This has been quite a week. The simultaneous conclusion of Notre Dame spring football and the NFL draft left me with a small mountain of things I wanted to get through.
That was further complicated by the often time consuming demands of what you might call everyday life. I am still scouring my latest spreadsheets of nerdery on the NFL draft in a futile attempt to make some kind of sense out of it all. In the mean time here is the rapid fire version of the week in news.
Lane Kiffin is laying down the law at USC. The thought of Lane Kiffin brings many things to mind. Disciplinarian is not one of them.
"It's more tightly run now. Businesslike, more serious," linebacker Malcolm Smith said. "We have to clean the locker room -- seriously -- now. They run us if you miss a class. There's no room for error. They've tightened the ship up."
Yeah that sounds really hard core. In other USC news the Pac-10 announced that "a coach broke rules." Strangely the incident sounds a lot like Pete Carroll using Pete Rodriguez as a special teams consultant in 2008. Interesting that he wasn't actually named as the perp.
Steve Smith had Jimmy Clausen deliver a six pack of Cactus Cooler to minicamp. I used to love that stuff when I was a kid. The only thing better was the combo of a Big Red and a Goodart's Peanut Pattie.
Is Missouri heading to the Big Ten? Barking Carnival has the latest on the superconference realignment rumor mill. While it is obviously a hot topic in the mainstream media I'm not convinced that anyone really knows anything. Andy Staples seems to think that Notre Dame is actually the linchpin in the whole thing and his perspective is actually pretty interesting. In a related piece UCONN Head Coach Randy Edsall chimed in and said that the Big East should give Notre Dame the ultimatum about joining the conference for football. Call those fringe benefits of doing things like losing to UCONN on Senior Day. It still hurts. A lot.
On the Barking Carnival note, we are part of a large family of sites here on the FanTake network that cover a variety of college programs and other sporting topics. I highly recommend that you click around in the activity column on the right side bar. There is no better place to spend some time on a weekend morning or while at work for that matter. Scipio Tex put together a nice roundup from around the network this week that is also a great launching pad to take a look around. If nothing else you will enjoy Scipio's work. He is scary smart, uber informed and always throws in a nice dash of random. He is likely sitting in the Pentagon right now steering Predator feeds onto Bin Laden's Cave while simultaneously eating migas, reciting the classics and pondering the playbook of Greg Davis. In reality I think it is more likely that he is actually the guy in the Dos Equis commercials.
You also might want to check out the Tortilla Retort. Dedfischer is back from the Texas Tech Red & Black game and reporting that Tubs will win 9 during his inaugural season in Lubbock. He also managed to squeeze in a Gettysbug reference. I like it.
On to Notre Dame news. Coach Kelly is now being referred to as the "Anti Weis." How original.
Notre Dame unveiled "the shirt" for 2010. It is actually low key and Kelly Green. UHND has the scoop. I wonder if the student section wearing green will prompt Coach Kelly to break out the green jerseys at least once? I'll be curious to see how he decides to use them period.
Miss the Notre Dame Blue-Gold game? Whether you just want to re-watch the highlights or have yet to see Brian Kelly's offense in action under the Dome here is a glimpse.
Coach Kelly and the staff have been absolutely on fire picking up commitments this week. Kelly's ability to recruit with the big boys was a major discussion point amongst the fan base at the time of his hiring and it is great to see results like these before he has even coached a game. Subway Domer has a great wrapup.
And then there is the small matter of the Notre Dame Jock Jams video that went viral across the blogosphere yesterday. I am 35 years old and have been a Notre Dame fan since I was a kid. Hence, my ratio of pleasure vs. pain as a Notre Dame fan is seriously in the negative. As for this video I just don't get it. HLS has a quality diatribe on the matter.