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

In the News

North Carolina didn’t give Mack Brown a pay raise but extended his current contract one year through the end of the 2025 season.

The Les Miles saga continues as Oregon State President F. King Alexander has resigned due to his handling of Miles while he was at LSU.

Mike Farrell gave Notre Dame an average grade after ranking quarterback play over the last decade.

Top Georgia wideout George Pickens is out for the year after tearing his knee up this week.

Alabama tight end coach Jay Graham abruptly resigned citing mental health issues. He was hired 2 months ago.

Fake numbers? Several Penn State players nearly broke stopwatches with their Pro Day performances.

Dennis Dodd at CBS Sports has a feature on Clark Lea rebuilding Vanderbilt.

Throwback Article

An official 18S Film Room devoted to punt return? YES!

The Portal

Minnesota linebacker Itayvion “Tank” Brown has landed at Michigan State.

Oklahoma is holding up the transfer of quarterback Chandler Morris, son of coach Chad Morris, to TCU.

Rising junior safety Tykee Smith is leaving West Virginia and will be one of the more sought after transfers on the market now.

Pro Football Focus ranked Jack Coan as the 19th best transfer of the college football off-season.

Helmet Talk

Northwestern has unveiled a bunch of alternate helmets in recent years, many of them pretty poor efforts if you ask me. Does it seem like a low number that only Northwestern, ECU, TCU, Kansas State, Washington, and LSU feature purple in their color scheme in the entirety of college football? I’m a big fan of purple.

I’ve always found Northwestern’s traditional purple helmet one of the more underrated in the country. They’d be better off continuing to mess with their uniforms but keeping this on their heads.

Recruiting

Speaking of Northwestern, they are keeping local product wide receiver Reggie Fleurima (0.916) in state.

UCLA grabbed their second 4-star tight end of the cycle with Carsen Ryan (0.902) committing recently.

Georgia kept athlete Malaki Starks (0.985) in-state and picked up another 5-star recruit.

Defensive tackle Tygee Hill (0.901) is also staying in-state and committed to LSU.

House of the Week

We’re back in California, this time up the Pacific Coast Highway to the northwest of Los Angeles for the home of actor Pierce Brosnan in Malibu. Bond, James Bond!

I wanted to dismiss it, but yeah that green roof is pretty awesome. Well done taking 3 years on that. Although, I find it odd that the backyard facing the beach is so wide open. Seems ideal for a raging party with 200 people but almost out of place with a small group.

What makes scissor truss ceilings romantic, specifically?

At first, I thought the TV screen was hilariously too small given the length of the room and then the huge screen came down, whoops. The music room is nice, if a little too bourgeois, and the lack of amps makes me think no one seriously spends time creating tunes in there.

This house is great, maybe my favorite we’ve featured so far. However, I wanted to see the street level entrance on the inland side and it’s hilarious to see what that looks like. Negative trillion curb appeal for $100 million!

Tunes

This song was brought up briefly in a podcast I was listening to recently and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked up the artist and this glorious video. Take it all in, baby:

Am I the only one who thought this was sung by a black Caribbean artist? I feel completely duped for several decades! How is there not a single black guy in this band? Why are there so many keyboards on stage? This song is a classic, though. Timeless. I also found out that the singer Matthew Wilder produced No Doubt’s massive album Tragic Kingdom.

On This Day in Sports

Elgin Baylor recently passed away. He retired just 9 games into the 1971-72 season with the Los Angeles Lakers following knee trouble and would witness his teammates immediately set the record for consecutive wins (still unbroken) and later produce a then NBA record of 69 wins in an 82-game season. Behind fellow aging stars Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain, the Lakers would go on to win the 1972 NBA Championship and would give Baylor a ring for his part with the team.

Book Nook

I wouldn’t say Keith Richards’ 2010 memoir is the best thing I’ve ever read. But, if you like the Rolling Stones and that era of rock music it’s a very fun read. Besides the common refrain of wondering how Richards is still alive through all of his travels I always think about the section he covers while the band recorded Exile on Main St:

So, they flee England with tax problems and decide to record their next album at the Nellcote mansion Richards is renting in the French bay just east of Nice. They use their famous mobile recording studio and set up all this equipment and gear throughout various rooms in the basement.

With drug use rampant–and Richards a certified heroin addict–the band would record all evening long and into the middle of the night. What always sticks with me is that the band would often jump into one of the speed boats anchored on the shore near the basement and jet over to Monaco or even the Italian border to party into the early mornings. Then, they’d turn around and come back to Nellcote, sleep for a few hours, and do it all over again. Band members were in an out over the several weeks, but still, can you imagine being a fly on the wall for one of these sessions and boat trips?

Hot Take

Today is an oldie but a goodie, Notre Dame should cancel its annual games against Navy and Stanford. Keep playing them, but remove the annual tag.

Trivia

Notre Dame will have 9 scholarship football players from Georgia on the current 2021 roster. Name the 9 players.