Poached:

Not Poached:

Justing Trattou

Poached:

Not Poached:

Brian Smith

Poached:

Not Poached:

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If you didn’t keep pretty well connected to the internets and recruiting news in the last 120 hours, you’d be wondering where these names came from, but ND suddenly has itself 2 new and very key commitments from some previously committed-elsewhere players.

We’ll post more on our thoughts about recruiting previously committed players in a later post, but for now, suffice it to say that what Charlie Weis has managed to do in about a week has been positively Urbanesque!  And we love it!

Everyone, please welcome Brian Smith (ILB) and Brandon Walker (K)!

Brian Smith (son of former ND fullback Chris) had been a verbal commit to Iowa, but his real field of dreams had always been located at 46556.

Brandon Walker had been committed to Louisville, but it would seem that the departure of their head coach created a bit of a recruiting ripple.

Welcome to the family, fellas!

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Apparently men much smarter than the rest of us have decided to pass down a decree banning all tailgating within a mile of the Orange BowlStadium in Miami Florida on Super Bowl Sunday. Some probably guess that the glorius and righteous forces of capitalism are at work. Afterall, the ban all but guarantees that anyone who is feeling hungry or parched whilst within a mile of the Super Bowl will have to purchase their food and beverage from designated Super Bowl vending locations. However, it takes but a moment of thought to realize that this is really a microcosm of what the late-80s USSR looked like. Since nobody can have any chance at having a tailgate that is superior in quality or size to their neighbor’s, nobody will have a tailgate at all! It’s like blue jeans. Kinda. Or toilet paper.

Super Bowl ticket holders, seen here, are already wandering the streets of Miami, looking for food, beer, and some TP.

And, of course, any beer, brats, or artificially flavored, coloured (hello, readers from the UK!), cheese-like nacho toppings will have traveled through miles and miles of bureaucratic red tape before anyone can get to them, if they can get to them at all!
How appropriate is it, then, that the Super Bowl is to be held within a stadium of which the walls are crumbling on down?

Hit it, The Boss!

Editor’s Note: Um.  Yeah.  We can’t read good.

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The above headline could be in reference to last night’s recruiting bombshell, or it could be in reference to a certain bottle of Johnny Walker Black. I’ll never tell.

The Roundup:

• IRT takes a look at Florida’s container-ship worth of defensive end prospects and wonders if Urb plans to run a gadget defense along with his gadget offense I like to call “Timmy! Special!”. That’s right, Timmy. You are special.
• BGS has more news-tidbits than you can shake a stick at. Why shake a stick at something? When has shaking a stick ever resulted in anything but a poked eye and a ruined 5th birthday party? Whoa. Flashbacks.
• FireMarkMay tried to warn us all. Hopefully in the event of a real crisis, we all respond better.
• Robot Charlie manages to creep us out and satiate our thirst for all things Corwin Brown all at the same time.
• I have just one disagreement with Bonger and his latest post over at NDN blogs; kicking the down sure looked fun in the eyes of Michigan, LSU, and SoCal.
• The Big Lead reminds us that while children the world over are forced to starve and endure visits by Sally Struthers, Mike Wilbon is making 2 Million Dollars a year excreting bile through his mouth.
• EDSBS points out that Urban Meyer likes his recruits like he likes his eggs: Scrambled. No. Wait. That’s not how it goes. He likes his recruits like he likes his women: Poached. Yeah. That’s much better.

Hey, speaking of eggs and whiskey, it’s time for lunch!

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Bummer.

Free link here explaining the whole thing. It clearly had nothing to do with new schemes with a new DC, better weather, or prevalence of exposed female skin on Florida’s campus. Definitely not the last one. That’s for sure. That would never play into the mind of a 17/18 year old boy staring a DE chart with the depth of the hadopelagic zone in the face.
Visual representation of Notre Dame discussion boards in the last few hours here:

Admittedly, if I were trying to pick a D Line for which I’d like to play based on this past season’s performance, Florida would be right up there, and I’m sure that new shiny mythical national championship trophy makes for one hell of a recruiting tool.

