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

Top News

Notre Dame’s Lance Taylor is leaving to take the offensive coordinator position at Louisville and now the Irish need a new running backs coach.

With Mike Elston off to his alma mater Michigan the defensive line position became available and will be filled by Al Washington. He played college ball at Boston College and he’s coached at the Power 5 level at his alma mater, Cincinnati, Michigan, and Ohio State prior to coming to South Bend.

As expected, Brian Polian couldn’t hurry off with Brian Kelly quick enough to stand right next to him on the sidelines at LSU games. The Irish have officially welcomed Brian Mason as special teams coordinator from Cincinnati.

Stetston Bennett and Nolan Smith are returning to Georgia for 2022.

Kirk Ferentz signed a contract extension to stay at Iowa through 2029 which would make it a clean 30 years as head coach of the Hawkeyes if he makes it that far.

UCLA agreed to an extension with Chip Kelly through 2025.

Todd Graham resigned after 2 seasons at Hawaii following allegations of mistreatment of players that made its way to the state hearing level.

California head coach Justin Wilcox signed an extension through 2027. That’s an interesting decision for someone who hasn’t mustered even a .500 record in the Pac-12 once in 5 seasons.

Western Michigan head coach Tim Lester received a 2-year contract extension through 2025 following a bowl win this post-season.

Uniform of the Week

This past season Virginia Tech wore 1999 throwbacks for a home game against Syracuse. You may recall this was the Hokies season that saw them make a run to the BCS National Championship Game against Florida State in the Sugar Bowl with Michael Vick at quarterback. They lost of course, but there’s always been great vibes about these uniforms.

Virginia Tech has tried a lot of different uniform gimmicks in recent years. Some have worked well and some have absolutely bombed. These throwbacks are so simple and effective–among the best in the country to utilize the plain white pants (and you know I’m loving the TECH wordmark on the right hip). Most of all, the contrasting burnt orange TV numbers on the shoulders are such a cool little touch.

Recruiting

Notre Dame safety KJ Wallace is transferring out of the program. A low 4-star recruit from the 2019 class, Wallace had a brief flash as a player on the rise but didn’t have much of a role in 2021.

Former Irish safety Khari Gee announced his transfer a month ago and is headed to Georgia Tech.

This past Sunday, 2022 receiver Justius Lowe (0.8616) from Oregon officially left Utah’s class after never signing, set up a visit to Notre Dame for January 28th, and then cancelled that visit. He promptly committed to Oregon.

Michigan State picked up a commitment from 2023 running back Kedrick Reescano (0.9165) out of Texas this week.

JT Daniels winding college career will make another stop as the former USC, and now former Georgia, quarterback will be playing at a new home in 2022. He still has 2 years of eligibility!

Hunter Johnson signed with Clemson, later transferred to Northwestern, and is now headed back to Clemson. He’s thrown for 1,090 yards in his career.

Former Florida State quarterback Chubba Purdy is transferring to Nebraska.

Brenden Rice (son of Jerry Rice) is transferring from Colorado to USC. He’s caught 27 passes in 2 seasons.

All-Big 12 corner Jarrick Bernard-Converse is transferring away from Oklahoma State. He’s played 4 years for the Cowboys and is using the Covid season for an additional 5th-year somewhere else.

YouTube Channel

I’ve always wanted to commute to work by train. Readers, if you do this chime in down in the comment section with your experience. I recently came across this video about the design of Tokyo. I don’t love trains like a nerdy train guy obsesses over different locomotives, with all due respect to those people. But, public transportation and how we all deal with it in different cities and regions does fascinate me.

I commute 55 minutes (in moderate traffic and weather) each way to work. My choices are either taking back roads with no tolls for a 52-mile trip that much takes longer or the 65-mile highway route with tolls for a shorter trip. I pay $88 a year to New York for the EZ-Pass plan that drops my daily toll fee to 26 cents. Factor in gas, car wear and tear, and my goodness I would love to ride a train to work. At least, in non-pandemic times.

