Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Following intense negotiations and campaigning we will not be seeing an expanded college football for at least 4 more seasons.
The Division I Board of Directors has decided it will take a look at the NIL rules, so that should be fun.
Marshall wants to leave the Conference USA for the Sun Belt and is headed to court to make sure it happens.
Denard Robinson is heading back to Michigan in a player personnel role.
Art Briles is back in the college game after being hired by Hugh Jackson to be the OC at Grambling State.
Dave Doeren received an extension through 2026 at NC State.
The USFL Philadelphia Stars drafted former Notre Dame linebacker Te’von Coney with the 2nd pick of the 30th round this week.
Uniform of the Week
Recently, it was reported that UCLA’s athletic department posted an unbelievable $62.5 million deficit for the 2021 fiscal year thanks to a combination of Covid effects, poor media rights, bad on-campus deals, and the fact that Under Armour backed out of its record $224 million apparel deal with the school. A judge just ruled that UCLA’s lawsuit against Under Armour will continue. It’s not all bad, though. The Bruins signed a 6-year $46.4 million deal with the Jordan brand–and while that’s an extremely friendly deal for Jumpman–you can’t put a price on looking good.
UA ended up simplifying the uniforms but struggled in some areas, most notably making the iconic shoulder stripes too awkwardly long. Jordan has fixed that. What I really want to point out is the gold pants. If Notre Dame wasn’t looking for the mustard anymore (I am pro-mustard though) and wasn’t interested in going back to the paler Vegas gold pants this color from UCLA could look damn good for the Irish.
Recruiting
Alabama keeps one of the nation’s top corners in state as Jahlil Hurley (0.9895) committed to the Tide.
The country’s No. 13 ranked quarterback Brayden Dorman (0.9149) is headed to Arizona.
Former UCLA receiver Chase Cota has picked Oregon as his new home.
Miami (OH) edge rusher Cam Butler had 13 tackles for loss last year and has transferred to Virginia.
TCU edge rusher Khari Coleman has committed to Ole Miss.
YouTube Channel
On a recent episode of Life Advice from the Ryen Russillo podcast a wealthy guy wrote in saying he wanted to buy a Ferrari but his wife wasn’t too keen on the idea. It got me thinking, how rich do you have to be where buying a Ferrari is worth it? Now, it depends on which car you’re looking for as you’ll see in the video below a used 2015 Ferrari 458 Spider at around $200,000 can be manageable for a decent swath of wealthy people. Around 5 months ago, a Ferrari 488 GTB merged on to the highway with me and it is the first Ferrari I’ve seen in the wild in years. I tried to keep up to look at it more, and it absolutely dusted me and everyone else around me into the distance.
A new version of that car I saw is around $330,000, so you’re effectively financing a nice new house on wheels. Let’s say you put 20% down ($66,000) you’d be looking at close to $5,000 per month for payment on a typical 5-year loan. A quick estimate on insuring a Ferrari will run you another $1,000 per month. Plus, a Ferrari dealer is rare. In my general vicinity you have Toronto, Detroit, Columbus, Boston, and New York dealers so unless I want to leave the country it’s a 6-hour drive to the closest place. With all the upkeep–and maybe being able to drive the car 7 months a year in my region–it’s not worth it all.
Tunes
Taylor Swift’s brother graduated from Notre Dame in 2015 and she was on the sidelines for the 2010 opener, so she’s officially a friend of the program for life. I’m mostly lukewarm about her music as a whole but do think she’s taken a big step forward over the last 4 or 5 years. I generally enjoy when artists evolve and are constantly changing their music, even if a lot of it is to stay with the modern sound and is trendy. I thought Swift nailed this move with the 2017 song “Delicate” which critics could say is over-produced, but I love it.
We can all agree that manipulated vocals are straight out of control these days. However, the cold opening in this song with Swift’s voice going through a vocoder is really cool. I like how it slowly builds through the beat in the first verse, goes back to its slow intro, and then really kicks into gear with the full beat and drums in the second verse.
Trivia
How many games of at least 100 yards rushing did Kyren Williams have in his Notre Dame career?
The Other Football
The Premier League was highlighted this weekend by a last-minute header from Harry Kane as Tottenham beat leaders Manchester City at the Etihad. We won’t discuss Spurs’ game at Burnley on Wednesday. Liverpool are now just 3 points back of City for the league lead.
Christian Pulisic scored in Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Lille during this week’s Champions League games. Unfortunately, fellow American Weston McKennie broke his foot in Juventus’ 1-1 draw against Villareal.
