• ND Ranks Top 20 in Football and Academics, but not partying (according to Princeton Review). Helpful for recruiting hard working… #
• …young men that know how to create their own good times. #
• Hawthorne: “Chief Nursing Officer.” WTF? #
• RT @espn4d: If you want some comedy this afternoon, follow @greide as she details the ongoing farce that is C-USA’s “virtual” media day. #
• WHOA! Hawaii FB Coach uses homosexual slur in ref: to ND. http://bit.ly/qiY3s #
• Follow Friday-ish: Gotta follow @greide from now on just in case she points to any more WAC/C-USA madness. #
• Wondering if @GreenyAndGolic will have an “exclusive” explanation of what ND’s “Fa&&oty” dance was form Golic’s son tomorrow. #
• @TriceraPops We don’t know what that is. Is it intimidating? in reply to TriceraPops #
• Followers: What other great CFB blogs do you follow on Twitter? Besides us, I mean. #
• God help our massive company, full of people who call into 200+ person con-calls without use of a mute button. #
• @edsbs We were expecting Freak to PS a screen cap from “The Bird Cage.” Opportunity: wasted (?). in reply to edsbs #
• HP Sold us a scanner/printer/copier w/o cable 4 conn to PC. Setting phasers to “gory, painful kill.” #
• @tywillie How did you shoot on that hole? in reply to tywillie #
• @SteveKragthorpe “flamin hot cheetos” sounds like a description UH’s McMackin would use. in reply to SteveKragthorpe #
• RT @tywillie: I too accept McMackin’s apology. http://bit.ly/Lix5m #
• RT @greide: Hawaii to hold presser in 20 min to talk about the fate of Greg McMackin. #
• RT @greide: And no, I don’t think they’re going to fire McMackin. Probably just a reprimand. #
• @greide Still thinking McMack is employed? (I’m watching Burn Notice on Tivo rather than the presser.) in reply to greide #
• RT @greide: McMackin suspended without pay for 30 days. He said he would continue to coach the team for free. Also taking a salary redux. #
• @greide How’s that work? How can one be suspended but still coach for free? in reply to greide #

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I suppose you never want the President of the United States to be drunk, and that right there is good enough reason to rationalize a brew pick by Obama of Bud Light. At just 4.2% ABV, it’s only slightly more intoxicating than the Snapple I just chugged with breakfast. Still, I’ve always said that I want my POTUS to be the smartest man in the room, and I think I’d be remiss to fail to state that I also want my POTUS to have an appreciation for good beer. Once Henry Gates opted for a Sam Adams Light over his original pick of well-marketed-piss-from-a-well-marketed-hell Red Stripe, Obama’s staffers, who clearly must be girl-drink-drinkers, should have been on a mad scramble to ensure that Barack wasn’t downing the worst brew of the bunch. That’s not to say that Sam Adams Light or Blue Moon are much more than average “intro brews” for the just-post-frat crowd to sip on while trying to acclimate themselves to the world of flavor in their beer, but at least they’re better than something that none of us could discern from Keystone in a blind taste-test. I want to know what you think, America. If you could elect the POTUS’s Beer, what would it be?

The Roundup:

• Regis Ben, Sub? Seriously? Over… everyone?
• The crown jewel of Stanford’s, um… crown.
• Pete Carroll is following all of the rules… that he just made up.
• PAC-10 Media Day happened, and those liberal sissies didn’t throw down a single slur.
• A Sprint that we never seem to see go 40 yards.
• 5 Reasons Florida wont repeat.
• Frankie Telfort, much sought after LB, is done with football at SoCal due to a medical condition, so he’s going to pursue medicine.
• How much does “revenge” really play into game results?

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Yesterday, we incorrectly reported that what the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors perform before a game is called “The Haka.” We were wrong. What the Hawaii Warriors perform is a “Ha’a.”

*Yes. Seriously.

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According to Hawaii Football Coach… hold on, I have to look this up… Greg McMackin, the night before the Hawaii Bowl last season, the ND and Hawaii squads took part in a ceremony during which the Hawaii squad did the completely bad-ass Haka, of which you can see a performance by the “All Blacks” in the video below.

