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

3 News Stories

#1 OluOlu 

Notre Dame’s recruiting machine continues to roll on with no signs of slowing down soon. This past Tuesday, the Irish welcomed offensive tackle Oluwasemilore Olubobola to the fold after the 6’6″ athlete committed to the program. He attends St. Peter’s Prep in New Jersey, the same school as former Notre Dame players Brandon Wimbush, Shayne Simon, and the Ademilola twins.

With a 5-star rating and 0.9912 score in the 247 Composite, Olubobola is the 8th highest rated Irish commit of the modern era. Current freshman Rodney Dunham is ahead of him on the list as well as Michael Floyd, Aaron Lynch, Sam Young, Manti Te’o, Jaylon Smith, and Jimmy Clausen.

In a bit of a different move, Notre Dame flipped offensive lineman Jackson Hill (0.8550) from UCLA on Thursday. He’s now the lowest rated recruit for the Irish in the 2027 class and hails from Chaminade High School northwest of Los Angeles.

#2 Lowering Standards

With skipping bowl games now becoming a thing and subject to criticism–depending on the prestige of the school of course–something needed to be done before these fat cats in the executive suites really started losing post-season revenue. Someday, the bowl games may largely go away but not before they scratch and claw to keep them alive.

That means, the NCAA football oversight voted to approve a proposal allowing conference greater flexibility to choose teams for bowl games. According to ESPN:

The conference must choose a 5-7 team that has achieved at least the minimum 930 multiyear Academic Progress Rate required to be eligible to participate in the postseason.

Does nearly every program meet the MPR requirement? Of course they do. The next question is whether we’ll see 4-8 teams allowed in bowl games and if that comes for 2027 or 2028?

#3 Home Times

Back on May 7th the Notre Dame football home game kickoff times were announced. If you like night games the 2026 season is going to be right up your alley. Games in South Bend including Michigan State, Miami, and SMU will be scheduled for 7:30 ET, plus the opener at Lambeau Field (technically a home game for the Irish) will also be another 7:30 ET kickoff.

Or, we should say 7:30 PM broadcast start.

This graphic could present the start time in a larger font.

You’ll notice none of those home games are exclusively on Peacock, although it’s reported there will be a Peacock-only game to fulfill Notre Dame’s obligations when they visit Purdue. That would be a Big Ten/NBC/Peacock sandwich of a game.

How many other night games will we see in 2026? The trip out to BYU seems like an easy choice. The Navy game tends to be in the afternoon or Noon slot, though.

Uniform of the Week

Notre Dame has only faced Rice once over the past (nearly) 40 years and back on that day in 2014 they work a super simple uniform of all white with their traditional modern-day blue helmet. The gothic Rice script across the chest was the only hint of flair, not even stripes adorned their sleeves–it was just plain white. From the back, you couldn’t tell if it was Rice or Georgia Southern. You never want to be compared to Georgia Southern in the uniform department.

Okay, something to work with. 

In recent seasons, Adidas has brought something a little different to Rice and now we’re cooking (pun intended). The small gothic script across the chest is gone (I don’t love gothic script but having it as their logo is fine) and instead we get a larger, bolder italic font. There’s actual stripes on the sleeves now. I really, really like their silver helmet with the logo inside a blue background, now that pops. They seem to have changed their blue a little bit and with that helmet they kind of look like Kansas State. Maybe getting ride of the helmet strip would help in that regard.

Media

From last July through this past winter I bought parts to assemble a new road bike and it was an awesome experience. As it went along I kept thinking why there wasn’t an official Lego bike to build. You could find really janky no-name brand monstrosities from China but they weren’t that complicated or interesting. Recently, Lego dropped news out of nowhere that they’ll be releasing a full road bike build in their Icons set. Prayers answered! It’ll be 1,015 pieces and retail for $130.00, a little on the steep side but honestly if you told me that piece count I would’ve guessed at least $200 with the way Lego prices some things.

I saw the picture on the box at first and didn’t think this would be particularly large. But wait, over 1,000 pieces…it had to be pretty big then? Yeah, it’s almost two feet long and a foot high. It’s not small. So much for going on my desk or somewhere more discreet. This big guy is going to go down in my bike lab. Which is where the McLaren MP4/4 (half the size of this bike) has been since I built it. I think the adult Lego trend is pretty awesome but displaying them (and frankly keeping some of them at all) is a pretty big hassle. That’s fair, otherwise I would’ve bought thousands more in new Lego sets.

Tunes

Vermont-born singer-songwriter Noah Kahan seems to be everywhere lately. Someone recently told me he was their favorite artist and I didn’t really know much about him. His most streamed song to date is “Stick Season” from back in 2022 on the album of the same name. I vaguely recognized the tune but was unaware (I must be getting old) that he was nominated for best new artist by the Grammy’s back then. Anyway, Kahan’s latest album The Great Divide came out back on April 24th. I gave it a listen this week.

He’s described heavily as a nostalgic songwriter who creates a sense of longing. I get it. The new album has been breaking a lot of records recently which surprises me because I wouldn’t describe his sound as overwhelmingly popular. Kahan has a pretty high-pitched voice and the really basic rhythm section isn’t particularly for me, I have to say. He has a great way with words and that’s a massive part of his appeal. I view it as like reading a book with music on the side, that’s sort of a compliment I guess. For me, I just can’t listen to this type of Americana-folk for extended periods of time, and his new album is quite long at over 77 minutes.

One More Thing

Have you ever taken one of those color swatch ordering eye tests? If you have some time on your hands try one of those out and see how well you perceive different shades of color. Any time I want to argue about colors with someone (which is probably every other month) I like to bring up teal.

Is teal more of a blue or green color?

That’s teal.

The correct answer is probably it’s right in between green and blue. But, if I have to lean one way I think it’s more green than blue. If someone calls that blue, I’m going to protest. Don’t even get me started on Tiffany Blue and the absurdity of that shade of color.

My biggest point in my favor, I believe, is that if Notre Dame came out wearing teal uniforms the overwhelmingly majority of people would be saying they were wearing a weird shade of green. And I believe that to be true.