Tunes

I wanted to feature Chet Atkins this week putting on an absolute guitar masterclass from a 1970 appearance on the Johnny Cash Show. I would kill for these finger picking skills. I taught myself guitar for about 4 to 5 years, hit a wall, and don’t have time to push forward. I still stay interested in the gear side of things and have always loved the large Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar that Atkins used.

How about Cash’s voice, too? It’s like a computer used a sample of his voice, perfected his baritone vocals, and spit it out in the most perfect Johnny Cash way possible. But nope, that’s exactly how he sounded even on a 50+ year-old TV show. He must have one of the most iconic speaking voices of any American in history.

Trivia (answers at the bottom of the article)

How many sacks does Isaiah Foskey need in 2022 to set the all-time record at Notre Dame?

The Other Football

FIFA has introduced new rules on loaning players. Next season international loans coming in and out will be limited to 8, then dropping to 7 the year after, then to just 6 for 2024-25. Homegrown players will have looser restrictions.

In transfer news, left back Lucas Digne moved from Everton to Aston Villa for $33 million, winger Jonathan Ikone moved from Lille to Fiorentina for $15.4 million, and winger David Neres was sold from Ajax to Shakhtar for $13.2 million.

The Big 5 Check-In:

EPL – Man City defeated Chelsea 1-0 over the weekend. Coutinho welcomed himself back to England as an Aston Villa player with a goal and assist to come from behind and draw Manchester United. Everton lost 2-1 to Norwich and promptly fired manager Rafa Benitez. Tottenham came back from 2-1 in the 95th minute to beat Leicester City and you just love to see it. Liverpool got past Arsenal 2-0 in the 2nd leg to advance to the EFL Cup Final vs. Chelsea.

La Liga – Real Madrid beat Athletic 2-0 for the Spanish Super Cup. That gives left back Marcelo 28(!) major trophies for Madrid, tying club legend Paco Gento who recently passed away.

Serie A – AC Milan fell 2-1 to Spezia and failed to take over the top spot in the league. There’s still a lot of drama surrounding Juventus’ Paulo Dybala and his contract situation as the transfer window is closing soon.

Bundesliga – For the 2nd straight year, Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski won the FIFA Best Player of the Year Award. The cool story at Freiburg took a hit last weekend as they lost 5-1 to Dortmund.

Ligue 1 – Neymar has a documentary coming out soon that he hopes will make people realize he’s not such a bad guy. His teammate Kylian Mbappe might be staying at PSG, or so sources at the club seem to believe.

Streaming

I started watching Dances with Wolves on Netflix recently and I’m about 45 minutes in before I had to stop, not having picked it up back up again yet. The plot in the beginning just does not make sense to me. A soldier (who is seriously wounded) make a suicidal charge across a field, randomly succeeds in spurring his fellow Union men on, and somehow doesn’t die. Okay, fine. Then, the Army decides to let this hero pick wherever he wants to go and the character played by Kevin Costner wants to go far away to the frontier border. Sure, Mr. Hero you can effectively leave the war effort now.

The scene where he gets sent to the fort cracks me up. The “why” from the insane commander when he’s told he voluntarily wants to go to the frontier is one of the best lines in cinematic history. Will this movie get any good? Union soldier who stupidly tries to defend a fort by himself and learns about the natives surrounding him feels like a long 2 hours from where I left off.

A Look Back

The 1995 Fiesta Bowl turned an entire generation of Notre Dame fans against the green jerseys and you cannot convince me otherwise. Looking back, it makes no sense. Lou Holtz never wore green jerseys (the Sugar Bowl uniforms after 1991 with green accents don’t count) and the school had gone a decade without wearing them. I’d bet there is a disproportionate amount of Notre Dame fans who were born in the 1955-1970 window, and were young men or women or young adults in the late 1980’s, that are against the green jerseys more than any other slice of the fan base.

