Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Notre Dame tight end Mitchell Evans is out for the rest of 2023 after tearing his ACL.
Xavier Watts was named the Bronco Nagurski National Defensive Player of the Week again.
Benjamin Morrison a Jim Thorpe Award semifinalist.
Notre Dame debuted at no. 15 in the first College Football Playoff Rankings of the season this past Tuesday:
Ohio State running back Miyan Williams will miss the rest of the season with an injury.
Coastal Carolina quarterback Grayson McCall remains out with a concussion.
Iowa has announced that offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz will not be returning in 2024.
UCF and Nike have signed a contract extension through 2029.
The University of Houston has agreed to stop wearing their Houston Oilers-themed uniforms after the NFL asked the Cougars to stop.
Colorado players had jewelry stolen from their locker room after the visit to UCLA and Coach Prime would like the Rose Bowl to reimburse them for the losses.
The ACC has released their scheduling model for 2024-2030 with the following:
- No divisions
- Conference matchup increase from 56 to 68
- The top teams by winning percentage face each other in Charlotte for the ACC Championship
- Every team gets at least one home-and-away matchup with every other ACC team over 7 years
- The current 14 ACC teams will travel to California 3 times over 7 years and never in back-to-back years
- There are 16 protected matchups: Boston College-Syracuse, Boston College-Pitt, Syracuse-Pitt, North Carolina-Virginia, North Carolina-Duke, North Carolina-NC State, NC State-Wake Forest, NC State-Duke, Duke-Wake Forest, Virginia Tech-Virginia, Florida State-Clemson, Miami-Florida State, Miami-Virginia Tech, Stanford-Cal, Stanford-SMU, and Cal-SMU.
The Big 12 announced there will only be the following rivalry games every year in conference for 2024-27: Arizona-Arizona State, BYU-Utah, Baylor-TCU, and Kansas-Kansas State.
The Cure Bowl has been re-named the Avocados from Mexico Cure Bowl I swear I’m not making this up.
Uniform of the Week
I originally set out to discuss the James Madison football uniforms in this week’s Rambler but wasn’t sure about a second straight week of purple, plus the Dukes played Old Dominion this past weekend in the aptly named Royal Rivalry and oh my goodness the Monarchs have some cool uniforms.
I think light blue and dark blue is the undefeated color scheme. Even Under Armour took this and couldn’t mess it up! These teams debuted a new large crown rivalry trophy over the weekend, which James Madison takes to remain undefeated in 2023. Old Dominion at least won the uniform matchup.
Recruiting
After ditching his hometown Arizona Wildcats a couple weeks ago, edge rusher Elijah Rushing (0.9861) committed to Oregon.
LSU dipped into Texas for offensive tackle Weston Davis (0.9297) last Thursday.
Dayton safety Reggie Powers (0.9082) gave a verbal to Oklahoma.
Lancaster, Texas running back Kewan Lacy (0.8990) has left Nebraska’s recruiting class.
YouTube Channel
The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) is set to begin its inaugural season in 2024 after the PWHF folded this past July. I bring this up because the names of the 6 new teams have leaked via trademark databases in the United States. The names will be:
Toronto Torch
Montreal Echo
Ottawa Alert
Minnesota Superior
Boston Wicked
New York Sound
Those names are pretty terrible across the board. It made me think of the NHL and which names are lacking. My least favorite would be the Coyotes, Hurricanes, Devils, Panthers, and Blue Jackets. I hate the current Ducks logo but that’s a cool name.
Tunes
I’m 41 and have entered my Khruangbin phase. Recently I’ve discovered this Houston-based trio and have been listening many times over to their albums. I found this video explaining some of their writing process for a group that doesn’t include many vocals in their songs. Yes, this band is heavy as hell on the vibes. But the vibes are amazing!
I found it interesting that the bass player records riffs over a drum machine and sends things to the guitar player to further the tapestry of their songs. In a lot of their music the bass and guitar are really mirroring and echoing each other which can get a little tedious for an instrumental group, although they weave in and out of that connection incredibly well. What an awesome band.
Trivia
Via Brett McMurphy: Can you name the 5 teams in the Power 5 who have never been ranked once in the College Football Playoff poll?
The Other Football
Leo Messi has won his 8th Ballon D’or award, giving him 3 more than Cristiano Ronaldo for the most ever in soccer history.
In last weekend’s EPL action, Everton beat West Ham 1-0, Liverpool beat Nottingham Forest 3-0, City took the rivalry game with Man United 3-0, Brentford beat Chelsea 2-0, Arsenal crushed Sheffield United 5-0, Wolves tied Newcastle 2-2, and Spurs beat Crystal Palace 2-1 last Friday night.
Shocking news as Saudi Arabia is the only country to submit a bid to host the 2034 World Cup.
TV & Movies
The sad news of this past weekend was actor Matthew Perry passing away at the young age of just 54 years old. I knew he had a lot of health and drug problems throughout his life but as I’m reading his Wikipedia page I really didn’t know the extreme extent he’d been battling issues for such a long time. It’s really sad how booze and drugs can completely take over someone’s life.
