Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Terrible news out of Starkville where Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach passed away on Monday from complications following a heart attack. Certainly one of the most colorful characters in college football history, Leach’s coaching of the Air Raid at Kentucky and Oklahoma as a coordinator then with head coaching stops at Texas Tech, Washington State, and Mississippi State will live on forever. The Bulldogs do plan on playing their bowl game in his honor and are promoting defensive coordinator Zach Arnett to full-time head coach.
Late last week, Isaiah Foskey declared for the NFL Draft and won’t play in the Gator Bowl. Marcus Freeman expects everyone else on the Irish roster to play in the bowl game after Foskey (and Mayer last week) announced their intentions for the NFL.
The 2022 Mackey Award winner in our hearts Michael Mayer officially made unanimous All-American this week.
Incoming 2023 recruit Drayk Bowen has won the high school Butkus Award as the nation’s top linebacker. That’s the 4th win for a Notre Dame recruit since the award was created in 2008 following Prince Kollie, Jaylon Smith, and Manti Te’o.
Tight end Cane Berrong has entered the transfer portal.
Former Notre Dame wideout Joe Wilkins has transferred to Miami (OH).
Former Notre Dame and current FSU offensive lineman Dillan Gibbons won the Wuerffel Trophy for the 2022 season.
Navy has fired head coach Ken Niumatalolo, goodbye. The Navy AD came into the locker room after their 2 overtime loss to Army and fired him on the spot. Ouch! The AD has said hiring a triple option new head coach will be done as it’s in their DNA as a program.
Stanford has hired 54-year old Troy Taylor who was 30-8 during 3 seasons with FCS Sacramento State. RIP Jason Garrett to the Farm. Stanford quarterback Tanner McKee is also headed to the NFL.
Purdue has hired Illinois defensive coordinator Ryan Walters as their new head coach.
Kent State is hiring Minnesota running backs coach Kenni Burns as their new head coach.
Washington offensive coordinator Eric Morris is the new head coach at North Texas.
Syracuse offensive coordinator Robert Anae is headed to NC State to coordinate their offense, his third job in the ACC in 3 years. The Orange are promoting quarterbacks coach Jason Beck who came from Virginia with Anae prior to 2022. Syracuse also lost their DC Tony White who is headed to Nebraska.
South Carolina has hired Arkansas tight end coach Dowell Loggains as their new offensive coordinator. They’ve also given special teams coach Pete Lembo a new contract extension and raise.
USC quarterback Caleb Williams has won the Heisman, Maxwell, and Walter Camp awards. In addition, he also took home the AP Player of the Year honor.
Louisville quarterback Malik Cunningham is skipping the Fenway Bowl and will prepare for the NFL Draft.
Clemson defensive lineman Myles Murphy is sitting out the Orange Bowl and will prepare for the NFL. Also, Clemson linebacker Trenton Simpson has declared early for the NFL Draft.
Ohio State running back TreVeyon Henderson is out of the playoffs following foot surgery.
Top tight end Dalton Kincaid is injured and won’t play in Utah’s Rose Bowl game. He is leaving for the NFL, as well.
Biletnikoff winner Jalin Hyatt is skipping Tennessee’s Orange Bowl to prepare for the NFL.
In a 11-5 vote, the UC Regents are allowing UCLA to leave for the Big Ten without any financial penalties.
Uniform of the Week
I turned on the Army-Navy game this weekend shortly before halftime with the Middies nursing a 3-0 lead. There was an obligatory shot of the crowd on my screen before the producers brought the action back to the field. At this moment, I threw up all over my living room just like the Team America: World Police scene that’s been in the GIF hall of fame.
Army, oh no. What have you wrought? Gradient is tough to pull off on a football uniform. You have all varieties of sizes, heights, and weights on a football roster. Plus, there are too many modifications from individuals, like pushing the jersey up to expose your t-shirt. The speckled helmets are cool. But to use that speckle with the gradient did NOT work. It’s too hard to see and looks like the color changes abruptly right below the numbers.