Most of you know the history here. Due to the wonderful nature of the bowl rules back then–a mediocre and disappointing 6-4-1 Notre Dame team that finished the regular season on a 2-3-1 run with wins over Navy and Air Force–was picked for the Fiesta Bowl against a Colorado team whose only loss in 1994 would be to the eventual National Champion Nebraska Cornhuskers. Needless to say, it didn’t end well for the Irish. Of all the times to break out the green, why this game Lou?? I just remembered I wrote an article back in May 2018 that this game put a curse on Notre Dame.

18S Paddock Club

2022 Regulation Changes (Part 2 of 4, Floor & Chassis) – The new regulations for this year all start with the re-worked floor taking advantage of more ground effect to increase downforce. Tunnels in the floor are back for the first time since 1982 with a standardized tea tray at the front to make sure each team uses the floor as intended. The plank is more narrow and narrows further towards the front of the car. In the back, the diffuser is 300mm less wide but 110mm taller.

The array of aero bits are gone as the bargeboards of recent years are removed and now a longitudinal floor edge wing sticks up with fences to direct air into the tunnels. While we won’t see completely sealed floors for insane ground effect like cars in the 1980’s, we can expect cars to have very low rake in 2022 to seal things as much as possible which could mean significant changes for a previously high rake team like Red Bull. Testing has shown the overall car balance with the ground effect is close to the center of the floor which should help even more when cars do drive through dirty air.

The main chassis tub and cockpit are slightly larger for 2022. On the F1 concept cars the sidepod inlets for engine cooling were fairly large, although that’s partly due to the aero bits from the bargeboards no longer obstructing parts of this area, plus there is room with the prescribed volumes for smaller sidepods. They are keeping the shark fin for driver number placement, while cooling louvres are coming back around the engine cover area which could help reduce the size of said sidepod inlets.

The noses will be slightly longer than 2021 and instead of being flat then angling down the 2022 cars are slightly domed near the cockpit and slope gradually down to the ground.

Williams Racing (8th place, 23 points)

The 2021 season was a step in the right direction for Williams in the first full year of Dorilton Capital ownership. Their upgraded car meshed well with the Mercedes power unit and the team finished a surprising 8th (jumping over Alfa Romeo) following zero points in 2020. Led by 23 year old British rising star George Russell, the team combined for 10 finishes inside the top 12 and Russell’s impressive qualifying at Spa securing their first podium since 2017.

Russell is now off to take the much sought after seat at Mercedes opposite Lewis Hamilton leaving Canadian Nicholas Latifi as the elder statesman of the team. Russell beat Latifi in qualifying in all but 2 races in 2021. Now former Red Bull driver Alex Albon joins the team after a year away from the grid and should offer similar stiff competition. The struggles of Latifi–arguably the 2nd worse driver on the grid–brings the hope down for 2022 as well as remaining a customer team of Mercedes. Dorilton is pouring a lot of money into the team but they look at least a year if not 2 more away from becoming a midfield staple. Original team owner Frank Williams passed away back in November and it’s possible the team debuts a throwback livery in his honor for 2022.

Alpine F1 Team (5th place, 155 points)

Renault re-branded last off-season to their sports car brand Alpine and carry a lot of positive vibes into 2022 following a late surge past AlphaTauri for 5th place with the younger Esteban Ocon winning the chaotic Hungary Grand Prix and the veteran Fernando Alonso grabbing 3rd place in Qatar. They weren’t quite as competitive at the top of the midfield as 2020 but that’s largely due to Ferrari’s resurgence.

With the 40 year old Alonso who still seems committed enough to El Plan and a rising star in Ocon there’s a nice mix for Alpine to continue doing well. Also, they’d been using the same engine, chassis, and gearbox for 3 straight years through 2021 and will be the one team truly bringing massive upgrades to the new 2022 regulations. Also, executive director Marcin Budkowski exited this month with rumors ousted Aston Martin director Otmar Szafnauer is taking the job. Best Water Technology (BWT) is also rumored to become Alpine’s title sponsor after leaving Aston Martin, as well. Many are expecting Alpine to welcome a lot of BWT to their livery in 2022.

Trivia Answer:

8.5 sacks