Your weekly dose of Notre Dame news, opinion, and other stuff.
Top News
A Jon Wilner tweet at 1:23 PM eastern reported USC and UCLA were planning to leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten starting in 2024. At 7:40 PM, USC announced they were leaving and UCLA officially did the same 2 minutes later. Will the Big Ten be done making moves? They are working on a new TV deal and could further add more programs for a monstrous pay day.
Notre Dame will be wearing green jerseys in this upcoming fall’s game against California.
News broke right after last week’s Rambler that freshman running back Jadarian Price tore his Achilles and will miss the 2022 football season.
Starting in 2023, the ACC will be dropping divisions for football and moving to a 3-3-5 pod schedule. They thought this would be the big conference news of the week. Also, the state of North Carolina is setting aside $15 million to move the ACC headquarters from Greensboro to Charlotte.
Due to a debilitating back injury UAB head coach Bill Clark is retiring. They’ve promoted from within and will be hiring offensive coordinator Bryant Vincent.
The Big 12 is set to hire Brett Yormark as the new conference commissioner. Yormark is currently the chief operating officer for the Roc Nation entertainment agency.
Mike Leach signed a new 2-year extension at Mississippi State that will pay him $5.5 million per year through 2025.
The state of New Jersey has earmarked $100 million to Rutgers in order to update their basketball arena and get started on a new indoor practice facility for football.
Memphis and Boise State have agreed to a home-and-home series in 2023 and 2026.
Uniform of the Week
Da Bears. We have another edition of FCS Summer™ but also another edition of Name That School. I’m going to be completely honest, I uploaded this picture a few days ago and came back to write this and forgot which school it is. So, if you don’t get it don’t feel ashamed. Making matters more difficult is that there are 7 teams at the FCS level nicknamed the Bears. Now, you have to go off the Big Sky Conference patch, which for some of us, will narrow the part of the country down correctly.
Obviously, this is Northern Colorado. A team coached by former NFL wide receiver Ed McCaffrey who will be entering his second season on campus in 2022. He was hired prior to 2020 but their program didn’t play during the pandemic year. Their standard helmet just has “UNC” across the side which is quite boring. These bear logo helmets are much better.
Recruiting
Notre Dame has added a trio of commits since our last Rambler. First up was 2024 tight end Jack Larsen (0.9293), followed by 2024 wide receiver Cam Williams (0.9475), and lastly 2023 offensive tackle Charles Jagusah (0.9752) this past Thursday morning. Texas cornerback Micah Bell (0.9451) announces today, and well, you know how we do it these days.
High 4-star quarterback Jaden Rashada (0.9796) committed to Miami on Sunday. The Canes also added athlete Robert Stafford (0.9323) and receiver Nathaniel Joseph (0.9506) this week, too.
Kadyn Proctor (0.9952) is the no. 2 tackle in the 2023 cycle and is staying home at Iowa.
5-star corner Tony Mitchell (0.9903) has committed to Alabama.
The no. 9 interior offensive lineman Jaydon Chatman (0.9237) gave a verbal to Texas. The Horns also grabbed elite receiver Johntay Cook (0.9839) as the post-Manning announcement brings forth more bounty.
The no. 6 interior offensive lineman Roderick Kearney (0.9425) committed to Florida State.
Clemson added interior lineman Harris Sewell (0.9646) this past Wednesday.
Corner Calvin Simpson-Hunt (0.9289) committed to Ohio State.
YouTube Channel
Everyone has Top Gun on their mind (I haven’t seen TG 2 yet so don’t spoil it!) and it got me thinking about aircraft carriers. I have never seen one in person, which I think is pretty common? There are currently 11 in service for the U.S. Navy and if you’re not living in San Diego or in the Norfolk, Virginia areas your opportunity to see one in person is limited absent some extensive military experience overseas. Are these behemoths almost unsinkable as this video suggests?
It caught my attention because a few months ago in the Buffalo inner harbor we had an old warship randomly sinking into the water after a suspected leak. Don’t worry, it’s fine now. I would like to suggest that these aircraft carriers are very sinkable if they were bombarded because that feels like common sense to me. I’m going to need more evidence.
Tunes
I wasn’t rich enough to own a Sony CD Walkman in the 1993-95 years and instead relied on the cassette tape Walkman edition as I preferred listening with headphones on even inside my house. Some memorable tapes in this period for me include Green Day’s Dookie (remember it was blue?), Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York, Weezer’s debut album, and all 3 copies of the Beatles Anthology. I had this insufferable paper route and I’d drive the cassettes into the ground with memories of the batteries dying slowly on a few rounds walking about.
