, that’s exactly what transfers are for. Someone who is genuinely unhappy at ND shouldn’t be forced to stay there, football or no.
My only possible issue with this is that, like with the Buchner transfer, I suspect there’s a good chance of tampering. Same with Addison to USC last year, the OU to USC players, etc. But it’ll always be basically unenforceable now
I don’t even mind some level of technically “Tampering”, it’s only natural to send out feelers and know what awaits you.
You’re right to mention the Addison situation, it was pretty gross. He was induced via NIL to transfer as the reigning Biletnikoff winner. Feels different from a backup QB probably having some contact with his former coordinator to see if he had a landing spot at a new school.
Genie is way out of the bottle on that, but at least it’s Tyler Buchner and not Albama paying Joe Alt seven figures to go play tackle for them. College football will basically be over when it gets to that point (essentially what happened with Addison).
The Bagmen have become legitimized. Academics for admissions have been marginalized. Prime negotiated lowering those as condition for his signing. What majors are these athletes coming in with and taking at their new schools? State laws are passed to allow agents, lawyers, etc. in a race to the bottom. Influential alumni sit on state boards. What would you say if ND stopped playing such programs such as USC? I imagine Colorado’s recruiting classes may reflect marginal students.
I’ve never really been that guy, but I’m with you. I’m not a big fan of unlimited movement. Removing the cap of 25 new guys per year (or whatever the rule exactly was) has turned into a huge change.
It’s one reason I liked the college game way more than the pros – far more stability even with guys graduating.
So easy to make this better with some common sense rules, like a cap on transfers and limiting the number of undergrad transfers you can do.
I’d be on board with one free undergrad transfer. After that, you can still transfer as many times as you want but you have to sit out the penalty year.
Honestly NFL may become more stable than college at this rate. What we have now in CFB is unrestricted free agency full time
unrestricted free agency every year for every player.
I agree a few simple rules would probably solve this. I thought I had read somewhere that they were going to crack down on the 2nd,3rd, etc. transfers. Was that a new rule suggestion? I can’t remember but I thought the idea was one essentially one free transfer and after that you’d have to show cause (and playing time is not that kind of cause).
I think reinstituting some kind of cap of the number of new scholarships (whether with freshmen or transfer) you can give out each year would solve the problem. I don’t know what that number should be but 35 new scholarships would be 40% of the 85 roster new. That seems in the ballpark. Or didn’t they have a two year rule with scholarships before – whatever it was. So maybe give some leeway with making it 70 every 2 years.
So do we blames Tommy for leaving or Parker for being hired?
Maybe Diggs was upset Parker took took Tommy’s 2nd and 12 run up the middle off the call sheet
Jeremyiah Love’s picking things up quickly just became important.
Well, that stinks, but we can absorb some losses at RB. Definitely need some options to cut down on the wear and tear on Estime, though.
Can’t say I’m surprised Mayer didn’t go in the 1st. He just doesn’t have that explosive athleticism that makes him a real game-breaker at the next level. I’m sure he’ll get picked soon enough in the 2nd round and he’ll be a very solid player for a long time. But that’s not quite the same thing as a game-breaker. Few TEs are like that.
He really gives me a Jason Witten feel. His floor is so high, and he’s going to convert tons of 3rd and short situations, but as you say, the explosiveness just wasn’t there in college. There’s always the chance that pairing him with a great QB might unlock an ability deep down the middle.
I would probably have taken a player like that in the first round, but I understand GMs wanting to swing for the fences instead of going with the safer choice.
Yeah, Mayer absolutely ruled in college, but if he ever makes an NFL All-Pro team in his career I’ll be pretty surprised. High floor, low ceiling for the NFL, basically. I understand why Kincaid was taken ahead of him, and I would expect Brock Bowers to get picked higher next year too – they’re higher-ceiling players, and it’s understandable to want that from a first-rounder.
That said, I’m a little surprised that a title-contending team didn’t take him because he seems like a piece that can be plug-and-play from day 1 and be solid next year.