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

3 News Stories

#1 Conference realignment strikes again, but not where you expect it. No one can stop the expansion of the mighty Patriot League who added Richmond and William & Mary recently and will now bring Villanova into the league starting in 2026. The Wildcats have been a mainstay in the FCS playoffs for most of this century and won their only National Championship back in 2009. Since 2006 they’ve been members of the Colonial Athletic Association in football. The CAA has been in serious decline while also losing Delaware (Conference USA) and UMass (MAC) for 2025 in addition to the above defections. Crucially, the CAA also lost James Madison a few years back, as well.

#2 Bowl games coming and going is nothing new in college football. That’s why it’s no surprise that it was recently announced the Bahamas Bowl will not be played in the 2025-26 season. RIP. The bowl game that brought us our first international post-season contest in roughly 80 years looks to be no more. Usually, whether these bowl games make or lose money doesn’t seem to matter too much but the last 2 Bahamas Bowls saw a combined attendance of just over 10,000 fans. Yes, it’s a TV product but still.

The slot for this game will still be played, but where and when? I was sleuthing around r/CFB and an astute commentator mentioned December 16th (late afternoon), December 17th (early afternoon), December 24th (mid-afternoon), or January 3rd (early afternoon) as possible holes in the ESPN bowl schedule above. For a hefty payout of $225,000 for each program they’ll have to match up someone from the MAC and Conference USA.

#3 ESPN released their FPI for the 2025 season, we’re only 3 months away now we can do this. The Fighting Irish are ranked 7th in their system behind Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State, Alabama, and Georgia with Texas in the no. 1 spot. Rather than debate the top of their rankings the risers and fallers section caught my attention and was something to mention this week:

Many of these programs (FSU, Stanford, Purdue) from the power programs really have nowhere to go but up. FAU just hired super young Texas Tech OC Zach Kittley so that position may be worth paying attention to if the Owls really do improve this much. Still not good overall, but it’s something I’ll keep an eye on. I’ll go ahead and sell Auburn, thank you.

This rebound season for Indiana after a playoff appearance will be fascinating to watch. Going something like 8-4 would traditionally be awesome news for the Hoosiers. Maybe it’s not going to be a great season for the service academies. Is there any way Coach Prime surprises and Colorado exceeds expectations? They open up the season on a Friday hosting Georgia Tech, will the Buffs be favored?

Recruiting

The nation’s top tight end and 5-star talent Mark Bowman (0.9904) out of Mater Dei committed to USC.

Safety Kaiden Hall (0.9299) has committed to Florida.

Coming off an official visit, interior offensive lineman Tommy Tofi (0.9402) committed to California.

Offensive tackle Bryce Gilmore (0.9162) gave a verbal to Arkansas.

Texas wide receiver Ryelan Morris (0.9179) has committed to Stanford.

Texas A&M grabbed cornerback Camren Hamiel (0.9169) from Arizona.

One of the nation’s top cornerback’s Justice Fitzpatrick (0.9738) is headed to Georgia.

Offensive tackle Leo Delaney (0.9411) committed to Clemson.

Uniform of the Week

Fresh off a Southeast Division title and .500 record the Orlando Magic are set to debut a new look for the 2025-26 NBA season with plenty of nods to the past. On Tuesday this week, the organization released a fresh suite of new logos and uniforms. Up first, we’ll tackle the logos. Now, this team is an example of going backwards with every step with their logo through their history. They’ve basically done a re-fresh every 10 years and it’s been downhill since their awesome 1988 expansion logo. A basketball with half the stars hiding behind it? Yet another tired circle logo with script inside it (what is this SB Nation circa 2011?) and then a basketball version of the Dallas Stars logo (maybe the worst in the NHL and definitely a crime given their past logos) to finish things off? These are all bad stuff.

The uniforms, now we can get behind these. This was an area where Orlando was getting progressively worse through the years. Now they harken back to their expansion days. The white pinstripe home set is virtually identical to 1988, except with blue numbers in black outline which is reversed from the originals. When the team was formed black was their away jersey and then switched to blue in 1994. They’re now switching back to blue as the primary road option with the black “statement” third option.

The blue jersey font is too small and almost looks like a printing mistake. Tiny font! The original “Magic” font was goated and this more traditional lettering is a downgrade. I don’t hate the blue angled top portion of the black jersey in a vacuum, but with a blue jersey already in the arsenal they should’ve just kept this one all black.

TV & Movies

We are 29 days away from the 112th edition of the Tour de France which will begin in the northern city of Lille. As such, Netflix has dropped the trailer for this season’s Tour de France: Unchained that comes out early next month. As the resident cyclist, it’s an exciting time of year (July 4th festivities on Friday followed by a Saturday morning lounging for stage 1 of the Tour is an ultimate summer vibe) but this trailer comes with some pretty depressing news as this is the 3rd and final installment of the series.

Blame the rights to the Tour…and the French. Despite being more French-centric than it should be, the series ended up being far more popular internationally than within the borders of France. Reports suggest Netflix wanted to go in a different direction with the, well, direction of the series and couldn’t come to an agreement with ASO (who owns and operates the Tour de France). So, this is it. For now. Rumors suggest another media company (Amazon? Apple? NBC?) may swoop in and try something similar, but we’ll see. After releasing the show a few weeks before the Tour in the past, they are releasing this year’s installment just a few days before the Tour begins–so the majority of the cycling media won’t have time to focus on it. These shows are meant to grab new fans into the sport but waiting a full year to watch events from the 2024 Tour so close to the 2025 Tour is bad decision making.

Tunes

You learn something new every day, it’s true. I have never watched the movie To Sir With Love starring Sidney Poitier from nearly sixty years ago. It looks a lot like a 1960’s version of Dangerous Minds with the gender and racial roles reversed. I’m sure it’s a good movie, maybe even a great movie. It made a lot of money and was a big deal that year, scoring Poitier a Golden Globe–the first black man to win that award. However, the title song from the movie was also a smash hit.

I can’t say I’d ever heard of this song until this week. And what blows my mind is that it was the biggest selling single in the entirety of 1967. Not Stevie Wonder, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Doors, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, the Supremes, or the Hollies. Nope! A singer (who was featured in the movie) named Lulu recorded this song and it sold like hot cakes. Mind you, the song shouldn’t have been anywhere near the best selling single of that year but cultural phenomena happen all the time and they can be weird.