See UND-USC in VIP Style; Domers to Play in Chicago Tournament

Notre Dame football fans will be interested in hearing about the Notre Dame Monogram Club’s football raffle, a contest that could give you all the VIP treatment at the upcoming Notre Dame-USC football game.  The raffle is $100 per ticket, but you could win a VIP prize pack, which includes hotel accommodations, tickets to the luncheon, pregame hospitality tent, press box seats, the Friday night reception and the VIP parking section pass. Go here to see how you can get your raffle tickets. Or, if you don’t win, you could always go to StubHub.com to get some seats at the game.

In other news, the Notre Dame men’s basketball team will play in the Chicago Invitational Challenge in late November. Among the schools they might play on their way to the tournament championship are Northwestern, St. Louis and Iowa State. Games with Northwestern and Iowa State are already in the works. If you’re interested in getting tickets, you ought to check out theStubHub page for Notre Dame basketball tickets, as this is a great opportunity to see the Irish in action. The Domers have plenty of fans in the Chicago area who would love to come out and see a game.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Notre Dame Hockey Player Selected in NHL Draft

Notre Dame freshman hockey star Kyle Palmieri was selected in the first round of the NHL’s Entry Draft this past weekend.  Palmieri, a right wing, was picked up by the Anaheim Ducks in the first round, number 28 overall.  Ian Cole, a former Irish player who was selected in the 2007 NHL Draft, was the only other first-round selection in Notre Dame Hockey History. Palmieri was a member of the US National Under 17 and Under 18 teams for the past two years, where he impressed coaches and scouts with his offensive instincts and puck-handling skills. According toUND.com’s website, U.S. Development Program head coach Ron Rolston said of the young hockey star:

“He’s put together and real strong on his skates. He’s got good speed and he takes it to the areas he needs to score goals. He does everything for us and he’s a lot of fun to watch.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Notre Dame’s Kerri Hanks an ESPY Award Finalist

Attention Notre Dame sports fans! You can help earn Kerri Hanks, Notre Dame women’s soccer sensation, an ESPY Award. All you have to do is go HERE and vote for her to win an ESPY Award for the best women’s college athlete of the past year. Kerri sure deserves it, so get out the vote for Kerri. Everybody do your part.

In case you were unaware of Kerri’s soccer skills, let’s break this down. She has won the Herman Trophy, the equivalent of the Heisman Trophy or the Naismith National Player of the year, two times in her four years of playing soccer at Notre Dame, and she has four times been selected as a soccer All-American. Do you know the last person to accomplish those things? Only a little soccer player by the name of Mia Hamm. Ever heard of her? Kerri Hanks is going to be the next great American soccer star, and you can help build her national recognition with an ESPY.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Charlie Weis Special to Air on Comcast SportsNet

Head football coach Charlie Weis will be the subject of a Comcast SportsNet special this Sunday called The Foundation of Charlie Weis. The television program, due to air exclusively ion Comcast SportsNet this Sunday at 4:30 CDT, will focus on the off-the-field life of one of the nation’s highest profile coaches.

As some of you Notre Dame fans may know, there’s a lot more to Charlie Weis than just his coaching responsibilities. He’s also a dedicated father, husband and charitable superstar. Charlie and his wife Maura started Hannah and Friends (HannahAndFriends.org), a charity set up by the Weis family to help other families with special needs children get the care, education and support they need. Hannah, Charlie and Maura’s daughter, was born with developmental difficulties. In raising her, they realized that they should be doing more to help other families with similar problems but dissimilar resources. CharlieWeis is a man with a big heart, and it will be on full display this weekend. Check it out!

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish football tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Awesome Notre Dame Online Auctions

If you’re a big Notre Dame fan we’re sure you’ve been to the UND.com online store, where you can get everything from Fighting Irish shot glasses to Notre Dame blankets, sweatshirts and even old-timey leather football helmets. But did you realize that there’s an Online Auction for cool Notre Dame stuff? Check it out!

Here at the Notre Dame Online Auction you can get lots of exclusive things that you might find on other online auction sites, like eBay. Most of the stuff you see here is one-of-a-kind, things like signed helmets, signed jerseys and memorabilia holders. Looking over the auction, some things jump out at us. Here are some of the best things we saw:

  • The highest priced thing right now is the Legends Signed Football  Helmet, which was signed by guys like Joe Montana, Lou Holtz, Joe Theismann, Rudy Ruettiger and a bunch of other awesome players. It’s going for $600.00 right now.
  • Some of the lower priced things include Used Locker-room Nameplates. If you had a son who played football for the team, buying his nameplate for $10.00 would be an awesome gift.
  • We found a Tom Zimikowski boxing glove. You remember Tom? He was a safety drafted in 2008. Well few people know that he’s also a very good boxer, and was briefly a pro boxer.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Smyth Recieves Honor; Hockey Schedule Announced

Graduating senior distance runner Patrick Smyth has been selected to be a member of the ESPN the Magazine/CoSIDA Cross Country/Track and Field Academic All-American First Team. That’s a long title, but basically it means that Patrick was as fast as he was smart while he was at Notre Dame.  He set the Irish record in the 10,000 meters and finished 4th in the country in the NCAA National Meet a few weeks ago. He finished his studies at Notre Dame with a degree in History and a 3.75 GPA. Congratulations, Patrick Smyth.