I don’t remember having homework prior to 7th grade when I then moved into a larger school district. I used to sit in my bedroom and absolutely blast this Stone Temple Pilots album Purple for hours and hours going through schoolwork. Parts of this album were do damn loud. Check out the transition at 0:46 seconds in “Big Empty” for example. STP was going hard in the 1990’s.
Trivia
Notre Dame played 6 teams from the ACC during the 2015 season. Will Fuller scored a touchdown in every game that year except against 3 of these ACC opponents: Virginia, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest, and Boston College. Name the 3 teams.
The Other Football
Sadio Mane has completed a $35.2 million move from Liverpool to Bayern Munich.
Gareth Bale is headed to LAFC for 2022 following a star-studded career in Europe.
Gabriel Jesus is in need of some Europa League football and is headed to Arsenal from Manchester City.
Tottenham is set to break their transfer fee record by bringing in forward Richarlison for $72.8 million.
Midfielder Frenkie de Jong is rumored to be headed to Manchester United from Barcelona for a fee reportedly over $70 million.
Romeo Lukaku is headed back to Inter Milan on loan from Chelsea.
The US Women’s team defeated Colombia 2-0 on Tuesday in a friendly.
Barcelona have sold 10% of the La Liga television rights for 25 years to global investment firm Sixth Street. This gives the club $207.5 million Euros to cover debts for the closing financial year.
Streaming
I once had a history teacher who inundated us with classical music which meant among the movies we watched were 1984’s award-winning Amadeus. Now, I’ve always enjoyed this movie. Do I really love classical music? I’m not sure I can go that far. There are certain composers I’m more drawn to and Mozart would certainly be one of them. But, I’m more so obsessed with how humans compose music, even down to pop artist’s who are doing it mostly on a computer. The only people I don’t care about are country artists because that’s all complete trash.
This is one of my favorite music scenes in a movie where composer Antonio Salieri gives Emperor Joseph II a piece of his own to play as Mozart waits to come in the room. After hearing it just once, played poorly, he’s memorized the piece and improves upon it right in front of Salieri’s face. It’s a real alpha move, for sure. The rare humans who can digest music and spit it back out this way are some of my favorite people to watch operate in this realm.
A Look Back
In November of last year Nebraska restructured Scott Frost’s contract. Normally in the coaching world this is great news. Not so much for Frost who had his annual salary reduced by $1 million and is subject to performance goals to bump the salary up and even possibly trigger an extension through 2027. This came during the Huskers bye week following their 4th straight loss while sitting at 3-7, and as many know, Nebraska would not win another game in 2021.
What they did do is open up last fall with a week zero loss to Illinois. Frost’s current deal runs through 2026 without meeting those new bonus metrics. Right now, his buyout sits at $15 million and is cut in half by the middle of this upcoming 2022 season. Does anyone think he makes it to 2023? Frost is 10-25 in Big Ten play during his tenure and absolutely has to start 3-0 next year opening up with Northwestern, North Dakota, and Georgia Southern before Oklahoma comes to Lincoln.
18S Paddock Club
Formula 1 returns this week to England for the 10th round of 22 races as Red Bull (76 point constructor championship lead) and Max Verstappen (46 point driver championship lead) come in with a ton of momentum looking for revenge after last year’s opening lap crash that thankfully did not leave the Dutch driver with any injuries.
In cased you missed the drama from the 2021 race:
Last time out at Silverstone, Hamilton yeeted Verstappen into the barriers.
British Grand Prix
Silverstone Circuit
FP1 7/1 8:00 AM ET
FP2 7/1 11:00 AM ET
FP3 7/2 7:00 AM ET
Qualifying 7/2 10:00 AM ET
Race 7/3 10:00 AM ET
Silverstone, with its balanced mixture of fast corners, straights, and some slower bits, is traditionally a track where teams introduce larger update packaged to their cars. So far, reports are that the grid will be bringing the following:
Red Bull – DRS fixes, lighter floor.
Ferrari – New rear wing on both cars, floor/diffuser upgrades, and sidepod updates.
Mercedes – Updates to improve bouncing.
McLaren – Only small changes.
Alpine – A new floor and sidepod updates.
Alfa Romeo – Small updates.
AlphaTauri – No updates until July.
Haas – New updates not until the Hungary GP.
Aston Martin – Major upgrade package rumored.
Williams – New sidepods, rumored to be like Red Bull’s concept.
