Spring has arrived at Notre Dame…well, spring football at least.
Much like signing day, it is a period of (mostly) unbridled optimism for the program. This spring is no exception and doubly so with the return of Everett Golson to the Irish and knowing that there is no backup QB named Tommy Rees.
Hey, no offense to Tommy. I will always appreciate what he did for this program; however, I am not going to miss “TOMMY NO!” being in the back of my mind.
The fact is that Everett Golson was the QB that Kelly no doubt envisioned growing and building his offense around. As we’ve seen before, Kelly’s offense begins and ends with the QB and that also includes the QB finding himself heavily involved in the running game as well. It was the one wrinkle that Tommy simply couldn’t provide this offense and now it’s back.
Add on to the fact that Everett spent the past year training with QB guru, George Whitfiled, and expectations are as sky-high as ever. I mean, he’s throwing the ball with the laces now!
We will spend our time pouring over heavily-edited videos of spring football practices, trying desperately to squeeze out any bit of information, changes, or perceived improvement. We will try to find meaning in every word uttered publicly by Brain Kelly or any Notre Dame player for insight. And, when the time comes for the Blue/Gold Game, we will find an excuse to tailgate analyze every play until fall camp starts up.
Through it all, we will likely look at it with blue and gold glasses. We will happily drink the Notre Dame Kool-Aid straight from the pitcher, finish it ourselves, and ask for seconds. Dreams of a million different ways to murder Skunkbears and Trojans will happily dance in our heads.
Personally, I find no shame in this. We are now a football-deprived fanbase with no opponent around to bring us crashing down to reality and I will happily live in my ND fantasy football land.
Brace yourself. Winter is leaving.
The Roundup
You may have noticed a new banner at the top of HLS. The folks running the ND fantasy camp wanted us to help spread the word and we are more than happy to do so. This is something that Biscuit has participated in (do yourself a favor and read all of those if you haven’t) and had a blast. This is on my bucket list as well, but since all my money is going to my wedding and honeymoon this year, please partake for me.
NCAA rule changes have passed. The stupid “we will still penalize you for targeting even if targeting is overturned” rule is now gone. The stupid “you have to wait 10 seconds to snap the ball or you get a delay of game penalty” is thankfully never seeing the light of day. Somewhere, Saban weeps.
COME AT ME BRO FAN ON COURT DOT GIF. I can safely say that I’d never thought I’d see this happen at a basketball game, but the bigger question is: how in the hell did that fan get so close to an opposing coach to being with?
An artistic interpretation of spring, provided by MSPaint Like a Champion Today.
Notre Dame has their first openly gay athlete. Matt Dooley, a senior on the men’s tennis team, publicly came out earlier this week. That article, by the way, is penned entirely by him and is definitely worth your time to read.
And now your moment of Nix… Yeah, still haven’t come up with a title for this. Moment of sweetness? Irish Chocolate Funny News? I don’t know, I haven’t had time to think, but Nix still owns this section:
Thank you @espn for posting my real 40 time. #ThankYou #IrishChocolate #Fast #NotMolasses pic.twitter.com/Y4papdr9w9
— lOUIS NIX III (@1irishchocolate) March 6, 2014
The Booze
These days, I’m not able to really plan or think about selections for the weekend here. However, this week was a gigantic pain in my ass thanks to day job insanity and I just refreshed my bourbon supply. So bourbon it is and I REGRET NOTHING.
Texan by birth, Irish by choice.
First-generation Domer and a former student manager, HLS podcast host, HLS Sim creator, Extra Life streamer, and technical problem haver. You can find more non-Notre Dame related writing on his Patreon.
- Epilogue - January 3, 2022
- HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
- The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021
the back end of that UCSB gif is about the surfer dudest thing I’ve seen in a while…
I wanted so desperately for it to end with a Hawaii player just blindsiding him and sucker-punching his ass.