Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
Not long after Notre Dame’s first couple spring workouts news came that nose guard Aidan Keanaaina tore his ACL and is likely out for the season.
Al Michaels is set to join Kirk Herbstreit for the Thursday Night Football games on Amazon. This now bumps Mike Tirico up to NBC’s Sunday Night Football booth which means Notre Dame will be looking for a new announcer for home games. Irish radio’s Paul Burmeister is the heavy favorite to replace Tirico.
The Clark Lea era started with new uniforms, now Vanderbilt is tweaking their school logo to a very blah “V” that looks pretty weird, in my opinion.
Sad news out of Ann Arbor as potential 1st round pick David Ojabo tore his Achilles during Michigan’s Pro Day.
David Cutcliffe has been hired as the SEC’s special assistant to the commissioner for football relations.
Uniform of the Week
I hate the monochrome uniform, but really hate the way it’s become so common. With that said, there is somewhat of an iconic feel to Boise State’s all-blue uniforms and their turf. Sure, I don’t love it but I respect it. Also, if you had asked me what color the end zones are at Albertsons Stadium I would’ve guessed blue. It looks like they’ve always been orange, so you learn something new every day.
Will we ever see Boise State as big as the program used to be in the early 2000’s and into the early 2010’s? Perhaps this was always their fate and they’ve maxed out, especially as the musical chairs of conference realignment continue to keep the Broncos on the outside looking in for the foreseeable future. Losing BYU, Utah, and TCU from the Mountain West as Boise State was joining really hurt their future.
Recruiting
With rumors swirling of a large NIL bag being secured, quarterback Nico Iamaleave (0.9961) committed to Tennessee on Monday.
Athlete Robby Washington (0.9295) is staying local and committed to Miami.
St. Louis tight end Mac Markway (0.9553) has committed to LSU.
Four-star athlete Kaden Feagin (0.9115) has voluntarily committed to Illinois.
Emory Jones is in the Transfer Portal following 4 seasons at Florida. The quarterback totaled 3,347 passing yards, 14 interceptions, 1,273 rushing yards, and 36 total touchdowns with the Gators.
Starting corner Jarvis Brownlee is leaving Florida State.
Former 4-star quarterback Dematrius Davis is leaving Auburn after one season.
North Carolina safety Cameron Roseman-Sinclair was a 4-star recruit from the 2020 class and is now leaving Chapel Hill.
YouTube Channel
Here’s my history with gaming consoles: My best friend had an Atari in 1987, my brother reluctantly shared his Nintendo with me in 1989, I finally got my own Sega Genesis in 1990 and played that thing a gross amount until about 1997 or so. Then I entered a dark period where our prep school dorms didn’t allow consoles in rooms but we had a Nintendo 64 in the common room where Goldeneye was played almost exclusively. I was back in the game with a PS2 in 2001 and rode that hard until switching to an XBox 360 in 2006 and then an XBox One S in 2017 where I’m sitting today.
The rise of Sony and the Playstation starting in 1994 is wild. At that moment, Nintendo has just passed 100 million units. By mid-1997, Sony has already eclipsed 50 million units and overtaken Sega for 2nd place. By the end of 1997, Sony is already halfway to catching Nintendo. Now here comes the GOAT PS2 in 2000. At this point, Sony is just over 105 million units. In less than 2 years, they’ve surpassed Nintendo.
As Microsoft begins its rise in the early 2000’s Sony goes from 200 million units to 300 million units by the end of 2007. I haven’t gone back to Playstation in a while but I’m pretty sure I had 3 separate Playstation 2 consoles, long live the king. The first got absolutely battered in college and the second overheated on me. Looking back, maybe not the best durability, and partly why the Ps2 was made for nearly 15 years, but damn was it popular.
Tunes
I was sanding some door trim about a month ago with my Beats Powerbeats Pro’s in listening to an Apple modern hits station, vibing out after dinner no big deal. A few songs into this work I heard the unmistakable voice of Charlie Puth and now I’m intrigued enough to keep listening. Then, in the chorus there’s this click noise. I check my watch and the song is called “Light Switch.” I knew a little bit about Puth’s out-in-the-open recording style and thought, “This dude went ahead and made a song based on the noise of flicking a light switch, didn’t he?”
And that’s exactly what he did.
Sure, this feels a little corny. Puth makes it seem like the song is being done on the fly and all these ideas are working as they come to him. In reality, he’s likely working for hours on end making changes to each part of the song. It all feels a little too set up for me.
You know, some people if they had one wish would choose world peace. I’d debate somehow having song stems available to any piece of music ever made as my wish. This modern way of using computers isn’t as authentic but I’m fascinated by the production techniques and it looks so damn fun.
Trivia
Which Notre Dame receiver, with a minimum of 20 receptions, has the highest yards per catch average over a season since 2010?
