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

Top News

Audric Estime was not named a Doak Walker finalist WTF?

The latest College Football Playoff rankings feature a top 4 of Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan with Washington now ahead of Florida State. Notre Dame lands in at no. 18 this week.

Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis’ college career is over following a leg injury suffered this past weekend.

Syracuse has fired head coach Dino Babers.

Utah quarterback Cameron Rising announced he’ll return for a 7th season in 2024.

Pittsburgh and Wisconsin will open the 2027 season Dublin, Ireland.

Washington and Washington State have signed an agreement to play the Apple Cup through the 2028 season.

FexEx founder Fred Smith has donated $50 million to the Memphis football stadium renovation project.

Uniform of the Week

We only have a couple more Notre Dame games before the clock starts ticking on a visit to College Station, Texas. As of this writing, we have 282 more days until the Irish invade Kyle Field and experience all of the Texas A&M weirdness that is to come. Back in 2020, the Aggies reverted back to a more classic look from the 1980’s and early 1990’s vastly simplifying their uniforms from the beginning of the SEC era as encapsulated by those Johnny Manziel teams.

I typically don’t like the imbalance of a home uniform like A&M that goes maroon-maroon-white starting from the top at their helmets. Last week, they wore their all-maroon set at home and it’s one of the rare monotone schemes that I kind of enjoy in college football. I also feel like the Aggies were among the first teams in FBS to adopt this monotone color uniform, I recall it being a popular choice among friends in the old days of NCAA Football on PlayStation at the turn of the century.

Recruiting

Quiet week for recruiting, a reminder that the early signing period for college football is less than a month away and begins on December 20th.

Notre Dame added the commitment from Brophy College Prep corner Cree Thomas (0.8826) in the 2025 recruiting class.

Lots of content this week about Colorado losing offensive lineman Talan Chandler (0.8647) to Missouri. He isn’t a top 1,000 prospect in the Composite which speaks to Colorado’s struggles as they have the 69th ranked class and only 9 commits. It’s not going great for Coach Prime against this much adversity.

YouTube Channel

We haven’t been posting much to our 18 Stripes Twitter/X account over the last couple weeks. Yes, the app seems like it’s slowly dying and being replaced by other platforms and that’s a part of it. But more accurately, we’re just being lazy. I’m not sure how important tweeting out articles for us remains these days in a shrinking user-base. It does make me realize that we often, especially during football games, communicate through memes.

We’re all just searching for those imaginary internet points. A well crafted meme is the chef’s kiss. Please enjoy the Casually Explained YouTube channel covering a brief history of memes. The internet is a pretty weird place, man.

Tunes

I have a theory that weird and irregular front men in a lot of bands make it hard for the group to have a lasting impact once they grow older and pass away. For a time, the band can be super popular and incredibly successful but their fame slowly fades away. I think that happened with a group like The Cars who were led by the extremely different looking Ric Ocasek. He died back in 2019.

I went through a phase where The Cars were heavy in my music rotation. Their debut self-titled album is elite and one of the best debut albums of all-time. Truly, it opens with “Good Times Roll”, “My Best Friend’s Girl”, and “Just What I Needed” providing a bevy of rock radio hits right off the bat. I particularly like “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight” the 6th track from the album. I’m sad that a band like this is slowly fading away from relevance.

Trivia

Can you name the 3 schools to ever win the NACDA Director’s Cup for the most successful college athletics program annually awarded?

The Other Football

The USMNT wrapped up the League of Nations quarterfinals by defeating mighty Trinidad and Tobago 4-2 on aggregate.

In a game marred by fan violence, Argentina defeated Brazil 1-0 handing the latter their first ever World Cup qualifying home loss. That’s an amazing stat.

Diego Maradona’s game-worn “Hand of God” jersey from the 1986 World Cup sold for $9.28 million through an auction at Sotheby’s.

Barcelona and Spanish star Gavi tore his ACL. Real Madrid and Brazilian star Vinicius is out 3 months with a torn thigh muscle. Real Madrid also lost French midfielder Camavinga until February with a hamstring injury. What an international break!

France beat Gibraltar 14-0 in a Euro 2024 qualifying match. So at least that happened.

Everton, of all teams, have been handed a 10-point deduction for Financial Fair Play breaches. At this rate, Man City will probably be given extra points.

