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

Top News

Notre Dame recently changed the lyrics to the Victory March to include and recognize it’s female students. The song now officially says, “While her loyal sons and daughters march on to victory.”

Tough news in the NFL as Kyren Williams broke his foot during a workout with the LA Rams.

After 8 seasons, Notre Dame will replacing the field turf this off-season with a fresh new surface.

The College Football Hall of Fame ballot is out for 2022 and former Irish stars Todd Lyght and Michael Stonebreaker are on the list of candidates. First-time candidates include Tim Tebow, Alex Smith, Ryan Leaf, Ki-Jana Carter, LaMichael James, Luke Kuechly, and DeAngelo Williams among the big names.

Sad news as former Notre Dame and Arizona receiver/corner Davonte Neal was charged with murder in his home-state of Arizona last week.

Walmart heir Robert Walton will be buying the Denver Broncos for a cool $4.5 billion.

Arkansas football head coach Sam Pittman signed a new deal with the Hogs through 2026.

Uniform of the Week

I guess it’s going to be the FCS summer around here. Today, we’re taking a look the Owls of Kennesaw State from northern Georgia. They’re a powerhouse in the Big South Conference having won the league in 3 out of the last 5 seasons. They haven’t broken through yet in the playoffs but current head coach Brian Bohannon is 57-13 (.814) since a rocky first season on campus. Their uniforms rule.

Are these the best Adidas uniforms in all of college football? I’ll grade on a curve if only because these are not traditional and shouldn’t be graded as such. Top to bottom though, I love this look. Their interlocking “KS” logo is unique, they mix their colors really well, and the small touch of silver outline is great, too. I even like the helmet stripe that doesn’t end completely on either side with a little notch looking thing. Overall, these are very unique and memorable uniforms. Although, the “EAT” helmet bumper for effort, attitude, and toughness is kind of lame. Really basic motivational slogans like this aren’t needed beyond middle school.

Recruiting

Just last night the Fighting Irish won a recruiting coup as 5-star 2024 quarterback CJ Carr (0.9873) committed to Notre Dame last night. You can read his commit post HERE.

Notre Dame also picked up the recent commitment of Kansas offensive lineman Joe Otting (0.8750) on Tuesday. Post HERE.

Atlanta corner Avieon Terrell (0.9010) committed to Clemson. The Tigers also picked up a verbal from offensive tackle Ian Reed (0.9110) this week, as well.

Auburn has landed LSU wide receiver transfer Koy Moore.

Former 1,000-yard rusher Kobe Lewis is leaving Central Michigan after missing 2021 with an injury.

YouTube Channel

A couple weeks ago I picked up a new iPhone 13 after a little over 4 years using an iPhone 8. I’m also 150+ pages into the Steve Jobs biography so I have a lot of Apple content on my mind. I finally reached the age–while having my 6th cell phone in my life–that I didn’t really care if I bought a new phone or not. My biggest issues were that my camera started not working, I thought the speakers were failing, and eventually Apple wasn’t going to be supporting the phone anyway so time was running out.

This week was the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference and it ends today. There are going to be some cool new features coming to the phones but nothing overwhelmingly awesome. It makes you wonder how much more better and transformative the iPhone is going to get in the coming years. I know Apple has talked a lot about AR/VR products in the coming years, like Facebook, and that is not very interesting to me at all. I’m still trying to cope with grabbing my phone upside down all the time because it no longer has a home button on the bottom.

Tunes

One of my favorite things to do is pick out songs from artists that you’d make someone listen to if they’ve never heard from the band in their life. For example, what is the first Rolling Stones song you’d show a friend? What’s the first Beastie Boys song? Jay-Z? Drake? Elvis? Depending on the artist, it can be a really tricky situation to find the perfect song that encapsulates what that performer or group is all about.

I’ve always felt like “Over the Hills and Far Away” was that song for Led Zeppelin. First, you get the combination of Jimmy Page’s acoustic guitar in the beginning and then his electric guitar mixed in later. It has a very John Bonham big entrance for the drums. It’s an overall groovy song with a fun bridge layered in classic Page overdubs. It has a very Zeppelin-like title. This note from Spin on the wiki page nails it:

“Over the Hills and Far Away” best demonstrates just about everything the band does well: the unforgettable and impossible-to-pin-down opening riff, the life-affirming transition from acoustic to electric, the constant switches in tone and dynamic, the piercing solo with double-tracked climax, the impeccable interplay of guitar, bass, and drum, the inimitable Plant shrieking, the gorgeous coda, even the super-oblique title.

Trivia

Over the last 5 seasons, name the 8 Notre Dame players who have totaled at least 10 tackles for loss in a single season.

The Other Football

Ukraine is heartbroken after putting up 2.1 xG but falling 1-0 to Wales in the World Cup qualifying playoff final. Wales now joins the group with the United States, Iran, and most notably rival England for this fall in Qatar.

The United States played a scoreless draw against Uruguay over the weekend.