The Other Football
Last night, the United States drew Mexico 0-0 in Mexico City to keep both teams at 22 points in the standings. Costa Rica moves closer to the teams with a 1-0 win over 1st place Canada. The U.S. will face Panama on Sunday and Costa Rica next Wednesday to close out CONCACAF World Cup qualifying.
A late winner in stoppage time by North Macedonia in the 2nd round playoff semifinals sent Italy packing and missing out on their 2nd straight World Cup. Japan and Saudi Arabia booked their qualification this week.
It was a quiet weekend in the EPL with Arsenal and Spurs both winning, the latter now moving into 5th place let’s go. All of the favorites won in the last round of the FA Cup as the semi-finals are all set with Man City vs. Liverpool and Chelsea vs. Crystal Palace.
Manchester United have interviewed Ajax manager Erik ten Hag for the position with the Red Devils.
According to multiple reports, highly touted midfielder Franck Kessie is set to leave AC Milan this summer on a free transfer to Barcelona.
UEFA is set to change the current Financial Fair Play rules for European soccer.
Wayne Rooney and Patrick Viera were inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame on Wednesday.
Streaming
I saw The Blair Witch Project in theaters twice. The first time was on spring break in 1999 while visiting my girlfriend in New York City. It was by far, with no other screening ever coming close, the loudest crowd I’ve ever experienced at a theater. Due to the unusual nature of the film, I think it made all of these people talk among themselves because it was slow and kind of boring. Then, maybe 30 to 40 minutes into the movie people started heckling the movie with around 30 people eventually walking out in disgust. Welcome to New York!
I went to the movie again that summer with a friend and we’d spend the next few months playing pranks on each other with the Blair Witch symbol like we’d been abducted and had gone missing. Overall, I remember thinking the movie was sort of unique (the first theater experience certainly was!) but that it was mostly not scary and a pretty weird let down from the hype that had been generated from its promotion and release.
A Look Back
Notre Dame opens next season (2023) against Navy in Ireland a mere 11 years after making the trek to the Emerald Isle. You may recall, this trip was rescheduled from the 2020 Covid season and there was absolutely no way Notre Dame and the Naval Academy were going to skip this event. I noticed via a level-headed thread at Rock’s House how some Notre Dame folks spent a whole week in Ireland making preparations for this game. In total, this is like a 3-week staycation for these people!
The 2012 game is probably one of my most favorite memories of the Brian Kelly era. It was the start to a new season, and one in which we really needed to put 2011 behind us. It was a fun and entertaining beat down of Navy nice and early in the morning while the rest of the day remained to watch other teams make a fool of themselves, if possible. Let’s do it again next year.
18S Paddock Club
The Ferrari hype train was building momentum through the start of last weekend as Charles Leclerc grabbed pole in Bahrain and now it’s full steam ahead as teammate Carlos Sainz joined Leclerc for an Italian 1-2 on the podium in the first race of 2022. Leclerc fought off a Max Verstappen series of overtakes after an effective early undercut but the reigning world champion fried his tires in the pursuit and dropped back a few seconds from the lead largely for the remainder of the race.
With 14 laps remaining, Verstappen made a last ditch effort to pit for the 3rd time to see if his soft tires could chase down Leclerc on his old mediums. However, a fire in Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri brought out a safety car which allowed Leclerc the chance to pit for new softs.
On the re-start with 7 laps remaining, Verstappen complained of steering problems (his steering trackrod was damaged on his final pit stop) and engine problems while Leclerc breezed ahead. Verstappen’s car shut down thereafter and he retired into the pit lane. Even worse for Red Bull, the Sergio Perez car also shut down through turn 1 on the very last lap, both cars failing due to a suspected fuel pump and/or vapor lock issue. 30 points in the constructor’s race simply vanished.
Bahrain GIF recap.
Despite having poor race pace for their standards, Mercedes were able to move up to the 3rd and 4th spots after the Red Bull engine failures. Kevin Magnussen grabbed 10 points in a joyful day for Haas, Bottas nabbed 6th in his first race with Alfa while teammate Zhou Guanyu picked up a point in his first F1 race as all of China rejoiced. Joining Red Bull in having a no good, very bad weekend was McLaren whose cars look frighteningly atrocious and slow through one race.
Fantasy – BANG BANG takes a 63-point lead with a whopping 291 points thanks to turbocharging Leclerc, using an early mega driver on Russell, and choosing Ferrari as the constructor.
Saudi Arabia Grand Prix
Jeddah Corniche Circuit
FP1 3/25 10:00 AM ET
FP2 3/25 1:00 PM ET
FP3 3/26 10:00 AM ET
Qualifying 3/26 1:00 PM ET
Race 3/27 1:00 PM ET
Race 2 Preview: The teams travel west across the Arabian peninsula to Jeddah to visit the new street circuit for the 2nd time in 4 races stretching back to last year’s penultimate event that saw Lewis Hamilton win in dramatic fashion despite damage to his car.
