Chicago Tribune’s own Notre Dame beat writer, Brian Hamilton, doesn’t know much about the Notre Dame Football Program.

In covering the news about Tenuta joining the Irish, he said (and I urge you not to click on that link)…

What, exactly, does “assistant head coach/defense” mean — especially for Irish defensive coordinator Corwin Brown, whom Weis lauded at every turn in 2007? We’ll see. At minimum, it means that the defense’s performance in ‘07 still wasn’t good enough in Weis’ eyes, however effusive his praise of Brown was. Given Tenuta’s credentials, consider the fire under Brown officially lit.

Moron.

Let’s see, “What, exactly, does ‘assistant head coach/defense’ mean?” Um, Brian, you’ve been the beat writer for Notre Dame for a full season. Did you not bother to notice that the guy Jon Tenuta is replacing, Bill Lewis, had the job title, “Assistant Head Coach/Defense?”

Here’s some visual proof in case they change his title by the time you check that link…

Dear Lord, if all of humanity knew as little about their jobs and researched as little as Brian apparently does, we’d all still be convinced that leeching is an excellent treatment for mental illness.

There is no fire lit under Corwin Brown. Charlie Weis saw a great opportunity and grabbed a great football coach while he was available. Why? Because Charlie Weis is good at his job. Brian Hamilton is not.

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Ok, now that it’s official…

January 31, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Notre Dame Hires Jon Tenuta as Assistant Head Coach/Defense; Bill Lewis to Join Athletics Community Relations Staff

NOTRE DAME, Ind. ­ University of Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weis announced today that 44-year coaching veteran Bill Lewis, Irish assistant head coach/defense the last three seasons, will leave the Irish football coaching staff and join the University’s athletics community relations staff. Weis also announced that former Georgia Tech defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta has been offered and accepted the role of assistant head coach/defense.

Lewis will remain at the University and will begin his role as manager of athletics community relations on Feb. 18. Tenuta’s start date is set for Feb. 18.

Yay! The “offered and accepted” rather than “hired” probably means that they still have to do all that HR stuff, but whatever. Tenuta is, at the least 1-0-1 against Weis in the battle-of-football-minds. You could argue he’s 2-0. This is just an awesome hire. With Corwin Brown’s ability to get the players excited to play, plus his obvious skill for defensive game-planning, Tenuta will be a valuable resource for both Weis and Brown. Also, whether Tenuta coaches linebackers or cornerbacks, he’s got a history of molding, let’s say “underappreciated young men” into terrifying hit-machines that get big signing bonuses in the NFL.

A quick look at what he did while at Georgia Tech, after 1 year at UNC where he crafted the best defense in the ACC…

As you can see, after his first year, or, what I call the “adjustment phase,” his defenses were consistently terrorizing. The Jackets averaged a rank of 20th in total defense, allowing about 313 yards a game and giving up just 19 points per game. Heck, in his 1st year his defenses only allowed 20 points a game. And in the 3 years that the NCAA has records for sacks on their website, GT ranked 14th, 28th, and 1st nationally with a yearly average of about 3 sacks per game!

The one “weak” spot in Tenuta’s history seems to be in passing defense, but Corwin Brown has already shown that he’s been able to solve Notre Dame’s previous pass defense issues. Combined with Tenuta’s encyclopedic rush defense know-how and mad-scientist blitzing genius, the Notre Dame defense may soon be the terribly swift sword we’ve all been hoping for. And with the incredible recruiting classes that Corwin Brown and Charlie Weis have been bringing in, I find myself falling into DEFCON-1 levels of fan-boy glee. I may as well be writing a monster movie review for AintItCoolNews.com at this point. I’m going to wear an Irish shirt to work tomorrow! I may even have to re-watch a video of the 2007 GT/ND game. With this hire Weis has instantly turned that nightmare moment into a preview of dreams-come-true.

Welcome to the family, Jon!

