Hocutt said UM won’t play FIU but wants to book marquee opponents and would be interested in speaking with Notre Dame when it hires an athletic director about one of its new annual prime-time neutral site NBC games.
As a younger Notre Dame fan who grew up with the Notre Dame teams of the late 80’s which had several epic matchups with Miami, the thought of Notre Dame facing off against the Hurricanes in a neutral site game is absolutely awesome.
Would a game against Miami in the neutral site game finally stop some of the ongoing complaining about the scheduling of these games? Hopefully.
Considering Miami’s recent incidents such as their in-game brawl with Florida International maybe those old Catholics vs. Convicts shirts could find some more use.
Here’s a GREAT clip of Rocket Ismail talking about the pre-game fight with Miami in 1988 from Aaron Taylor’s Legends of South Bend.
When Matt Carufel transferred from Notre Dame last year, he didn’t always have the nicest things to say about the Irish or Charlie Weis. It seems he just didn’t feel he fit in at Notre Dame. Never mind that his transfer coincided with the exact timing of him losing his starting spot to Eric Olsen. Nah, that could never have have anything to do with it right?
Notre Dame started 1-9 in 2007, but Carufel said his decision to leave school had nothing to do with wins and losses. He was homesick when he lost his starting job after the first three games last year.
“I didn’t like it from the get-go,” said Carufel, who left Notre Dame last October. “I missed my home and parents. I missed Minnesota, but I also wanted to have coaches that I felt cared about me and my situation. It wasn’t the right place for me, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t right for someone else.”
Right, so he didn’t like it from the get-go, but decided to come back for a second year and then left right after losing his starting spot? At least Demetrius Jones was honest about why he left and didn’t take pot shots at the University.
Jimmy Clausen was added to the Maxwell Watch List along with 74 other NCAA signal callers this week.
Clausen was one of 26 quarterbacks to make the list and one of only three sophomore signal-callers honored (a total of 12 sophomores made the list). The 6-3, 212-pounder started nine of the 10 games he appeared in last year and made his mark on Notre Dame’s freshman passing records. Clausen started the second game of the 2007 season, the earliest any Notre Dame quarterback had started at that position since freshmen regained eligibility in 1972. He completed 138 of 245 passes for 1,254 yards with seven touchdowns and six interceptions in his rookie season. Clausen ranks second on Notre Dame’s freshman quarterback single-season lists for completions, attempts, yards and completion percentage.
It’s nice to see that Jimmy is one of only three sophomores on the list.
Will Clausen make it past the watch list and be a quarter or semifinalists for the award? I for one wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed on the watch list for a little while.
We had Lee Becton on the UHND Podcast “Spanning the Dome” last night and have the MP3 uploaded for either playback through a flash player or via download. Head over the podcast page to hear the interview - click here for the interview. Thanks to Lee for taking the time to speak with us!
For those of you who may have forgotten just how good of a back Lee was when he was at Notre Dame, peep the YouTube clip below.
Jon Tenuta spoke at the Notre Dame celebrity golf tournament last week and some interesting things to say. Notre Dame fans better be ready to see a lot of blitzing this fall because apparently, Tenuta and Corwin Brown intent to send everything but the kitchen sink at opposing offenses.
Jim Morse nearly fell backwards in his chair.
Knute Rockne, reportedly, rolled over in his grave.
Such was the reaction when new Notre Dame assistant head coach for defense Jon Tenuta told the crowd of local Irish-backers on Friday that, this fall, the team will “blitz about 80 percent of the time.
To which, Morse, the former ND captain and long-time area booster, shot back: “We haven’t blitzed that much in 10 years, total!”
Last year we didn’t get nearly enough pressure on opposing quarterbacks so it’s great to hear Tenuta speak of applying that much pressure. Considering the secondary should be a strength this year, we should have the personnel to allow for that much blitzing as well.
Tenuta also made mention of the improvements by both Jimmy Clausen and the offensive line since game one of last season when Tenuta’s Georgia Tech defense embarrassed the Irish offense.