The high-speed track offers a stark contrast to Bahrain with harsh minimal braking, few slow corners, and a narrow track that will make overtaking difficult. Tire wear and overheating brakes (major problems last week) shouldn’t be as much of an issue at Jeddah with a less abrasive surface. As such, Pirelli have brought the middle compounds C2-C3-C4 for the weekend. There have been a handful of barriers moved back to help the driver’s with visibility on the tight track and I’d expect Ferrari’s apparent heavy advantage from the first race to be a little more muted on this high-speed corner track where their superior grip and acceleration won’t be as needed out of slower corners.
Podium Prediction: Last year’s race brought us a pair of red flags, tons of tire and pit strategy, plus plenty of shenanigan’s with rule breaking. Outside of the final corner heading into the main straight, there are so few opportunities to pass on this circuit so qualifying will be crucial. It’s tough to pick against Ferrari right now but I like Red Bull to fix their reliability issues and for Mercedes to look much better than last week on this track with a Safety Car or two making strategy decisions more important.
1st – Max Verstappen, Red Bull
2nd – Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
3rd – Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
Trivia Answer:
Kevin Austin, 18.50 average in 2021.
Iamaleava is a great prospect, but I mean he’s not Arch Manning or Trevor Lawrence or like THE #1 guy in a class that everyone sees coming a mile away as a surefire capital G Great player. I don’t see why Iamaleava would be worth $8 million to Tennessee, is that just the only elite QB that would give them a look? So they just were willing to dump that kind of cash on any top flight QB, even if it’s not THE top flight QB?
But, whatev, just glad that collective didn’t come for Dante Moore, considering he’s ranked higher than Iamaleava in the 247 composite.
Loved the video game look, I was big into Sega back in the day. Dreamcast was ahead of its time! Shame they are out of the hardware game.
Bring Back Sega.
The Tennessee boosters are doing what they do best, blindly throwing money at the next program savior without thinking things through.
Ha, probably so. $8m is such a random number, like how did they get there and who felt it was sufficient? How is that the market price? Would have thought much less would do, but from the report a lot of it is backloaded and I’m guessing if he doesn’t pan out they will pull the carpet out on him. Which is really bad for these kids, perhaps not in this situation but I’m sure there will be all kind of unintended consequences from the current “wild west” status of NIL as it grows.
Yeah, the current “empower the players” lockstep position that blindly cheerleads NIL and no transfer restrictions hasn’t thought of any potential downsides. The ISD guys have brought this issue up on their podcast a few times, noting that the transfer rules mean there will be a ton of churn, with coaches running off underperforming players to free up roster spots so they can raid lesser teams for good players. There’s going to be a nasty side of NIL coming out sooner or later, since it immediately went from players theoretically being able to get paid for endorsements into legalized booster slush funds. Quinn Ewers reclassifying to get in a year before Ohio State wanted him to get an NIL deal and then bailing because he needed to play to get it is the tip of the iceberg. There’s no way the boosters at Texas A&M are going to pay $20 million for a class and not expect immediate results. And that’s not even getting into whatever shady or manipulative deals are bound to happen when there’s big money being offered to a bunch of 17 or 18 year olds who probably don’t have a lawyer looking over the contracts.
Worse yet is the idea that gambling is now rampant. How long before it’s revealed that someone threw a game? Indeed, I’m sure it’s happened already. There’s too much money riding on games now.
All of this was an inevitable development. The only thing we can try and do is police it and prevent it from happening.
As for the NIL stuff, there will likely be some regulation coming, but only after a few kids get screwed over royally. Young unsophisticated kids getting screwed by college football? It would never happen. /S
PS2 is definitely the king of consoles. I finally got mine in 2002 and played the absolute crap out of it until getting a PS3 in 2010 (had to replace it once for reasons I forget now). I’ve been a PlayStation guy every generation except the last one, which I sat out because kids and money. PS5 has gotten me back in, although I’ll never play as much as I did in the old days.
I miss the old days.
I thought I had that trivia answer right with Kevin Stepherson. And he’s so close to being right, twice. 18.48 YPC in 2016. 18.9 YPC in 2017, but on only 19 catches. The right answer probably wouldn’t have been in my top 5 guesses.
I was being tricky.
The US missed a couple of golden opportunities last night. Couldn’t believe Pefok missed that sitter. They’re almost guaranteed a spot if they win on Sunday though. I’d rather it not come down to the last match on Wednesday away at CR…Canada losing last night certainly didn’t help.