Ah well, tomorrow will be another day, and there’s bound to be some statistical law out there that dictates that ND is bound to recruit more than a few DL recruits in a single recruiting season someday.

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Thanks IRT, you’re always on top of this stuff.

Click here to visit Shark.

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And they’ve got plenty of you!***
Apparently at least one NFL scout isn’t buying into the hype of the all-world, Heisman winning QB and iconic figure of redemption, Troy Smith.

One scout, the Cincinnati Bengals’ Greg Seamon, was quoted on a Web site ridiculing Smith as an overhyped Heisman-winning quarterback who would flop in the NFL or not make it at all, joining a list that includes Terry Baker, John Huarte, Gary Beban, Pat Sullivan, Andre Ware, Gino Torretta, Danny Wuerffel, Chris Weinke, Eric Crouch and Jason White.

“Really, he’s not that fast,” Seamon said of Smith. “He gets run down by defensive ends. He’s not real big. He kind of stares down his targets. You didn’t see those breathtaking, thread-the-needle throws [against Florida] that you’d hope to see from a top-of-the-draft quarterback.”

*** Like how I sort of spun that one around and made it my own? See what I did there?

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After post-poning his decision a few weeks back, All-Star RB recruit Robert Hughes announced today that he will be Irish.

Robert, we love that you took your time and made the right decision.  Welcome to the family!
 

Power RB Hughes.

Rivals Profile:  http://rivals100.rivals.com/viewprospect.asp?sport=1&pr_key=37805

Edit:

New Picture – I don’t like the Go Wolverines thing at the bottom, and I am too lazy to edit it out, but this shows just how much of a stud this kid is.  In High School.  The dude is a beast, and I am PUMPED to have him on the squad.  I expect big things.

Now that I think about it, I love the Michigan note at the bottom.  It reminds them what they missed out on.  I’m sure they’ll be reminded time and again as Hughes plows over their hapless LB’s over the next 3-4 years…

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Ron Zook: “Yeah! I Know! It’s AWESOME!”

A sports sociologist/communist derided “recruitniks” and sites like Scout.com or Rivals.com, saying such outside factors cause elite 17 year old athletes to become “hedonistic, materialistic, and individualistic. “

Yep, never knew a 17 year old kid in the best shape of his life to be hedonistic, materialistic, and (gasp!) individualistic if it weren’t for the strange world of recruiting.

Not to belittle some of the valid points that this sports psychologist (seriously, how do I get a job like that?) makes, but I have a feeling some of the tendencies he’s noticing among the elite and athletic 17 year olds will also exist in a massive portion of the chubby, not-expected-to-do-much-other-than-get-a-middle-management-job 17 year olds as well.

Now excuse me, I have a TPS report to fill.

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Former Atlanta Falcons head coach, University of Washington alum, and now current Seattle Seahawks assistant coach Jim Mora has moved into what we like to call a “staging area” for his impending replacement of Ty Willingham as head coach, Football Program, University of Washington.

This sort of maneuver makes sense.  It’ll be much easier to hit the ground running and start work immediately on recovery efforts of the Washington football program if he’s already living in the area when he takes the job.  Time otherwise spent on looking for a new home and finding out where the best schools are located can now be spent on firing incompetent assistant coaches, filling massive recruiting voids, and holding press conferences that display levels of competence the Seattle media haven’t seen in years.

In unrelated news, it’s been reported that Ty Willingham’s handicap has shot up 3 strokes in the past week and he’s developed a case of the yips on putts from 3 feet and in.

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The Chicago Bears defeated the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Championship Game today, saving the English language.

The Saints, sentimental favorites of Americans everywhere who love to say things like “irregardless,” “effect” when they should say “affect,” and “but yet,” had a slogan that will be judged by history as the dumbest fucking slogan in the history of slogans: “Who Dat?”

On behalf of English speakers the world over, thank you, Chicago Bears.

The Saints: Disappointing people who say “theatre” with a “hard ‘A’.”

Edit: Crap. I just realized I live in Chicago. This place is going to be insufferable.

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SOUTH BEND, Ind.–Former Notre Dame wide receiver Jeff Samardzija, who was drafted by the Cubs last year, has decided to forgo his football career for a career pitching with the Cubs.