The most encouraging thing that Tenuta said on Friday, even more than his promise to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the opposition, is that the Jimmy Clausen and the offensive line he saw this spring was a night-and-day improvement from the outfit his Georgia Tech team drubbed last fall.
Considering how inept the Irish offense was in that game, that might not be saying a whole lot, but it’s still nice to hear.
I made a quick post the other day on the Football board about my three biggest concerns for 2008 and it got a nice little discussion going so I thought I’d flesh out those concerns a little more in a full post over here on the blog.
1. Offensive Line - I don’t think any rationale fan could have a bigger concern for this season than the offensive line. the line was atrocious last year and was about as effective as Major League Baseball’s performance enhancing drug policies during the 90’s. The good news is that four of the five starters are back the year. The bad news is… four of the five starters are back from a unit that allowed 58 sacks in 2007. Honestly, the line can’t be any worse this year, right? Still. This team will only go as far as the line takes it. We have the skill position players to make some big plays, but there won’t be plays to be made if Clausen is on his backside and the running backs can’t find any day light.
Is this the year Sam Young starts to tap into the vast potential he possesses? Young has started every game of his Notre Dame career, but up until this point, he has had more than a few struggles. Injuries have been a problem for him so hopefully a healthy 2008 will mean a new and improved Sam Young. Outside of Young, which of the young OL are ready to step up and start dominating in the trenches? Dan Wenger has shown flashes as have Eric Olsen and Chris Stewart. Can the Irish find a group of five regulars who can get a consistent push up front and keep Jimmy’s jersey clean is the big question though.
2. Defensive Line - Last year Trevor Laws masked the depth issues along the defensive line with a monster year, but this year the lack of recruiting up front at the beginning of the Weis Era could haunt us. Fortunately, we have an outstanding class of defensive linemen coming in this year. Counting on freshmen along either line, however, is never a good thing. According to reports around the net, Bill Lewis has said we will need as many as five freshmen DL to be in the rotation this fall - which is actually all of them - 1. Ethan Johnson, 2. Sean Cywnar, 3. Brandon Newman, 4. Hafis Williams, 5. Kapron Lewis-Moore (Darius Fleming could be a 6th if the staff plays him a DE instead of OLB).
With Pat Kuntz back, the starting lineup should be Ian Williams in the middle with Kuntz and Justin Brown on the ends. That makes a solid, but fairly average group of starters. Early reports are that Ethan Johnson has shown up to campus in great shape - could he step in and start from day one ala Anthony Weaver in 1998? Who knows. All I know for sure is that right now the defensive line situation scares the hell out of me.
3. Kicking Game - Reports out of spring ball where that Brandon Walker was much improved, but in the Blue-Gold game he missed on a long field goal attempt which could have backed those reports up. There will likely be a competition in camp for the place kicking duties, but I would be shocked if Burkhart takes Walker’s spot. The problem, however, is that Weis didn’t feel comfortable enough with any kicker to attempt a 47 yard field goal to beat Navy. Wind or no wind, that is a severe lack of confidence. Assuming the offensive line is improved and the defensive line finds a couple regulars amongst the freshman, this team will need a solid kicker
Last year Notre Dame honored former coaching great Ara Parseghian with a statue outside Notre Dame Stadium. This year they will be doing the same for the last coach to bring a title home to Notre Dame - Lou Holtz.
“I am humbled,” Holtz said. “I don’t know of any greater honor I could ever hope for professionally. To be back with the national championship team and to have a statue put in there with Rockne, Leahy, Parseghian…I am really humbled.”
Holtz joins Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, Jesse Harper, Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine among former Irish coaches in the College Football Hall of Fame. Forty-two former Notre Dame players also have been inducted, including Chris Zorich in 2007.