The Champions League Final is supposed to take place in St. Petersburg but with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this week UEFA is looking for an alternative location.
Another American in midfielder Gio Reyna came back for Dortmund after missing 6 months with a hamstring injury, only to reaggravate the same muscle. He’s likely out a couple weeks.
We’re only a few days away from the 27th season of MLS kicking off with Charlotte FC adding to the 28-team league as the newest member.
The United States Women’s team won the SheBelieves Cup for the 5th time with a 5-0 win over Iceland. In even bigger news, the USWNT settled with U.S. Soccer over equal pay for $24 million, including a lump sum of $22 million.
Streaming
Please bring back the BBC produced Sherlock series, I beg you! We’ve been treated to 13 episodes of wonderful television but it’s been over 4 years now since it last aired. I binged the series some time around 2015 when most of episodes had already aired thinking to myself there will be a lot more coming in the future. I was very wrong. And I feel like there’s a major void in my life.
It kind of feels like the run is officially over and it makes me really sad. The stock for Benedict Cumberbatch is sky high now and the main actors have all mentioned how hard it is for them to agree to find time to film any new episodes. I mean, Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange now in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’s probably tied down for 7 more movies until his 60’s or something.
A Look Back
Clemsoning. It’s something we’ll teach our kids about. Do you remember how funny this 2012 Orange Bowl game was for most of the country? Clemson had just started showing flashes under Dabo Swinney to start 2011 but lost 3 out of their last 5 games only to sneak into this game after crushing an overrated Virginia Tech team in the ACC Championship Game. The best thing about this game was the hope for the Tigers. They led 7-0, then 14-7, and 17-14 following the 1st quarter. Then it was 49-20 at halftime and 63-20 before the end of the 3rd quarter.
Isn’t being out-scored 49-3 in less than 2 quarters hilarious? Less funny, if you don’t like Clemson, is that this game was kind of like that Joe Burrow meme where he’s on the ground against UCF in the bowl game. Clemson has won 10+ games in 10 straight seasons since this loss and is 121-17 overall in this time period. Imagine telling January 2012 you that Clemson would only lose 17 time over the next decade worth of games!
18S Paddock Club
The 8-time defending champions Mercedes unveiled their car early last Friday morning with a promotional showcar rendering with their real car shown in studio–later taking the real thing out for a shakedown that day. The car is highlighted by a return to their traditional silver following 2 years with a black livery. For the most part, the placement of their advertising and trim color placement has remained the same. Notice they have kept the Petronas green trim on the outside of the wheel covers but become the 2nd team (along with McLaren) to debut a design inside the cover with the AMG branding.
The Mercedes-AMG F1 W13 E Performance
The car features a very front placed cockpit with a longer nose that extends to the end of the front wing main plane, and unlike most teams to date, has a very thin inner edge near the nose. With pushrod (front) and pullrod (rear) suspension they’ve kept things the same as 2021. Their inlets are boxy and swoop back into the body incredibly tightly with a long rear part of the chassis remaining quite slim at the exhaust.
It seems like Mercedes have found a way to package the power unit behind the driver in an incredibly narrow fashion. You’d think cooling could be a problem, although they’ve since shown cooling gills on the body via removable panels. Their floor is very detailed and extensive looking. About half the grid have gone with a single support pylon for the rear wing and Mercedes is added to that list, too.
This past Monday afternoon Alpine unveiled their new car, featuring a mostly pink livery to be used for the first 2 races as well as a mostly blue livery for the rest of the season. The influence of new main sponsor Best Water Technology is clearly evident. Outside of BWT, their car ad placement is largely the same as 2021.
Both color liveries of the Alpine A522.
They have a slender nose hanging short of their front wing main plane with pushrod suspension in the front and pullrod suspension in the rear. Like most cars, their sidepods are quite wide. The intakes are wide but not very tall with the sidepods sloping back to rear of the chassis. Interestingly, they have cooling gills on top of the sidepods as well as on the center line of the body. Like Mercedes and Honda engines, Renault has finally split their supercharger from their turbo. Lastly, Alpine are yet another team using a single arm attached to the rear wing.
The first 3 days of testing began in Barcelona this Wednesday and is wrapping up this Friday.
We got our first look at the “real” Red Bull car with a high front wing and detached first element. They join McLaren as the only team to run a front pullrod suspension. There’s a large tray leading into their inlets with a huge undercut beneath their wider sidepods. Using a single pylon attached to the rear wing, it’s a highly developed car featuring some interesting aero bits, especially a raised lower element of their beam wing.
