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

Top News

In case you missed it after the first spring practice, Irish football players Will Schweitzer, Justin Walters, and Ron Powlus III all medically retired while Caleb Johnson, Philip Riley, and Josh Bryan are no longer with the program. The lone full practice media viewing of spring comes up this Saturday.

Notre Dame won its record 13th National Championship in fencing recently, and became the first program in school history to achieve a 3-peat title. Individual fencers Luke Linder (sabre) and Eszter Muhari (epee) also took home National Championships, as well.

The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics have named Utah’s Mark Harlan, Pittsburgh’s Heather Lyke, Iowa State’s Jamie Pollard, and Kansas State’s Gene Taylor as the AD’s of the year for the football bowl subdivision.

Former Notre Dame assistant Chip Long has been hired at Louisville as a quality control assistant.

Bowling Green head coach Scot Loeffler has signed an extension through the 2025 season.

Troy head coach Jon Sumrall signed a 4-year extension through the 2026 season.

South Carolina defensive end Jordan Strachan has been granted a 7th year of eligibility.

Uniform of the Week

You could make the case (and many have done so) that in 1999 uniforms for college football and the wider football world changed forever. In the same year Nike unveiled the BYU “Bib” uniforms (discussed a few weeks ago here) they unleashed a hard re-set of Oregon and the sport has never been the same. This was the first year of Joey Harrington at quarterback and 2 years later he was on the cover of the NCAA 2003 video game. Oregon was maybe the example in college football where new uniforms can catapult a program into a new stratosphere. The power is real! Since debuting these uniforms, Oregon has won the 9th most games in college football.

Looking back, knowing what was to come, these uniforms to do feel a but quaint. At the time though, it was like a big whoa, that’s a different look. Oregon also took a while to really ramp up the different uniforms, while many of us probably misremember them coming out with crazy alternates right away. At first, they brought more yellow trim before full yellow jerseys in 2003. Then in 2006 things really started to change (remember those steel tread plate shoulders!) and a couple years later they had the feathers on the shoulders prior to taking the “O” off the side of the helmet in 2012. For the last decade-plus, the Ducks rarely use the same full uniform twice in the same year.

Recruiting

Offensive lineman Anthonie Knapp (0.880) committed to the Irish this week.

Quarterback Jake Merklinger (0.9681) committed to Tennessee on Thursday.

Ohio State added a pair of offensive linemen brothers in Deontae Armstrong (0.9052) and Devontae Armstrong (0.8992).

Corner Jeremiah Newcombe (0.9214) committed to Oklahoma.

Defensive lineman Jeffrey Rush (0.9387) committed to Ole Miss.

Auburn has added running back J’Marion Burnette (0.9348).

The top tight end from the 2023 class Duce Robinson (0.9907) finally committed to USC.

2023 corner Antione Jackson (0.9140) has flipped from Miami to East Carolina.

YouTube Channel

Time for some more pickleball drama. I actually saw my first pickleball game (match?) going on recently in my town and made a mental note for the future in this article. It was a group of 4 elderly gentlemen tucked into the corner of a tennis court at one of our smaller village parks. Full disclosure, I’m on Team Tennis. I got hooked watching Wimbledon one summer, picked up the game, and won the 1995 Town of Tonawanda 13-14 year old championship. No big deal. I should’ve pursued it more instead of making it a fun hobby during the summer.

As such, I don’t like the encroachment on tennis courts. Just play tennis instead? This feels a lot like if there was a new sport invented that was a little more bigger than putt-putt golf and people started invading golf courses in order to play. I realize pickleball is catering more toward people who don’t want to run around as much as playing tennis, but maybe more running around is a good idea. I also don’t get playing on tiny courts with a partner, either.

Tunes

I was watching a video recently that chronicled the album of the year throughout the history of the Grammy’s and noticed they tended to lag behind “popular” music (and I use that a bit loosely) for the most part until you get into the 1970’s. I always viewed the 1960’s as my favorite decade of music but I’m not sure the 1970’s will ever be topped for the combination of talent, breadth of music, and hits. The only knock (especially through modern eyes) is the lack of hip-hop and not as much female representation.

From this video of the most iconic albums from every month of the 1970’s, I know I haven’t listened to the entire LP on the following:

The O’Jays – Back Stabbers (August 1972)
Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies (February 1973)
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (May 1973)
Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (September 1973)
Parliament – Mothership Connection (December 1975)
Boz Scaggs – Silk Degrees (February 1976)
Rainbow – Rising (May 1976)
The Runaways – The Runaways (June 1976)
Al Stewart – Year of the Cat (July 1976)
Wire – Pink Flag (December 1977)
Elvis Costello – Armed Forces (January 1979)
Frank Zappa – Joe’s Garage (September 1979)

I’ve done pretty well for someone born in 1982. I had to check on the Mike Oldfield album because I’d never heard of this before. It turns out, this was a 2-track nearly 50-minute instrumental album debut by a 19-year old that gained popularity 7 months after its release when it was part of The Exorcist soundtrack. So technically, it wasn’t big in May 1973 like this video makes it seem. Lies!

