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

Top News

There’s a global helium shortage which means Nebraska has cancelled their tradition of releasing balloons after scoring their first home touchdown of the season this fall. Or, should we say if they score? Got ’em.

A report shows that Dwayne Haskins’ blood-alcohol level was 3 times over the legal limit when he was struck and killed on a Florida highway after leaving his vehicle back on April 9th.

Michigan State athletic director Adam Haller has said realignment will be coming soon to the Big Ten.

Jimbo Fisher is still big mad about Nick Saban’s comments directed toward A&M and their recruiting “practices” shall we say. CBS has released their TV schedule for this fall and would you look at that, there’s an 8 PM eastern timeslot on the Saturday when the Tide and Aggies face each other.

Uniform of the Week

It’s another edition of “is this is a FBS program?” Yes, it is! Today we feature the Charlotte 49ers out of Conference USA in their cream colored jerseys and pants. For 2021, they actually introduced a gold chrome helmet–which was teased with this all-cream uniform but never worn all together–that they used a few times through the season.

Charlotte also introduced a new logo as seen on their helmets. It’s supposed to be a pick axe but I can’t un-see a basic airplane. I’m also not sure about the “CLT” script on the shoulders. I know that’s used extensively in Charlotte with the airport and everything but, uhh, I’ll just leave that alone.

Recruiting

Notre Dame wideout target Rodney Gallagher (0.9539) committed to West Virginia.

Quarterback Eli Holstein (0.9760) has committed to Alabama which seemingly removes the Tide from the Arch Manning sweepstakes.

Oregon dipped into Texas for wide receiver Ashton Cozart (0.9305) on Sunday.

Defensive lineman Joel Starlings (0.9117) gave a verbal to North Carolina.

California wideout Rashid Williams (0.9122) has committed to Washington.

Arizona State wideout transfer Ricky Pearsall is headed to Florida.

Former top 100 prospect wide receiver Deion Smith was set to transfer from LSU to Ole Miss but did not qualify. He’s headed to the JUCO route.

Iowa wideout Charlie Jones is leaving the Hawkeyes program after being a special teams ace with 718 career receiving yards.

Iowa State wide receiver Tarique Milton is staying in the Big 12 and is headed to Texas.

YouTube Channel

I spent a lot of time in the greater Toronto metro area as a kid and had a soft spot for those Blue Jays teams winning back-to-back World Series titles inside the SkyDome, which is what I will always call the now-named Rogers Centre. Recently, there were ideas to replace this stadium but Toronto has thought better of the idea. It’s a really cool stadium that shouldn’t disappear after a little over 30 years of service. I don’t think Canadians are quite as crazy as Atlanta and the Georgia Dome. Anyway, just a few feet away outside SkyDome is the massive beast that is CN Tower.

When you’re in big cities with tall buildings and look up from the base sometimes it makes you dizzy and disorientated. When I was something like 10 years old and finally got to see the CN Tower in person (it can be seen easily across Lake Ontario from anywhere in Niagara County, USA if it’s a clear enough day) standing at the bottom was literally frightening. It was like meeting this monolith being that you’ve stared at from a distance for years and thinking how did they build this thing? There’s a couple shots in this video and all that concrete going up so high, it’s insane. The feeling of being so close to something that doesn’t seem to be built solidly (but is indeed) and could topple over will never leave me.

Tunes

I would argue (especially removing the Beatles from the equation) that Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece Rumors is a top 3 album of all-time across any genre. The most recent Rolling Stone Top 500 Ranking had the album #7 overall on their list that ebbs and flows with trends over time. That feels about right, I suppose. One thing that I’ve always felt was that if you wanted to introduce anyone to a popular rock ‘n roll sound then Rumors is a perfect place to start.

The album has basically no weak songs. The penultimate “Oh Daddy” is the weak link but oddly sets up “Gold Dust Woman” well with the right vibes. My favorite song from the album (and thus the band, I think) is “Never Going Back Again” an absolute fingerpicking classic from guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. He’s become so underrated he’s now overrated as a musician but man what a guitar player. This song is extremely difficult to pull off on an acoustic.

Trivia

Who has more career total touchdowns: Chris Tyree or Braden Lenzy?

The Other Football

Manchester City fell behind 2-0 to Aston Villa and shockingly left the door open to a Liverpool league title on Sunday. However, City rallied for 3 goals late in the 2nd half for their 6th title since 2012. For their effort, Liverpool finished 1-point back of their 2nd title in 3 years. On the Champions League front, Tottenham secured the final 4th spot thanks to a 5-0 thrashing of relegated Norwich. Also going down will be Burnley and Watford as a late goal from Leeds keeps them in the EPL for another year.

Over in Italy, we saw AC Milan win 3-0 on the final day to secure their first league title since 2011.

In the women’s Champions League the favored dominant Barcelona squad fell to (another dominant) Lyon squad 3-1 for their impressive 8th European title in the past 12 seasons.

Roma beat Feyenoord 1-0 in the Europa Conference League title game.

The UK Government has approved the sale of Chelsea FC to American businessman Todd Boehly and his group of investors.

Brenden Aaronson becomes the 2nd most expensive American transfer ever following a $30 million move from Salzburg to Leeds.

Seemingly thumbing their nose at Financial Fair Play rules, PSG have been able to re-sign star forward Kylian Mbappe to a new 3-year contract rumored to be worth $50 million Euros per season with a $100 million signing bonus. It’s a new world record soccer contract.

