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

Top News

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard had ankle surgery and is expected to miss the rest of spring practice. All-American cornerback Ben Morrison also had shoulder surgery and will be out through spring and beyond.

Pete Bevacqua’s tenure as Notre Dame athletic director officially began on Monday, March 25th.

The NCAA Football Oversight Committee has recommended that analysts be allowed to coach in practices and games. Additionally, they’ve recommended that a head coach can assign any 10 assistants (including analysts) as off-campus recruiters.

Georgia running back Trevor Etienne, who transferred in from Florida, was arrested on suspicion of DUI.

Wisconsin and Cal have signed a home-and-home deal for 2029-30.

Athletic director Pat Chun is moving from Washington State to Washington.

Uniform of the Week

Raise your hand if you’d ever heard of Grand Canyon University prior to this year’s March Madness. Not me! They even participate in and won the WAC this year. No clue this was a school and that their basketball team was good. Taking a look, the school was turned into a for-profit Christian institution back in 2004 which is bad vibes. Especially with over 100,000 mostly online students and only 500 or so full-time faculty. What are we doing here?

Grand Canyon does have a cool nickname the “Antelopes” which gives rise to the shortened nickname on their jerseys above. They just lost to Alabama in the NCAA Tournament, though. For the 2023-24 season the team had 2 separate white uniforms (one with GVU on the chest and one Lopes), plus a black set, purple set, and this nifty light gray sets in purple trim.

Recruiting

USC flipped 5-star defensive lineman Georgia commit Justus Terry (0.9971) after the Peach State native had been a verbal to the Bulldogs for 14 months. Safety prospect Hylton Stubbs (0.9679) and edge rusher Isaiah Gibson (0.9609) also committed to USC.

Alabama has added a verbal from linebacker Darrell Johnson (0.9809).

Running back Girard Pringle (0.9123) committed to Miami.

Linebacker Brett Clatterbaugh (0.9028) gave a verbal to Virginia Tech.

The Composite no. 1 quarterback for the 2026 class Jared Curtis (0.9937) committed to Georgia.

YouTube Channel

Are you old enough to remember black and white television? The National Television System Committee developed a color standard in 1953 and channels like NBC broadcast their first color transmission during the Tournament of Roses parade on New Years Day in 1954. More Rose Bowl nostalgia. Later that year, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color was first put on television and was a pivotal moment in the switch from black and white. However, the process in every day American homes took so much longer.

Sales of color televisions didn’t really heat up until 1965-66 in the United States. By then, most of the top programming on the big networks had transitioned to color. It’s wild to see other places even slower to adopt the switch. For example, today’s video shows a channel in Australia finally moving to color in the year of our Lord 1975.

Tunes

I have fond memories of the Britpop invasion in the late 1990’s and albums like Oasis’ (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? take me way back to 1996. Although I’m proud of the music I’m not always loving the fashion at the time. Remember the “Song 2” music video from Blur? The band members bouncing off the wall is one of my favorite MTV videos of all-time. I always thought he said “my HMO checked” in the first verse and not “by a jumbo jet.” Do you hear it?

Small tee-shirts with the short sleeves. Slightly baggy pants. Some Airwalks on the feet. I had a pair of black and brown suede Airwalks that I thought were the coolest shoe in the world. I looked it up and Airwalk are still making shoes to this day. Of course, I never skateboarded and got dirty looks from the hardcore skateboards who probably listened to crappy punk music.

Trivia

I got the trivia question wrong last week. Let’s try this one, how many times during the Charlie Weis era did Notre Dame score 10 points or fewer in a game?

The Other Football

The United States cruised past Jamaica 3-1 in the CONCACAF Nations League semi-final last Thursday and then took home gold with a 2-0 win over Mexico in the final. That championship win included this absolute piss missile goal from Tyler Adams.

You may notice, the United States debuted their new home kit for 2024 against Mexico and released the new away kit against Jamaica, too. The team is on a long break for a while before prep begins for this summer’s Copa America.

Ukraine, Georgia, and Poland all punched their ticket to the European Championship this summer after victories recently. Ukraine did the unthinkable with a pair of late goals to advance to the big tournament this past Tuesday.

TV & Movies

I haven’t revisited the Lord of the Rings movies since they came out, nor have I read any of the associated books. The theatrical release time for all 3 movies is 558 minutes. I enjoyed the first movie and thought the visuals were so awesome. Also, one of my first DVD purchases! I’m pretty sure I didn’t watch any of these 3 films in the theater, though.

Is it worth it to go back and re-watch LOTR again? At what age do kids get interested in this type of movie? I would line it up to watch with my 3 little Murtaugh’s but probably not before 10 years old? Maybe 12 years old? Do kids even like this series?

A Look Back

You know one of my hottest takes is that Kevin McDougal is the most overrated player in Notre Dame history. No personal slight to Kevin, but that’s relative to the somewhat re-written history behind his emergence and effectiveness as quarterback of the Irish. As I was looking back for something in this section I came across an article with Lou Holtz berating McDougal for his lack of confidence and too many turnovers heading into the BYU game week with Notre Dame sitting at 6-0.

There was even talk that McDougal could get benched leading up to the trip to Provo. Ultimately, he wasn’t but McDougal did get dinged up in the 45-20 win which led to the rather odd memory of Paul Failla starting the following week at home against USC. The Irish cruised 31-13 against the Rob Johnson-led Trojans and McDougal would be back at Veterans Stadium against Navy a week later.

18S Paddock Club

Max Verstappen didn’t win the race! It’s a whole new world in F1! Well, at least for one weekend. Ferrari showed impressive pace all weekend long in Australia although a mistake during qualifying prevented Carlos Sainz from taking pole position.

At the start of the grand prix, Verstappen was overtaken by Sainz (a rare sight in the sport since 2022 began) but we soon discovered the top Red Bull driver’s car was on fire. The rear right brake was effectively stuck, caught fire, exploded, and that was the first DNF for Verstappen since this same race in Melbourne in early 2022.

Other notes from Australia:

*Sainz’ recovery from appendicitis was remarkable and he took up the mantle as a Max-esque dominator cruising to an easy victory. Charles Leclerc finished 2nd, too. Forza Ferrari.

*The weekend kicked off with Williams sitting Logan Sargeant down and giving his car to Alex Albon after the latter destroyed his during a crash in practice. The poor team didn’t have a spare chassis available in the Land Down Under.

*Visor tear-offs wreaked havoc again. First, one got stuck in Sergio Perez’ floor limiting the Red Bull to just P5 after a penalty during qualifying dropped him down the grid to start. Second, another  tear-off got stuck in the brake of Alpine’s Esteban Ocon forcing an extra pit stop.

*Fernando Alonso was giving a hefty 20-second penalty after the race for unsporting braking too early and often to cause the crash of George Russell on the penultimate lap. Alonso dropped from P6 to P8. With an engine failure for Lewis Hamilton, neither Mercedes picked up points in Australia.

*Double points finish for Haas. Just 3 points, but still!

*Yuki Tsunoda gave us one of his best races to date with a P7 finish moving RB Visa up to 6th in the constructor standings.

*It’s early, and a double DNF doesn’t help, but McLaren currently have more than twice as many points as Mercedes.

Trivia Answer:

7 times, over a brutal 24-game stretch in 2007-08.