Don’t know if you watched that Italy match, but I watched it with my son. Seemed inevitable from about the 25th minute on that was going to be the end result. Weird how soccer can be so unnervingly predictable sometimes. Although for Italy, the writing has been on the wall that the quality in that squad has been declining for some time. The Euro win gave a lot of folks false hope in my opinion. Winning large tournaments takes a lot of luck in soccer and they certainly had it last summer.
Loved the console talk. I think we’re about the same age, which was the golden age of growing up with consoles. I went through an NES, Genesis, PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, XBOX360, XBOX1, and recently ‘got my son’ a Series X for Christmas. It’s an incredible gaming experience.
Thanks for doing these each week. Really look forward to it.
I’m looking into a Series X this holiday season “for my kids” too.
My guess is DaVaris Daniels.
Seeing the image of PS2 immediately reminded me of playing Tony Hawk until the early morning. Still works to this day
I put in some hours playing Skate 2 on XBox 360 back in the day. Fun game to explore, but very difficult if you wanted to get good at it.
Yawn and blink twice if you need help, Kaden.
He’s at least from Central Illinois right by Chambana and UofI fandom is real down there. Anywhere else and I’d totally agree. Except East St Louis too, UofI has a pipeline from them too
Maybe he’s interested in a Library Studies or Computer Science degree. UIUC has good programs in both.
Great engineering school, really good school all around though it pains me to say that as a UIC alum in perpetual little brother mode
They’re no SIU-Edwardsville
Poor little brother’s little brother
I thought that was UIS?
Who?
That would require anyone to remember UIS exists
(Also, not for nothin, but SIUe now has ~1,600 more students than SIU-C.)
That’s not shocking, I know SIUE has done well for itself and was listed as like one of the best values in the country before while SIUC has hit dwindling enrollment, I think. Everyone has but us
I made basically all the wrong bets in week 1 of fantasy, which is why I’m currently dead last. I have chosen to double down by betting heavily on everyone who did well last week, with Leclerc, Sainz, and Ferrari on my team, and gave up the Mclaren love. Which I’m sure will mean that both Ferraris will catch fire and Danny Ric will win the race.
I had NES->SNES->N64->PS1,2,3,4. I’ve still got the PS4 and my kids are the ones who primarily use it, but every once in a while I’ll get into playing late at night on the weekends. SpiderMan, Uncharted 4, and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey are my favorite games on that platform.
I dropped McLaren for Haas this week. And KMag’s car hasn’t been working at practice today, so that’s great.
My two Alfa drivers kept me out of last on my theory that Alfas are undervalued in races in which they finish, with the downside being an increased risk of spontaneous combustion compared to the field.
So they’ll either keep me afloat despite my Verstappen + Merc constructor combo or explode and be entertaining.
Man did Ferrari mess up a good thing with their new livery – maroon is not their color.
Also, not a console but I just saw this tweet today, serendipitously enough and figured it was worth passing on. My uncle passed down this to me in the ’90s from his childhood and I played it so much. Very simple and basic obviously, but so much fun.
I had tickets to the 2020 Ireland game, hopefully I can get them back for 2023, was looking forward to the trip.
Blair Witch xkcd
The changes I made to my fantasy team are paying off so far, with the exception that I dropped KMag due to his car troubles on Friday, in favor of Tsunoda. So of course, Tsunoda couldn’t finish qualifying and Magnusson got P10…
Really crazy to see Hamilton not make it to Q2. He seems to be having trouble with the new car. Also thankful that Schumacher is ok after that nasty crash. Don’t think we’ll see a lot of passing on this narrow track today.
Wait, can you make changes after seeing practice? Does it lock right before qualifying?
It locks right before qualifying. But a nuance I wasn’t aware of was that you only get 3 free changes per week. I had a 30 point penalty this week for using all of my changes, not all of which were necessary, including dropping KMag.
And boy, was I wrong about not much passing. The new regulations really seem to favor closer racing and more overtaking, which has yielded the most competitive first two races of the season that I can recall.
Nobody looks as dominant as Mercedes did when the last new regulations first came out. I think we may even have more than two drivers and teams in serious contention for the championship this year, especially if Merc can get their shit together. Definitely a fun and competitive midfield, though. Obviously multiple teams are dealing with reliability issues with the new engines, which adds a wild card.
I knew about the free changes, but thought everything locked before FP1. Crucial info!
Yup, that much overtaking at Jeddah is a positive sign. Even if most of it came through the last corner down the main straight it’s a huge upgrade so far that cars can follow through the whole track without losing time, losing downforce, or killing their tires.
There was some good passing at corners 1 and 2 as well, especially in the beginning as the Alpines kept passing each other. Felt bad for Alonso, as well as all the other drivers who got retired. Danny Ric can’t catch a break. Bottas was having a nice race (and more importantly would have given me some fantasy points)
https://twitter.com/75toRupp/status/1506307059180048384/photo/1
Thought this was hilarious.
I saw that too, and shared it with our Slack group. Hilarious.