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

Top News

Joe Alt (1st-team) and Benjamin Morrison (2nd-team) have been named to the AP Pre-season All-American team.

Michigan is self-imposing a 3-game suspension for head coach Jim Harbaugh.

USC is set to hire Washington’s Jennifer Cohen as the school’s next athletic director.

Carson Beck is the new starting quarterback at Georgia.

Oregon State has named Clemson transfer DJ Uiagaleilei their starting quarterback.

True freshman Jaden Rashada has won the starting quarterback job at Arizona State. Former Irish quarterback Drew Pyne suffered a hamstring injury earlier in August and hasn’t been practicing.

Luke Altmyer has been named the starting quarterback at Illinois.

Haynes King has won the Georgia Tech quarterback job.

Casey Thompson has been named the starting quarterback at FAU.

Washington running back Cam Davis will miss 2023 with an injury.

Texas AD Chris Del Conte has received a 7-year contract extension.

The Knight Commission is once again pushing a proposal for FBS football to turn into a free-standing enterprise fully outside the control of the NCAA with independent directors.

Uniform of the Week

The definition on this photo is terrible and I apologize. Recently, Michigan State unveiled new uniforms for the 2023 football season. They produced a bunch of videos trying to look hard which seems to be common for most programs but especially in the Mel Tucker era in East Lansing. By the way, only 9 more years and $85.5 million remaining on that Tucker contract! There isn’t a ton of change with the new uniforms except in a couple key areas, plus a new all-black uniform.

On the normal uniforms the addition of a Spartan pattern on the helmet stripe, pants stripe, collar, and inside the shoulder sleeves adds flavor. The pattern looks fine on their green helmets but looks off to me on their white helmet. That might be because the pattern on the jersey is in a light gray instead of green. The all new black uniforms, dubbed “Shadow”, is mostly black with slightly off-black accents. The helmet has a speckle background and a dark green traditional Spartans logo.

Recruiting

Notre Dame 2024 recruit Cole Mullins broke his ankle and will miss the remainder of his senior season. Mullins is expected to enroll early in South Bend in January.

Five-star defensive lineman Eddrick Houston (0.9885) committed to Ohio State.

Top edge rusher Jordan Ross (0.9832) committed to Tennessee.

Defensive lineman Kamarion Franklin (0.9753) committed to Ole Miss.

Offensive tackle Blake Ivy (0.9460) committed to Texas A&M.

He’s not a major recruit but Dre Kirkpatrick is 33 years old and his son Dre Kirkpatrick (0.8550) committed to his dad’s alma mater Alabama as a safety over the weekend.

YouTube Channel

Depending on your age, it’s time for some nostalgia with today’s video taking a look at every day items that are no longer used often or have become obsolete. They include:

Pay phones – We had pay phones in both my prep school and college dorm rooms. I did use the pay phone while in prep school to call my parents but by college I was rocking a Nokia in my pocket.

Cigarette vending machines – These remind me of the few drinking clubs (I don’t know what else to call them) that were popular decades ago. I definitely saw one at a sorority party in some small town bar in 2004 but it was empty.

TV Guide – I vaguely remember this sitting on our living room coffee table until the mid 1990’s but I never looked at it.

Jukebox – These are still around a little bit, aren’t they? I know I’ve seen digital ones, as well.

Newspaper vending machines – This always reminds me of Dumb and Dumber.

Phone books – There used to be this enormous Yellow Pages office building a half mile from my house. It’s been long gone for 20 year or more.

$2 bill – My wife’s family are obsessed with these and hand them out on special occasions.

Vending machines – This one is more about ready-made meals? It didn’t make too much sense. My work still has 3 vending machines for snacks.

Typewriter – I took a typing class as a freshman in high school and kind of love it, but they were those digital typewriters.

Camera film – I’ve pretty much only had experience with Polaroid cameras or iPhone cameras in my life.

Fax machines – I know faxing isn’t dead in the medical world that I occasionally deal with and it’s terrible. We just have copy machine instead of little fax machines.

Rolodex – These are kind of useful still if you’re old school.

Carbon paper – This was more about those sliding credit card machines but I deal with carbon paper receipts at work sometimes, too.

Tunes

Does anyone think about the song they would want played at their funeral? No, just me? Well, if I had to pick it would be Led Zeppelin’s “Bron-Yr-Aur” played maybe on a loop a few times. I first heard the song featured on the 1976 concert film The Song Remains the Same as the band is arriving in New York City in the sunshine heading to their 3-night stay at Madison Square Garden in 1973. Yes, they waited 3 years to release the film from this set of concerts. It was a different time, indeed.

I had the 1999 DVD release of the movie and shortly after finally bought the double album Physical Graffiti from which today’s song was originally released. Out of all my top bands, Zeppelin’s favorite albums of mine changes the most. Right now I would go from best to worst: II, Houses of the Holy, IV, Physical Graffiti, I, In Through the Out Door, III, and Presence.