Recruiting
Notre Dame has added their first transfer of the 2022 off-season as USF kicker Spencer Shrader will join the Irish for his final year of eligibility. He is 28 of 41 on his career, plus 20 of 26 his last 2 years with 13 of 14 being good from inside 40 yards.
Our old friend edge rusher Keon Keeley (0.9960) committed to Alabama finally.
Edge rusher Reuben Bain (o.9677) has committed to Miami.
Safety Daeh McCullough (0.8978), son of Notre Dame running backs coach Deland McCullough, committed to Oklahoma. The Sooners also added rising sophomore linebacker Dasan McCullough, another brother, through the transfer portal who is coming off a freshman All-American season with 4 sacks.
Edge rusher Hunter Clegg (0.9259) committed to Utah.
Linebacker Arion Carter (0.9329) committed to Tennessee.
Quarterback Lincoln Kienholz (0.9217) gave a verbal to Ohio State.
In the 2024 class, top quarterback DJ Lagway (0.9875) committed to Florida. Also, the nation’s top wide receiver Jeremiah Smith (0.9982) committed to Ohio State.
Looking at the transfer portal, Coastal Carolina quarterback Grayson McCall is seeking a new home while Western Kentucky gun slinger Austin Reed has decided to stay with the Hilltoppers after previously putting his name in the portal.
YouTube Channel
I’m far from an expert in the crypto game. FTX initially popped up on my radar when they signed a deal with the Mercedes F1 team back in September 2021. They got their company logo on the Mercedes rear wing endplates and when the team rocked up to the Miami GP this past spring with a funky livery, that was all in collaboration with FTX. A month ago, shortly before the F1 season concluded, Mercedes suspended their partnership because……..FTX declared bankruptcy and founder Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly led one of the biggest fraud schemes in United States history.
I don’t understand how crypto has been so alluring for people. Look at SBF, for example. This dude has a weird haircut. Dresses like a slob. He has a creepy extremely high pitched voice. Lives in the Bahamas. Noted for his lack of sleep in favor of working all night at the office. He set up a crypto currency exchange and crypto hedge fund. You’re telling me that guy stole $10 billion from customers? Every red flag imaginable was there staring at everyone!
Tunes
I recently added today’s song to my Apple Music 2022 playlist. At first I just liked the vibe. I’m a sucker for those spacey and slow guitar riff, as well chronicled on The Rambler in the past. It came up on a radio mix at home and it was an easy add for me. Recently, a podcast ended early on my commute so I clicked on my playlist and actually paid more attention to the lyrics. This song is pretty dark!
I shouldn’t be that surprised when the song says, “In the back of my mind, I killed you.” Well, okay then! Is he a Notre Dame fan talking about Tommy Rees? I was doing research and this artist d4vd (pronounced “David” sheesh kids these days) is only 17 years old. He’s a teenager from Houston, my goodness. He rose to some level of fame making Fortnite music montages then decided to make his own music. I feel so old. But this first single released a couple months ago did pretty well on the Billboard charts, so good for David, I mean, d4vd.
Trivia
How many Mackey Awards has Notre Dame won in its history?
The Other Football
A lot has happened in the week since our last Rambler. We have the World Cup Final all set!
In the quarterfinals, Argentina beat the Netherlands 2-2 on penalties, Croatia beat Brazil 1-1 on penalties, France beat England 2-1 (poor Harry Kane damn it), and Morocco’s incredible run continued with a 1-0 win over Portugal.
This week in the semifinals, Argentina poured it on against Croatia in a 3-0 win and France didn’t have a ton of trouble beating Morocco 2-0. So much for the little guys, it’s blue blood final time.
Argentina vs. France for all the marbles is coming up on Sunday at 10 AM ET on Fox!
In other news, long-time dedicated American soccer writer Grant Wahl tragically died in Qatar after suffering an aortic aneurysm.
Lastly, ESPN is completely out of broadcasting the MLS as Fox signed a new 4-year deal with the league for exclusive TV rights in the United States.