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As you’ve no doubt heard, Irish Illustrated is reporting that Jon Tenuta is joining the ND Football coaching staff. I’m not going to link to them. They’ve really ticked me off. This is just another example of Irish Illustrated being unable to act with any sense of responsibility to the program that essentially makes it possible for them to exist as a business. There’s still not 100% confirmation from any ND officials that this is happening. If it is, in fact, happening, there area many reasons why Notre Dame and Charlie Weis haven’t announced it yet: perhaps they wanted to let the players know first, they probably wanted to make sure the recruits knew about it and were comfortable, they certainly wanted to do background checks and prepare for such a big announcement. Maybe they just didn’t want to give the Urban Meyers of the world a little more reason to be calling Irish commits. So why on earth Irish Illustrated couldn’t see fit to keep their big yaps shut is beyond me.

Here’s a little hint to Irish Illustrated: We knew, or at least heard about this, days ago. And we’re just a few guys with professions completely outside the sports journalism world. How pathetic is that, II? You’ve probably spent a full day hurriedly pursuing a “lead,” and developing your “sources” for this “story.” We sat around, watched a little American Gladiator, and someone e-mailed it to us. But we decided not to post anything about it because A) it’s still only rumor and B) the program that we care about wanted to wait on announcing it. But that’s cool. If you want to go stomping on the feet of those who make it possible to garner your wages, feel free. I’ve never subscribed to Irish Illustrated. I suggest all other Irish fans follow my lead. If you really want a service that can give you great information and does their business with some sense of honor, then there are far better choices out there for Notre Dame football fans.

To say I’m surprised that II did this would be wrong. I figured if we knew about it, others did too. I was mostly just waiting to see which site decided to break with it rather than just keeping quiet and letting ND announce things on their own schedule. II is the same site, of course, that managed to put a wrench in the recruiting works of 2007 with their little depth-chart-engineering stunt/article, scaring the bejesus out of certain recruits. To assume that those in charge of Irish Illustrated are fans of Notre Dame would be foolish.

No word yet on if Irish Illustrated’s loose lips have managed to put holes in the 2008 Irish Recruiting Barge, but what was looking like a final recruiting week with few downsides and lots of potential upside just got a lot shakier. Way to go Irish Illustrated. Nobody likes you.

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And his mom is pretty cool too.

Free story from Irish Eyes.

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Pete Carroll met with the Washington Redskins about a job on Monday, but he’d rather not talk about it.

USC Coach Pete Carroll on Monday declined to address reports that he met with Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder about becoming the NFL team’s coach.

The NFL Network and the Associated Press said that Carroll met with Snyder in St. Louis following Joe Gibbs’ resignation but that it had been mutually decided he would not be a candidate.

Carroll has been mentioned as a candidate for NFL openings after each of the last six seasons at USC. He said before the Trojans’ victory over Illinois in the Rose Bowl that he would not comment on reports or rumors about a possible return to the NFL.

Carroll reportedly spoke with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank while Carroll was on vacation in Hawaii this month.

Last year, while vacationing in Costa Rica, Carroll interviewed with Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga.

So Pete may not be leaving Socal this year, but what about next year? He keeps meeting with NFL organizations, so he clearly wants to leave Socal. I wonder what the recruits who are about to sign on the dotted line next year think about that.

You’re a beaver.

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WVU sued Richie Rich Rod for $4M to settle the buyout clause of his contract.   You know, the contract he signed in August, where he agreed in writing to pay WVU $4M if he left before the contract term was completed?

Roddy Rod says I’ll give you $1.5M, we’re even, right?

Fuzzy math?  Nope, just Michigan math.

Rod fits right in up there.

“Wait, okay, think I got it.  So if $4M is this much…”

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Mr. Heathman, long-time caretaker of the Rockne Memorial at the site of the plane crash, passed away yesterday at the age of 90.

