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

Top News

Manti Te’o is on the College Football Hall of Fame ballot this year. Other new finalists include Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Aaron Donald, Mark Ingram, and Desean Jackson.

Notre Dame has added a 2025 home game with Boise State.

Former Notre Dame quarterback Tyler Buchner (who won a National Championship with the lacrosse team this spring after transferring back from the Alabama football team) will be walking on to the Irish football team as a wide receiver.

The 2024 playoff schedule has dropped for college football:

College will be going head-to-head with the NFL on Saturday, December 21st which is a big reason (only reason, really) they’ve decided to move the Noon and 4 PM kickoffs to TNT. The NFL will have Texans/Chiefs (NBC, 1 PM) and Steelers/Ravens (Fox, 4:30 PM) in those timeslots.

A bill in the North Carolina legislation would require UNC and NC State to play East Carolina, Charlotte, and Appalachian State every year, and not always at home.

Uniform of the Week

Next up in the new college football uniform updates are the Baylor Bears. In recent years, the program was using some pretty basic, maybe even boring, uniforms that relied too much on a monotone look. The good news is that they’ve made some changes, the bad news is that for now the monotone look has largely remained in place. Try something different guys…

Did Oregon and the Green Bay Packers just have a little Baylor baby? I’m a fan of the traditional striping on the shoulder and pants. It just doesn’t seem to fit the Bears aesthetic at all. They really need to get back to those RGIII days with gold pants and green jerseys. Nothing from this look screams long-term to me, and it’s a curious re-brand full of blandness. Even their anthracite uniform is boring as hell.

Recruiting

Notre Dame got its quarterback for 2026 as Lake Mary, Florida’s Noah Grubbs (0.9469) committed to the Irish.

Five-star linebacker Zayden Walker (0.9873) committed to Georgia.

Duncanville, Texas quarterback Keelon Russell (0.9782) flipped from SMU to Alabama.

Edge rusher Chad Woodfork (0.9519) is headed to TCU.

Running back Bo Jackson (0.9576) committed to Ohio State.

Running back Deandre Desinor (0.9134) committed to West Virginia.

Safety Keon Young (0.8958) committed to Ole Miss.

In the 2026 class, Florida took a commitment from quarterback Will Griffin (0.9540).

Wide receiver Keisean Henderson (0.9828) committed to Houston.

YouTube Channel

I’ve recently started using Waze in my car as my preferred map service. Previously, I wasn’t using anything besides an occasional Google Maps route if I was utterly clueless about my destination. I’m currently using the spy male voice for directions which has added some humor. One thing I didn’t like is how much it affects a podcast when there are a lot of turns to deal with. The voice interrupts the podcast and then sends you 2 seconds back to re-listen to the same part of the podcast. I feel like that could be a lot more smooth of a transition.

I like the community driven aspect to Waze and picking up on construction, hazards in the road, and police is great for someone like me. Although, the Waze app is tough on phone batteries as expected. Google owns Waze, which is weird. I guess I prefer the Waze UI and the little characters and that’s enough for me? Of course I choose the F1 car as my car icon, vroom vroom.

Tunes

Apple Music recently released their Top 100 Best Albums list that you can read HERE. It’s generated a lot of discussion, which I guess is the goal of making a list like this, right? As expected, the list takes a pretty strong turn towards including many modern artists. That might not make this list super accurate but how many people over 50 or 60 are using Apple Music as their preferred streaming service? And how many would be reading the Apple list? Here’s the complete list of all artists included from albums released since the start of the century:

#100 – Robyn, Body Talk (2010)
#98 – Travis Scott, Astroworld (2018)
#96 – Lorde, Pure Heroine (2013)
#95 – Usher, Confessions (2004)
#94 – Burial, Untrue (2007)
#93 – Solange, A Seat at the Table (2016)
#92 – Tyler, the Creator, Flower Boy (2017)
#89 – Lady Gaga, The Fame Monster (2009)
#85 – Kasey Musgraves, Golden Hour (2018)
#82 – 50 Cent, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2003)
#80 – Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)
#79 – Lana Del Rey – Norman F*****g Rockwell (2019)
#76 – Bad Bunny, Un Verano Sin Ti (2022)
#72 – SZA, SOS (2022)
#68 – The Strokes, Is This It (2001)
#59 – Arctic Monkeys, AM (2013)
#55 – Rhianna, ANTI (2016)
#47 – Drake, Take Care (2011)
#36 – Beyonce, Beyonce (2013)
#30 – Billie Eilish, When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019)
#26 – Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
#18 – Taylor Swift, 1989 (2014)
#15 – Adele, 21 (2011)
#13 – Jay-Z, The Blueprint (2001)
#10 – Beyonce, Lemonade (2016)
#8 – Amy Winehouse, Back to Black (2006)
#7 – Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d City (2012)
#5 – Frank Ocean, Blonde (2016)

Obviously, they packed in a lot of the modern albums in the front third of the list. Twenty-six out of these 28 modern offerings are from solo artists, something I talk about all the time. The music groups are dead.