It’s race week, as @F1 heads to Silverstone for the #BritishGP! 🇬🇧
The circuit is one of the most challenging tracks for tyres of the season due to the energy demands on the tyres. Here’s what you need to know👇https://t.co/8kbc56TwmI#F1 #Fit4F1 #Formula1 #Pirelli #Pirelli150 pic.twitter.com/M0acq63TWS
— Pirelli Motorsport (@pirellisport) June 27, 2022
3 Questions for Silverstone:
1) Which team will unlock potential with updates?
A team like Mercedes may feel like they’ve finally unlocked something with their car in Montreal and know that Silverstone suits them well. If there’s a track that is going to provide Mercedes a win this year and/or George Russell’s first career victory this could be the weekend. Elsewhere, will a team like Aston Martin bring an upgrade that really jumps them up into contention for points? Their base is right here at Silverstone and they could be a fun team to turn things around heading towards the back half of the season.
2) Can the midfield battle reignite again?
Unless disaster strikes, the top 3 look to be locked with no one catching Mercedes in 3rd place. That fight for 4th between McLaren (65 points), Alpine (57 points), Alfa Romeo (51 points), and maybe AlphaTauri (27 points) hasn’t been that fun thanks to so many DNF’s, particularly from Alpine and Alfa. I expect this race to heat up considerably especially with McLaren seemingly content to sit on their hands a bit.
3) Will reliability or crashes alter the championship this weekend?
Ferrari has pushed back a new battery update as they work on getting the reliability of their engines down in the next handful of races. Any further DNF’s would be disastrous. We also haven’t seen many incidents near the top of the grid between the top teams. Will that end soon?
Trivia Answer:
Clemson, Wake Forest, and Boston College.
Had a great Mozart picture and title ready for this and things changed 🙁
Aircraft carriers are insane. I was stationed near Seattle Washington, and there was a carrier homeported in the town I lived. You could always tell then it came back, the rental market would go bonkers with 5000 people descended on the town.
Other fun facts, each carrier is powered by 2 nuclear reactors, which are so massive, they dwarf the ones on submarines. Fun aside, in my nuclear training classes in South Carolina, one of my classmates is now the first female aircraft carrier captain ever, she was a helicopter pilot and was sent through the nuclear training pipeline when she was selected to command a carrier. For being a pilot with no engineering background, she was insanely smart and scored one of the highest GPAs in the class.
I was never on one either, but I had carrier buddies tell me how they’d go a 9 month deployment and there were still thousands of strangers on the ship. My brother, who used to drive carriers, corroborates that story too. While definitely not unsinkable, they are some thicc betties that could take A LOT of punishment prior to going under
Maybe we need your former classmate to run the NCAA?
She’s made of iron, sir. I assure you she can, and she will. It’s a mathematical certainty
Also, the 2015 Boston college game… what in the hell was that?
I had to double check the stat line, but BCs quarterback went 7-16 for 64 yards, and notre dame damn near lost the game… that 2015 squad was bonkers
Two memories from that game:
1. Too much green. All green uniforms, the grass, the wall.
2. We had some big injury late in that game. Felt avoidable when you have first stringers out way too long.
There is an aircraft carrier in Charleston that is open to the public. If you or your child is in cub scouts in the south, you will inevitably stay the night in said aircraft carrier.
It will be one of the worst experiences of your life.
Wait what.
I don’t know if the sleeping quarters are like they were for regular crew back in the day, but they’ve got these bunks held up by chains that are 4-5 beds each…maybe 10 inches between the “mattress” you’re in and the bottom of the one on top of you. There’s easily 100+ people in the room with limited AC. 80% of those in there are pre-pubescent boys. Worse than camping. Hopefully worse than what the military really go through.
10″ is not right. It was at least 14″ of vertical separation between the mattress and the bottom of the next bunk above.
The Yorktown. They have some kind of camping program.
Get to know someone in the Navy who is deploying. The program you are looking for is called a Tiger Cruise.
This is where they fly the crew’s friends an family out to the last port call and everyone rides the ship back in for 2-3 days.
Offer not valid on submarines
There are tiger cruises on subs, but they are EXTREMELY rare
EA Sports better hurry up with the next college football game or there might not be a college football at all…
Gonna be quite the trip to see how Notre Dame navigates the late-stage NCAA shifting power dynamics once again.
My trivia guess of Virginia was wrong. Shucks.
How soon you forget the catch that launched a thousand collapsed-UVA-fan memes.
Hey there – Helicopter pilot and carrier denizen here.