Samardzija’s Tommy John surgery has been scheduled for late August.

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

Announcing the newest members of the University of Notre Dame Football Program Coaching Staff:

Drum roll, please….

Drum roll?

More…

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Q asked me to do a 2006 All-Male Revue, which I thought was a strange request, so I asked him if I might be able to just do a Review of 2006. He reluctantly agreed, so here goes nothing (with much thanks to Wikipedia and its submitters for doing the leg work).

• January 2: The Ohio State Buckeyes defeat the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 34-20 in the Fiesta Bowl in what ESPN will later tell the public is the absolute most lopsided 14-point victory in the history of complete and utterly dominating blowouts.
• January 3: Twelve deceased coal miners and one survivor are discovered in the Sago Mine Disaster near Buckhannon, West Virginia in the United States. Samuel L. Jackson has an unhealthy desire to speak to the sole survivor, pictured here.
• January 4: Texas defeats Southern Cal 41-38 in the BCS National Championship Game. Southern Cal head coach Pete Carroll and quarterback Matt Leinart blame Reggie Bush for failing to push running back LenDale White two yards on a critical late 4th down possession.
• January 7: Embroiled in multiple scandals, former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay announces he will not seek to reassume his former post, but rather will assist Southern Cal head football coach Pete Carroll in recruiting new players.
• January 22: Kobe Bryant, used to forcing his balls through unyielding holes, scores 81 points in a single game, the second most of all time behind Wilt Chamberlain’s 100. 72 of the 81 points scored contract herpes.
• February 5: Ben Roethlisberger wets the bed in Super Bowl XL in Detroit, so Notre Dame legend Jerome “The Bus” Bettis picks up the slack in his hometown and leads the Steelers to a win in his final NFL game. The Biscuit wonders what in the world caused Roethlisberger to have such a horrible game.
• February 8: The 48th Annual Grammy Awards are held. Kelly Clarkson wins 2. No one cares, but I have an excuse to post a picture of Kelly Clarkson.
• February 10: The Winter Olympics open in Turin, Italy, reminding the world once again that this is considered a sport.
• February 11: Dick Cheney shoots his 78-year-old friend lawyer in the face with a shotgun. Aaron Burr unavailable for comment.
• February 16: Kobe Airport, an offshore airport in Japan, opens for business. Immediately after the doors open, the airport is served with 12 paternity suits.
• March 3: The inaugural World Baseball Classic begins in Tokyo. Alex Rodriguez wraps himself in bubble wrap during the tournament.
• March 5: Three 6 Mafia makes history as they become the first African-American hip-hop group to win an Academy Award for Best Song and also become the first hip-hop artists to ever perform at the ceremony. Several journalists declare Notre Dame officials and fans racist for not attending the award ceremony.
• March 11: Slobodan Milosevic dies, making Mark May the Biggest Living Asshole.
• March 25: Half a million people in Los Angeles protest a proposed crackdown on illegal immigration. The Biscuit laughs and throws his illegal immigrant maid an individually-wrapped slice of Kraft American cheese.
• March 30: After Japan beats Cuba to end the World Baseball Classic, Alex Rodriguez emerges from his cocoon, sees his shadow, and doesn’t hit for six more weeks.
• April 8: The bodies of 8 murdered men are found in Shedden, Elgin County, Ontario. The loss of the 8 men halves the population of Sheddin. Local authorities blame Canada. Mark May blames Charlie Weis.
• April 9: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is removed from office after 4 months in a coma. Joe Paterno, head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, is quoted as saying, “Four months? Phssssh. Amateur.”
• April 11: President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirms that Iran has successfully produced a few grams of 3.5% low-grade enriched uranium. U.S. would counter with its own enriched uranium supply, but U.S. President George Bush sold it in town for some magic beans.
• May 3: 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, is sentenced to life in prison, making Mark May the Biggest Asshole Not Serving a Life Sentence.
• May 27: Notre Dame recruit Chris Stewart flaps his arms in South Bend, and a 6.3 magnitude earthquake strikes central Java in Indonesia.
• June 9: The World Cup begins in Germany. The American team misses its flight to Germany and fails to show up for its matches. Zinedine Zidane headbutts Marco Materazzi in the chest. For the fourth consecutive time, the World Cup is expected to spark American interest in soccer. America smiles politely at soccer, lets it crash on its hide-a-bed for a month, and then speeds it to the airport so it doesn’t miss its flight home.
• June 19: The Carolina Hurricanes defeat the Edmonton Oilers 4 games to 3 to win the Stanley Cup. Americans everywhere say, “So, what’s this soccer thing I’ve been hearing about lately?”
• June 20: The Miami Heat win the NBA Finals 4 games to 2. Dwyane Wade is named MVP. Americans everywhere say, “Hey, did you catch the Hurricanes-Oilers game?”
• June 23: In Miami, the FBI arrests seven men, accusing them of planning to bomb the Sears Tower and other attacks in Miami. Kermit is surprised that terrorists, unlike ESPN, recognize Chicago as an actual city.
