Notre Dame Interested in Joining Football Conference?
Are the Irish ready to finally join a football conference? Will Notre Dame be forced to seek refuge from an always-brutal schedule and take part in a conference’s schedule? Some say yes. In fact, it’s one of the hottest rumors in the college sports section of the Truth and Rumors side of FanNation, a sub-site of SportsIllustrated.com.
Apparently if the Irish have another losing season, the pressure to join a legitimate conference will be too high to resist. As you probably know, the Irish are, and have been, an independent football school for years. Staying outside of a conference allows them to have a more flexible schedule, and because the fan base for this school is so high, many people like the idea that Notre Dame can travel all over to play.
Of course, this is all speculation. The SI.com page has a link to the actual source of the article, the New York Times, so you can judge for yourself. But if this does happen, the questions boggle one’s mind.
Will Notre Dame join the Big Ten with some of their traditional football rivals? Will they go to the Big East, where their other athletic teams participate? Or will they go to another Midwest conference, like C-USA? Too early to start thinking about all of this stuff, say we.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Where Did the Irish Go in the NFL Draft?
As you are certainly aware, the NFL Draft took place over the weekend. There were a couple Irish players who were eligible to be taken by pro teams, but unless you stayed by your TV for three straight days, you probably missed where all of the Notre Dame players went. You can check out this page at CBSsports.com to see there Notre Dame athletes landed in the draft, but I’ll break down the basics right here.
- John Carlson – 2nd Round, Seattle Seahawks
- Trevor Laws – 2nd Round, Philadelphia Eagles
- Tom Zbikowski – 3rd Round, Baltimore Ravens
- John Sullivan – 6th Round, Minnesota Vikings
So there you have it. All of the best players from last year’s class went pro for one team or another. But which Class of 2008 Notre Dame football player will make the best pro? Only time will tell. Carlson and Laws clearly have the best chance of starting next season, but most likely all of these new NFL rookies will have to wait for some time on the bench before they can get substantial playing time.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to Stubhub.com.
Rutgers, Notre Dame Can’t Close Deal
The NFL Draft is probably the first thing on your football agenda as you begin your Monday, but we have to make sure that a little piece of important news (at least it’s important to those of us who take an active interest in Notre Dame football tickets) doesn’t fall through the cracks.
The news? Apparently the Notre Dame-Rutgers series, which was scheduled to be a one-and-one game series (meaning that each team got to have a game at their home site once every two years) has been dumped in the trash. The people negotiating the deal wanted Rutgers to play their home games off campus at a larger stadium, such as Foxboro or Giants Stadium. However, Rutgers wasn’t having it, so they nixed the deal. There’s no saying whether the Fighting Irish and Scarlet Knights won’t work something out later, but for now, we won’t get to see these teams play each other past 2010.
This is a real bummer for fans of the Fighting Irish in the Northeast, because I’m sure there would have been lots of people wanting to fill the seats in New York or New England to see Notre Dame play closer to their home.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Lots Going on with Notre Dame Baseball, Soccer, Lacrosse
The Notre Dame athletics department is not slowing down simply because basketball and football season are over. On the contrary, the Irish have plenty of stuff going on in the athletics department. Let’s start with the most boring.
The soccer team is going to have a new stadium next year. A huge donation came in from a charitable donor, so the groundbreaking for the new field and stadium will be this weekend. The place should be all finished by about this time next year. You’re going to want to get some soccer tickets to see the games from a new vantage point.
In other, more exciting news, the lacrosse team is set to play Ohio State on Sunday. The game will pit the No. 7-ranked Irish against the No. 9-ranked Buckeyes. Should be a good one. These teams are natural rivals, and they could be playing a preview for the national title game. Sound like a good time to you?
Finally, the Notre Dame baseball team is getting ready for a weekend series with St. Johns. The game is important because the 12-3 Irish are just one game ahead of the Red Storm at the top of the Big East standings. Although the season is far from over, giving up the No. 1 spot in the standings is never good. So get out there and support the Notre Dame Fighting Irish baseball team at Frank Eck Stadium.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Notre Dame Ready for a Season with Great Wideouts
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team is already counting on a better passing game in 2008-’09. As you might remember, the Irish had their struggles on the offensive side of the ball, but most of them were with the running game. By the end of the year QB Jimmy Clausen had the passing game running, well, perhaps not on all cylinders, but on a few of them, for sure. After some spring practices, there’s apparently even more optimism, because the receiver corps are looking good.
Said offensive coordinator Michael Haywood, “We keep track of everything. We keep track of every play that’s made, every catch that is made by a wide, every ball that is deflected, every ball that is dropped, every ball that is unaccepted, and every ball that is incomplete, for whatever reason.”
