Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Notre Dame has added Australian punter James Rendell to the roster for 2024.
Former Notre Dame punter Bryce McFerson has committed to Maryland.
According to recent reports, the NCAA national office is prepared to settle more than $2.7 billion in antitrust cases with money going to former players over the last 10 years. Additionally, the settlement is expected to include a commitment from conferences and schools to share revenues, up to $20 million per year, with athletes in the future.
Former Colorado running back Dylan Edwards has transferred back home to Kansas State.
Running back Damien Martinez has transferred from Oregon State to Miami.
High 4-star safety Peyton Woodyard has entered the transfer portal after enrolling early at Alabama.
Minnesota transfer Athan Kaliakmanis has been named the starting quarterback at Rutgers and former starter Gavin Wimsatt is transferring.
The entire UAB football team has joined the players union Athletes.org after being introduced to it by head coach Trent Dilfer.
The grave for Knute Rockne and his family have been relocated to the campus at Notre Dame.
Uniform of the Week
We are working our way through all of the new NFL uniforms released recently. Soon we’ll get to Denver but today we take a look at the makeover coming from the Houston Texans. We have some good and some bad. Their updated home and away set are a definite upgrade. The home jersey has a streamlined but modern look, and I like the horned logo on the shoulders. The white jersey is similar, although the horns coming across the top of the shoulders looks bad and I’m surprised they moved away from the red numbers. The new standard uniforms have a ton of blue and very little red which will look quite boring very quickly.
The red color rush uniforms are inoffensive, except for the bull horns across the shoulders again. The 4th set with dark blue (which many will see as black), red, and “H-Town blue” is a bold design that shows a lot of promise. However, both the red helmet and blue H-Town helmets are really, really bad. Why is there no white inside the bull horn on the red helmet? And the dark blue helmet looks like something you’d see made by a local restaurant that hangs proudly on their wall behind the bar.
Recruiting
Notre Dame landed defensive back Dallas Golden (0.9524) out of Tampa, Florida.
Running back Marquise Davis (0.9331) gave a verbal to Kentucky.
Safety prospect Alex Graham (0.9225) committed to Colorado.
Wide receiver Jerome Myles (0.9002) committed to Ole Miss.
Edge rusher Daeden Hopkins (0.8940) committed to Missouri.
There are several 2026 commits in recent weeks…
Safety Demetres Samuel (0.9666) committed to Syracuse as did linebacker Izayia Williams (0.9839) both out of Florida. That would be some big time additions for the Orange but a long way to go!
Athlete Darryon Williams (0.9549) committed to Florida State. The Seminoles also added top cornerback Jaelen Waters (0.9311).
Offensive tackle Carson Nielsen (0.9202) committed to Iowa.
Linebacker Rodney Colton (0.9410) committed to South Carolina.
YouTube Channel
The fastest people on earth will be running in Paris this summer. I will be coming out with a preview of the Summer Olympics in a few months so keep an eye out for that if you enjoy everything that comes with the athletic circus every 4 years. Below is a fun video of every Olympic 100 meter final since 1984 when Carl Lewis took home gold with a time of 9.99 seconds.
That run from 1984 looks so slow! I like this comparison because I’m a believer that sports at night make things cooler and these races started doing that in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Olympic record from Usain Bolt happens at 6:28 in the video with his performance at the 2012 games in London.
Tunes
Last week I talked about the recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees for 2024. While looking at artists that are still not in there’s no greater snub right now than Boston. How is this group not enshrined in Cleveland??? We’re talking about undeniably one of the best classic rock artists, a group that pushed boundaries for rock music, and whose music is a defining characteristic of the middle 1970’s.
Was their career long? No, it really consisted of 2 albums and then a long wait for their 3rd LP dropped 8 years down the road. Some argue the band’s lawsuit with CBS via their Epic Records deal has forever blackmailed the group from such honors. If so, that’s baloney. We have maybe the best debut album of all-time and a group that packed a greatest hits worth of songs into a very short amount of time. They should’ve been in the Hall of Fame at least 20 years ago.
Trivia
Name the 3 NFL teams with perfectly symmetrical main logos.
The Other Football
A late penalty adding a brace for Vinicius allowed Real Madrid to draw Bayern Munich 2-2 in the 1st leg of the Champions League semifinals. In the other side, Dortmund defended home turf and lead PSG 1-0.
Bayer Leverkusen beat Roma 2-0 in the 1st leg of the Europa League semifinals. Their unbeaten streak now stands at 47 games.
Liverpool drew West Ham 2-2 on Saturday which leaves the Reds 5 points from 1st place with just 3 games remaining. With Arsenal’s 3-2 win over Tottenham in the North London Derby they remain atop the EPL by 1 point with Man City having 1 game in hand.
The English Premier League clubs have agreed to a spending cap that could begin in the 2025-26 season.
The United States and Mexican soccer federations have withdrawn their bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup and will look to win the rights to the 2031 tournament instead.
Leicester City have clinched promotion to the EPL after sealing 1st place in the Championship on Monday following a 3-0 win over Preston North End.
USWNT veteran fullback Kelly O’Hara is retiring at the end of 2024.