In other news… the men’s hockey team has announced their schedule for the next season of play. The Irish were one of the best college hockey teams in the nation last season until they tragically were upset in the early rounds of the NCAA Tournament.  They are expected to again be one of the nation’s top teams when they return to play. Their first game is against the Alabama-Huntsville Chargers on Friday, October 9th. Notre Dame will play other top-tier teams at home, like Boston College, Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State. Stay tuned for more hockey information.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Dennis Dodd Picks the Independents

If you head on over to CBSsports.com you can check out a nice little Independents preview of the coming NCAA football season.  Basically Dennis Dodd has been going through the major football conferences and calling it how he sees it, ranking the teams in terms of strength and taking a few predictions about the way they’ll fare this year.

Dodd goes into a little rambling monologue on Joe Paterno and his objection to having Notre Dame join the Big Ten. Like many fans out there, Dodd is in favor of the expansion of the Big Ten, but thinks that Notre Dame is the most logical addition. Unlike some of the expansion critics, he sees how this arrangement could be mutually beneficial to both the conference and the Domers.

As far as his projections go, Dodd seems to think that the Irish are capable of becoming an elite football team this year. All the ducks are in a row, and so long as Jimmy Clausen comes out firing like he did at the end of last season, UND football fans will have a team that wins in the double digits and has BCS Bowl talk all season long.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Meet Touchdown Jesus!

If you’ve purchased and used many tickets to Notre Dame football games, you are probably well aware of who Touchdown Jesus is. But perhaps you’re unfamiliar with this piece of Notre Dame lore. Let’s see if we can’t enlighten you Notre Dame fans a bit.

Touchdown Jesus is actually a mural created by Millard Sheets entitles “The Word of Life.”  The artwork is painted atop the Notre Dame library, the Hesburgh Library, and is one of the most recognizable landmarks on the Notre Dame campus. The thing that really makes the mural famous, though, is the fact that you can see it from inside the Notre Dame football stadium. After the stadium was expanded the last time, it became harder to see, but you can still get a good look at it. It’s called “Touchdown” Jesus because the image shows the resurrected Christ with his hands raised upwards above his head, the same signal a ref might give to signify a touchdown or made field goal in a game of football. And now you know… the rest of the story.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets, go to StubHub.com.

More from the Luke Harangody Decision

You can see a transcript of the entire press conference that Luke Harangody and coach Mike Brey had with the media during the decision-making spectacle that Big Luke had on Monday. It’s at UND.com. Some of the quotes were interesting. You should read the whole thing and you might get a good idea about the processs that Luke went through to come to the decision. Here’s his opening statement:

“Well, first of all, I’m just glad to be here back. It feels great. The first person I see when I walk in is Zach Hillesland, so it makes my decision feel even better. It was a decision as Coach talked about that came down to me, just wanted to be a kid again, another year of college, and definitely I look back and didn’t want to go out on the year we had last year. We have high expectations for this year with Ben and Scott coming in, so it’s an exciting time for me and the University going into next season.”

After a couple of questions, Luke came out with this one. Here at the Notre Dame Blog think that it’s the highlight of the whole interview:

“But when it came down to it, I realized that my time wasn’t done here yet.”

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Should Notre Dame Football Players Be Paid?

The Notre Dame Blog was skimming the college football headlines when it came across this interesting article at CollegeFootballNews.com via FOXsports.com. In case you haven’t been following college sports for a while, there’s been an interesting debate going on for years. The question is this: Given all the money and fame and visibility that the best college athletes, particularly football and basketball players, give their schools, should they be paid to play for their universities? Although tradition holds that college athletes ought to remain amateur, only paid in scholarships or sports stipends, it seems like more and more the issue of paying players comes up, especially considering some of the things that have gone on recently with USC hoops and Alabama football.

What do you think, Notre Dame sports fans? Do you think college athletes should be paid to play? If so, how much? Would the money come from the school budget? Would tuition subsidize player salaries, or would the money come from athletic endowments and other, outside sources? Who gets paid, every NCAA athlete, or just football and basketball players? Would this work at a private institution like Notre Dame easier than at a public institution like Michigan? The debate goes on and on… just something to think about, Irish fans. We’ll see you back here tomorrow.

To get Notre Dame Fighting Irish tickets, go to StubHub.com.


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