The Irish have senior David Grimes, and a couple of younger wide receivers in Duval Kamara and Golden Tate, both sophomores. Notre Dame will miss John Carlson, the tight end who will likely be taken in the NFL Draft coming up. So what do you think? Do you think the Irish will have a formidable passing game this next season. Something tells us that they will. Now, we have to focus on the running game…
To get Notre dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Trevor Laws – Where Will He Go in the Draft?
Check out this picture of Trevor Laws, one of the nation’s top defensive lineman NFL Draft prospects. He’d do a wonderful job on almost any NFL team in the league. He’s big and mean and can clog up the lanes, disrupt passes and pressure the quarterback with the very best. But where will he wind up in the NFL draft?
A link on the page will take you here, to a mini sheet on Laws. Read up on the player, but if you got tickets to the games last year, you probably already know some of what the pro teams are looking at right now. SI.com says that they think he’ll be taken in the middle of the second round.
Why won’t he get taken earlier? Like it or not, 6’0’’ 305 lbs is not that big for an NFL defensive lineman. Most quarterbacks and O-Ts will be bigger than Laws. However, as you probably already know, Laws makes up his lack of size and ability with an intensity and focus that usually allows him to get the edge on players who aren’t as non-stop as he is in the trenches.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Check out Spring Football Highlights and Lacrosse Rankings
Notre Dame sports are nowhere near dormant right now. In fact, there is a lot going on, even though it is neither football nor basketball season. If you go to the UND official site you’ll be able to see some of the highlights from the annual Spring Game, called the Blue-Gold Game. This is a fun event for everybody who can get tickets, because it’s basically more festival than actual scrimmage. The offense gets a chance to play against the defense, and you get to see a lot of players out there who you might not see otherwise. Rudy would have played in this game. That being said, there are some good plays to check out, but I’d refrain from making too much out of it in terms of predicting how the actual season will go. There’s still a long off season.
Oh, and as promised in the title, we’re going to give you a cool rankings sheet for college lacrosse. As you might already know, the Irish are one of the best teams in the country. Although this rankings list is a bit old, it will show you that Notre Dame is pretty freaking sweet in the world of college lacrosse. Check it out and then pound your chest if you’re a Notre Dame fan.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Irish Get No. 5 Ranking from Andy Katz… Plus ND Assistant Goes to Toledo
The Notre Dame men’s basketball team just got a huge compliment. Andy Katz, one of the most famous college basketball writers for ESPN, has listed the Irish as his preseason No. 5-ranked team. Notre Dame is sandwiched between No. 4 Kansas (the returning national champions) and No. 6 West Virginia (a Big East rival of theirs). There have been some good rankings out already, and Andy Katz is very well respected in the NCAA basketball world. Could they make it all the way to the o. 5 seed in the actual AP Top 25 Poll? We’ll see.
In other news, the Irish have just lost an assistant. Gene Cross was an assistant on the bench for the Irish for a few years, but before that he worked with several other top college programs, including Virginia and DePaul. Now he’ll get the reins of the whole Toledo team. Although they have not been to the NCAA Tournament in over 20 years, we wish Toledo and Cross the very best. Good luck, and keep in touch with the Notre Dame Blog, big guy.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Is South Bend Titletown, USA?
Have you checked out the ESPN feature about Titletown, USA. Many towns in America claim that their unofficial nickname is Titletown, USA. So many, in fact, that people have really, really hard fast opinions on the subject. There are cases for many cities across the nation. But there are more questions than answers. Do you have to have multiple titles in multiple sports? Are we counting minor sports? Do you have to have a large population, or can Titletown be more accurately given to the town with the most titles per capita- thus giving the advantage to smaller towns. While New York might have all those Yankee titles, they still have a population that’s way to great to be called a town of titles.
So that leads us to our question: Is South Bend, IN Titletown, USA? There is an argument to be made here. The town of South Bend is pretty small, and mostly based around the university. And the Irish have won many national championships, especially in football. The problem is that national championships in college football are subjective. They did not award a national champion in the early days when Knute Rockne was the mayor of Titletown. So the discussion goes.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.
Check out where the Notre Dame Draftables Rank
The NFL Draft is coming up, so there is no lack for predictions and analysis from every different perspective about what teams will pick who and when. It can be a bit overwhelming. That’s why we suggest you break into the analysis market by going to the trusty folks at ESPN.com. While you can’t read a lot of the “expert” analysis about the players without an “Insider” pass, you can get a good first take on what the field of recruits looks like. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish have several players on the market, among them are: Trevor Laws, John Carlson, Tom Zbikowski, John Sullivan, Geoff Price, Joseph Brockington and Ambrose Wooden.
The take on the graduating class from Notre Dame seems to be that tight end John Carlson is going to be the top player picked from the Irish. He’s ranked somewhere in the top five at his position, and if you were a fan of the team last year, you know that he was scrutinized big-time for everything that he did or didn’t do. The word on the street seems to be that J.C. is big enough and mean enough to get into an NFL roster, but some teams might be skeptical about the dropped passes his senior year, as well as his injuries.
To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.