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

Top News

In case you missed it, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick is stepping down in early 2024. He will be replaced by NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua who is a 1993 alum.

The Big Ten revealed a “Flex Protect Plus” scheduling model for the 2024 football season that features protected rivalries, a 9-game schedule, with every conference pairing having a home-and-home every 4 years. The protected rivalries include Michigan-Ohio State, UCLA-USC, Minnesota-Wisconsin, Indiana-Purdue, Michigan State-Michigan, Iowa-Minnesota, Illinois-Northwestern, Iowa-Nebraska, Maryland-Rutgers, Iowa-Wisconsin and Illinois-Purdue.

The College Football Hall of Fame ballot is out and Todd Lyght is the only Notre Dame player listed. The new players with their first year on the ballot include Michael Vick, Larry Fitzgerald, and Terrell Suggs.

Both of Colorado’s first 2 games (TCU and Nebraska) will be on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff.

Reports across the country say the Big 12 is interesting in adding UConn to their conference. There are also reports about adding Gonzaga. The Big 12 is also set to announce football games in Mexico next week and are discussing starting a bowl game in Monterrey from 2026.

Ole Miss added key wideout transfer Zakhari Franklin from UTSA. He totaled 3,348 yards and 37 touchdowns in 4 seasons with the Roadrunners.

EA Sports is rumored to be spending $5 million for all of the FBS player naming rights in next year’s College Football 24 video game. There are talks that players may hold out for more money.

The former president of the USFL is starting a spring football league for high school football recruits.

Former USC quarterback Matt Cassell is joining the NBC Big Ten pre-game show.

Netflix will be releasing a documentary on the 2006-09 Florida Gators called Swamp Kings.

Uniform of the Week

My high school colors were red and gray (until my senior year when they added BFBS and also darkened the red to make it maroon) and it’s made me somewhat of an expert on this color combination. Therefore, I have some thoughts on Washington State. Quick tangent, Wazzu used to have cool helmets back before the days where everyone had alternates when they’d wear silver at home and crimson on the road. Over the last decade, they’ve worn 19(!) different helmets so those days of a fun home/away differences are long gone in favor of complete randomness.

The big thing with red and gray is that the colors need to be close to each other, and a little bit of white trim isn’t necessary but can help a lot in certain situations. For example, from the neck down there’s virtually no gray in this picture and it doesn’t look like Washington State. However, the helmet does (although it should be metallic silver) because it mixes all 3 colors. Too often, the Cougars will use gray and white together only and that looks especially terrible.

Recruiting

Notre Dame added big nose guard prospect Sean Sevillano (0.8644) last Friday. The Irish also added running back Kedren Young (0.9220) on Monday night and offensive tackle Styles Prescod (0.9087) on Tuesday.

Five-star linebacker Sammy Brown (0.9928) has committed to Clemson. The Tigers also added wide receiver Bryant Wesco (0.9788).

Georgia has added defensive lineman Justin Greene (0.9504).

Safety Dejuan Lane (0.9041) committed to Penn State.

USC gained the commitment of safety Jarvis Boatwright (0.8908), offensive tackle Manasse Itete (0.9038), edge rusher Kameryn Fountain (0.9567), and corner Dakoda Fields (0.9575).

Offensive tackle Kevin Heywood (0.9121) committed to Wisconsin.

In the 2025 class, Texas added quarterback KJ Lacey (0.9692) and Alabama added running back Anthony Rogers (0.9599).

YouTube Channel

I am semi-coaching tee-ball right now and I hate it. It’s my first real dip back into the Little League fields since the summer of 1994. There’s a slight tinge of America’s Pastime and when the weather cooperates there are bits and pieces that can be enjoyed. I’d settle for kids paying attention and actually playing the sport 20% of the time. It’s damn near 0% through our first 5 games. I’m keeping my mouth shut for now but secretly hoping none of my kids play baseball or softball as they get older. Anyway, here’s a video of Barry Bonds hitting baseballs into lower orbit:

Bonds was the last Major League player that made me feel excited about baseball, even with the alleged steroids. He retired after the 2007 season, so it’s been a while! I always liked how Bonds spanned such 2 different eras. As a rookie in Pittsburgh he’s wearing that large pillbox hat with a tight-fitting pullover jersey. Then in 2001, he’s wearing baggier cream Giants uniform with the pants down to his heel with a huge elbow guard. Just look at THIS comparison.

Tunes

The Moody Blues are one of those bands from the 1960’s and 1970’s that got lost in the shuffle of the British Invasion groups and they aren’t typically brought up much these days. For example, THIS list of the top 50 groups from the 1960’s omits Moody Blues altogether. Now, their catalog isn’t super deep to be fair. The band had modest success with the song “Go Now” in 1964 but then struggled until they released their 2nd album Days of Future Passed which is a certified classic.

The band worked with the London Festival Orchestra to record the album (although they recorded their bits separately except for one ending of a song) and brought us maybe the genesis of the progressive rock era, released just over 6 months after The Beatles dropped Sgt. Pepper earlier that summer of 1967. One of my favorite tracks is “The Afternoon” medley above that opens up side 2 of the record. This album sounds like if Yes, Pink Floyd, and the Kinks had a baby.

Trivia

Who is the highest rated offensive lineman to commit to Notre Dame since 2000, according to the 247 Composite?

