Yep. You read that right. Now calm the hell down.

Ara and Lou are to be the honorary coaches of the Notre Dame Blue and Gold game (the traditional spring intra-squad game at the end of the spring practice season (April 21st, 1:30pm)), and have already picked their staffs.

Notre Dame Stadium’s grounds crew is apparently planning to grow the grass on the Blue sidelines up to a foot in anticipation of Lou’s arrival. They could grow sugar cane over there, and he’d still pick it all bare. We’ve got a feeling that this will mark the end of the Blue-Gold Game being a “friendly little” competition.

Meanwhile, the game will be sponsored by Home Run Pizza Inn. All good and fine, but when the hell is Rocco’s gonna get on that horse and get to sponsoring the game? Must be tricky to handle such large marketing deals in a cash-only fashion.

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Bryan Pata, the “University” of Miami football player who was murdered outside of his apartment this past season, had a couple of brothers. And those brothers are still alive. Those brothers also want to “honor” the memory of Bryan by participating in the University of Miami Pro-Day (a day when draft-eligible Miami football players show off their skillz to pro scouts). How exactly this will honor anything about Bryan is unclear. What is clear is that Bryan’s brothers aren’t very good football players. It’s also pretty clear that the Patas and the University of Miami deserve each other.

“Like, whoa. Seriously? They say it’ll ‘honor’ him?”

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If you haven’t already, head over to BGS and check out their disection of Dennis Dodd’s “rankings” of coaching hires made in the 2004 off season.  If Chris Leak had someone read this to him, he’d be all like, “Damn, Dodd, even I coulda did more better.”

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And hey, that makes total sense.   Why work out this week, at a neutral site and when you’re not feeling 100%, when you can work out 2 weeks later with some more prep, more time to heal and on your home turf?  Oh, and the ND Pro Day is March 4th.

This seems totally logical to me.  A bunch of ND haters, and likely the media, will say that this has caused “Quinn’s stock to drop”.  They are incorrect. 

Listen, morons, NFL coaches and scouts don’t give a shite about what you or the media say and think.   They don’t give a shite about Quinn working out today or in 5 days, or if it’s in Indy or at ND.  What they care about is whether they like the player, his work ethic and his talent.  They can get a good read on the player through the interviews that take place around the Combine.  They get a read on the work ethic there as well, and also from CW.   And they get his talent through the TONS of film they watch, and through his workout, wherever and whenever it is.  So wherever Quinn ends up in the draft, his participation (or lack thereof) in the ‘official’ evaluation workouts is irrelevant. 

If NFL teams thought the way you (meaning the media and the ND haters – not our loyal readers) all do, they’d end up drafting a bunch of no-name players every year that tried REALLY HARD at the Combine drills, and did well.  Why doesn’t that happen?  Oh, bc they are not IDIOTS.

Besides, how can you not perform better when you’re working out under Our Lady’s watchful eye?   Good luck Brady.

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It’s cold, all the morning shows were in LA for the grammys or emmys or something, where it is not cold, and up here in Chicago it’s 7 months until summer.  And to top it all off, it’s 57 days until the spring game.
The Roundup:

• Charlie Weis talks, and talks, and talks, about the state of the program.  You might want to take a 2 hour lunch to get thru it, but then you’re probably a slow reader.
• BGS has an actual interview with an actual, official piece of the Notre Dame machine.  This blows our mind.  At least we can always say we knew BGS before they went “big time.”
• EDSBS took time from its busy schedule to respond to accusations that Florida recruits players that couldn’t get into Harvard.
• SMQ points out that when you have Dennis Dodd and Gary Barnett together, you can’t stop the stupid.  You can only hope to contain it.

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We’re not saying the fix is on, but it looks like a juror rather conveniently collapsed in the Weis malpractice trial just a day before the case was to be handed over to the jury. Of course, we haven’t followed this thing at all, so we have no idea why this would be convenient to either party. We mostly just jump at any chance to use the image of Denny Crane on HLS.

