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

Top News

Notre Dame is ranked 10th in the ESPN post-spring SP+ by Bill Connelly.

ESPN and TNT Sports have agreed to sublicense select College Football Playoff games starting this season and running through the 2028 season. FBS Schedules has the breakdown per year:

Penn State has approved a $700 million renovation plan for Beaver Stadium.

Jaden Rashada is suing Florida and Billy Napier for nearly $14 million over his “failed” NIL deal during the recruiting process.

Colorado has sold out its season tickets for the 2nd year in a row.

The NCAA Board of Governors, ACC, Big 12, and Big Ten have voted to accept the settlement terms in House vs. NCAA and related antitrust cases. The SEC is expected to approve the settlement soon, as well.

Uniform of the Week

Buckle up for this one, folks. Recently the New York football Giants unveiled throwback uniforms that are many things but simple and ordinary they are not. Instead, they jumped head first into some wild fauxbacks (officially) as they mashed together a bunch of different elements from a 10+ year period in the organization’s early roots. Now, the result is mixed (at best!) but I do respect the effort here. When it comes to things like this, I enjoy a ‘go big or go home’ attitude even if it fails spectacularly.

We must admit, the helmet is hot garbage. Get that thing out of here and burn them all in a New Jersey oil fire. Normally, I like the gray throwback facemask but it just gets lost on that stupid helmet design. The jerseys are…something. Many have compared them to the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens. It’s jarring at first but with another helmet I think this whole thing could’ve worked. I genuinely like the pants and socks and think they look fantastic. Plus the all-black cleats. I’d love to see everything above except with a blue ‘normal’ Giants helmet photoshopped onto the everything.

Recruiting

Slow week in recruiting! Although, Ben Davis HS cornerback Mark Zackery (0.9411) is set to commit this Saturday with Notre Dame the crystal ball favorite.

Defensive lineman Gordy Sulfstead (0.8759) committed to Notre Dame.

YouTube Channel

I’ve got a video about sports, sports stadiums, real estate, and Chicago. It should be very popular on this Notre Dame blog! Sadly, I have not spent much time in downtown Chicago nor tasted its finest steakhouses. My daughter’s t-ball team is the White Sox and as a coach I realized I really dig their hats so much. Less cool is their stadium named Guaranteed Rate Field. I feel like you can’t be good at baseball with that name alone. I learned some interesting stuff from today’s video, though.

The Cubs have an elaborate underground garbage system, that’s neat. I never realized the old Comiskey Park was right next to the current White Sox stadium. The layout there is brutal. A highway to one side, train tracks to the other side, plus parking upon parking lots everywhere. What say our Chicagoans? Will the White Sox succeed in building a nicer and more functional fan-friendly stadium? What about the Bears situation?

Tunes

I can’t go 5 minutes surfing Instagram without hearing the same song over and over. The tune in question is “Back on 74” by a group named Jungle. While doing research I discovered they sung “Busy Earnin” which I knew from a FIFA game soundtrack. That song had a more electronic dance sound to it. Not so much “Back on 74” which I must admit at first I thought was created by a group of black women.

Nope, Jungle are led by 2 white British guys and now a British woman, as well. Wild stuff. The most interesting thing to me about this song is the transition from the verse to chorus which first happens at 0:28 in this video. Google says it’s a A-flat minor to B-flat minor change. It feels like a key change. It’s also odd for the lyrics extending from the verse (Ooh ooh ooh ooh where did it) to the chorus (go?) which is sneaky and a bit jarring. It’s a groovy little song.

Trivia

What year did we last see a college football team gain at least 600 yards in punt returns?

The Other Football

Well, for the second year in a row Arsenal bottled the Premier League. These are just the facts. With 91 points, Manchester City wins the league by 2 points. It’s the club’s 4th straight title, 6th championship out of the last 7 years, and 9th EPL trophy in the last 13 years. Quite the juggernaut.

The European places for 2024-25 will be as follows:

Champions League: Man City, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Aston Villa

Europa League: Tottenham and Chelsea or Man United

Europa Conference League: Chelsea or Newcastle

*If Man United win the FA Cup Final they will place in the Europa League. If Chelsea stay in the Europa League spot from a FA Cup Final loss by Man United, then Newcastle gets the lone Conference League placement.