Um, now, we don’t have any video or any idea of what that “something special” might be. We don’t believe we’ve seen it. But the ND players and coaches must think it’s pretty awesome if they’re willing to put it up against The Haka. Greg McMackin, on the other hand, did not think it was “awesome.” No. He thought (and said) something else entirely.

They get up and do this little cheer. Like this … little fa**ot dance. You remember, Jason and Steven. The guys were all looking and trying not to laugh. I gave them the …

Those ellipses are a direct quote of McMackin trailing off of his line of thought and remembering, moments too late, that he doesn’t live in 1950s South Carolina, but 2009 Hawaii, complete with all the furnishings of Twitter, the Internets, and modern society. Before he could even get this next line out to the 12 reporters attending WAC Media Day, we all knew what he’d said…

don’t write that ‘fa**ot’ down. I was misquoted. Anyway, I give them the shaka. So our guys get up, and it was the best haka I’ve ever seen. They’re on their chairs. They had beads on, they’re ripping the beads off. It was a little scary. I think Notre Dame watched that and said ‘we better have ourselves ready.’

Such a shame, really. Because in all likelihood, whatever “something special” is, it probably is pretty lame compared to The Haka, and probably deserves some derision so that it’ll be replaced by Manti T’eo this season with an Irish Haka set to something by Flogging Molly. But there’s appropriate derision, and there’s homosexual utterances by clueless, uncivilized morons. Now we find ourselves in some awkward position where we probably have to dutifully defend whatever lame, likely-set-to-a-Bon-Jovi-tune cheer the Irish had performed.

*Note: We can only assume the ND Football Players are not still doing the “Blood! Blood! Blood makes the grass grow!” thing.

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Our announcement of the ND vs. Opposition Draft, coupled with this post over on UHND, reminded me of this post we did a year ago looking at draft talent in ND’s upper classes and this post from this past spring looking at the poor state of draftable players on the 2008 squad (again, keep in mind, we were looking at the more senior classes) where we proposed a thought-experiment:

What sort of ratio of wins-to-2010-draftees would that represent? Go ahead and throw your guesses down in the comments. I’ll think on it a bit more and throw mine in there as well, but I’m having trouble dividing by zero.

And remember, we found that, in the 31 seasons studied, the average number of wins for a season per draftee in the following year was 1.75.

So with that in mind, and the 2009 season approaching quickly, we ask…

How Many Irish on the Current Roster Will Get Drafted in 2010?

• 4-6 (59%, 43 Votes)
• 0-3 (25%, 18 Votes)
• 7-9 (8%, 6 Votes)
• 9+ (8%, 6 Votes)

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Or maybe I should say Pete’s more of a Bob Ross. He sees happy little trees everywhere, and, more importantly, he sees “happy little mistakes.”

USC football Coach Pete Carroll employed a former NFL tactician last season to help with the team’s punting and kicking game, an arrangement that may have violated NCAA rules that prohibit consultants from coaching, The Times has learned.

Carroll’s action could widen a continuing investigation by the NCAA, the governing body of major college sports, which has been looking at USC football for more than three years and the school’s basketball program for the last year. The probe has been examining specific allegations of improper payments to two players as well as the broader question of whether USC has lost “institutional control” of its athletics department.

Note that it seems to be the consensus of “experts” that such an infraction would fall into the “major” bucket rather than the “minor” bucket. But also note that this infraction is just loop-holey enough that the NCAA can go on ignoring it like it ignores anything else that SoCal might do.

The bylaws say teams may retain temporary consultants “to provide in-service training for the coaching staff, but no interaction with student-athletes is permitted.”

So I’m pretty sure all of this will result in little more than blogger fodder. So is Bruins Nation, who can’t even muster up much righteous incredulity for the news, so common-place these ignored infractions by SoCal have become.

Well we are not sure what else the NCAA is looking at this point. Apparently they have been “looking” for years and to date we have heard nothing. And no one here is going to be holding their breath. Pom Pom and his renegades will continue to operate whatever way they want because clearly NCAA rules don’t apply to them.