Red Bull’s RB18.
Since their livery launch, Red Bull have added cryptocurrency company Bybit to both wings, plus on the side of their nose near the cockpit.
In testing, both Haas and Alfa Romeo had trouble with their cars on Wednesday but the rest of the grid had great reliability while running a ton of laps. The buzz word on Thursday was “porpoising” as every car is dealing with a loss of downforce from the ground effect cars on the fast straights, causing a troubling bouncing effect.
Leclerc’s F1-75 bouncing down the straight in Barcelona.
Taking everything with a grain of salt, it seems like both Ferrari and McLaren are impressing the paddock the most. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine started to overshadow Thursday’s practice as Haas driver Nikita Mazepin is Russian and his oligarch father (who met with Russian president Putin on Thursday no less!) heavily funds the team through the Uralkali sponsorship. As of this writing, Haas was removing all of their Uralkali signage from the team while it looks unlikely F1 will go through with the grand prix in Sochi later this year.
Trivia Answer:
Seven.
How many games did Williams play in? I was guessing like 22 (out of a possible 25 is it?) over 2 seasons (he had to have missed one here or there). So wow 7 seems surprisingly low then. Obviously this year must have been most of the games where he didn’t get over hundred. Maybe he did it once this year then (what was the game with that crazy run to the edge that turned into a roughly 80 yard TD)? and 6 last year?
Yup, roughly 23.5 games only for Kyren.
One maybe slight hot take but more just personal annoyance is non-UNC schools wearing the Michael Jordan Jumpman on their jerseys. Especially for a once proud basketball school like UCLA, just doesn’t look right, even in a different sport. What’s next, Kentucky or Indiana??
Anyways, in Prister’s recent interview with Swarbrick, Jack was very complimentary towards Under Armor and their company leadership. Overall the tone was very satisfactory from Notre Dame towards UA. Obviously remains to be seen if that’s Savvy Jack being cagey in support a current partner, but based on that I wouldn’t be surprised if ND and UA extended. Not sure if there were any rumors on the next contract or switching, just found that tone to be very positive from Jack.
Is Nike the only “major” company ND hasn’t had sponsor their jerseys yet? I feel like I can picture Reebok ND stuff, but maybe that wasn’t actual jerseys. UA, Adidas, Champion. I guess there aren’t really any other American companies in the jersey game – Nike & Jumpman. I assume ND + Jumpman will never happen.
Just Reebok cleats for a few years in the 90’s.
BC is a New Balance school now:
Although, they signed a separate deal with Adidas for football.
New Balance is headquartered in Boston.
T-Shirt under jersey + Face mask + New Balance + Boston College Basketball = This guy is asbolutely fistpumping taking a charge or making a layup.
We’re totally extending with Under Armour 🙁
Personally, the only school that would look weird with Jordan would be Duke basketball.
Georgetown wears Jordan, too, as I recall. That’s a bit odd.
I’m honestly starting to regret my Ferrari purchase, as well. The kids get it so dirty! Plus, it’s not practical for taking my dog to the vet. But, I did get a pretty sweet 28.8% APR on my 300-month loan, so not all bad.
Regarding T-Swift, both folklore and evermore slap, as they say. Disney+ has a documentary on the folklore album, which is worth a watch – If only to see the guy from The National, who couldn’t seem less like an indie rock guy.
Concerning the debacle at Turf Moor, Spurs were without one of their top 3 LB’s, so they get a pass from me. Let’s not forget, Burnley is one of the top 19 teams in the Premier League.
Should’ve put money on Burnley, classic let down spot.
Recently watched a YouTube segment on why Jay Leno doesn’t own a Ferrari. Basically Ferrari continually keeps kicking you in the ass to remind you how lucky you are that they let you buy one.
Yes, they make it hard. Also, I don’t think Ferrari leases their cars from official Ferrari dealers. A lot of wealthy folks out there leasing their super-luxury cars.
Porpoising seems unpleasant
Only if you’re not doing it on porpoise
Jealous of this real estate market, btw. Anything around here is double if not triple for “nice”.
Heh, yeah I was going to put a caveat in there. I should say, that price for an average house in the country.
I tried watching the why I regret purchasing a Ferrari video. But then the guy started talking about how it didn’t fit in his 3 car garage…as the fourth car. That doesn’t seem like a Ferrari problem.
Plenty of mistakes were made.