Streaming

So, the trailer for Stranger Things 4 dropped recently and I’ll be honest I haven’t come back to the series since the 1st season. I liked it, and thought it was fine. As a child of the 1980’s it stirred a lot of those core memories of childhood. As an aside, I really miss riding a bike. I’m unabashedly looking forward to some ‘LOL White People’ cruising around town on bicycles with the family some day. I’m going to have an absolute dripping bike helmet.

The real reason I bring up Stranger Things is that because in our writer’s Slack room someone shared the episode lengths for this season. It is reportedly 781 minutes across 9 episodes with that final episode rumored to be at least 2 hours and 30 minutes, possibly even longer. Ain’t nobody got that time for that.

A Look Back

Today we look back at the last Notre Dame game prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks. It was a big time for change in the United States and eventually the same for the Irish as this was the beginning of Bob Davie’s final year in South Bend. Fellow uniform nerds may recall this was the last game before Notre Dame put American flags on the chest of the jerseys and the back of the helmets. The flags are still on the helmets to this day (and it looks odd IMO if you think about it and it’s been 21 seasons).

Nearly everyone recalls the 2000 thriller against Nebraska, even if the Irish came up short. This 2001 return game in Lincoln…did not go like that. The Huskers raced out to a 17-0 lead and eventually led 27-3 at halftime before taking their foot off the gas. Notre Dame was playing with someone named Andy Wisne at nose guard. We had no chance.

18S Paddock Club

Charles Leclerc took the lead through turn 1 at the Spanish Grand Prix and led comfortably in what looked like an easy win after a flying hot lap in Saturday’s qualifying gave him pole position over a crippled Max Verstappen backing out of his final run with a DRS issue. When Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz spun off at turn 4 early on during Sunday’s race, followed by P2 Verstappen doing the same at the exact same spot on the track, there seemed to be no doubt remaining on 1st place.

George Russell in his Mercedes vaulted into 2nd place after the Verstappen mistake but was quickly under attack with both Red Bull cars closing in fast. However, that faulty DRS mechanism crept up again on Verstappen’s car and some superb defensive driving from Russell allowed Leclerc to extend his lead as a P2 through P4 logjam continued. After his first pit stop on lap 22, Leclerc enjoyed a comfortable 5.5 second lead over Russell. A few laps later, Leclerc increased his lead by 11.5 seconds with a frustrated 4th place Sergio Perez pleading for Red Bull to instruct Verstappen to move aside so the Mexican could pass Russell.

On lap 27, everything changed. Leclerc’s power unit failed and he retired thrusting Russell into 1st place. On lap 29, Verstappen took to the pits for an interesting alternate strategy with soft tires. Two laps later, Perez would pass Russell for the lead. After the top 2 would pit for mediums we saw Verstappen charging fast on his soft tires and quickly gaining ground from P3.

On lap 37, Russell’s aging medium tires sent him to the pits with Verstappen on his gear box as the reigning champion was now just 6.2 seconds behind teammate Perez (also on aging mediums) for the lead. Perez would quickly pit and put Verstappen back in the lead but since Max was on the softs he also had to come in for a 3-stop strategy on lap 44 and was out 5.8 seconds behind Perez with Russell again just behind the champion. Verstappen would sail away from Russell before team orders were instructed out to Perez over the radio.

On lap 49–with Verstappen on fresher tires highly likely to easily win a fight anyway–Perez begrudgingly let his teammate through. From there, Verstappen won his 3rd race in a row, and with Leclerc’s retirement, gains a 6-point lead for the driver’s championship. Red Bull now moves up to 26 points ahead of Ferrari in the constructor’s championship.

Elsewhere on the grid: Russell’s 3rd place gives him his 2nd podium of the year, Lewis Hamilton drove all the way to 5th after an opening lap puncture with Mercedes now miles clear in 3rd place by 70 points, Lando Norris had a nice drive to 8th place while being sick (having a Q2 lap deleted), and after taking a new engine Fernando Alonso drove from last place to 9th in Spain.

F1 Fantasy – It was pure carnage this week with Leclerc’s retirement but Joseph B. led the way with 147 points.

Monaco Preview: The 79th running of the Monaco Grand Prix comes at a blissful time for Formula 1 popularity but a turbulent time for the race track’s future on the calendar. The F1 and FIA remain in a simmering battle with the Automobile Club de Monaco over the hosting fee, advertising control, TV race direction, and event planning which has seen a continuous cat and mouse game with both sides agreeing to 1-year extensions to keep holding the race but no long-term contract signed.

Monaco Grand Prix
Circuit de Monaco
FP1 5/27 8:00 AM ET
FP2 5/27 11:00 AM ET
FP3 5/28 7:00 AM ET
Qualifying 5/28 10:00 AM ET
Race 5/29 9:00 AM ET

This weekend, the traditional Thursday start of practice is no longer and we’re on a normal F1 weekend schedule. The hometown hero Leclerc (+100) is the favorite, despite his publicized house of horrors history on the track. Can you bet against Verstappen (+125) at this point? Perhaps, if you don’t trust this Red Bull car at the slowest track of the season.

Don’t forget that Sainz (+1600, 3rd best odds) finished 2nd here last year and will come with a better car than 2021. Maybe he gets that elusive first career victory?

One interesting thing to note is that the Alfa Romeo was by far the quickest through the slow sector 3 chicane in Spain. Could we see (if his wheel comes off during the pit stop this year!) a return of Bottas to the podium? He’s +10000 to win the race, which is a fun bet too.

1st – Max Verstappen, Red Bull
2nd – Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
3rd – Valtteri Bottas, Alfa Romeo

Trivia Answer:

Trick question, they both have 8 career scores.