Trivia

Sam Hartman has thrown at least one touchdown pass in how many consecutive games? 27, 30, or 36?

The Other Football

Spain defeated England 1-0 to win their first Women’s World Cup. The Spaniards are also the reigning U-20 and U-17 World Cup Champions, things are going pretty well for their soccer program!

The Messi Madness continues as Inter Miami defeated Nashville 1-1 on penalties to win the Leagues Cup. Messi scored in the 23rd minute and now becomes the most decorated player in soccer history with 44 trophies.

Christian Pulisic scored a screamer outside of the box in his first Serie A game with AC Milan:

Mason Greenwood has left Manchester United following his rape investigation.

Tottenham 2-0 over Man United, City 1-0 over Newcastle, West Ham 3-1 over Chelsea, Aston Villa 4-0 over Everton, and Arsenal 1-0 over Crystal Palace highlighted the recent action in the Premier League.

American defender Sergino Dest is headed out on loan from Barcelona to PSV.

TV & Movies

Last week I sat down and watched the 1979 comedy The Jerk featuring Steve Martin. I was expecting big things and I know there’s been a lot of sensibility change since the movie came out, still I was really disappointed. This is considered one of the best comedies of all-time? Check out the embedded video below of the funniest moments from the film. Which parts are really funny?

Part of it for me is that I may not like Steve Martin a ton and didn’t enjoy his idiot persona in the movie. I did listen to his book on tape once, and enjoyed it. There’s no doubt this one was an absolute box office smash, though. On a budget of just $4 million the film made $100 million. In today’s dollars that’s a box office grab of $403 million. That number would be 13th best in this current year behind John Wick: Chapter 4 but ahead of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

A Look Back

Today we are stretching all the way back to the weekend and a video released by Notre Dame where Sam Hartman gives the team sneakers for the trip to Dublin (he’s since also given the team gold Beats headphones for the trip). In this you can see Freeman say that Hartman has a NIL deal with Under Armour. There’s been a lot of back-and-forth among fans about what UA may or may not be doing with NIL and I think it’s important to lay out the financials of any deal. Some really think UA is giving NIL money to all Irish athletes. That simply can’t be the case. And if it is, we are talking really small amounts of money to everyone. They’d need nearly $1,000,000 to spread $1,000 to every varsity athlete at Notre Dame.

A handful of the most high profile athletes on campus getting NIL money from Under Armour makes a lot more sense. I still wouldn’t think anything coming from them would be big time money even for the star athletes. With this “gift” from Hartman, the team got the UA SlipSpeed sneakers that cost $150 per pair. Why wouldn’t this just be provided by UA instead of via Hartman’s NIL, you ask? The sneakers are intended to target Gen Z kids who want trainers but are also obsessed with the ease of slides. The sneakers have a collapsible upper heel to be worn more like a slipper. They are also marketed as a trainer and, I don’t know, with their shoe issues I’m not sure I’d be running or playing sports with a heel lock that is pretty much doesn’t exist.

18S Paddock Club

Formula 1 returns to action after the summer break and invades the dunes of Zandvoort just a stone’s throw from the shores of the southern part of the North Sea. Most fans don’t consider this track among the best in the sport but I tend to really like the layout. The races in recent years have suffered from overly aggressive Max Verstappen fans in his home country and hopefully things are more calm this time around as they get serious about banning orange flares.

Speaking of which, Verstappen will be going for 9 straight victories this weekend to tie former Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel’s all-time record.

Round 13 of 22
Dutch Grand Prix
Date: August 27th
Race: 9:00 AM ET
Location: Zandvoort, Netherlands
Circuit: Zandvoort
Laps: 72
Tire Compounds: C1, C2, C3
Track Evolution: 4 out of 5
Asphalt Abrasion: 3 out of 5

It’s been such a long break it’s difficult to asses where each team and driver left off before coming to the Dutch Grand Prix. Last year, the Ferrari’s were still super quick in qualifying and both Leclerc and Sainz were barely beat out for pole by Verstappen. We had a decent amount of drama during the race featuring a VSC, full SC, some pit stop issues, and tire strategy that, as per usual, eventually brought Verstappen the win.

F1 needs more steeply banked corners.

Rain is in the forecast this weekend, although if the current predictions hold it’ll likely affect the practice sessions the most and either move out or be very light for qualifying and the grand prix.

It’ll be interesting to see this 2nd year of regulations and how they deal with the twisty Zandvoort track. Normally, cars that are strong in the slow corners can thrive on this track. The dirty air complaints that were present early in the season have died down in recent months but this is a circuit where overtaking can be extremely difficult. Teams will put a ton of emphasis on qualifying and hope their results can hold during the race.

Trivia Answer:

30 games