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

Top News

Outgoing Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the school is down to Adidas, Nike, and Under Armour for the new apparel deal with a decision likely coming this summer.

LSU vacated 37 wins from 2012-15 after NCAA penalties were handed down on Thursday stemming from illegal recruiting benefits.

Jarron Jones was named to the All-USFL team as an offensive tackle with the Memphis Showboats.

College Football Playoff Executive Director Bill Hancock is stepping down when his contract expires on January 1, 2025.

According to reports, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders is having surgery Friday morning to remove a blood clot in his groin. Sanders has already had 2 toes amputated in 2021 and was rumored to be having continued issues with blood flow on the same foot.

Top overall 2024 recruit and quarterback Dylan Raiola was set to transfer from Chandler to Pinnacle High School in Arizona but due to state rules was expected to serve a 5-game suspension. The Georgia Bulldogs commit now says he will transfer to Georgia powerhouse Buford High School for the 2023 season.

Uniform of the Week

Time makes you nostalgic for many things. Despite Pittsburgh going back to their royal blue and yellow roots and making a huge upgrade I think I miss their old uniforms from the LeSean McCoy era. I never thought I’d say it but here we are. It’s definitely not about the helmet. The milky gold was rampant in this era, including for our Irish and others like Navy. Remember when Pitt had the weird growling panther logo on the helmet that was difficult to make out? I think everyone at Pitt during that era hated it.

I do like these jerseys, though. And the all-blue look was packaged pretty well with the gold helmets. It’s a look that Notre Dame has tried and I don’t hate it. The gold numbers outlined in blue with the white shadowing looks really sharp.

Recruiting

Notre Dame added safety prospect Taebron Bennie-Powell (0.8589) on Wednesday.

Interior offensive lineman Jason Zandamela (0.9471) committed to USC.

Edge rusher Jamonta Waller (0.9620) committed to Florida.

Athlete Braylon Burnside (0.9283) committed to Mississippi State. The Bulldogs also picked up wide receiver JJ Harrell (0.9353).

Penn State has added wideout Tyseer Denmark (0.9182)

Clemson has added edge rusher Darien Mayo (0.9298).

Offensive lineman Max Anderson (0.9252) has committed to Tennessee.

Wide receiver Emmett Mosley (0.9038) committed to Stanford.

After just 9 days committed, wide receiver Keonde Henry (0.9192) left Boston College’s class this week.

Ole Miss has flipped former Florida quarterback commit Austin Simmons in the 2025 class. Simmons will be reclassifying to 2023 (sure, why not!) and enrolling with Ole Miss this summer.

YouTube Channel

Below is a video of the top grossing movies since 1976. It says of all-time but apparently we are pretending movies didn’t exist prior to 1976, or maybe it would be waste of time to include films from earlier eras. Either way, it’s time to look at movies raking in all the dough. Things don’t get crazy until E.T. obliterates previous records and re-sets expectations.

Then, Titanic comes in and blows that record out of the water (no pun intended). As mentioned in a previous Rambler, I was obsessed with the Titanic as a kid but I’ve only watched the movie once in its entirety. I will die on this hill that Avatar is an incredibly stupid movie and that dumb film took over the top spot shortly after its release. I truly do not get it. When the video ends, we only have 4 movies pre-2000 still on the main screen as top-grossing films.

Tunes

I was traveling quite a lot over the Juneteenth holiday weekend and heard the song “Calm Down” maybe a dozen times across a couple of days. It’s one of those Afrobeat songs that instantly gets your finger tapping, head bobbing, or body moving. It has an infectious beat. It’s also really hard to understand the lyrics, which prompted me to look them up and learn more about the song. As of this writing, the song is no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song was originally released by Nigerian singer Rema back on February 11, 2022 and it quickly blew up all across the world. So much so that Rema recorded a new version released on August 25, 2022 that features Selena Gomez and a verse for the famous American singer. The newer version (which you’ll hear on American radio) is embedded above. The glow up for Rema from the original music video is pretty funny.

Trivia

Which team gave Knute Rockne the most of his 12 career losses at Notre Dame?

The Other Football

Since last week, a lot has happened in the United States soccer world. First, the program brought back Gregg Berhalter as manager and proceeded to smash Mexico to bits 3-0 in a very, ahem, lively game in the Nation’s League semifinals. A couple days later, the US beat Canada 2-0 to secure the trophy.