Streaming
If you’re here for some early 2000’s nostalgia you’ve come to the right place. Remember the show Crank Yankers on Comedy Central? This was college era for me and I don’t think we had Comedy Central on the cable package, but I could be mistaken. What I do remember about Crank Yankers is everyone having the bits downloaded on our Limewire accounts.
I don’t know what to tell you, other than substances were ingested that made this show very funny in a way my adult brain struggles to comprehend today. Like, we were dying and in tears with some of these prank calls. Still, the Batman call has always stayed with me. The “Batman?? Residence” still kills me though. The delivery is so great and the best ones happened when the person being pranked cooperated in way you could never believe.
A Look Back
I recently made the mistake of watching the beginning of the 2013 BCS National Championship in which Notre Dame was very much not facing Kansas State. Man, what a beast Eddie Lacy was in college. He was stuck behind Trent Richardson and Mark Ingram in 2010 and Richardson in 2011 before going absolutely wild on the SEC and wider college football world in 2012.
Unfortunately, the Irish ran into this machine in Miami on that fateful night. For the record, Lacy gained 140 yards on 20 carries while backup T.J. Yeldon had a ho-hum 108 yards on 20 carries. Lacy’s NFL career is crazy (the consensus is that he ate himself out of the league, no?). He’s the rookie of the year and makes a Pro Bowl, has back-to-back 1,110 yard seasons then just 29 more career games in a sharp decline before being out of the league for good. He’s still only 32 and he hasn’t played in any of the last 5 NFL seasons.
18S Paddock Club
Previewing each team on the grid for the 2023 season…
Team: AlphaTauri
Founded: 2006
2022 Result: 9th
Base: Faenza, Italy
Owners: Red Bull GmbH
Power Unit: Red Bull Powertrains (Honda)
Team Principal: Franz Tost
Drivers: Yuki Tsunoda (3rd year), Nyck de Vries (rookie)
The Good: Well, there wasn’t much good to speak of in 2022, unless you count AlphaTauri being able to exist in the Red Bull orbit during a season in which the mother team won a double championship. Yuki Tsunoda gained another year of experience and had his contract extended. Pierre Gasly’s profile as a world athletic star increased a lot off the track, which should’ve helped the fledging AlphaTauri clothing line. That’s all I’ve got.
The Bad: This was a good year to show how separated AlphaTauri and Red Bull are despite having the same owners and sharing the same engine and some other car parts. When it was unveiled Alpha had pushrod front suspension in contrast to Red Bull’s pullrod front suspension it was clear a different aerodynamic philosophy was coming from Italy. And it completely flopped. On some of the power tracks, Alpha could manage pretty well with the Honda engine but their downforce was a mess, plus they continually had brake issues late in the season. When Alpine signed Gasly in early October, it felt like he was fed up with the poor car and couldn’t wait for the season to end.
All hail, short kings.
2023 Hope: One has to assume Alpha will be moving as much as they can towards the favored Red Bull aero philosophy. This will be Tsunoda’s make-or-break 3rd year in Formula One. They signed soon-to-be 29-year old rookie Nyck de Vries to add to the Dutch power on the grid and at 5’5″ (to Tsunoda’s 5’3″) gives us a team of Short Kings. It seemed like de Vries was going to be a forgotten man in F1 coming into 2021 but resurrected his career thanks to the emergency drive for Williams at Monza a few months ago. He’s a 2019 F2 champion and 2021 Formula E champion, one could argue Mercedes did a terrible job finding a promising junior a seat in F1 and AlphaTauri may reap the benefits now.
Trivia Answer:
1, Tyler Eifert, 2012
Navy wants to keep the triple option but doesn’t want Niumatalolo to run it. Sure.
How deep is the triple option coaching pool exactly?
Burger is getting the call!
I thought they should go air raid and do a complete 180. Weirdly enough, I thought about Leach taking over Navy some day and then the terrible news.
