At a recent celebrity softball game, Charles Barkley entertained the locker room with a story about the first time he played against Dirk Nowitzki in an international game in the late 90’s and subsequently tried to recruit him to Auburn. Dirk was nice enough to post it in his YouTube channel for the rest of us to enjoy. http://youtu.be/qlz01nBrl4s Some of the highlights: So I call Nike and I says “Find out about this kid. Tell him I’ll give him anything he wants to go to Auburn.” “In ...
Looking Back: Quinn to Samardzija to Beat UCLA
On October 20th, 2006, driving back to Notre Dame after a short Fall Break, I daydreamed about the slim chances of the Irish (ranked #10 with a record of 5-1 at the time) sneaking into the National Championship picture with 6 more wins and a healthy amount of luck. For the first 59 minutes of the game the next day, I wondered if maybe I should have spent some more time at home instead of returning to campus early, with the UCLA defense completely stifling the Irish offense to the tune of just ...
NCAA Football 2013 – EA Sports Player Rankings Leaked
A special shout out to the guy that snuck a video camera into the E3 gaming convention and recorded himself going through the NCAA Football 2013 selection screens to get all of the team ratings and player ratings for the next version of the college football gaming dynasty. He may have filmed the 16 most boring minutes on YouTube, but he gave us college football fans and gamers some golden offseason fodder to argue about. Starting with the overall team ratings, Notre Dame is given a 97 ...
NBC Deal Money not a Differentiator
While the annual “will Notre Dame join a conference?” discussion hasn’t been quite as consuming as it was in 2010 and 2011, the debate rages on as the major conference landscape continues to see a multi-year facelift (realistically, it’s more of a Botox injection gone wrong than a facelift). Specifically, there has been a significant amount of buzz surrounding swelling college football TV contracts, particularly with Florida State president Dr. Eric Barron releasing a statement about why the Big ...
The Fastest Twins in College Football
The Notre Dame men's track & field team cleaned up at the Big East Championships last weekend, running away from the field (pun intended) to win the conference title with 153 points, earning over 50 more than second place South Florida (100 points). Among the many Notre Dame stars last weekend were the football team's own twins George Atkinson III and Josh Atkinson. After George posted the second best 100 meter dash time in the prelims (10.36 seconds), Josh stepped up in the finals to ...
Conference Commissioners + Free Vacation to Florida = Results
If you've been following the BCS developments over the past few weeks, you probably, like the conference commissioners and Jack Swarbrick, have no idea what is going on (though you probably haven't enjoyed a free vacation to Florida). While the details are still being ironed out, it has become apparent that the current BCS model is no longer in consideration (hooray!). The leading option, as reported by Mark Schlabach of ESPN, is to hold a four team playoff using the sites of the current BCS ...
Now what? Moving on at DE after Lynch
Last Friday the Aaron Lynch messages started pouring into my phone, and the 7 stages of grief quickly followed: Shock and Denial - No, he can't be leaving. He just came back home from Ohio after Easter. This is a cruel Twitter joke, right?! Pain & Guilt - Why can't this program catch the break it needs? Isn't there more we as fans could have done to keep him on campus? Should we have Tweeted at him more frequently and left more comments on his Facebook page? (answer: definitely ...
The Vegas Sharps Must Really Like Tommy Rees
After the blackjack tables of the Las Vegas strip used me as their personal ATM a few weeks back, I wandered over to the MGM Grand Sports Book in a sad attempt to convince myself that I may have some kind of mental edge over both the degenerate gamblers and the schmucks walking out of the David Copperfield show. I bet on two teams I love: the Notre Dame men's basketball squad and the Chicago Bulls. I bet on one team I hate: the Miami Heat. Naturally, I lost all 3 (and I can only make myself feel ...
Did the Irish Actually Overachieve in 2011?: A Statistical Analysis
The 2011 Irish season was full of a lot of "what if?" questions. What if Jonas Gray holds on to the ball against USF? What if Dayne Crist doesn't snap the ball for a second time against USC? What if Denard never got a visit from Aladdin's Genie? (By the way, I looked up the characters from Aladdin and his name was actually "Genie" - you would think Disney could have had a little more creativity) What if Tommy Rees played a little more Madden so he could learn how to read a Cover 3 ...