Easter Heathman, who at age 14 was one of the first people to arrive at the crash site near Bazaar, has given hundreds of people the opportunity to visit a stone memorial that marks the spot where Rockne and seven others died on March 31, 1931.

“More than any other single person, he preserved the memory of Knute Rockne, not just here in Kansas, but really all over the country,” said University of Kansas faculty member Bernie Kish, former executive director of the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend and a close friend of Heathman’s.

Mr. Heathman was the focus of a video piece you can see here at Classic Ground, and was recently honored with an honorary monogram at a ceremony at the pep rally for the ND-PSU game in 2006.

Easter provided tours to folks making their way out to the Rockne crash site in rural Kansas, and was concerned about a succession plan given his age and recent health challenges.  Here’s to hoping that someone as dedicated and noble cares to take up the cause.  And that the memory of Easter is as strong as that of Rockne.

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The Notre Dame Seniors in the Senior Bowl.

What did you think I was going to say?

The Irish had 4 senior representatives invited to this year’s NFL Senior Bowl, but only three were able to play:  Trevor Laws, Tommy Z and John Sullivan all had pretty solid performances.  Stud TE John Carlson unfortunately contracted some kind of whacked out flu that knocked 18 pounds off his body in a few short days, so he had to bail out from the week’s festivities.  Word is that he’s feeling better, but obviously he just couldn’t be ready to play.

From all reports, the ND seniors performed well.  Laws was double-teamed through much of the afternoon, but still made a big impact on the North squad’s defense, registering 5 tackles and 1 sack as well as a fumble recovery. (Good for 3rd on the North team in tackles) Despite the double teams, Laws regularly pushed his olinemen backwards, collapsing the pocket and creating pressure.  Laws also won a game award for Most Outstanding Lineman.  Given the competition and Laws pre-senior-bowl-week status, that’s a heck of an accomplishment.  Expect to see his stock rise come draft day.

Tommy Z also had a solid game, making good reads and reacting to the ball well.  Zibby racked up 5 tackles putting him just behind Laws for team tackles on the North at #4 on the squad.  Zibby also had a fumble recovery, and showed off his return skills with an explosive 38 yard punt return.  Zibby was awarded the Long Distance Play of the Game Award (Is that award sponsored by AT&T?  What is up with that name?), for the, um, long distance he ran with the ball…yeah.

Finally, Center John Sullivan looked fully healed from his late season injury.  Despite being part of a new line, John performed well, which likely helped assuage some of the concerns out there after John “led” the extremely bend-able ND O-line this past fall.  No shotgun for JS though, so one still has to wonder if he’s gotten past whatever mental block was giving him issues with shotgun snaps this past Fall.

All in all, it was a great turnout for a small but respected group.  I expect that all of their stocks went up this week with their hard work and significant results in the game.  Check out this link for highlights of the game – which actually was pretty exciting.Oth

Relevant notes on how to catch up on these fellas and their NFL journeys:

Trevor has a blog.

Zibby did an interview with the Chicago Trib on how things are going so far.

Yes, John Carlson was sick.

And, apparently, Sullivan is keeping things low key.  Cuz I don’t have a link for him.  But word to you Sully.  Word.

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It’s an Insider post, but the first line says it all:

Another day, another story about Urban Meyer’s alleged sketchy recruiting tactics.

It’s pretty much just a review of what we already know – there are a TON of shady/wrong/rule-breaking things that Urban has pulled in the recruiting game lately.

Link.
But it’s one more data point in a string that point to Urb being the Liar.

Kids, don’t go to Urb.  The dude will use you, ruin you, and spit you out.  And if he gets caught with his shadiness, he’ll blame you. 

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Update: Here’s a new pic…

So here’s a lot of links…

The Roundup:

• USA Today reminds all ND fans why they should cheer for the Pats in the Super Bowl.
• This is all starting to look like an episode of Boston Legal.
• It’s nice to know Kevin White was able to find a new job after we fired him.
• Yet another account of Barbaro’s escapades in Atlantic City
• Oh, and now it really does look like Barbaro did, in fact, say, “F*** Jesus.”
• Things just aren’t going the way Reggie Bush had planned.
• BGS has everything you need to know about Irish pro prospects.
• The people are starting to unite against Urban Meyer (warning: auto-play music, myspace page, and really hideous web design. Sometimes righteousness is ugly.)