The Other Football

Leo Messi will be signing with Inter Miami in the MLS. There was talk that he could be loaned to Barcelona for a year or 2 before actually starting his MLS career but all signs pointing to perhaps the greatest soccer player in history setting up shop in the United States. There are reports that Messi will be getting profits from the Apple Season Pass revenue, plus money from Adidas and their upcoming profits in the MLS.

Real Madrid has agreed to buy Jude Bellingham from Dortmund for 103 million Euros.

Jarrod Bowen scored in the 90th minute to lift West Ham United over Fiorentina in the Europa Conference League Final on Wednesday night.

The Champions League Final is this Sunday at 3:00 PM ET on CBS. Manchester City will look for their first title against Inter Milan, live from Istanbul, Turkey.

PSG has fired manager Christophe Galtier.

Tottenham has hired Ange Postegoclou who is coming from Celtic where he won 5 trophies in 2 years in Glasgow. Give me a trophy, please!

Leon beat LAFC 1-0 (3-1 on aggregate) this past Sunday to win the CONCACAF Champions League.

Louisville City defender Josh Wynder is transferring to Portuguese champion Benfica for a USL record $1.2 million.

TV & Movies

The 3rd season of I Think You Should Leave dropped on Netflix with 26 new sketches. Vulture has ranked every skit if you’d like to check that out HERE. I found myself enjoying it but also feeling like the Tim Robinson style of comedy is running out of steam in this format. By now, there’s an understanding of the layout that goes: Main character is really weird, oh man he gets even weirder, and sometimes a late addition to the sketch comes in and becomes even more weird! I tend to like Robinson’s off the wall insanely weird sketches and his lower key sketches while sometimes feeling like everything in the middle tries too hard.

There are still many memorable moments in the skits, though. For example, the end of the above video and the delivery has kept me chuckling for a week. “You’re just here for the zip line”, “They’re trying to make me look fake!”, “That lives with us on earth!”, “If I talk you get money, but I never talk”, and “He pays people in fast food” are some lines from the skits that will live on forever.

A Look Back

September 3, 2005 is way up there in modern Notre Dame games that were just flat out entertaining and genuinely surprising with their level of building momentum. Recently, we discussed the awesome 4th quarter that put away Wisconsin in 2021 and this game against Pittsburgh has to go down in Notre Dame history as one of the best 2nd quarters. Things went from being down 10-7 to being up 35-13 at halftime with the feeling that the Irish were absolutely flying.

This was my first game post-college and it reinvigorated my love for Notre Dame college football after spending the previous years being way too busy with life. I look back and if this was a slow start to the Charlie Weis era I’m not sure I would’ve been interested in writing or talking about Notre Dame football. Certainly not to this degree, today. So while by the end of his tenure I wanted to punt him to the moon, I’d like to say thank you, Charlie.

18S Paddock Club

We were close to a chaotic weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix but the rain only disturbed free practice 3 and left a slowly drying track during qualifying while the race stayed completely dry. Saturday saw an abysmal qualifying result for Charles Leclerc (19th) while George Russell (12th) and Sergio Perez (11th) both missed out on Q3 from the top teams. No one could match Max Verstappen’s 1:12.272 time and the Dutchman aborted his final run because he’d already secured his 4th pole of the season.

It was a pretty weird qualifying overall. While Spain’s own Carlos Sainz started P2 his fellow countryman Fernando Alonso damaged his floor and started P9 all while Lando Norris surprised everyone starting P3 for the race in a usually slow McLaren.

At the race start, Sainz nearly passed Verstappen but was rebuffed into turn 1 with an aggressive defense, meanwhile Norris touched with the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton ripping a huge chunk of the McLaren front wing off his car and forcing him to pit. That was effectively the day done for Norris.

Verstappen sailed off into the distance unchallenged for the whole race. Behind him, Sainz and the Ferrari once again displayed poor tire degradation. Eventually, both Mercedes drivers moved into the podium places in a vote of confidence for their new upgrades.

Perez eventually moved up to 4th but his teammate Verstappen only sees his championship lead grow even larger following a brief challenge from the Mexican just a few races ago.

Other notes from Spain:

*This was Verstappen’s 40th career win in F1 and he doesn’t turn 26 until September. It may be difficult to ever match Hamilton’s dominant stretch with Mercedes (81 wins from 2014-21) but in comparison he had 14 career wins at this same age. Verstappen could be looking at 40 to 44 wins just during 2021-23 by the time this season is complete.

*This was a complete Grand Slam weekend for Verstappen, too. He topped the leaderboards of all 3 practice sessions, took pole, fastest lap in the race, plus the grand prix victory.

*This was the first race all season where Mercedes completely out-classed Aston Martin. Due to their consistency and talented driver lineup, Mercedes is 18 points ahead of AMR for 2nd place.

*Through 7 races, Ferrari only has 1 podium. One! For the first stint it looked like Sainz was ready for a podium but it didn’t happen. There’s a 60-point gap down to 5th place Alpine for Ferrari but a 52-point gap up to 2nd place Mercedes.

*Yuki Tsunoda picked up a late 5-second penalty for running Zhou Guanyu off the track at turn 1. That dropped Tsunoda out of the points with Zhou finishing 9th, now tied with teammate Valtteri Bottas at Alfa Romeo with 4 points.

F1 is off this week and will be in Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix on June 18th. Let’s hope the wildfires don’t disrupt the event.

Trivia Answer:

Sam Young (0.9964), 2006