Right now the way these stories keep unfolding from the “most scandalous athletic program of this era” the term lack of institutional control applies more appropriately to a hapless, pathetic, impotent NCAA than the rogue program run by Mike Garrett and Chetey Petey.

But again, do understand that this is a serious accusation and would be a serious infraction. Notre Dame fans have spent many a conversation trying to figure out how ND head coaches, past and present, can “carry dead weight” in the form of coaches who offer less contribution than their counterparts. If this accusation is true, Pete decided nobody on his official, legal staff had the proper acumen to coach up his special teams and decided to bring on an illegal, hired-gun to do the work. It’s a very real competitive advantage.

UPDATE: Conquest Chronicles shares their thoughts. Overall it’s a fair-ish piece from the resident SC blogger, but he gets one piece wrong while trying to rationalize.

But what was Rodriguez compensated? Rodriguez states in the piece that his time consulting with Carroll was minimal. Didn’t Charlie Weis have Bill Belechick (sic) consult with him on some ND football issues?

What he CC failed to note is that Weis consulted Belichick during the off-season, and it never involved Belichick monitoring practices or games during the season.

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Mel Kiper Jr. seen here
eating his heart out.

Earlier this year, and I mean early, a series of discussions on various ND football boards, plus a lot of writing about how the talent on ND’s roster so “clearly” “outclasses” so much of the talent on the rosters of the opposition of 2009, got myself and a few other ND football bloggers to thinking about what a mock-draft of all that talent (Irish and not) might look like. So we decided to hold our own mock draft, and very soon we’ll start presenting each player picked in that draft across the various blogs.

The participating blogs in this inaugural (hopefully) exercise were, in alpha-order: The Blue-Gray Sky, Classic Ground, Rakes of Mallow, and HLS (with a guest appearance by Joe). And right up-front I’d like to thank the participants for trudging through the actual draft process in such patient and well-studied fashion. I eagerly look forward to reading their presentations of their picks and to writing my own.

Meanwhile, over there on the right of the screen (if you’re actually reading this on the HLS site), you’ll notice a little draft pick ticker I slapped together. Watch it carefully, as I’ll be adding the names of draft picks and links to their corresponding presentations as they become available here and at the other participating sites.

And now for some details about the draft. First, the rules.

• Each team will include 11 defensive players, 11 offensive players, a kicker, punter, kick returner, and punt returner.
• A player can play only 1 offensive role, 1 defensive role, and may play both punt and kick return.
• A player can be drafted from anywhere on his real-world team’s depth chart.
• Offensive teams must involve C, both T, both G, QB, one RB, one WR, and one TE. The other 2 remaining offensive slots may be filled with whatever combination of “flex” players, but may not include C, T, G, or QB.
• Defensive teams must involve at least 3 defensive linemen (DE and DT), and at least 3 linebackers. Also, GMs must develop either a 4-3 or a 3-4. So either your team will include 4 DL, 3 LB, and 4 DB or 3 DL, 4 LB, and 4 DB.
• No DCE’ing. We’d all like to know what Golden Tate could do from the tailback position, but let’s leave him at WR. Same for DE/LB type guys.
• Draft order was determined by random number generator picking names from a hat. Whoever has first pick in the previous round is rotated to last pick of the next round. After the first 2 rounds, GMs took turns making 2 consecutive picks at a time to speed things up.

And now for some meta-info on the draft results:

• 5 Teams were drafted by 4 “GMs” and one team of “co-GMs” among the 4 participating sites.
• As math would have it, 130 players were drafted.
• 12 different positions saw a player from another team drafted before any Notre Dame players were drafted for that same position.
• My personal team only includes 1 Michigan (sucks!) player.
• Notre Dame was best represented in the draft with a full 11 picks more than SoCal.
• 3 Midshipmen were drafted.
• Nevada was as well represented as MSU. In fact, Nevada was better represented than BC.
• UConn was represented even better than Nevada. And UConn was 1 pick shy of tying Michigan (sucks!).
• Washington State and Washington have the exact same number of picks.
• 36 picks separated the #2 QB pick and the #3 QB pick.

