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

Top News

Notre Dame football begins fall camp today.

Former Notre Dame linebacker Drew White tore his ACL during camp with the Washington Commanders.

The NCAA Board of Directors have delayed the vote on transfer reforms.

Texas A&M 2020 signee Donell Harris was a top 50 recruit and has medically retired.

Ryan Day and his wife have donated $1 million to Ohio State’s mental health fund.

A judge ruled that UCLA will receive $67.5 million from Under Armour after the apparel company terminated their 15-year deal early back in June 2020.

Auburn quarterback T.J. Finley signed a NIL deal with Amazon earlier this week and was charged with eluding police on Thursday after numerous traffic violations on his motorcycle.

Uniform of the Week

What is a Torero? I had to look this up as it’s a bullfighter but not the kind (matador) whose aim is to kill the bull. San Diego actually has a Clark Gable looking bullfighter live mascot thing going on for their school. I’m a bit disappointed. I’m looking at this picture below and I thought there would be some sort of surfing motif. Their helmet logo in particular feels in that mold. It looks like we want to go hang out at the beach, it’s San Diego!

Either way, I like these uniforms. Again, dark blue and light blue bringing us something nice. This feels like if Ole Miss moved their team to the west coast. That script above the numbers is also terrific.

Recruiting

Notre Dame picked up linebacker Jaiden Ausberry (0.9510) on Thursday night. Commit post HERE.

Alabama gained a commit from top running back Richard Young (0.9864) plus defensive lineman Hunter Osborne (0.9421). The Tide also flipped tight end Ty Lockwood (0.9390) from Ohio State this week.

Quarterback Brock Glenn (0.8980) committed to Ohio State in a bit of a surprise.

Athlete Dalton Brooks (0.9685) committed to Texas A&M.

Michigan State picked up offensive tackle Stanton Ramil (0.9233).

Edge rusher Colton Vasek (0.9356) committed to Oklahoma.

Interior lineman Markee Anderson (0.9402) is staying in-state and committed to South Carolina.

YouTube Channel

I recently saw a map of the most popular (in terms of number of stores I believe) grocery stores in each US state and it made me look for a video going over something similar. It’s amazing in this vast country how different stores can get even from county to county in certain parts of the United States. As a child of the 1980’s we had Bells, Quality, and Tops (the most popular chain in New York state despite the dude in this video’s embarrassing answer) with the latter still going strong to this day.

In the mid-1990’s a Walmart supercenter moved in and forced everything but Tops to close. Outside of my immediate village I am blessed to be a part of the Wegman’s stores in the metro area. There are a lot of supermarkets I’ve been to across the country and Wegman’s is the best. One of my least favorite things to do is go into a supermarket in a really small town that looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1974. It’s a true creepy time capsule.

Tunes

Recently, Sirius XM Radio dropped Los Angeles Top 40 KIIS-FM after an old business deal ended where they could simulcast the station along with iHeart Radio. Instead, Sirius plugged in the Yacht Rock station its place. It could be worse! Also, If you you haven’t check out the channel The Spectrum it’s pound for pound the greatest radio station out there. Today, we feature the solo hit “Baker Street” from Scottish performer Gerry Rafferty.

This was off his No. 1 hit album City to City which blew up with another hit song “Right Down the Line” which is probably my favorite of his work. However, it’s tough to match “Baker Street” and the indelible saxophone riff that kills in this tune. It’s overall a very strange song that wouldn’t necessarily reach out to a lot of people, but this hit just right in 1978.

Trivia

A Lou Holtz-coached Notre Dame team scored 30 or more points and lost to a team that finished unranked only once in 11 seasons. Name the opponent and season.

The Other Football

It came home. England won the 2022 Women’s Euro 2-1 with an extra-time goal to beat Germany. The Lady Lionesses will face Brazil in the first-ever Finalissma at some point in the future. England will also face the US Women’s team in a sold-out friendly on October 7th inside Wembley Stadium.

