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

Top News

Howard Cross was named the Walter Camp National Defensive Player of the Week after his performance against Duke.

Duke quarterback Riley Leonard has a high ankle sprain but will not be out for the rest of the season.

Iowa quarterback Cade McNamara is expected to miss the rest of the season with a leg injury.

Pittsburgh has benched quarterback Phil Jurkovec and will start Christian Veilleux this weekend.

NC State has benched quarterback Brennan Armstrong and will start MJ Morris on Saturday.

The NCAA Division I Council has approved the following changes, most notably:

  • Reduction of the transfer windows from 60 to 45 days total. For football, it’ll be 30 days in the first window then 15 days in the second window.
  • Removal of initial counters for scholarships as long as a program stays under 85 scholarships.
  • FCS to FBS application fee of $5 million up from $5,000.

Ole Miss was fined $100,000 by the SEC for storming the field in their win over LSU.

Georgia Tech has demoted DC Andrew Thacker and replaced him with Kevin Sherrer who coaches the linebackers.

Indiana has fired offensive coordinator Walt Bell.

According to Front Office Sports, NBC, Apple, and Amazon are all in the mix to be one of the broadcast partners starting in 2026 with the expanded College Football Playoffs.

Uniform of the Week

I swear I am not making any of this up. Not long ago, Georgia Tech unveiled black uniforms dubbed the “Ghost Uniform.” As you can see below, they went with black jerseys and pants instead of their traditional navy blue but kept their gold helmets and used black trim. It’s their best attempt to look just like Purdue, right? This isn’t the best part of the story, though.

The uniforms are supposed to be glow in the dark! Whoa, fancy. Except, Georgia Tech proceeded to wear them during an afternoon game (it’s not like they would wear them in pure darkness anyway but some form of PR with the uniforms in a dark tunnel may have been worth it) and then proceeded to lose to Bowling Green in said uniform. How many years will need to pass until the Yellow Jackets wear black again?

Recruiting

Texas athlete Terry Bussey (0.9905) committed to Texas A&M.

Notre Dame showed some interest in safety Davis Andrews (0.8772) but he committed to Utah and will be going on a mission prior to enrolling with the Utes.

Edge rusher Brian Robinson (0.9538) has committed to Kentucky.

In the 2025 class, Penn State added Pittsburgh area tight end Brady O’Hara (0.9021).

YouTube Channel

I’m pretty sure we have discussed The Sphere in Las Vegas on this site in the past. It popped up on my radar a while back as the place where the upcoming F1 race will be circling next month. The $2.3 billion structure was under construction for a long time and several months back started projecting images on its enormous outdoor spherical LED screens illuminating the desert sky to the northeast of The Strip. The exterior is pretty freaky and feels like a new modern wonder of the world. However, the inside is even more mind blowing.

Just a few days ago, U2 took up a residency at The Sphere for their first set of shows since 2019 and this is officially called U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere. There were a bunch of high profile celebrities in attendance and some of the clips from the show are outrageous. This place sits nearly 19,000 people and 10,000 of the seats have haptic technology built into them. This looks like a dawn of a new era in world entertainment. It’s the type of place that people will hold up as the gold standard for music venues–plus The Sphere plans on holding other events here like award shows and even smaller sports like boxing.

Tunes

I was in my basement recently and saw my two hefty binders of CD’s from my high school and college years sitting down there collecting dust and being sad. They make me nostalgia more so for all the times spent with friends trading music and introducing people to cool bands and artists. I definitely love the streaming era and its accessibility, though. I probably miss the CD booklets as much as anything these days. Kind of like my parents missing the inside of a vinyl record and the fun that came with those purchases.

My first foray into legit streaming was back in the Pandora days. Is Pandora still around? They took my musical tastes and always played the band Love while I was tooling around in the car. If you haven’t listened to this band’s 1967 album Forever Changes you should check it out. The group had a bunch of band member changes in their career but they struck gold on this one album. Their most famous song “Alone Again Or” from this album is best described as psychedelic Spanish folk rock. It’s a quality jam.

Trivia

Who leads Notre Dame in sacks through 6 games this season?

The Other Football

We have a fresh batch of Champions League results this week:

Shakhtar 3 – 2 Antwerp
Atletico Madrid 3 – Feyenoord
Dortmund 0 – 0 Milan (Christian Pulisic’s return to BVB)
Lazio 2 – 1 Celtic
Barcelona 1 – 0 Porto
Newcastle 4 – 1 PSG
Man City 3 – 1 Leipzig
Belgrade 2 – 2 Young Boys
Braga 3 – 2 Union Berlin
Real Sociedad 2 – 0 Salzburg
Bayern Munich 2 – 1 Copenhagen
Inter 1 – 0 Benfica
Lens 2 – 1 Arsenal
Galatasaray 3 – 2 Man United
Real Madrid 3 – 2 Napoli
PSV 2 – 2 Sevilla

Bayern (A), Lens (B), Real Madrid (C), Real Sociedad (D), Atletico Madrid (E), Newcastle (F), Man City (G), and Barcelona (H) top their groups after 2 matches.