The USMNT will open the Gold Cup this Saturday against Jamaica. The USWNT has friendlies lined up next month against Wales, Vietnam, and Netherlands before they open up the World Cup on August 1st against Portugal. American captain Becky Sauerbrunn will miss the World Cup with a broken foot.

Arsenal have agreed to a $86 million deal to land forward Kai Havertz from Chelsea. Man City also looks to be agreeing to a $35 million fee for Chelsea’s Mateo Kovacic, as well.

Ilkay Gundogan is headed to Barcelona on a free transfer after spending the last 7 seasons with Manchester City.

Chelsea midfielder N’Golo Kante is the latest player to be heading to Saudi Arabia. His contract ends this month and he’ll be joining Al-Ittihad for a cool $110 million per year.

TV & Movies

I grew up and lived most of my life in Western New York. It’s a weird spot for baseball fandom. We are equally close to the Guardians, Pirates, and Blue Jays to varying degrees although being in New York State of course the majority are Yankees fans. The local AAA baseball team has been affiliated with the Guardians and Blue Jays the longest throughout their history. I’ve never liked the Yankees but as someone who supports the superiority of NYC over other cities, I respect the Yankees and their history.

This new documentary on Yogi Berra looks like it’ll be fascinating. He was long retired by the time I was born so like many Americans he existed in this funny, buddha-like, old guy wiseman who just happened to have won an eye-watering 13 World Series in a baseball career with 18 All-Star appearances. He’s someone who needed this type of exposure about his life.

A Look Back

It doesn’t make any sense but to me 2013 feels older than the 2012 season. Is it the Tommy Rees vs. Everett Golson vibes? Is it shoving the disappointment of 2013 deep, deep inside of me making it feel like it preceded the uNDefeated season that didn’t end undefeated? This video today was the first season opener against Temple, and another one would come to open 2015.

Under the direction of Matt Rhule (now the savior of Nebraska football lol) in his first season with Temple, this was a weak 2-10 Owls team. Their only wins came against Army and then in the finale against Memphis (then coached by Justin Fuente’s who stock has cratered now). I seem to remember being frustrated that Notre Dame’s offense didn’t put more points on the board because the overall stats from this game were quite strong. Also in hindsight, Temple scoring 6 points on 25 first downs is very funny.

18S Paddock Club

Well, surprise surprise Max Verstappen won the Canadian Grand Prix. Still, we saw a lot of drama elsewhere and plenty of weirdness throughout the weekend.

  • The first practice session was mostly lost when a failure in the local CCTV prevented cars from taking the track after more than a few minutes. Quebec was having trouble getting it together!
  • There was a little bit of dry running during practice but most of the 2nd and 3rd sessions included rain and intermediate tires.
  • Qualifying was largely wet but there was a dry enough period during Q2 where Alex Albon in his Williams topped the session and other drivers like Leclerc (Ferrari), Perez (Red Bull), and Stroll (Aston Martin) missed out on Q3 after they couldn’t set a decent lap on soft tires.
  • By my count, there were 19 summons to the stewards for possible penalties over the weekend. That included Niko Hulkenberg getting a 3-place grid penalty for speeding during a red flag after finishing qualifying P2 and on the front row. Sainz, Tsunoda, and Stroll all received 3-place grid penalties for impeding during qualifying, as well.
  • Verstappen grabbed pole by over a second and would lead every lap of the race. Although, a bird got stuck in his brake duct(!) and threatened a possible DNF.
  • George Russell crashed, causing a Safety Car that bunched the field up together. Russell briefly returned to action but later retired with a front brake issue.

  • Fernando Alonso eventually passed Lewis Hamilton for 2nd place and spent the rest of the race managing a fuel issue that never caused him to DNF.
  • Ferrari had maybe their best race pace of the year finishing 4th and 5th after making the bold decision to adopt a 1-stop strategy.
  • Albon also went with a 1-stop and finished in P7, barely ahead of Esteban Ocon in his Alpine.
  • Sergio Perez could only battle his way up to P6 and hasn’t made a podium in the last 3 races, all of which teammate Verstappen has won. Perez also hasn’t made Q3 in qualifying for half of the races this season.

F1 is off this week and will return to the Red Bull Ring in Austria next weekend for a sprint weekend.

Trivia Answer:

Nebraska, 3 losses (1922, 1923, and 1925)