Leo Messi scored 5 goals in a route of Estonia during a friendly this past weekend. Argentina hasn’t been defeated in their last 33 games.

Robert Lewandowski wants out of Bayern Munich with Barcelona rumored to be his dream landing spot. He’s turning 34 this summer and has 1-year left on his contract in Germany.

Real Madrid are close to signing French midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni for $100 million or more from Monaco.

Streaming

I’m a couple episodes into the HBO Max miniseries Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty and I’m assuming a lot of this is extremely dramatized without reading any reviews so far and only going off my decent knowledge of these events. I’m enjoying it so far and appreciating it for what I think it’s trying to be, a bit of a weird nostalgic 1980’s time capsule with a little flair. A lot of the characters are so accurately portrayed physically but there’s also just enough of things being off that it’s fun. For example, I go back and forth thinking John C. Reilly is either absurd or perfect as Dr. Jerry Buss.

Admittedly, I do not know much about Jerry West outside of his professional life but holy hell he is a tough hang in the early portions of this show! This has to be a gross dramatization and fabrication? There’s no way a man in that shape would last very long in a coaching or executive role and yet he’s been in the NBA for 60 years! His character really feels out of place and a complete lunatic but I guess for the purposes of this show he offers a foil to introduce some struggle to a player (Magic Johnson) who had the super rough life of winning the National Championship and then the NBA Title as Final’s MVP in back-to-back seasons.

A Look Back

Unless we face them in the post-season it’ll be just 2 meetings in 6 years against Pitt through 2022, although we are scheduled to face the Panthers in 2023 with this ACC deal. The Irish have won 6 out of the last 7 meetings too, with that awful 2013 game being the exception. I was thinking back to that 2020 matchup when Kenny Pickett didn’t play (before he was even considered much of a NFL prospect) and how bad quarterback Joey Yellen looked against the Irish. I put him up there with Syracuse’s Rex Culpepper as the worst quarterbacks, at least from an eye-test, that Notre Dame has faced in recent memory.

Yellen was an embarrassing 10 of 27 for 101 yards and 3 interceptions in this game. That’s a 46.24 passer rating. Man, it had been a while but when Notre Dame blows out Pittsburgh it’s really a blow out. In the 22 games in this series that Notre Dame has won by at least 25 points the combined point totals are 1,001 to 123, or an average blowout of 43.5 to 5.5 points. Those wins account for 30.5% of all games played between Notre Dame and Pitt, too.

18S Paddock Club

Formula 1 opens up LGBTQ Pride Month and We Race as One in Baku, Azerbaijan this weekend, so not great for the promotion of inclusion. Despite being one of the most remote locations on the calendar, money continues to talk the most. This will be the 5th race held in Baku with last race’s champion Sergio Perez coming back to the place of his lone 2021 victory following the blown tire of teammate Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton’s “brake magic” mishap on the re-start.

Baku is a tough circuit to predict. The main straight is 1,600 meters long but when you factor in everything after turn 16 is basically full throttle you’re looking at over 2,250 meters (1.4 miles) of intense speed. Yet, a majority of the track from turns 1 through 10 are full of much slower, tight, and mostly 90-degree corners. A team like Ferrari will want to dominate the inside portions of this track with their superior downforce but can’t bolt on too much of a big rear wing and sacrifice speed on this long straight.

Azerbaijan Grand Prix
Baku City Circuit
FP1 6/10 7:00 AM ET
FP2 6/10 10:00 AM ET
FP3 6/11 7:00 AM ET
Qualifying 6/11 10:00 AM ET
Race 6/12 7:00 AM ET

Charles Leclerc won pole here last year, in a bit of a surprise. I’d expect over one lap for either Ferrari from Leclerc or Carlos Sainz to have an edge on Saturday’s qualifying. However, the race pace of the Red Bulls was tremendous in 2021 with Verstappen nursing a 4.5 second lead over teammate Perez with only a few laps remaining prior to that infamous tire failure.

Twenty out of the 21 podium places so far this year have come from Red Bull, Ferrari, or Mercedes drivers. The only exception being McLaren’s Lando Norris’ 3rd place at Imola. This probably isn’t the track to see another midfield driver on the podium again. I’d like to zag and say Ferrari does really well this weekend, especially with Vertsappen’s history of failing to podium in Baku. But, I won’t. The early reporting has Red Bull continuing to bring more upgrades and their car is going to be so strong in that straight line third sector.

1st – Max Verstappen, Red Bull
2nd – Charles Leclerc, Ferrari
3rd – Sergio Perez, Red Bull

Trivia Answer:

Isaiah Foskey (12.5, 2021), JOK (11, 2020 & 13, 2019), Khalid Kareem (10, 2019 & 10.5, 2018), Asmar Bilal (10, 2019), Julian Okwara (12.5, 2018), Jerry Tillery (10.5, 2018), Te’von Coney (12.5, 2017), and Drue Tranquill (10.5, 2017).