“I could never repay Notre Dame for everything it did for me family,” Holtz said. “More importantly, to be able to associate with the people of Notre Dame was a great honor. People like Emil Hoffman, Mike DeCicco, Dean Waddick, Bill Sexton, Colonel Stephens, Moose Krause…
As a younger Notre Dame fan, Lou Holtz is the first coach I remember watching on the sidelines for the Irish and really - any football team for that matter. I grew up as a football fan watching Holtz pace up and down the sidelines picking grass along the way so this news certainly makes me thrilled.
Jeff, Kyle, and I will all be out in South Bend for the Michigan game weekend and I’ll be sure to snap some shots of the statue and post them to the UHND Flickr account (which is now visible on the sidebar of articles and will be visible here as well if I get some time this summer to make some design tweaks to the site).
So I logged into SportingNews.com this morning to check out how my fantasy baseball team did last and I see the following headline, “Why Do You Hate Weis.”
Really? That’s the best you could do?
I guess there is a reason that Sporting News is not even in the same league as ESPN, FoxSports, or even Yahoo when it comes to sports news websites. It’s sad too since Sporting News was the second sports news magazine I ever subscribed to after Blue and Gold Illustrated.
“We’re big believers in how Notre Dame time and time again over all these generations has maintained its strength,” he said. “I don’t see that going away.”
Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed, although Ebersol said the contract is a flat fee and not based on ratings. The current contract that expires in 2010 is reported to be worth $9 million a year.
Ebersol said the important thing for Notre Dame, which hasn’t won a national championship since 1988, is to be in the race to be a top 10 team in most years “for it to be a wildly successful arrangement.”
“We go into this thinking that if the vast majority of the years has Notre Dame competitive in that top 10 or for that top 10 through the majority of the season, then we’ll be very happy,” he said.
“We are thrilled about this arrangement,” said Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John Jenkins.
But perhaps not as thrilled as NBC President Ken Schanzer, who spoke in comically glowing terms of the “elegance of the institution” and knowing that Irish officials will “comport themselves in ways that make you proud to be associated with them and allow you to live in the reflected glory of that nobility.”
“That nobility” produced just three victories last season, the fewest since 1963. But Ebersol said coach Charlie Weis didn’t have to sell NBC on Notre Dame’s prospects for improvement.
“What I would say to Charlie is that I think his charms are best spent on dealing with 18- and 19-year-old men or boys,” Ebersol said, “than they are being wasted on guys who are older than 60.”
Schanzer added: “Neither of whom can run very well.
Notre Dame starting nose tackle Pat Kuntz is back at school after missing the spring semester for what he termed personal reasons.
Kuntz was enrolled Tuesday as summer school began and is expected to be enrolled for the start of the fall semester, said Brian Hardin, Notre Dame’s director of football media relations.
This is truly great news for the Irish defensive line. Depth along the defensive line this fall will still be extremely thin with Kuntz, but without him, the Irish would have been in some serious trouble.
Look for Kuntz to slide over to defensive end this fall after spending most of 2007 as the starting nose tackle. With a full spring as the #1 NT, sophomore Ian Williams should be ready to take over the starting role with the undersized Kuntz sliding over the defensive end spot vacated due to the graduation of Trevor Laws.
Frankie V said:
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Jimmy Clausen was added to the 
1. Offensive Line - I don’t think any rationale fan could have a bigger concern for this season than the offensive line. the line was atrocious last year and was about as effective as Major League Baseball’s performance enhancing drug policies during the 90’s. The good news is that four of the five starters are back the year. The bad news is… four of the five starters are back from a unit that allowed 58 sacks in 2007. Honestly, the line can’t be any worse this year, right? Still. This team will only go as far as the line takes it. We have the skill position players to make some big plays, but there won’t be plays to be made if Clausen is on his backside and the running backs can’t find any day light.
Last year Notre Dame honored former coaching great Ara Parseghian with a statue outside Notre Dame Stadium. This year they will be doing the same for the last coach to bring a title home to Notre Dame - Lou Holtz.
Senior nose tackle 