Chelsea have won a Premier League game and Manchester City have lost. What is going on!? On Monday night, Chelsea finally got the monkey off their back with a 2-0 win against Fulham. Elsewhere, City played one of their worst games in a long time falling 2-1 to Wolves.

This past weekend will be remembered as the game where a VAR mistake allowed Tottenham to defeat visiting Liverpool 2-1 after a late Joel Matip own goal. With the combination of aggrieved Liverpool fans and the luck of Spurs we might see this game’s results nullified. Not to be outdone, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is saying the game should be replayed lolololol.

Leo Messi continues to be out with an injury for Inter Miami, not traveling with the team to Chicago on Wednesday night. He’s missed 5 out of the last 6 matches.

The 2030 World Cup is sure to be insane as it was announced the tournament will begin in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay before shifting across the ocean to Spain, Morocco, and Portugal.

TV& Movies

I was talking with my oldest about the cartoons I watched as a kid and how different the experience was 30 to 35 years ago. Oh, innocent times. There’s nothing quite like a 6-year old surfing YouTube on her tablet and watching some of the silliest and dumbest content you can imagine. All at her fingertips 24/7 unless I take it away. What were the bad shows I watched as a kid that don’t look great in hindsight?

I zeroed in on G.I. Joe, a cartoon I remember watching a lot of as a real small kid but otherwise couldn’t remember any details beyond the bad guy Cobra being pretty cool. They only made 95 episodes across 3 seasons (and it came back a few years later too) but the legacy of this cartoon lived on for a long time. The toys were cool to play with but the show itself featured way too many characters. Check out the intro song to the episode above, wow.

A Look Back

Oh, another college football team didn’t have the right amount of players on the field? What a shame! When Trent Dilfer was announced as the new head coach at UAB with no college coaching experience, I figured this is the type of guy we were going to see a little bit as he breaks into the sport. Let’s set the table. It’s early 4th quarter and UAB is forcing a punt on Tulane and looking for an upset. Then the Green Wave punter unleashed a shank, maybe for 10 yards or so. It looked like a terrible punt, one of the worst this year.

But, flag on the field! UAB were penalized for an illegal substitution with 12 men on the field. At this point, Dilfer just goes OFF on the sidelines. Truly, an impressive and entertaining rant directed at multiple people. You think it’s going to stop but it does not. An elite rampage for all of us to enjoy. Thank you, Trent.

18S Paddock Club

Only 6 more rounds to go in this F1 season and we’ve swung back to the Middle East again before we turn around for a mega 4-race stay in the Americas in Austin/Mexico City/Sao Paulo/Las Vegas. Of course, the season will finish where it always has in recent year at Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi.

Due to the World Cup, we didn’t race in Qatar last year and the plan originally was to have a new state-of-the-art track in the country ready for Formula 1 soon but those ideas have been put on the backburner for now. Even the sportswashing in Qatar has a limit so it seems.

Round 17 of 22
Qatar Grand Prix
Date: October 8th
Race: 1:00 PM ET
Location: Doha, Qatar
Circuit: Losail International Circuit

However, Qatar is still splashing plenty of money around after they inked a 10-year deal to continue hosting races–initially this Losail Circuit was just a pandemic-related fill-in back in 2021. They’ve upgraded the paddock, parking, increased capacity to 40,000 grandstand seats, and done extensive upgrades to the VIP, medical, and media centers plus a ton of beautification work all over the track.

A few storylines for this weekend:

It’s a sprint weekend which means qualifying for the grand prix comes up on Friday with the shortened race following up another qualifying session on Saturday. Max Verstappen only needs a few more points to clinch his 3rd straight driver’s championship so he’s 99% likely to be crowned on Saturday following the sprint race.

Daniel Ricciardo got some quality simulator work in for AlphaTauri but isn’t quite healthy enough to race. The team will continue with rookie Liam Lawson with an eye towards Ricciardo coming back for the Austin GP, one of his personal favorite places to race in his adopted American home.

Speaking of America, the FIA formally approved the application of Andretti Racing who are looking to join Formula 1 as soon as 2025. It’s not over yet as F1 (as represented by the teams and Formula One Management) prefer Andretti not to be on the grid, or at least wait until a new Concorde Agreement is in place for 2026 so he’ll have to pay a $600 million to $800 million entrance fee instead of the current $200 million fee. Also, American Logan Sargeant is the sole remaining driver without a contract for next year. Will we learn about his fate soon? All signs point to him staying at Williams…look out for an announcement in Texas at the next race perhaps?

Trivia Answer:

Jordan Botelho, 2 sacks.