Soon, Joe will reveal the #1 pick in the 2009 draft, and then we’ll have 130 opportunities for some great debate among the blogs and the readers. I hope you enjoy it.

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“To me I look at it like this: If you go to Notre Dame to end up the season being ranked in the top 20, I think, as an athlete and a football player, you’re going to the school for the wrong reasons,” said Terrell, whose ‘88 squad beat four top 10 teams, including the Hurricanes, No. 2 USC and No. 3 West Virginia. “You should go to win a national championship. If you’re a coach and you’re trying to just be .700, .800 (winning percentage) at the end of a season, it’s the wrong university to coach for.”

“And it’s not that they dumbed down the schedule or anything, but I get upset when people say, ‘Look, things are different now. We can’t expect to be ranked in the top 5.’ That’s what gets me. You still snap the ball. You still have four downs and Notre Dame still recruits across the country. I want us to win the national championship WITH all of those challenges in front of them. It would make it that much more sweet.“

Amen, Mr. Terrell. Amen. And I am 100% sure that this is what the kids, and the coaches, are working towards right now. People laugh when they think of Weis saying 9-3 isn’t good enough, because he’d have killed for a 9-3 result in the past 2 seasons. But what I like is that I think that that attitude, that desire, to make it to the TOP is still there. Now, we’ll find out this season if he’s the coach that can make it happen (some semblance of getting there), but the intent, the desire, I think it’s there. I can tell you what, it’s HERE baby!

LET’S DO THIS GO IIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIISSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!

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Not that this is shocking, or interesting, to anyone really, but we feel obligated to keep this story going because it’s fun true.

Orson at EDSBS confirms it in his latest Curious Index recapping the day in CFB. On Big Ten media days and Purdue 2009:

…here’s our favorite summary of Purdue’s possible season: “Purdue?” [/raises eyebrow] (Thus concludes EDSBS’s Purdue coverage for 2009.)

Ha.

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We already knew this much: Come Sept 12th, either Notre Dame would defeat a fumbling and bumbling Michigan (sucks!) in Ann Arbor, shining a light on the program Rich Rodriguez seems hell-bent on beating with the mishap stick every day and twice on gameday, or Notre Dame would lose to Michigan (sucks!) in inexplicable fashion. And by “inexplicable,” we mean that Weis and company learned nothing, zip, zilch, zero over the last 2 seasons, and have instead decided to forge through the jungle of the 2009 season using nothing but a blunted wiffle-ball bat and last year’s run-blocking to clear a path.

What we did not know, is this, and it’s really disappointing:

Millen, the former Detroit Lions president, said he’ll be back in the state of Michigan early this fall, calling college football games for ABC.

He’s expected to broadcast the Michigan-Notre Dame game Sept. 12 in Ann Arbor. He’s getting back to work as a college game analyst for ESPN/ABC, studio analyst for NFL games on ESPN and the NFL Network.

We fully expect Millen to leap up at random moments in the telecast to let his broadcasting teammates know that he’s drafting either Golden Tate or Mike Floyd or both at the #1 spot.

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Here are two lists you need to know:

Top 20 Party Schools

Top 20 Colleges for Academics

You’ll notice that ND doesn’t top the Party schools list. Clearly not Top 20. You parents may love that (we hope you do, at least, otherwise we’re screwed). The players won’t looooooove that, but hey guys, let me assure you: you can have a good time at ND, or any other non-Top-20 party school.

Top Party Schools that regularly compete with ND for recruits? Penn State, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin, FSU, Tennessee, ASU. Moms, if you want your kid to become a boozehound, by all means, join Urban the Liar (he can also learn to shoot AK-47s in Gainesville), or JoePa (your kid will learn how to party like the undead!)

But if you want your kid at a top football program, and to actually LEARN something at a top-rated institution? Notice the ONLY top football program in the top 20 academically? Yep, that’s Notre Dame folks. (I don’t consider Stanford a top football program, and yes, ND still is one).