• July 5: North Korea successfully test fires long-range Taepodong-2 missile. Chicagoans still call for Brian Griese to deliver nuclear warheads rather than Taepodong-2.
• July 9: Italy wins the World Cup over France 1-1. 1-1? What’s that, America? You say you miss Dwayne Wade?
• July 18: The SS Nomadic, built to serve as a service and repair boat to Titanic, returns home to Belfast with its smokestack tucked between its legs and a pink slip on its desk.
• July 21: St. Louis is hit by two major violent windstorms in a span of three days. Wind?! Pussies.
• July 23: American Floyd Landis wins the Tour de France. Americans are about to ask what happened with the Italy-France game, but then tour officials announce that he failed a doping test. Americans are surprised that officials couldn’t tell he is a dope.
• July 31: Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, temporarily relinquishes power to his brother Raúl before surgery. Cigar connoisseurs, shortstops keep fingers crossed.
• August 9: Maurice Clarett, ambassador of the Ohio State University, is arrested in Columbus after making an illegal U-turn and leading the police on a chase in a sports utility vehicle. He is finally stopped after driving over a police-mounted spike strip. Police say they were forced to secure a cloth around Clarett’s mouth after he allegedly spit at the officers and called them “nigga haters” during the arrest. According to Columbus Police Sgt. Mike Woods, the officers discovered a hatchet, a loaded AK-47 variant, a Hi-Point Pistol and two other loaded handguns in his vehicle along with an open bottle of Grey Goose vodka. The officers use Mace to subdue Clarett after attempts to subdue him with a Taser prove ineffective because he is wearing kevlar body armor. Unfortunately, Clarett’s arrest causes him to fail to deliver the body armor to tOSU quarterback Troy Smith prior to the National Championship game.
• August 10: London Metropolitan Police make twenty-one arrests in connection to an apparent terrorist plot that involved aircraft traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States. New TSA regulations are put into effect, permanently banning all liquids and gels, including but not limited to deodorants, colognes, toothpaste, and gel implants, in both checked and carry-on baggage. Biscuit cancels his plans to bring a stripper back from Vegas.
• August 23: In Austria, Natascha Kampusch manages to escape after being kidnapped eight years ago by Wolfgang Priklopil, who locked her in his cellar. Priklopil commits suicide by throwing himself in front of a train. Congratulations are extended to the new Biggest Living Asshole Pedophile, Mark May.
• August 24: The International Astronomical Union declares Pluto “not planet” and Chris Stewart “planet.”
• August 31: Edvard Munch paintings The Scream and Madonna are recovered in a police raid in Oslo, Norway, more than two years after they were stolen. Stolen Tyrone Willingham painting The Bubble Scream is still missing.
• September 1: Media says that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish will have a very tough time beating the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets at home, calling GT a “very underrated team.”
• September 2: Notre Dame defeats Georgia Tech 14-10. The media calls Notre Dame “lucky,” as GT is a “very overrated team.”
• September 3: Andre Agassi retires after his final match in the U.S. Open. Tennis legend John McEnroe says, “The world of tennis will sorely miss that f@#$ing sh@$head.”
• September 8: Many members of the media pick Penn State to upset the #2-ranked Fighting Irish, saying that Penn State is a “very talented team with a great young quarterback.”
• September 9: Notre Dame annihilates Penn State 41-17 because, according to the media, Penn State is a “mediocre team with a young quarterback who gets rattled under pressure.”
• September 15: Spinach contaminated with E. coli kills one person and poisons over 100 others in twenty different states. In a poorly thought-out course of action, Americans call on Popeye to defend them from the outbreak.
• September 16: The Notre Dame-Michigan game is canceled after Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr injures his nipple nursing quarterback Chad Henne.
• September 19: Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand declares a state of emergency in Bangkok as members of the Royal Thai Army stage a coup d’état. The army announces the removal of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra from power. The Prime Minister’s former secretary declares that she will shave her head until Notre Dame wins a national championship.
• September 23: The Fighting Irish end Michigan State coach John El Smith’s career, scoring three touchdowns in the fourth quarter to overcome a sixteen-point third fourth quarter deficit. After the game, Smith sends his players to defend the field so that the Irish cannot plant a flag in it, as the Spartans had in Notre Dame Stadium the year before. As if the Irish would stick their flagpole in the Spartans’ field without wearing a condom, which are evil.
• September 29: U.S. Representative Mark Foley (R-FL) resigns after it is revealed that he sent explicit e-mails for several years to underage male pages. Old-fashioned Mark May uses good old pen-and-paper.
• September 30: Notre Dame continues restoring order to the universe by reminding Purdue that it sucks at football, administering a 14-point loss to the Boilermakers. Media personalities surprise the Irish faithful by failing to recognize the 14-point deficit as “one of the largest defeats in the history of modern college football.”