There are fourteen from this modern list from female artists, as well. I will admit many of those included are major bangers.

I’d argue 1989, The Blueprint, Lemonade, Back to Black, and Blonde are aggressively overrated on this list. I wouldn’t even put Blonde in a top 500 list and I have no idea how that ended up 5th!

Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was no. 1 on the Apple list. That seems to encapsulate a lot of the list and shouldn’t be in the top spot but that album was so, so good.

Trivia

Which Notre Dame head coach has the most 1-point losses in their career with the Irish?

The Other Football

Most clubs would die for a single Champions League title. Anyway, Real Madrid secured their 15th UCL championship this past weekend with a 2-0 win over Dortmund. The German side actually played really well (+0.95 on xG) but it wasn’t enough to topple the Spanish giants.

The plucky Real Madrid team followed things up by signing PSG star Kylian Mbappe on Monday, as well. It ends a several year flirtation as Madrid signs the French winger on a free transfer and he will reportedly sign a deal for $15 million Euros per season with a $150 million Euro signing bonus.

The United States Women defeated South Korea 4-0 in manager Emma Hayes’ first game with the team. They repeated a shutout again on Tuesday with a 3-0 victory over South Korea once more.

Liga MX side Pachuca defeated Columbus Crew 3-0 to win the CONCACAF Champions Cup championship.

Turkish club Fenerbache have announced Jose Mourinho as their new manager.

TV & Movies

I learned that Jim Henson died because he didn’t get a sore throat checked out in an appropriate manner. Tragic stuff. I watched Jim Henson Idea Man on Disney+ this week and went through a ton of emotions and nostalgia. When I was a kid, Henson was one of the most respected figures in the United States. Didn’t everyone love the Muppets, Sesame Street, and Fraggle Rock? Who would’ve had a higher approval rating circa 1987 than Jim Henson?

I enjoyed the documentary for a lot of the background into his life and beginnings as an artist with puppetry and other video ideas. He was so young when he started to craft his career and it’s wild to see him doing stuff all the way back in the mid-to-late 1950’s. All that funny stuff in black and white! I really wish we could’ve seen another quarter decade of Henson and what artistic visions he could’ve imagined, especially with the internet just around the corner prior to his death.

A Look Back

Don’t look now, there are only 85 days until the season opener at Texas A&M. The last meeting with the Aggies happens to be the one and only time the Irish traveled down to College Station for a game back in 2001. This was pretty much the nadir of the Bob Davie era as it was slowly coming to a regrettable end later this season. The program was just destroyed by Oregon State in the bowl game the prior season, opened up with a loss to Nebraska and Michigan State, before concluding this disastrous 0-3 start at Davie’s former coaching spot.

A&M opened up a 14-0 lead and the game turned into a bit of a rock fight in front of 87,206 fans. By the way, when Notre Dame visits this time Kyle Field holds more than 20,000 more fans than back in 2001. Anyway, Notre Dame averaged 3.2 yards per play in this game while losing 24-3. Both Carlyle Holiday and Matt LoVecchio lit up the scoreboard going a combined 12 of 25 for 121 yards, 0 touchdowns, and 3 interceptions.

18S Paddock Club

F1 is back this weekend for the 9th round of the season at one of the sport’s most affordable spots on Notre Dame Island in Montreal, Quebec. This is always a fun track, part street circuit but more of a purpose made park-like design with plenty to offer to different types of drivers. It’s also a site that is familiar with mixed conditions and the forecast for this weekend looks like rain will be playing a big part in the proceedings.

*As always, due to the hard stopping areas on this track there will be plenty of brake talk as the weekend ramps up and the circuit rubbers in eventually.

*3 drivers not named Max Verstappen have won races already this year. Can we make it a 4th this weekend? In a normal year, Verstappen’s 31 point lead would be solid but the tide does seem to have shifted towards Ferrari and McLaren in the last 4-6 weeks of development.

*Silly Season continues to roll along as first this week Alpine announced they will not be renewing Esteban Ocon’s contract after this season and then Red Bull announced a 2-year extension (through the end of the 2026 season) for Sergio Perez. Now everyone waits to see what Carlos Sainz will do after being bounced from Ferrari. His decision has to be coming soon.

*The FIA and F1 officially dropped the first set of car regulations for 2026 on Thursday. Smaller, slightly lighter, more battery power, and active aero on both wings with a new push to pass feature are common to the sport in 18 months. That’s plenty of time to dig in more to the details.

Trivia Answer:

Lou Holtz, 5 times (Michigan ’86, Pitt ’86, Penn State ’87, Colorado ’90, Tennessee ’91)*

*Holtz is the only coach with more than 1 defeat by a single point in the same season.