I flew H-60 airframes off of carriers for a number of years.
The missiles the America (RIP) test used were not designed for use against capital ships. The weapons are all subsonic and designed for small craft – AGM-84 Harpoon, AGM-65 Maverick, UK Penguin, & French Exocet. Warhead sizes range from 221-kg for the Harpoon to the 57kg for the early anti-tank versions of the Maverick.
You may remember the French made Exocet from the USS Stark incident. Two hit the Fast Frigate USS Stark (FFG-31) nearly simultaneously and the ship survived. The America displaced (empty) 61,000 tons and the Stark displaced 4100 tons. Two missiles did not sink a ship massing 6.7% of the America.
Fuzing makes a huge difference also. Most of these are impact fuzed. There is a piezo-electric impact sensor that sends an electrical signal to the detonator, so the explosive train starts almost instantly at impact. The Penguin has a delay fuze so the missile body to enter the target, allowing unused fuel to add to the damage event. Aviation fuel fed fires do not melt steel, but they weaken them, possibly leading to structural failure. Fire at sea is a killer, just ask VADM Nagumo and the Kido Butai.
As for the torpedoes, I was not able to see what type and number were used. America was set for full water tight integrity and that helps control flooding. If she was taking shots from sub launched torps (Mk-48s), well those are big boys. That her keel stayed intact through that pounding is a testament to design and construction.
The America demonstration was, in large part, propaganda – LOK HOW TUFF OUR STUFF IS!1!1
I could have spent years peppering her with .50cal AP and she would have withstood it. It was, in small part, what the name suggests, a weapon test event. She had no aviation fuel onboard, not weapons in her stores.
In contrast to the lightweight munitions used, Cold War era weapons designed to kill a carrier were very dangerous. The most prolific carrier-killer missile in the Cold War was the AS-4, NATO call sign Kitchen. She massed 5300kg, flew at Mach 4.5 (nearly hypersonic) and had a 1000kg warhead. Modern hypersonics are even faster. The energy of impact is on par the explosive potential of the warhead. The, then Soviet, tactic was to launch salvos of 2-3 per plane of these missiles at one target.
Lastly, the video also conflates the survivability of the carrier with the survivability of the Carrier Battle Group. That is like a magician’s sleight of hand. I am showing you one thing, Super Hornets and Link-16, in order to hide another, the massive vulnerabilities of a large, unstealthy ship.
I’m not saying this whole video is trash, but I will say that it should be taken with a large grain of sand when it claims the F in Fspace is silent.
That, and “Milirary Boat.”
All very accurate points. As a former member of the America, and helping it decommission in 1995. I was very sad to see it sunk. Although most sailors have a love/hate relationship with the ship they serve on.
I wanted to bring up the watertight integrity of the ship. I sort of think of it like a wine box with all the dividers inside. Except the dividers don’t let any air/water pass through. The ships are designed to seal off sections of the ship from other sections. The have to be able to survive Chemical/Biological/Radiological (CBR) attacks. There is a basic level of watertight integrity set in port, when you leave port, when you go into hostile territory, and then when you are attacked. The America had the full setup done. Everything sealed off that could be sealed off.
So, the conventional weapons used against it was sort of like sealing up all the compartments of that wine box and floating it out on the water and shooting it with a BB gun, waiting for it to sink.
Side note on the Harpoons: the anti-ship load out has magnesium as part of the explosive. Magnesium burns extremely hot and will catch everything on fire around it. This may be mattresses in crew berthing, metals with a lower ignition point (aluminum, copper), people, jet fuels, etc… When the Moskva was sunk not to long ago by the Ukraine, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some magnesium in the missile that did it.
Also: Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). This can be anything from an Army Tent in a forward deployed position (think Blackhawk down) to an office building (think CIA HQ). Obviously, some are more permanent than others.
Troof – Yeah food, racks, deployment skeds, or CO on Stennis sucks, but it least it is better than what those idiots onboard the Lincoln or GW
Great stuff, thanks!
Looks like Dante Moore was the elite 11 MVP.
So named by Sports Illustrated. The camp itself named Jackson Arnold.
Interesting. I read it in 247 so assumed they were talking about the official one. They did say it was basically a toss up between Moore and Arnold.
God I just wanna know what’s going on with a bunch of athletics depts now scrambling with the shifting college football landscape. Are other pac 12 schools going to try to follow (Washington and Oregon could be huge gets for the Big Ten)? Who’s the Big Ten aiming for themselves? Is it too late for the big ten to drop Maryland and Rutgers? lmfao strange times ahead