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.
TYLER ADAMS FROM THE PARKING LOT ARE YOU FOR REAL??? 💥🚀🔥 pic.twitter.com/ZrK7PoxCST
— CBS Sports Golazo ⚽️ (@CBSSportsGolazo) March 25, 2024
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.
Starting to think Riccardo is cooked. What a downfall. If only he was ok being red bull #2
He might not make it through 2024 poor guy.
He’s really going to test the limit of how long you want to keep a personality hire
Wait are we talking about Deion at Colorado
Watched some of that first season of Drive to Survive recently. It was sad to see how they had clearly cast Danny as the up and coming star of the sport, and where he’s ended up instead. He definitely would have been better off staying #2 to Max
We should not legitimize Grand Canyon as a real school
Fair.
Considering he was playing behind Rick Mirer for 3 years and therefore only had one year, with minimal experience beforehand, I think Kevin McDougal was a damn good QB. He certainly was a great athlete. Derek Mayes said he was the best athlete he ever played with and there were a slew of good athletes on that roster.
He’s a Pete Bercich drop from being mentioned in the same breath as Tony Rice and Tom Clements.
Does he owe you money ???
It’s all about winning.
Fun fact: Brandon Wimbush ran for 5 fewer yards in the 2nd half against Boston College in 2017 than McDougal had in his 10 regular season starts in 1993.
With sacks removed, McDougal ran 45 times for 161 yards in 1993 for 3.57 yards per carry!
The memorable FSU game in 1993 for McDougal:
21 rushing yards
108 passing yards
0 TD
It seems made up.
I agree on the made up part. My memory (faulty perhaps) is of McDougal being a pretty good runner. The stats don’t back that up, for sure. Looking at that teams stats as a whole, I guess with so much talent, especially at RB, they just spread the ball around. Other than Lee Becton’s rushing total (1044 yds) and Mayes” and Miller’s YPC (21 yds. +) nothing really stands out for anyone. RB Ray Zellars lead the team in TD catches (3) and DB Jeff Burris in rushing TDs (6 tied with Becton).
All that said, Kevin McDougal was a good QB on a great team.
I’m down with you, tlndma. A good QB on a great team. That final comeback against BC (before the horrible/awful Bercich drop) was a thing of heart and beauty.
i have never watched the BC game of that year on account of being -9 years old but it sounds like such a bizarre insane experience that maybe i should just experience it
It was literally a heartbreaker. In a (excruciating) way, one could say that we have never recovered from it, certainly not natty-wise.
Huge let down from the Florida State absolute triumph the week before. Team flat and stunk up the field for a lot of the game, and this was back when the crowd was not a factor if it wasn’t a big game, so crowd was flat. BC extremely motivated from their previous beat down by us, and was a sneaky good team.
And then after all of that we came storming back. Like Lou said, if it had ended with that incredible comeback, the team would have known it was a team of destiny and would have won the bowl game and the Natty hands down. Lou’s face when the BC field goal was good aged 20 years in a minute.
I was there with my 3 year old, with my uncle who grew up playing with the Rockne kids, who had been to the Army scoreless tie in ’46, etc, who had seen a million games. I started to cry (I confess) but he shut me up so as not to upset my son. Who was upset anyway.
And the BC fan behind me was shouting over and over with a tone of absolute disbelief, “We… beat Notre Dame.” Oh yuck!!!!!!
So sure, watch the game. I could never bring myself to it.
I’d just add that BC was #17 coming into the game and had been embarrassed by ND the season before. They had a really good QB in Glenn Foley. Living in Mass., it was a torturous day.
Yeah — 50-0 or something the year before.
My daughter was tortured the same,she was living in Worcester at the time.
54-7, and it wasn’t that close.
The comeback in the 93 game deserved to be remembered forever as a magical ND moment (complete with whining haters somewhat fairly pointing out that 2 total fluke center-snap fumbles played a large part), but the football gods took it away.
That’s where I live Noise. Did she work in Worc.?
I watched fellowship of the ring in 6th grade on its theatrical release, so 12 years old.
I had just finished reading the trilogy a month prior to its release so I was SUPER ready for the movies.
Maybe a recommendation: test the Tolkien waters by reading the hobbit with your kids? It’s definitely written to be more of a children’s book and is a quick read, if they’re jazzed about it, LOTR movies might be on the horizon
But NOT the Hobbit movies. Don’t subject them to that
Test them out with this fever dream of marijuana, acid, and the 1970s in all their glory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC35cQKHwzg
Seriously tho I think 12 is about right. My 12 year old’s advanced reading group earned a viewing of FotR on a lazy Friday in April. She’s made it halfway thru FotR and is really liking it.
And I have rewatched them more than once. Took work off to see matinees in the theater. We are big fans of “One does not simply” and “So it begins” memes around the house. Also a big fan when the kids are running late and they ask when we need to leave, dropping the Saruman “The hour is later than you think.”