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Mike Golic Jr., son of ND Alum/ESPN Analyst/Doughnut Eating God Mike Golic, has verbally committed to Charlie Weis and Notre Dame. This is phenomenal news as all early reports indicate that Mike Jr. is a high quality prospect. Add on the fact that he is the son of Mike Golic and nephew of Bob Golic, and there is some serious Notre Dame mojo inside this kid. We can only imagine that an early commitment from such a (presumably) long time fan as Mike will help build enthusiasm for the 2008 recruiting class.

Hates Trojans, Peter Pan

We also have to believe that this first recruit of 2008 will do a nice job of helping to set the tone of Charlie Weis’ new rules for commitment and all that they entail. Welcome to the family, Mike!

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EDSBS brings us proof that while Ohio State doesn’t know anything about defending the spread attack, they’re still #1 at fucking shit up.

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It’s Friday, ND BBall won last night, despite the cold in Chicago the sun is shining, and I’ve got Prince playing on the nano.
The Roundup:

• Today must be awesome, because first I learned that Chet Coppock was assaulted and then I see that FLP hates Dan McNeil just as much as I do (at least I hope.  Satire is hard… to understand.)  Karma, I don’t ask for much, but if you could cause Dan McNeil to choke on his next Allen Brother’s steak and fall upon Coppock, thus breaking Coppock’s legs, well, that would be swell.
• Fomer Notre Dame player and current ESPN Radio host Mike Golic is one of a few hundred victims of salmonella poisoning as a result of contaminated peanut butter.  I wonder if he’ll lose more weight now than he did using Nutrisystem.
• Man, no wonder the Illini are being all pissy lately.
• Looks like Mitch Mustain is really interested in driving Pete Carroll nuts while not starting now.  Southern Cal may be our biggest rival, but we don’t wish Mitch and his mom on anyone.  Wishing this much ill on anyone just ain’t Christian.  Though when it happens to Houston Nutt, it’s pretty damn funny.  He’s the Dan McNeil of College Coaching.
• The Wiz is covering the Charlie Weis lawsuit with a level of obsession that creeps us out in a Silence of the Lambs kind of way.
• Ah, and to once again prove this is an awesome Friday, The Dumbass King isn’t going to do any writing for a while.

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Thanks to IRT for this.  Georgia Tech 3-Star recruit Kyle Jackson recently expressed some thoughts about Notre Dame:

“Notre Dame didn’t exactly have the best-looking chicks,” Jackson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

We wont even get started defending Notre Dame’s beautiful and intelligent women.  No need.  Frankly, that doesn’t seem like a very good reason to pick one school over another.  It’s enormously short-sighted.  But maybe Kyle’s just applied the Peter Principle to himself and realizes that college is as good as it’s ever gonna get.  Maybe then it’s a pretty good reason not to attend Notre Dame.

The fact Notre Dame never offered Kyle is also an excellent reason.

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Biscuit writes post on new clock rules.  Q posts his own 2 minutes before Biscuit finishes.

Biscuit not happy.

Here’s the official posting:  http://www.ncaasports.com/story/9997258

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Um… Yay?

Thanks to the efforts of bloggers everywhere (seriously, where else have you really seen mass-complaining about this?), the stupid clock rule known as Rule 3-2-5e is being scrapped. Normally this would be a reason to celebrate, but it turns out that rather than just scrapping the stupid new rule and going back to the good ole’ days, the NCAA is insisting on being “progressive.” And so, they’re going to introduce some new, slightly less stupid clock rules:

• The clock will start on the snap of the ball. No complaints here!
• Team-called Timeouts will be 30 seconds long rather than 65. Eh. While I appreciate that this means less time just watching guys on a field stand around, my overwhelming appreciation for the “chess game” within football feels a little neglected here. It’s not like the coaches are just standing there, doing nothing, staring at their players. Unless of course that coach is named Ty Willingham.
• The Playclock will be only 15 seconds long after a TV Timeout. Oh, this will be grand. Can’t wait for the almost obligatory delay of game penalty that all non-Charlie Weis coached teams will incur at least once a game.
• Kickoffs will take place from the 30 rather than the 35. …practically guaranteeing that a Notre Dame team will never see the positive side of a touchback this year. [Praying that new kicker recruit, "Lefty," proves to have bionic leg.]
• The play clock will be 40 seconds rather than 25. God Dammit. “Hey! Let’s make the potential total time between snaps twice as long!” I just can’t wait to see Indiana get themselves in position to upset someone like Ohio State, just to see the next 48 minutes of the game turn into a flashback of a major league baseball game. That’ll be awesome. So glad the rules committee is looking to handicap the better teams. That’s just what the sport needs – soul-sucking parity.

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I don’t know – the kid and his coach and his parents and Poodle Pete and a billion USC fans are screaming “No, he never talked to him!  Not at all!”, which is then followed up with “And everyone else does it too!”.  But the video below seems to show it pretty clearly. 

The new USC frosh-to-be McKnight talked about how Carroll called Reggie up and had him on speaker phone, and how Reggie explained things and said he didn’t have anything to do with the violations.  And then, how that’s what helped McKnight out a lot in making his decision.

Okay, so the kid says 1)  Carroll called Reggie and had him on speakerphone  2) Reggie explained to McKnight the situation  3)  This helped McKnight make his decision to sign with USC.

What’s to debate here?  It’s a freakin’ videotape of the kid talking about the illegal incident.   Done deal!

Scroll to the :40 mark if you want to just see his comments.  Channel 33 News ain’t so slick.

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Thanks to the guys at BGS for pointing this one out. In their look back on the history of the Ron Zook drama, they came across a piece by Mark Tupper of the Decatur Herald & Review. We’re not going to link it as per our policy that people with the IQ of a dog biscuit do not get links. However, BGS has a link, and we’ll link to them because they’re pretty smart fellas, so if you want to read the whole piece, start there. (BGS’ own write-up is very well worth the read, by the way.)

Anyway, here are some highlights (?) from the piece. Bold is mine.

Postings on college football message boards carried out similar finger-pointing and, as too often happens with blathering on the Internet, they took on a life of their own.

Of course, all of these accusations had one thing in common: They were delivered under the cowardly cloak of anonymity.

It turns out, however, that knowledgeable people with resources and the right legal knowledge can track these so-called anonymous Internet postings. And so when Guenther hired an Indianapolis law firm more than two months ago to probe the source of these accusations, the process began to zero in on the author.

Uh, no. It’s actually pretty much impossible to track such things down. We’ll agree, it is cowardly, but to actually pinpoint the source of any accusations made on a message board without any level of, oh, let’s say reasonable doubt, is impossible. That’s especially true if these “knowledgeable people” do not have access to logs from a website to indicate things like an IP address. And that’s something you’d have to compel the owners of the site to supply. How, exactly, would Illinois go about doing that?

Even though there was absolutely nothing more than vague innuendo, the story provided more inflammatory material aimed at Zook.

By then, and as national signing date arrived on Wednesday, whispers about Zook and foul play were filling newspapers and providing juicy content for sports talk shows from coast to coast.

And on Thursday, Zook was in Chicago, doing a media blitz in which he offered himself up to answer any and every question on the subject.

Again, I have to ask, what are the accusations? There must be some because “Zook was in Chicago, doing a media blitz in which he offered himself up to answer any and every question on the subject.” Why? What were the questions? I’ve seen these pieces in the Chicago media. We never hear any actual questions. They just intro the piece, mentioning that there are a lot of questions floating around, and then they play a clip of Zook going “Aw, shucks. I don’t know why this is all happening to poor, little ole’ me.” Indeed, Zook and the Illini are putting on a media blitz to defend themselves against some ethereal notion of “questions floating around.” And again, I ask, why so jumpy, Zook?

More…

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