That’s it. I’m off to get a Squagle.

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First the stills. The video is bound to come around eventually…

You can lead a horse to Grey Goose…”

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vegetables. Nobody really likes vegetables. We will serve beef. USDA Prime beef. Not that un-American Kobe Beef for the wine-swilling Euro-trash set. Grain-fed, hormone-injected beef, just as God intended. Beef that goes along just swell with our All-American Beer. America, F Yeah!

A man who enjoyed the High Life.

The College Football Blog Awards are here!

Get a far better explanation than we could provide of what these are from EDSBS.

Then go here and nominate! We will not suggest who you should nominate. We will say that each of our nominations just happened to include a certain site that sounds a lot like “Fur Oil Guns.” Today we also did a lot of typing of the words “Blue” and “sky” and “Irish” and “table” and “Glory” and “hemorrhoid.”

Whoa. Over-share.

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Normally, I find EDSBS quite funny. Heck, there’s probably not a single college football blog I’ve enjoyed more over the last few years than Every Day Should Be Saturday. It’s hysterical, and it’s hysterical because the blog’s proprietor, Orson Swindel, is hysterical.

And that’s why Orson’s latest post sticks out like a sort thumb infected with gangrene and painted road-sign yellow.

Is Tom Lemming a Notre Dame Shill in 2008?

Lorenzo Booker thought so in 2004, certainly, and given some of the people we’ve talked to about it–yes, anonymous sources, but good ones that we didn’t just make up on a caffeine bender through the aisles of Inserection posting from our iPhone–the suspicion is there.

The number one complaint about Lemming involves his selection process for the Army All-American Game, a process he’s heavily involved in as “the country’s leading expert on college football recruiting and high school talent.” (There’s an R. Kelly joke here about “high school talent,” but that would be in error since the area of specialty in question for him is “middle school talent.” Moving on…)

A look at the rosters certainly does look statistically anomalous: of the 84 players invited to the Army All-American fully 21 of them either listed Notre Dame as their destination school or as an interested school. 14 are outright commits, and another 7 put Notre Dame on the short list.

Is this any different than what you would see in a selection of the young and athletically gifted from around the rest of the country? In this sample, the answer is yes: the same roster only features six USC commits, one LSU commit, one Florida commit, and eight commits for Ohio State, who must be the other school deserving of bids in Lemming’s eyes. Notre Dame does have the second-ranked recruiting class in the country, true, but Florida’s at number one, followed by ND, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida State, all of whom send relatively nobody to the Army All-American Game.

That’s 4, count ‘em, four, entire paragraphs with barely a single funny sentence. From EDSBS! On a day where Orson isn’t out-sourcing the posts to some guest-blogger! What the heck is going on there?

My guess: Orson’s starting to get a little sick of hearing about Florida’s own Urban Meyer, and his shady recruiting tactics, and thus the deflector shields have been given full power.

Let’s Review! (Working Backwards and in 5 minutes…)

• Salt Lake Tribune writes up story of Urban Meyer using the Florida Gymnastics program to recruit the girlfriend of JC receiver Carl Moore. After the story broke, Urban insisted, “we’re fine.” Reality insisted, “maybe not.“
• Urban Meyer vigorously recruits all-everything Corner Patrick Johnson, Johnson commits to some school not named Florida, Urban vigorously points out anomalous improvement in Johnson’s ACT scores.
• Urban takes the time out to direct a Florida Student Athlete, Tim Tebow, to talk to recruit Carl Moore (yes, the Carl Moore from the other story above) immediately after Tebow wins the Heisman, in what seems like a pretty obvious violation of NCAA rules.