12 good; my older was 12, his brother 10, he tagged along. Absolutely, reading The Hobbit was the first stage, and worked well. Then they at least had some SA on what hobbits and the other races were, and the world.
We wound up making/painting a thousand figurines and had some absolutely epic battles, and saw all the movies and they watched all the interviews with the cast and crew at the end of the extended version. Go for it. But not too young as there’s some scary stuff.
My Charlie Weis anecdote: his offenses were so poor (as seen in that depressing trivia fact), that I forgot how to play the Victory Clog in the marching band my junior year. This song is only played after a touchdown or after winning a game. We never scored and never won, so they song just disappeared from my brain completely. Fun times.
Ouch.
I do not remember black and white TV per se, but I definitely remember B&W reruns of shows like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, and when those shows switched to color. First season of Gilligan’s Island was also B&W, I seem to recall
Funny, wife was talking about Laverne & Shirley and I said I remember watching reruns in B&W, but she said it was a color TV show. Turns out I was just watching on an old B&W TV.
Grand Canyon has for a long time had one of the top club lacrosse programs in the country. MCLA lacrosse is high level as few schools can afford to have full varsity, so Grand canyon has been a known commodity to us for a while.
Anyway, I’m not going to pick on them for academics. I doubt their basketball athlete’s educations are any worse than those of North Carolina or Kentucky.
They were also famous in CBB a while back because they had really, really high student attendance for games and a really raucous crowd in a good, not bad way.
I was going to make fun of Grand Canyon for being a publicly traded university, then remembered that the Ivy League schools are basically enormous untaxed hedge funds that teach classes in the side.
/looks around
/whispers
So is Notre Dame
Yeah pretty much all colleges are this now to some degree, and have been for a while. In a weird way I respect the for-profit places for at least being open about it.
The Notre Dame community is all in on our women’s basketball team, who play today against Oregon State. Purcell was rocking as our ladies neutralized Ole Miss’s attack. The powerful – and soon to be defunct due to football – Pac 12 wbb placed seven teams in the tournament with five of the Sweet Sixteen left from the Pac – Stanford, USC, UCLA, Oregon State, and Colorado. Colorado includes Deon’s daughter.
What’s remarkable is as injuries have plagued the team there are only six players left. Westbeld and Citron played forty minutes, Hildalgo thirty-eight minutes, and Marshall, replacing Watson who was injured in the ACC tournament, played thirty-six minutes. DeWolfe played twenty-eight minutes. Bransford off the bench played sixteen minutes. Two rarely used players – Cernugel, a former walk-on, and Obinma, a transfer, each played one minute.
Injuries(5) – Miles and Jenna Brown have not played this year. Prosper suffered a lower leg injury November 29. Emma Risch has been out since December 6th and will have surgery. Watson’s injury was on March 16th.
Oregon State, one of the Pac’s tournament semifinalists and all of whom are in the Sweet Sixteen, is deep with their bench totaling sixty-one minutes against Nebraska. They started the year 11-0. This should be a real challenge. A win today and the Irish will probably face undefeated South Carolina, a rematch of their first game in Paris.
my women’s bracket rn is kind of nuts
only missed 2 in the first 2 rounds where i had UL beating MTSU and Michigan beating KU
as a big ND guy who was born and raised in south carolina and goes to USC this is like the ultimate vindication
So sad. I think the nose ring deal took Hannah off her game. Razor thin margin, honestly. A good year — esp when I think back to the Paris game, where I was.
What a wonderful season they had and certainly energizing and expanding their fanbase. Last year’s second team All-American, Olivia Miles, is coming back joining Citron, Hildago. Westbeld and Watson have Covid years if they wish and would be the starting five. Marshall and Bransford got valuable PT experience this year. Katie Koval, a 6 ft 5 inch five star and number 1 ranked post player comes to campus. We could be loaded. Adversity lead to success.
Maybe Hannah gets some nose jewelry company’s NIL money.
I now am rooting for Oregon State since who knows what their schedule is and how they will qualify in 2024-25.
Love this post. Total agreeance!
Unlike Bevacqua’s hiring from outside the AD community, the other Athletic Director changes are in itself a carousel. Gene Smith retires from Ohio State, who hires Ross Bjork from A&M, who hires Trev Albert from Nebraska. Alberts, an alum, will owe Nebraska $4 million. The Jonathan Smith analogy is appropriate. Nebraska hired Washington’s AD, Troy Dannen, who has now been replaced by WSU’s Pat Chun. Oregon State’s AD, Scott Barnes, was contacted by Washington about their AD job but declined to pursue it. He had been an assistant AD there. A&M and Washington now have new HCs and ADs.
Also, The Pac-12’s Departing Members Have Inked Their Divorce Contract