Mauricio Pochettino has stepped down as the Chelsea manager.

Pep Guardiola has been named the EPL manager of the year.

Bayer Leverkusen have been defeated, finally. The German team lost the Europa League Final on Wednesday 3-0 to Atalanta.

Despite being relegated and let go by Burnley, manager Vincent Kompany is rumored to be signing with Bayern Munich!?

TV & Movies

I’m halfway through the Woodstock ’99 documentary on Netflix and oh my what a trainwreck. Did any of our readers attend this disaster in Rome, New York? Or know anyone who went? I have vague memories of this happening but as someone who adored the original 1969 Woodstock (to an extent) and saw the disaster of Woodstock ’94 I thought it was incredibly stupid to try this again for a third time. Why? As always in these situations, the reason was mostly money.

Promoter Michael Lang seemed blissfully out of touch. His partner didn’t seem to care about anything except trying to make as much money as possible. The stupidity and arrogance from these type of leaders is abhorrent. There’s a part in the documentary where Lang admits he didn’t know who most of the musical acts were and that just blows my mind. Also, as someone who was a few years too young to attend, the acts and lewdness from some of the concert goers was really embarrassing, too. I wonder how much rage there would’ve been if the food, sleeping, cleanliness options would’ve been perfect?

A Look Back

It’s really funny to laugh at the misfortune of other’s on the football field. Take for example the PSC Top 15 Worst Plays of the 2023 College Football Season below. Notre Dame isn’t featured so we’re safe. What would’ve been the worst play of the 2023 Irish season, by the way? The DJ Brown failed interception against Ohio State? What other nominees would you submit? The funny thing is that in today’s video we’ve talked about the top 3 in detail on our website already. Major, major super funny gut punches for South Carolina State, Washington, and Miami.

I’d like to point out the no. 4 spot in the video. The receiver runs a great route, and there’s some really questionable defense to allow so much of the field side open for a receiver. And yet, the stone handed receiver allows the ball to go through his hands and hit his helmet. But wait! Not only does he miss the ball, the ball then pops right up in the air in a perfect spot to re-catch it and yet he completely loses focus and can’t bring it in. Hilarious. UNLV threw an interception on the next snap and lost the game to Fresno State.

18S Paddock Club

We were this close to an amazing F1 weekend. This close! 0.725 seconds close, in fact. Things started out with defending world champion Max Verstappen looking…human? The Red Bull driver’s set up was off throughout practice leading to several run offs into the gravel and also a crash for teammate Sergio Perez. When it came to qualifying it looked like big trouble for Red Bull.

It definitely was for Perez who qualified P11, although Verstappen hooked it all up for his F1-tying record 8th straight pole. On Sunday, Max drove away for a bit was ended up being reeled in (almost) by McLaren’s Lando Norris.

*Norris needed another couple laps and he would’ve won. It was a great reply to his first career win in Miami at the last race, plus teammate Oscar Piastri qualified P2 before a 3-place grid penalty was enforced for blocking Kevin Magnussen during qualifying. McLaren are officially Doing Good Things.

So close for Lando Norris back-to-back wins.

*Perez’ seat hasn’t really been too hot this year but this was one of those weekends where Red Bull can’t afford such a poor performance. He’s now fallen to 3rd behind Charles Leclerc in the driver standings and Norris is breathing down his neck just 6 points back. Quite the contrast to last year where Perez faced plenty of scrutiny, was constantly under the microscope, and finished P2 comfortably by 51 points.

*Not the amazing weekend Ferrari hoped for with their massive upgrades finishing P3 and P5 overall.

*This was an awful weekend for Fernando Alonso who finished P19 and damaged his car twice on the weekend. Aston Martin has only scored 4 points total over the last 2 races and are falling behind in the development battle now being closer to the likes of V-Carb than Mercedes.

Up next, Monaco! The best qualifying sessions of the year are coming this weekend live from the principality. Will the race be good? We’ll, see. Several teams are bringing upgrades again and it should be a dry weekend with little or no rain.

Trivia Answer:

2014, Nebraska, 620 yards (De’Mornay Pierson-El was a menace as a true freshman)