And yeah, that’s just what I found in 5 minutes of googling “Urban Meyer.” Not “Urban Meyer Recruiting Violations” or “Urban Meyer is a Liar.” Just “Urban Meyer.” And that’s all using a trackpad on my laptop too, so just imagine how much I could have found in 5 minutes with a mouse! Imagine if I could link to all the premium info and “sources” that tell the story of Urban encouraging kids to lie to other programs about their commitments!

As to the content of Orson’s post: I don’t really care. I’m not offended by the idea that Lemming has a soft-spot for Notre Dame. Most recruiting analysts have soft-spots. That a national analyst would have a soft spot for the only true national program in college football probably shouldn’t surprise anyone if, indeed, that’s the case. Don’t even get me started about the homerism of SEC region recruiting analysts. People just don’t notice it much because they don’t have their own all star game or the national recognition. And besides, overall, Orson’s analysis of the notion isn’t unfair, though his conclusion seems like a bit of a leap (yeah, he uses real numbers, but he uses Rivals.com numbers which tend to swing wildly, to make his point).

Hopefully Urban Meyer can stop doing shady things in the recruiting world and then Orson can get the funny back and leave the dull, stark, mundane posting to Brian Cook.

Ah, and since this post is largely about Urb…

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Well, now this thing has some legs.

Dana Jacobson is currently serving a 1 week suspension from ESPN. All 4 people that watch Cold Pizza or whatever the hell they call it these days have noted her absence this week from the show, and there was speculation that Jacobson might have been given some quiet time by ESPN execs, or she was foaling.

But now the Chicago Tribune has confirmed it with their “sources.”

Sources have confirmed that Jacobson, a co-host of “First Take” on ESPN2, currently is serving a one-week suspension because of her behavior at a Jan. 11 roast for ESPN Radio personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic at Atlantic City, N.J.

See? “Sources.”

Also, apparently ESPN’s ombudsman is responding to letters from concerned Christians.

And The Catholic League has picked up on the story, but we’re not entirely sure who in that league can do much about it. The Justice Leage, now there’s a league that could do something about it, but we’ve heard that Batman wont hit horses.

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Barbaro in the news. Again.

UPDATE 2: The story is being confirmed/uncomfirmed.
UPDATE: Please try to keep in mind that the story below is based on hearsay and that the “facts” are only alleged to be “facts” by a tipster to Deadspin.com. And as such, these “facts” should probably be taken with a grain of salt. There’s far too much holier-than-thou vitriol spreading on various ND message boards about this story. Take it for what it is: A story that, if true, just proves that Dana Jacobson has an alcohol problem, very poor judgment, and a horse-face. Nothing more. Just enjoy it for what it probably is: A dumb Michigan (sucks!) grad doing something stupid. If we want to throw around some moral outrage, let’s focus it on someone who verifiably deserves it.

**************************

Dana Jacobson, world famous television personality and host of mega-hit morning sports talk show “Cold Pizza” “First Take” on ESPN allegedly used her equine jaw to spit out some choice words about Notre Dame and a certain someone whom I like to call “Jesus” at the Mike and Mike Roast last week. (Which, listening to Mike and Mike the next day, one couldn’t help but notice nobody really seemed to want to talk about on air.) Please note she was saying this in front of Charlie Weis who was in attendance.:

…nothing yet from the Jacobson camp yet; we imagine that video being locked away somewhere deep in the bowels of Bristol HQ. A tipster who was there gives us a slight rundown, however:

. try THIS on for size….among her drunken statements made from the dais….(with Charlie Weis in attendance)….

“f… Notre dame”
“f….touchdown Jesus”
and – the step-aside-because-lightning-is-about-to-strike… “f…. Jesus.”

Dana Jacobson, reminding us that Michigan (sucks!) women will do really stupid things when you get them drunk! (In case you’ve forgotten your experiences in Ann Arbor for away games.)

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