Trivia

Can you name the city with the most dense population and the most ATM’s per capital in the world?

The Other Football

United States captain and Leeds midfielder Tyler Adams is out for a while after having hamstring surgery. During the international break, the US defeated Grenada 7-1 and El Salvador 1-0 to advance to the Nation’s League semifinals coming up in June. The Americans will face rival Mexico in appointment television.

Spurs have fired manager Antonio Conte but are keeping assistant coach Cristian Stellini on in an interim role. Director of football Fabio Paratici had his FIFA ban extended to 30 months following his alleged role in illegal accounting and player payments while at Juventus. It’s utter chaos at White Hart Lane right now.

Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have become the first managers inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame.

Atletico Madrid defender Inigo Martinez is set to join Barcelona this summer on a free transfer.

The Chelsea women dumped defending champions Lyon out of the Champions League in a shootout at Stamford Bridge on Thursday.

For fighting_eyerash we can confirm St. Louis City FC’s hot start continues as they move to 5-0-0 following a 4-0 win over Salt Lake. They will face Minnesota this weekend on Apple TV MLS Season Pass.

Streaming

We recently pulled the plug on cable and switched to Hulu. I have It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia cued up to go through all of the seasons (who knows if I’ll ever make it all the way to the most recent ever in my lifetime). Although I’ve caught dozens of episodes and partial episodes catching re-runs on TV, the show largely exists for me through meme culture. Dennis has always been my favorite character and the scene with him trying to sell his AEV (Amphibious Exploring Vehicle) is a highlight from the series.

Here’s the full monologue:

“I have contained my rage for as long as possible but I shall unleash my fury upon you, like the crashing of a thousand waves. Be gone vile man, be gone from me. A starter car? This car is a finisher car. A transporter of gods. The golden god. I am untethered and my rage knows no bounds.”

A couple times per month I ironically, and sometimes unironically, scream at my kids “I am untethered!” but then switch up the second part of the sentence depending on the circumstances.

A Look Back

Didn’t one of our readers discuss putting together a list of the top throws in modern Notre Dame football history? Of course, the Kizer-to-Fuller dagger against Virginia in 2015 is forever burnt into our memories. I feel like we talk about this throw quarterly here in the Rambler and that’s more than appropriate. I pulled up the clip again and had some more thoughts.

Shout out to #32 Mike Moore with one of the worst pass-rushes from this game. I’m sure he must have been exhausted because the effort here is abysmal. He rushes up-field straight for Kizer, but instead of actually applying pressure he tries a really slow inside move against C.J. Prosise. It then allows Kizer to side-step and square up a throw while also preventing a late blitzer from making a play. It’s still a really athletic and nifty bit of footwork from Kizer to make this happen, but Moore had to be kicking himself so much watching this in the film room afterward.

18S Paddock Club

This time last year, Ferrari were flying high with Charles Leclerc winning in Australia and completing a Grand Chelem (pole, race win, fastest lap, and led every lap) for the first time in his career. When Max Verstappen’s car caught fire for a DNF that weekend it looked like Ferrari were on their way to a championship. Fast forward to today and Red Bull and Verstappen’s dominance have a tight grip on the sport.

However, this is a track Verstappen has yet to win on in his career and it’s also a circuit Red Bull haven’t won on since 2011.

Round 3 of 23
Australian Grand Prix
Date: April 2nd
Race: 1:00 AM ET
TV: ESPN/F1TV
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Circuit: Albert Park Circuit
Laps: 58
Tire Compounds: C2, C3, C4
Track Evolution: 4 out of 5
Asphalt Abrasion: 2 out of 5

Following last year’s track changes there won’t be anything too different for the team’s in 2023. The only exception is the addition of a 4th DRS zone beginning after turn 9 when the 2nd sector begins. This was the re-worked area where the chicane was removed and the drivers are bombing down the back of the circuit for nearly 20 seconds before hitting the fast turns 11 and 12. They trialed the DRS here during practice last year and quickly dropped it for safety reasons–but want to bring it back again for 2023. Partially because Albert Park has traditionally been a difficult place to overtake through the years.

With Red Bull’s straight line speed, they should have a massive advantage in this 2nd sector. Last year, Verstappen and both Red Bull cars struggled in the slower sector 3 and this is where Ferrari really shined and ended up being the difference for pole. This year, Ferrari aren’t quite as quick through the slow corners. Can a team like Aston Martin or Mercedes surprise with a strong weekend in sector 3?

Other topics for Australia this weekend:

Teams usually don’t bring updates all the way to the Land Down Under so the tech side of things should be pretty muted.

We’ll see if McLaren’s disastrous start and poor luck turns around and they make some noise in the midfield with rookie Oscar Piastri making his first appearance in his home race.

The media are trying their best to make the Verstappen vs. Perez a Thing™ which isn’t entirely unrealistic. On raw pace and race craft this should be an easy teammate battle for the reigning champion but a couple DNF’s for Max and we might actually be talking about Perez with a real shot at a title.

Trivia Answer:

Macau