Not a new message, but one that should be reiterated from time to time.

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Coach Holtz (love the sound of that) led ND’s team of older (and in some cases even downright OLD) alums against the Japanese team, and pulled out a decisive victory.

We haven’t spent a lot of time on this, and I’m not really sure why. It’s actually a really cool event when you think about it. Holtz gets to coach again. Players that thought they’d never again don an ND uniform in a competitive environment, got to put on the Gold Helmet and go at it one final time. Oh, and they got to go to Japan too. That little part.

That’s pretty freaking sweet.

It did seem a little odd and kind of out of nowhere, and until today I didn’t really see much benefit. But now I’m loving that ND did this. Primarily, I think it’s a good reason because it’s a great brand-building event. As the world shrinks, and brands have to become more global, this gives ND a leg up on a lot of schools, and on pretty much every college football program that didn’t do this (everyone). Student bodies are becoming more and more international, as are fanbases. In the long run, all brands need to be global, and this gave ND a great opportunity to share the football program, and the school, with an international crowd.

And, of course, we won. That helps for sure.

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• Sup twitter friends! Just a quick thanks for following HLS. We will have a ton of updates as camp and the season get underway! #
• Fearing we may have taken vacation at wrong time. May never get back up to speed in time for fall camp! (Also feeling fat.) #
• My God, we’re ND fans/alums, and even we couldn’t care less about this –> http://bit.ly/XVaM8 #
• Mesmerized by the way Jason Whitlock totally ignored the racial angle to the whole ErinAndrewsNakedOGM story. Or… maybe not. #
• Up next from Whitlock: White Happy Clouds Versus Dark Rain Clouds – Racism In Our Atmosphere #
• Ty Willingham likes to golf, according to his good friend. Shocking film at 11! #

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One Montana chooses UW, the other chooses a temporary hiatus from ND.

Nate Montana has chosen to enroll in a Pasadena, CA Junior College for the fall semester, in order to get some playing time.

“I just feel that one of the biggest differences between me and the other quarterbacks there is the amount of game experience that they have over me.”

“I’m going there with the intention of getting playing time and then returning to Notre Dame in the spring to join back up with the team and compete again for the job”

“I’m excited,” Montana said. “It’s like a mixed feeling. It’s hard to leave a team that you’ve been a part of and that you’ve built camaraderie with, but I’m excited to get playing time, just to get time under center.”

I don’t love seeing him leave the team, and you can tell he’s somewhat torn about it, but I really can’t blame him. He was 4th on the depth chart behind Jimmy, Dayne, and now-returning Evan. With 2 solid QB commits in the 2010 class, I think Nate started to realize that he’d really need to make some strides to see the field at ND, in any capacity. This way he’ll get some game action, and then make a decision on where he goes from there. One could argue that he’d learn more under Weis and with those other guys around him at ND, but you know he wouldn’t be getting game action at ND, for sure.

That said, it also leaves him a much easier opening to transfer somewhere where he may have a better shot at moving up the depth chart. He may have come to ND thinking he’d get a great degree, be a career backup, and ride off into the sunset with a smarter brain, some good memories and all that. But then he gets on campus, puts on the pads, and? Boom, he wants to be a player. This gives him a shot to see how he performs on the field, in live competition. Some experience. And the chance to impress some coaches around the country in order to give him a better shot elsewhere.

Maybe he’ll be back at ND in the Spring, competing. Maybe not. Probably 50/50 at this point, pending how things go at the JUCO in Pasadena.

Best of luck Nate. We hope it works out well for you, regardless of where you end up in a year.

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Past player for, and friend of, Ty Willingham on the man. himself.

To Summarize:

Ty is a nice guy and really cared about his players.

All he really wants to do is golf.

Shocking part: The fact that all he wants to do is golf is a SURPRISE to his friend, who somehow thinks that Ty is some kind of work-a-holic.

I have never met Ty Willingham and probably never will. But I am 99% sure I know him better than this dude if this dude thinks Ty Willingham would ever, ever, ever, ever EVER want to spend time working rather than golfing.

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