TV & Movies

If you’ve never done this, please go research Leslie Nielsen and his fart machine jokes. This guy was an elite fart joke legend who passed away back in 2010. The world has missed him. I grew up on his legendary performances on Airplane! and the Naked Gun films–pound for pound as much comedy as you can pack into movies with great writing and delivery. There was always something about Nielsen’s persona and comedic timing that made him extremely relatable and ‘real guy’ drop dead funny.

The baseball scene from the first Naked Gun movie has always been a childhood memory, seemingly this part of the movie would be on HBO endlessly throughout the day. Look at the faces Nielsen makes in this scene! My goodness he is hilarious. As a uniform nerd, I also appreciate these old school Angels and Mariners looks. I can’t not mention that.

A Look Back

What are we going to do with targeting in college football and in the sport at all levels? We are completing year 16 at the FBS level of having various forms and regulations of this rule and it still feels as messy and indecipherable as ever. The application from officials and replay seems as inconsistent as ever and in the defense of the people attempting to implement more safety measures, I’m not sure the general public agrees on what is targeting, and more precisely, what should be targeting.

That is not the case with Boston College safety and Arkansas transfer Khari Johnson who lost his damn mind on this hit against Pittsburgh this past Thursday. This was the most targeting you can ever target. I was waiting for the rules analyst to pop in and obfuscate about whether Johnson made contact with the shoulder first, or something stupid like that which helps to make this rule terrible to educate the public. Luckily, sanity prevailed. As the announcer mentioned, this ticked every single box of targeting. Honestly, I’d be okay with a 2-game suspension this is ridiculous.

18S Paddock Club

Things got off to a rocky start for the inaugural (new) Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend. Free practice 1 on late Thursday night was red flagged just a few minutes into the action after Carlos Sainz’ Ferrari hit a loose drain hole severely damaging his car. That resulted into inspections and construction work on other drain holes on the circuit leading to an extremely delayed 2nd free practice that only completed past 6 o’clock in the morning Vegas time. In the middle of the chaos, they kicked out fans from the stands in the middle of the night which has led to a class action lawsuit against F1. What a start!

Luckily, we ended up getting a banger of a weekend once Friday arrived. Plus, the reports afterward were really positive for the experiences for fans and the casino businesses. Despite starting the race at 1 AM eastern they still picked up 1.3 million viewers in the U.S. for the 3rd best rating of the season.

Yes, he won.

The Ferrari’s were extremely fast during qualifying with Charles Leclerc taking pole and Sainz finishing in P2. Due to his car damage from the drain cover accident, Sainz needed to take new engine elements and received a 10-place grid penalty, though.

At the start, Verstappen pushed Leclerc off track at the 1st corner and would receive a 5-second penalty.

McLaren did not have a good weekend as Lando Norris crashed hard on lap 3 bringing out a safety car.

Verstappen struggled with tire wear and was eventually passed by Leclerc for the lead–something we’ve rarely seen happen to Verstappen since the 2022 season began.

George Russell ended up turning into Verstappen (earning a 5-second penalty for the former driver) later in the race which was a mixed blessing. It damaged Verstappen’s front wing but brought out a safety car again and allowed him to save time during a final pit stop.

At the end of the race we saw an intense 3-way battle between Sergio Perez (started P11 and worked his way up to the front), Leclerc, and Verstappen. At first, Leclerc chased down Perez and passed him for the lead. Verstappen also passed Perez and then was able to overtake Leclerc for the lead. Sitting in P2, Leclerc ran wide turning on to the Strip. However, the race finished with Leclerc executing an incredible overtake for P2 passing Perez at the end of the Strip on the final lap.

Round 22 of 22
Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Date: November 26th
Race: 8:00 AM ET
Location: Yas Island, UAE
Circuit: Yas Marina Circuit

The F1 season wraps up this weekend with a brutal back-to-back flying half way across the world back to United Arab Emirates after the long and time consuming Vegas festivities. Next year, they’re going to finish the season with a Vegas-Qatar-UAE triple header which is nuts.

This past weekend, Red Bull clinched their first-ever 1-2 finish in the drivers standings as Perez was able to hold off others for P2. The last race will determine several other placements for 2023, though:

  • Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso are tied for 4th place with Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc 5 and 12 points behind, respectively.
  • Mercedes only has a 4-point advantage for P2 over Ferrari.
  • Aston Martin trails McLaren by 11 points for P4.
  • The bottom of the grid isn’t settled yet with Williams in P7 coming into the final weekend with 16 more points than Haas in last place.

Trivia Answer:

North Carolina, Stanford, and Texas.