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

3 News Stories

#1 Defensive Assistant Shuffle Continues

First, linebackers coach Max Bullough went back to his alma mater Michigan State to coach their linebackers and also pick up the co-defensive coordinator tag. Next, the Irish lost defensive backs coach Mike Mickens to the Baltimore Ravens. Al Washington had been the defensive line coach but was moved to the linebacker job vacated by Bullough for rou, only for Washington to take a job with the Miami Dolphins (coaching linebackers) recently.

Everyone is so focused on Marcus Freeman’s possibilities with the NFL that no one saw all of the defensive staff leaving for the Shield! After filling the DL job with Charlie Partridge from the Colts all the way back on January 7th, Freeman has been busy filling the other jobs.

DB Coach Aaron Henry – A former player at Wisconsin, Henry coached defensive backs at Rutgers, NC State, and Vanderbilt before landing at Illinois in 2021 where he was also the defensive coordinator for the last 3 seasons. He’ll add the co-DC title with the Irish.

LB Coach Brian Jean-Mary – Now to be known as BJM, he is coming from Michigan where he spent the past 2 seasons (in addition to 2020) with 3 seasons at Tennessee in between. Before that, he held assistant jobs at USF, Texas, Louisville, Georgia Tech, and North Alabama.

#2 No New Year’s Eve

College football doesn’t want to compete with the NFL on New Year’s and with that date falling on a Thursday, that means no playoff games. With Amazon averaging over 15 million viewers for their Thursday Night football broadcasts this past season, college football simply will not compete. Instead, we’ll see the following schedule:

Fiesta Bowl Quarterfinal: Wednesday, December 30th
Cotton/Peach/Rose Bowl Quarterfinal: Friday, January 1st
Orange Bowl Semifinal: Thursday, January 14th
Sugar Bowl Semifinal: Friday, January 15th
National Championship Game: Monday, January 25th

In the event that Notre Dame received a first round bye and made the National Championship it would mean 3 games over a 58-day span.

#3 Not Every Day a New Stadium

This week, Northwestern announced that their new football stadium, called Ryan Field the same as their previous stadium, will officially open for their Big Ten opener against Penn State on October 2nd. That’ll be a Friday game in primetime. The $862 million stadium will seat 35,000 but the structure is far larger than its predecessor due to all the modern amenities. Notre Dame isn’t currently scheduled to play Northwestern, I wonder how long until the Irish line up a game here?

Too big…?

The Wildcats will face South Dakota State and Colorado early in the 2026 season at their converted practice facility that they’ve been using during construction. New stadiums at the Power 4 level are pretty rare. This will be the first new one since Baylor opened up McLane Stadium back in 2014. Houston (who has since moved up to Power 4 status) opened a new stadium in 2014, as well. Can you guess the last P4 new stadium before that? Yup, Minnesota back in 2009.

Uniform of the Week

I’ve been dying my entire life for Notre Dame to switch to green and gold uniforms for a period of several years. Maybe make the change…forever? Okay, I won’t go quite that far. Recently, as I researched a team to feature this week I came upon the Colorado State Rams. A program that is going to be entering a larger spotlight in 2026 thanks to a switch from the Mountain West to the re-born Pac-12. New head coach Jim Mora is also running things, although I still feel like after his success at UConn he could’ve landed a better job. No offense to Colorado State, of course. Back to uniforms, why doesn’t Colorado State look better in green and gold?

Maybe it’s because their green is too dark? Looking at their history, they wore green/brown, then green/yellow, then green/orange, back to green/yellow, and since the early 1990’s they’ve primarily used green and Vegas gold. They’ve worn Colorado state flag uniforms but you can’t switch to those full-time. The Colorado A&M throwbacks are okay, it’s just in the color pictures that have survived they wore a much paler melon colored orange and not this Miami Hurricanes cosplay. They should switch back to their 1970’s/80’s look, think of Green Bay Packers-style uniforms with Los Angeles Rams helmets of the NFL.

Media

I started watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms this week after hearing a bunch about it online and from a few co-workers. I didn’t even know it was a Game of Thrones prequel. You can see a lot of similarities to the production and sets to GoT, although I enjoyed this 3-episode first part of season 1 because it has a lot more whimsy, medieval, and realistic feeling to it. So far, there hasn’t been much of that fantastical element that Game of Thrones had. I’m guessing that might end and things will get far more violent. I’m fully expecting those well versed in these stories to comment that it’s going to start getting bloody and gruesome.

Since I didn’t do research before watching I wasn’t prepared for just this 3-episode drop (the other 3 episodes are coming each of the next 3 Sunday’s). I also wasn’t prepared at all for the plot twist to finish the 3rd episode. Now, I’m all in. Nice job, HBO. If I can find time this might have to be appointment television for the future.

Tunes

Against my will, and I cannot stress this enough, AGAINST MY WILL, my social media served me a video on an artist called Hobo Johnson. I’ve been mad about it for days. It looks like he gained some popularity around 2018-19 or so but since hasn’t been thriving as much in the musical scene. Gee, I wonder why? If someone know more and has listened to Hobo’s music please let us know in the comment section. What is going on here?

I was reading some comments about Mr. Hobo and most people were like, “Yeah, his music isn’t very good.” But then a few really seemed insistent that “Peach Scone” was a good jam. So, I’ve embedded said song from his NPR Tiny Desk concert (outside, no less) from 2018. I’m not going to be mean. I will just say this. Hobo has some linguistic talent but I’m not sure music is the right outlet for what he’s trying to do. A younger crowd might feel the music more deeply–to me it’s outrageously corny.

One More Thing

There are a couple player quotes from 2025-26 that will stick with me for a long time and they both come from Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson. The first one came after an embarrassing loss to Georgia in the SEC Championship in which Simpson claimed Alabama has “the best offense in the country” and that they just failed to execute against the Bulldogs.

There are many things you can say about feeling let down and holding yourself to a high standard. But, you can’t say that when your offense has been a hot mess for weeks and weeks.

“I left a legacy!” -Simpson

Recently, Simpson was interviewed by AL.com as he prepares for the NFL (where he’ll be drafted way, way, way too high) and he dropped these comments about not transferring to another school following some NIL opportunities elsewhere:

“The last thing I wanted to do was tarnish my legacy and go somewhere else where I didn’t go out of high school and I didn’t want to play. Hopefully in the draft whenever my name gets written on a card, they write the University of Alabama on there. It’s going to give me great pride.”

You started one year at Alabama and it was an utter failure!! What kind of legacy are we even talking about, sir? Were any Tide fans even clamoring for you to come back in 2026?

I get throwing a bone to the Bama fans and perhaps I should be cheering on someone who didn’t transfer in a world where seemingly everyone does. Still, this is another grossly tone deaf comment to me. I’m selling all NFL stock on Simpson.