TV & Movies
Sometimes I can’t fall asleep at night because I’m thinking about Avatar: The Way of Water making $2.3 billion. I watched the original Avatar and felt like I was taking crazy pills with how cool a lot of people thought the movie was years ago. After such a promising start to his career, I think James Cameron has turned into such a dork as a director. What a waste of years and years of a career.
I love that SNL came back with a follow up to one of my favorite skits in recent memory regarding the title script from these movies. All they did was bold it! I wonder what the plan will be the 2 more Avatar movies that are scheduled to be released in the future? Even more bold title script and the most bold title script?
A Look Back
The transition of Bill Belichick from cantankerous, sullen, and grumpy NFL head coach to a much interesting and outgoing media personality who simply loves talking ball is upon us. I love that ESPN said you know what we need to stack 8 whiteboards together and go through a draft board with one of the best coach’s in NFL history. Some intern spent a long time typing out all of these names and making cards to stick on the board.
I like the red versus black colors to denote those who have spent all of their eligibility. With the Covid year some of these guys are super old from the draft. Belichick’s a little rough around the edges on this segment but you can tell just how much he loves digging into football stuff like this. I’ll watch his post-retirement career with a keen eye.
18S Paddock Club
The third edition of the Miami Grand Prix kicks off this weekend from outside the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. Of course, Max Verstappen has won the first 2 races here including a mind-bending dominant win from P9 last year after a super rare mistake suffered in Q3.
That was the start of a F1 record 10 straight wins and Verstappen has gone on to win 21 out of the last 23 races since, as well.
It’s no surprise that off-track drama continues to swirl around the sport.
*Adrian Newey, the unquestioned best F1 engineer the sport has ever seen, will be leaving Red Bull after nearly two decades with the team. The controversy surrounding team principal Christian Horner really seems to be cratering the team with Newey negotiating an early release from his contract in 12 months. Will he go to Ferrari? Aston Martin? Perhaps retirement?
Mistakes were made.
*Ferrari had teased a special livery for Miami weekend in addition to releasing light blue race suits, helmets, and team gear to commemorate the car manufacturer’s 70th anniversary of entering the United States market. The results of their livery are…not good. The team also recently announced a new branding partnership with HP (the team is now officially called Scuderia Ferrari HP) rumored to be worth $100 million that suspiciously seems timed perfectly to hype up a lot of blue for the team this weekend.
*A few others may claim the title, but through 2 editions no other race on the calendar has drawn as much celebrity attention as Miami. The A and B-listers love Miami in general and this race seems to fall in a nice spot without the attention of football nor is it during the sweltering summer. Rumors suggest a certain couple by the names of Swift and Kelce will be in attendance.
Trivia Answer:
Saints, Colts, and Cowboys
Re: Trivia
My guess was Browns, Colts, Cowboys. Do the Browns even have a mascot other than a color? Does the team even exist anymore?
Also, is there a commit post coming on Dallas Golden?
Also, how did you think the Browns logo was symmetrical?
The Browns “logo” is just their helmet turned to the side, no?
Yup!
I believe the Browns have gone back to white facemasks and have updated the 2024 logo.
From the 1980’s the Browns also had an unofficial “Dawgs” mascot with the dawg pound in the endzone
It’s a real shame that the Browns haven’t gone with a helmet that had the helmet logo on it, with that helmet logo also having a smaller helmet logo on it, etc., etc.
I figured it was just the color brown as that’s all the helmet is.
Or a raised white flag.
I’m not an NFL guy…
Speaking of which, the NFL schedule release should be coming up.
This Is tricky because you’re referring to left vs right symmetry. But those symbols aren’t symmetrical if draw a horizontal line
I had to squint at the logo for a while to clarify why my immediate answer, the Chicago Bears, was incorrect.
That one is extremely tricky.
The Bear head or the C?
I did the same with both!
Carl Lewis was the 100m winner in 88′ too, after Ben Johnson tested positive.
I’ll be that guy, but the Cowboys logo isn’t perfectly symmetrical.
It’s vertically symmetrical, but not horizontally.
Well then neither are the Saints or Colts. Only a circle or square would be symmetrical both ways.
With 5 axes of symmetry, the Cowboys logo is more symmetrical than a logo of a square.
Yes, a circle logo would be infinitely symmetrical, and a star/polygon logo with 6+ points/sides would also beat out the Cowboys.
if we’re looking at the other symmetry, then Bears would be.
I always thought it was the other way around: Colts, Saints, Cowboys are horizontally symmetrical, Bears vertically.
Is it named based on the orientation of the line, or the parts?
The shading on the sides of the Bears logo’s face isn’t symmetrical in any direction. Close, but definitely not quite.
The Bears’ ‘C’ on the helmet is what is symmetrical
Ah, I had Football was a verb’s comment from earlier on the mind.
The tips of the ‘C’ are not the same length.
This trivia fact sent me down the rabbit hole. Odd that this C is not the same as the Cubs’ C, which is symmetrical
Wow. That’s nuckin futs. Who writes a ‘c’ like that?!?
Also, I noticed today because of the symmetry talk, all NFL logos face towards the right, which makes sense when they’re applied to a helmet. All, but the Eagles, which inexplicably faces left.
Yeah I was thinking of C.
Also adding to the list of impressive feats by Boston – the first record was written and performed largely by one man, Tom Scholz. I believe he did every instrument besides drums, and also designed his own guitar effects pedals (had a masters from MIT)