Barcelona have yet again sold more of its media rights in order to pay for incoming player signings. This won’t end terribly, I’m sure.

Riqui Puig is headed to LA Galaxy from Barcelona on a free transfer at just 22 years old. That’s probably not how he saw his career going.

The English Premier League season begins today as Arsenal visits Crystal Palace in a London Derby.

Streaming

George Jetson popped up in the news back in July because people were claiming he was was supposed to be born in 2022 in this month. The official Wikipedia site does claim 2022 but has nothing about the particular month. That would place the show The Jetsons somewhere in the 2060’s if we calculate George was a middle-aged dad with 2 kids.

The Jetsons got syndicated in 1985 with new episodes created for a couple years well after the initial 24-episode run back in 1962. This would explain why the original episodes look a little funny compared to what I watched as a kid. We’re still waiting on those conveyor belt showers, aren’t we? We have 4 more decades to get it ready. I don’t think the flying cars are coming any time soon.

A Look Back

At the time, Lou Holtz described this 1990 defeat to Stanford as one of the worst of his career. The Irish were No. 1 in the country and 3-0 to start the season with wins over a pair of ranked teams. Stanford came in 1-3 with a loss at home to San Jose State the week prior. Notre Dame led 24-7 with the Cardinal’s only score coming on their first play from scrimmage after a Ricky Watters fumbled punt return.

With Rocket Ismail sidelined due to a thigh bruise, Watters would fumble another punt return and Adrian Jarrell also lost track of another on a windy day in South Bend. Stanford ended up driving down the field to take a 5-point lead late in the 4th quarter. As time expired, a Rick Mirer throwback pass to Derek Brown fell off the tight end’s hands in the end zone. Just a brutal loss.

18S Paddock Club

Last week we said it couldn’t get worse for Ferrari and Charles Leclerc. It can get so much worse! During qualifying a door opened to a big weekend cutting into Max Verstappen’s points advantage after the championship leader messed up his penultimate run in Q3 and had an engine issue abort his final run to finish 10th. However, George Russell surprised by grabbing pole position over Sainz and Leclerc.

On race day, Verstappen had moved up to 6th place by lap 8 and both Max and Lewis Hamilton got past Lando Norris for 4th and 5th place by lap 13. A few laps later, both race leader Russell and Verstappen would take an early pit while Hamilton followed a couple laps later and then Leclerc came in on lap 22. At this point, things seemed fine for Ferrari.

On lap 31, Leclerc passed Russell for the lead and would build a 5-second gap with the race nearly half over. It seemed like Leclerc would cruise to an easy win. The big mistake for Ferrari came when Verstappen took to the pits and instead of extending Leclerc’s stint with the lead on medium tires and finishing on softs, they reacted on the very next lap and put poorly performing hard tires on Leclerc. In a shock move, Verstappen would quickly pass Leclerc, actually do a 360-spin through the final turn a bit later, and then pass Leclerc again on lap 45.

Leclerc would panic late for soft tires but the damage was done. Verstappen would cruise to his 8th win, Leclerc finished 6th, and both Mercedes drivers finished on the podium after a late charge from Hamilton secured 2nd place. It was a tough strategy loss for Russell coming off his first career pole, but it’ll all be overshadowed by Ferrari’s mistakes.

The championship fight is likely over. We’re entering the summer break with 9 races remaining and Verstappen’s lead is now 80 points over Leclerc. Red Bull is also 97 points ahead of Ferrari and Mercedes now just 30 points back of 2nd place, including some new-found race pace from the Silver Arrows.

We’ll see if Ferrari makes any organizational changes prior to the next race in Spa coming up in late August. It seems highly unlikely. Next week, we’ll have a mid-season review plus take a look at the 2023 grid as Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement, Fernando Alonso decided to leave Alpine and jump into that Aston Martin seat, and a ton of drama surrounds the future of Oscar Piastri.

Trivia Answer:

Stanford, 1990.