• October 7: Notre Dame defeats Stanford 31-10. The media reports that Notre Dame is racist for beating the team that once employed Willingham.
• October 10: Google buys YouTube for USD $1.65 billion and promptly renders it totally useless to pirates everywhere.
• October 11: New York Yankees Pitcher Cory Lidle is killed, along with his flight instructor, when his plane crashes into a building in New York City’s Upper East Side. The accident is the only hit the Yankees get in October.
• October 18: To honor Cory Lidle’s crash, Microsoft releases Windows Internet Explorer 7.
• October 21: Notre Dame squeaks past UCLA 20-17 on a 45-yard touchdown pass from Brady Quinn to Jeff Samardzija with 0:27 left in the fourth quarter. Quinn’s 304 YDS, 2 TD, and 0 INT against UCLA are declared “mediocre” next to Troy Smith’s 220 YDS, 4 TD, and 0 INT against Big Ten powerhouse Indiana.
• October 23: Jeffrey Skilling is sentenced to 24 years and 4 months in federal prison on charges relating to the financial collapse of Enron. His brother Tom forecasts a quarter century of golden showers.
• October 27: The 2006 World Series is canceled due to lack of interest.
• October 28: Notre Dame defeats Navy 38-14. The win is Notre Dame’s 43 straight over Navy. Tired of losing, Navy returns to South Bend and deploys a nuclear submarine into St. Joe’s Lake, leaving Gene Hackman in charge of the sub with Denzel Washington nowhere to be found.
• October 31: Veteran game show host Bob Barker announces his retirement from The Price is Right effective in June of 2007 after thirty-five years as host, fifty years on television, and ten years of kicking Happy Gilmore’s ass.
• October 31: U.S. senator John Kerry inadvertently calls American troops serving in Iraq idiots, causing both Democrats and Republicans to get up in arms. He later explains that he botched a joke meant to insult the intelligence of president George W. Bush. Democrats and Republicans are okay with that.
• November 3: Science predicts that 90% of maritime life forms will be extinct by 2048 after Charlie Weis goes on seafood diet.
• November 3: Ted Haggard resigns as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, after allegations of methamphetamine use and sexual relations with a male prostitute. The prostitute is later discovered to be named Mark May. So are the methamphetamines.
• November 4: Notre Dame blows out North Carolina 45-26. The media does not condone the use of the word “blowout” to describe the game, preferring the cliches “long, drawn-out battle” and “God I hate when Notre Dame wins.”
• November 5: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by hanging after an Iraqi court finds him guilty of crimes against humanity. Bob Davie and Tyrone Willingham are still at large.
• November 8: U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “resigns,” just when America was starting to warm up to him.
• November 11: Notre Dame beats the Air Force Falcons 39-17. PETA is up in arms at Notre Dame’s insensitivity toward the Falcons.
• November 17: Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) makes racist comments to African American hecklers at the Los Angeles Laugh Factory. Mark May has apparently moved on to comedians.
• November 17: PlayStation 3 is released in U.S. The headline is accurate. One Playstation 3 is released in the U.S.
• November 17: Former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler dies, allegedly while trying to purchase the PlayStation 3.
• November 18: Notre Dame defeats Army 41-9. All those “Armed Forces Trophy” jokes ESPN has been making finally pay off. “They’re making fun of us because we have three service academies on our schedule this year!” “Making fun of us by using our schedule, despite the fact that we have a harder schedule than most conference schedules?! BRILLIANT!”
• November 19: Wii released in US, effectively ending ChisND’s status as a regular HLS reader.
• November 23: Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian KGB agent, is assassinated in a London sushi bar, possibly by the Russian Security Service, the FSB, or possibly because the sushi bar didn’t follow this simple guide.
• November 25: The Notre Dame-Southern Cal game is canceled after Southern Cal head coach Pete Carroll gets injured while trying to fellate himself. Southern Cal fans wonder why Carroll wasn’t satisfied with the job the media was doing.
• November 28, 2006: U.S. District Judge James Robertson orders the Treasury Department to change U.S. banknotes to make it easier for blind and visually impaired people to determine their denominations. The blind and visually impaired vocally praise the decision, not realizing that no one else is in the room with them.
• December 9: The Ohio State Buckeye quarterback Troy Smith wins the Heisman trophy despite not being the best quarterback in the country, largely for “overcoming the difficulty of being a scumbag thug with a pea-sized brain all of his life.”
• December 10: Orhan Pamuk of Turkey wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, narrowly beating out Mark May. Mark May declares the Nobel Prize Committee “racist,” and pouts for the rest of the ceremony.
• December 26: Former US President Gerald Ford dies at the age of 93 years. The cause of death was a flight of stairs.
• December 30: Saddam Hussein, former Iraq president, is executed in Baghdad. “Hey, is this Mark May? Well, I have some good news…”

