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

3 News Stories

#1 Transfer Classes

I was interested reading this Bill Connelly piece at ESPN about his favorite transfer classes heading into the 2026 season. Oklahoma State, leads the way after raiding the roster of North Texas where they’re projected to have 6 starters from the Mean Green. From Notre Dame’s 2026 opponents, only Miami was featured in the no. 6 spot:

Mario Cristobal felt the need to add only 12 transfers — high-level recent recruiting is certainly providing depth in itself — but they were mostly vital ones. Mensah was a must, Barkate should be a great complement to Malachi Toney, and while edge rusher Damon Wilson II (Missouri) is far more of a pass-rush specialist than the departing Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor, he’s really good at that specialty. I’m surprised Cristobal didn’t aim for more linemen on both sides of the ball, but the roster’s upside remains high.

#2 Simplifying the Eligibility Clock, Maybe

This isn’t the first time this off-season we brought this up but according to Ross Dellenger, the NCAA Division I cabinet is set to meet about trying to change the college eligibility rules starting in the 2026 season. The plan being bandied about and to be debated is a new 5 year eligibility rule that will begin after high school graduation or the athlete’s 19th birthday, whichever comes first.

Crucially, “no waiver requests, redshirts or exceptions will be permitted, except for a small group of outliers (those on maternity leave, military service or religious missions)” according to Dellenger.

We’d likely see current athletes grandfathered into the system, but a clear decision would need to be made on player’s entering their 4th year of eligibility this season–would they automatically get a 5th year of sports then?

While this would create a simpler system, it would also reduce the amount of eligibility lawsuits against the NCAA over the long term. That’s probably the main selling point for many involved. The haphazard nature of eligibility and court rulings is pretty stupid at this point.

#3 Jersey Sponsors

A friendly PSA that jersey sponsors are allowed on college jerseys beginning this August 1st. In fact, programs are allowed TWO jersey patches on their uniform with a maximum size of 4 square inches. Following a couple more announcements this week, I believe we are up to 4 FBS programs who have released information regarding new deals:

LSU already has Woodside Energy patches on their practice jerseys.

LSU – Woodside Energy
Memphis – FedEx
UNLV – Acesso Biologics
USF – Tampa General Hospital

It’ll be curious to see where the market settles on these new revenue sources. I couldn’t find financial figures for any of the schools except UNLV which signed a deal for 5 years and $11 million total. That’s a decent chunk of change. I don’t think we’ll see Notre Dame sports jump into this, at least not yet. But what if they could bring in $10 million per year or something absurd like that?

Uniform of the Week

The Falcons were the latest NFL team to release new uniforms ahead of the 2026 season. You may recall, the previous iteration of uniforms Atlanta went heavy on the black with a modern-looking “ATL” chest script. It wasn’t wildly popular. Now, the team returns to a more traditional look. Well, almost. The team decided to keep a few modern elements–primarily their black helmets that were introduced in 2003 and then updated again in 2020.

The jerseys are plain but solid overall, a nice return from their modernistic previous set. I don’t love the small typeface across the chest but Nike seems intent on keeping this alive in the NFL.

Normally, I like pants stripes. However, these feel off. Atlanta is trying to keep silver as a color in their team palette but the striping looks odd when it’s nowhere else on the uniform.

Going back to red jerseys as the primary home is fine. I think black on black and/or black with red helmets are the Falcons’ best look although at least they are keeping the latter with the throwbacks.

I’ve read they will be bringing silver pants this year, which is weird that it wasn’t part of this unveiling.

Back to the helmets, I really prefer their old logo from the 1975-2002 but the larger sin is not going back to black facemasks. The Falcons used to wear silver facemasks with their red helmets (see, throwbacks) but never with the black helmets until 2020. It looks off to me.

Media

I went through a deep dive on the Nazi-built Wolf’s Lair from World War II. I have to brush up my history because at first I confused this with the Führerbunker in Berlin where Hitler ultimately met his own self-inflicted demise. But no, this sprawling complex is about a 10-hour modern car ride from Berlin situated in modern-day eastern Poland near the border with Lithuania. My first thought was that this was a pretty good idea from a military perspective and the engineering around it was really impressive.

But then you can’t talk about this place without its purpose as the command center of the ill-advised attack and invasion of the Soviet Union. Obviously, Hitler was insane. The day-to-day schedule that he kept here at the Wolf’s Lair is proof that he was a paranoid weirdo, and that’s the best thing you can say about him. It’s amazing that they spent millions upon million building this place in 1941, licked their wounds from the disastrous Operation Barbarosa 5 months later, and then continued pouring millions into enlarging and fortifying this place throughout the rest of World War II. Only, when the Soviets were encircling, to blow it all up as they left.

Tunes

The band Future Island popped up on my timeline recently and after a brief deep dive I’m ready to include them in this section. They seem to elicit a lot of love or hate. I’m here to tell you, I totally get it. I’ve read so many comments about how listening to Future Islands music without seeing them perform is a far different, and normal, experience. The band blew up when their song “Seasons (Waiting on You)” was released as the lead single from a new album back in 2014. The song is okay, I was a bit surprised it was named song of the year by a whole swath of publications though.

The singing does seem a little weird to me. When they performed the hit on the Letterman Show it all made sense why the band gets mixed reception. Lead singer Samuel T. Herring is kind of absurd. I’m sorry, this is not cool. He looks like a high school principal! Some people swear that the band is really, really good (if you do get in the comment section!) but after seeing Herring perform like this I simply cannot open myself up to listening to more of this.

One More Thing

I miss Pizza Hut, and if that’s wrong I don’t want to be right. I was right in that generation that grew up with the glorious sit down Pizza Hut locations and my local branch eventually fell on hard times. They eventually closed the red roof building (it later was taken over by a Japanese restaurant) and moved a mile away into a plaza. Sure, the nostalgia of the old restaurant was long gone but at least the new location had a decent enough (if soullessly modern) sit down area.

When Covid struck that was when Pizza Hut closed damn near everything. Recently, I was out of town and we wanted to grab some quick pizza. We found a Pizza Hut nearby but of course it wasn’t sit down. I’ve seen bigger food trucks–this place was tiny! All the same, the pizza and breadsticks hit the spot. I know they have some classic “retro” Pizza Hut locations sprinkled across the country and if you’re near one, consider yourself blessed.