Malik Jefferson = LB; Malik Cunningham = QB
Dillon Gibbons won the Wuerffel award based on creating a 501(c)(3) non-profit called Big Man Big Heart, Inc. that advocates college players to donate their NIL revenue to “promote unity, positivity and kindness in their community and beyond”. Big Man Big Heart has raised over $425,000 for underserved populations and individuals with special needs impacted by natural disasters and horrific accidents. His bachelor’s degree at Notre Dame was in management and consulting from the Mendoza College of Business. He was recently named as the 2022 recipient of the Jim Tatum Award (ACC’s top football scholar-athlete), as well as being named to the 2022 Allstate Good Works Team. Gibbons is getting his MBA at FSU.
One of the other finalists, Patrick Fields of Stanford, was a finalist last year. Fields transferred from Oklahoma in January. According to a Stanford release, he “planned and executed a three-day mentorship and networking event prior to Juneteenth in his hometown of Tulsa, Okla. The event brought together high school and college students with black business owners, leaders and mentors, to teach the students about the college admissions process and financial resources available to them. Fields raised the funds to make all events during the three days free to those who attended and hopes to give out academic scholarships through the event in the future.” Fields is studying for his master’s in management science and engineering at Stanford.
Last year’s winner was Isaiah Sanders from Stanford who had graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 2019 with a BS in Systems Engineering, and later earned a MS in Management Science and Engineering.
Drue Tranquill won the award in 2018.
Very sincere thanks for this, MC. “Heartwarming” was overdone 40 years ago, but… it’s kinda nice to get one’s heart warmed, especially at this time of the year. And though I am a PLS/ROTC ND grad, my recent dealings with Mendoza School profs and students shows me there is a side of their top-ranked business program that genuinely inculcates a slant on ethics and even altruism.
The pessimistic view: With other teams picking up elite recruits we are quickly fading. Even if we keep Bowen we’ll likely end up 8th (if OSU and Oklahoma pick up anyone of note). Without Bowen we’d probably be at best 9th, maybe even 10th or 11th if Florida/Clemson pick up some big fish (which I don’t think they are expected to do).
The optimistic view: teams 5-8 are really all neck and neck however it finishes up (if we keep Bowen and these teams don’t pick up many more elite prospects). And we’ll end up with a 2nd year in a row of at least 80% blue-chip rate (even better this year with nearly 85% rate with last year being almost 82%). That’s very good. That rate seems closer to top 4 worthy in most years.
On the other hand: We really could end up back in a 3rd tier of teams.
Tier 1: Bama/Georgia
Tier 2: Texas, Miami, LSU – maybe even Oklahoma – and possibly OSU
So that one of the best recruiting years we’ve had is still only good for a top 10 type class. The competition has gotten stiffer with more teams putting together stronger classes.
The hope is this class, in which our three best players all appear likely to have decommitted for NIL reasons, will convince the powers that be that it’s ok to let players get their market value and still come to ND.
Great point.
I don’t know how to do these things, but do the folks more talented than I know what our class score would be with Moore, Keeley, and Bowen (minus Minchey and Mukam)?
https://247sports.com/college/notre-dame/Season/2023-Football/ClassCalculator/
It would be 300.25.
Dang. That’s borderline elite.
yea the top 2 or 3 teams are almost always above 300.
Sorting out the NIL space and how to adjust is something that’s necessary, but I doubt losing a couple of recruits is going to demonstrably push Notre Dame into earth-shaking, program changing type of action.
You really think Notre Dame is going to look at the A&M’s and Oregon’s and Miami’s and be like, “yeah we gotta act more like THAT!”
Recruiting feels like…
I think the bag man have always been doing work at a few select programs, and those programs now just pay even more. Goes against us.
And now those tier 2 and 3 schools, and the occasional tier 4/5 (think the Louisville guy who flipped, or the Jackson State kid) can go all in on or two five stars and further reduce the pool of talent.
In an ideal world, the NCAA cleans up the NIL and transfer rules. Ha.
In a more realistic world, the case of the USC athletes going the NLRB and being declared employees maybe evens things back up again? Any hot takes on what the admin would do if all football players are declared employees?