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Mark Schlabach of ESPN wrote a column about the BCS, and how the in-conference regular season should be used as a kind of playoff system for the BCS.  You know, it was fine and dandy in a this-isnt-the-real-world kind of way.  Until he took his shots at Notre Dame.

I mean, seriously, these guys can bring any topic back to bashing ND.  Hmmm, want to discuss globalthermonuclear war?  ESPN Analyst:  “Yes. Well…blah blah blah…blah blah…ND sucks.”  Throw out the migration patterns of one-legged manatees or the overrated-ness of Katie Holmes and you’ll get the same thing.

Here’s a taste of what Marky Mark had to say, and this is all he gets:

Because Notre Dame has the ability to schedule whichever opponents it sees fit, the Irish are all but guaranteed seven or eight victories each season.

Are you serious Biz Marky?  Seriously?  I’ll take the bottom 7 out of ANY conference over the same bottom 7 that ND schedules regularly.  We don’t schedule garbage teams from nowhere – we pick up USC, Penn State, Michigan and a host of Big Ten schools.  Are these easy games?  No!  And even if you take the ‘light’ portion of our schedule, go ahead and compare it to what some of these ‘good’ teams (tOSU, Michigan in the Big Ten) face in their conferences.  It’s a joke, not even a comparison!   ND’s schedule was ranked 20th in the nation this year.  And that’s the LOWEST it’s been in recent memory. Give me a break, man, and think up something original, something with some thought and research behind it. 

Otherwise, it’s going to be on you…cuz I’m getting mad, and I strapped on my boots…so any dogs….NO, puppies and kittens better be on lock, cuz I’m about pissed enough to kick one.  Hard.  And all because of you Marky Mark.  So go get smart somehow and come back and give us something better.  Else Fido and Fluffy might get hurt.

  +    +   = Marky’s Fault

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