I didn’t watch Friends religiously like a lot of people in my age group. Whenever I think about Matthew Perry I go back to the 2000 film The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis co-starring as Jimmy the Tulip. I thought this movie harnessed Perry’s nervous energy comedian style really well and was a memorable theater experience. His run ins and problems with the backyard sliding doors I thought were hilarious.
A Look Back
I’m surprised players don’t slip on the football more often than they do. This past weekend, we got to see one of the best examples in American football history of a Looney Toons reenactment. This clip popped up on my social media this past Saturday and at first I was convinced it wasn’t real. This had to be some really clever editing, surely?
I’m wrapping my head around the thought process by this player. It’s a voodoo kick from North Carolina Central and deadens just inside the 5-yard line. Of course, there’s some blame on the kickoff man for not being closer to the ball but this is just a freak occurrence. However, was he trying to stop and pick up the ball before running? The ball had stopped moving though, does he need glasses? Other angles it looks like he almost purposely kicked the ball. And yet, my dude went flying in the air after apparently slipping on the ball. His reaction throughout definitely makes it look like he slipped for sure.
18S Paddock Club
It was a Ferrari 1-2 to begin the Mexican Grand Prix, what could go wrong? Here’s our quick race recap as we look forward to Interlagos this weekend:
- Both Red Bulls had great starts off the line, except Sergio Perez turned into Charles Leclerc into turn 1 and had to retire, yet another oof moment for the Mexican whose job is under fire.
- Max Verstappen grabbed the lead from P3 and went on to win his 16th race of the year, a new record broken from his mark last year.
- Danny Ricciardo qualified P4 and finished P7 for an amazing result for Alpha Tauri who jump up to 8th in the Constructors Championship.
Not ideal!
- Lewis Hamilton moved up from P6 to finish in 2nd place with Leclerc behind him in P3 to complete the podium.
- Lando Norris got screwed in qualifying and started in P17 only to move up to P5 at the checkered flag.
- Continuing their late season misery, both Alonso and Stroll had to retire with car damage. Aston Martin is now 20 points behind McLaren, yikes.
Round 20 of 22
Brazilian Grand Prix
Date: November 5th
Race: 12:00 PM ET
Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil
Circuit: Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace aka Interlagos
This weekend brings the last of the sprint races for the 2023 season. Last year, Red Bull had perhaps their worst practice and qualifying sessions of the season, eventually leading to George Russell picking up his 1st career F1 victory.
With only 3 races remaining we have a handful of positional battles to sort out:
- Mercedes leads Ferrari for 2nd place by 22 points.
- We mentioned McLaren in 4th place and that’s looking more and more secure with each session.
- Alpine is locked in for a disappointing 6th place, well below Aston Martin but well ahead of Williams.
- AlphaTauri and Alfa Romeo are tied on points for 8th and 9th with Haas 4 points back in 10th place.
- Perez is back to sweating in 2nd place with Hamilton only 20 points behind now.
- Sainz and Alonso are tied for 4th place with 183 points.
- Norris (6th) is only 3 points ahead of Leclerc (7th) while George Russell is secure from 9th place (Piastri with 87 points) while sitting on 151 points in 8th.
Trivia Answer:
California, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, and Maryland
Will the new ACC teams affect ND’s schedule at all or will they just play all the “old” ACC teams?
In a new arrangement, we’ll have to play Stanford 3 times per year.
Here is what I have heard: it is still an average of 5 ACC games each year (from all of the ACC teams except Stanford). ND will continue playing Stanford annually, but it will not count toward the 5 ACC games
Right, I assume we wouldn’t play any more or less games. The question is whether Cal and SMU will be on our schedule now and if so, how that’ll affect other teams on the schedule. I thought before it was that we played everyone every 3 years or something like that.
I have heard that ND is pushing back a little on that and there may be a compromise where ND either plays Stanford every year or a Stanford/Cal mix and they count as a half ACC game. So 11 total games per two years against ACC including Stanford/Cal instead of 12.
Also, it continues to be bizarre that the Army game for next year isn’t announced yet.
It’s not that surprising given all the moving parts involved in Army’s move to the AAC. We’ve gone longer than this without a full schedule release – hell, 2022’s full schedule wasn’t released until 2022, as I recall.
Really remarkable that we would have to sacrifice anything over this, and that the ND folks prioritized getting Cal and Stanford into a conference to the extent they were willing to make any sacrifices for them. Why would we do that? Who cares?
Somebody called Swarbrick a “zero-interest rate AD” a few weeks ago here and it’s so true. People used to think he was a great AD and now that’s totally out of touch with reality. Really a rough last few years for him overall, and whether his overall legacy basically hinges on Freeman’s success (and to a lesser degree Shrewsberry/Ivey).
I found Khruangbin about a year ago and was quickly a fan. Their remake of “Summer Madness” and their original “August 10” are faves. Watching the bass player during live performances does not diminish from the appeal.
I will still put Mordechai on as background music while I’m doing something…it is a great album. I personally don’t like their other stuff as much, but it’s solid.
Mordechai has a lot of funk in that album, I like it.
I read this sentence and immediately aged 30 years and and started yelling about the kids pulling up their damn pants.
Wow, how did they pull this off? LSU is ranked both 13th and 14th in the rankings. You would think they could trade those two rankings for a top ten ranking