I think a more realistic future outlook takes into account the lack of value that boosters are getting for these NIL investments, as well as some standardization of NIL contracts that actually ensure athletes receive the money that’s being “promised”.
Once these things happen ND will be better able to counter the recruiting inducement offers by proving FUND payments plus outside ND-affiliated NIL are similarly desirable.
Regarding employment status I guess my hot take is that outlawing amateur sports is so ridiculously radical that there’s functionally no way that it rolls out nationwide. The legal distinction between why a college student is banned from participating as a non-employee vs an 18 year old HS student doesn’t exist. Neither does the distinction between why football players can’t participate without being employees, but soccer players can.
I think the first thing you say is true but I wonder how long it’ll take and if ND will already be irrelevant on the national scene by then if we haven’t adapted at all.
The latter part of your thought is very interesting to me, being as over the past few years the landscape is in fact shifting to being so radically different from how things always had been. Being declared employees and shattering any remaining vestiges of amateurism just seems like the next logical step to me. Which means who the hell knows what “college” sports even look like in 10-15 years.
There are a huge number of 4* TAMU recruits leaving. I am assuming they didn’t find the field and their salary, oops NIL money, was cut. I think we will see a lot of that too.
Well the administration has “claimed” that ND would drop DI athletics if athletes had to be paid by the school. I think that’s obviously a 99.9% fictional world, but I’m think it’s likely the administration would fight against declaring them employees as long as legally possible, which would certainly put us further behind the 8 ball.
Honestly I’d prefer that. I have no interest in watching an increasingly me-first semipro league with unlimited free agency, early opt outs, skyrocking coaching money, and complete refusal to set or follow any rules at all. Just let the NFL use the XFL or whatever as a developmental league to take the five star prospects and let college teams have some kind of continuity instead of kids leaving as soon as they have a great year.
Walter Rouse, Stanford’s LT, who started in that position for four years, is the latest Stanford O-Lineman to enter the Transfer Portal. He has one year of eligibility remaining. Rouse was the last of the five Class of 2019 O-lineman to enter the Portal.
Rouse was a finalist for the Campbell Trophy that annually recognizes an individual as the absolute best in the nation for his combined academic success, football performance and exemplary leadership. Rouse graduated from Stanford with a 3.52 GPA in Biomechanical Engineering.
That’s one position we really don’t need help at.
Let him play RT, move Big Blake to LG.
Unlikely and unnecessary though. Idk if Rouse is even worth it though, if he was that good wouldn’t he be going pro? (Might be Cain Madden fears for taking a grad transfer OL)
Darn, Eric, here I was having a good time reading the Rambler, marveling as usual at your great brand of eclecticism (is that even a word).. and then you bring up the 2012/13 natty game. Which I have been trying sooo hard to forget. Yeah, Lacey, goodness gracious. And that O-line. Having said that — in the Manti documentary that just came out Robby Toma says that though Manti denied the catfishing thing took him off his stride, well, one can see it did.
OK, on to brighter memories. My dad was at the 1935 big win over tOSU in Columbus, as well as the one next year at home (which we always forget). Here’s to righting the ship this (next) season!
https://125.nd.edu/moments/notre-dames-first-game-of-the-century-1935/
Well, I’d say it was off-topic, but you made it a topic, Eric, so I will share an extreme sorrow that most of you won’t share, and some of you will be glad of my heartbreak. Les Bleus just lost one heck of a match. My boys and I have been closely linked to the fortunes of that team since 1998, in fact at 16 Ray played against Kante, the French midfielder (outplayed him in fact). Anyway — I hope some of you watched what was quite the show.
Penalty kicks are a stupid way to decide a soccer game, but in this case, probably a just outcome… though I just totally love the way this group of players never have a moment of quit in them. I suspect the injuries and the flu bug helped do them in — if Didier didn’t have to sub out Griezman, Giroud, Kounte, Varane, the penalties would have evolved differently.
Sorry for all this, folks — anyway, take care all from a sad and cold France!