The Week in News: Brawls, Lady Kickers and Ernest Jones

Welcome to this installment of TWIN. Congrats to Coach Brey and the Notre Dame basketball team for squeaking out that win against USF. It wasn't pretty but it was a W. The squad will now face Louisville in the semis at 9pm EST tonight. Now back to TWIN. Starting elsewhere and ending in South Bend.

Four Arizona football players went to a party last Thursday night and were asked to leave. Then things got interesting.

The players reportedly left and returned with "between 10 and 30" of their "homies."

Is it really that hard to tell the difference between 10 and 30? That number must have come from the Frat boy that was peeking through the blinds after they turned the lights out and told everyone to be quiet.... Anyway, Dick Rod now has his first little mess to clean up.

Temple will reportedly execute their move to the Big East in time for the Owls to play football this fall. The rest of their athletic programs will follow at a later date. It isn't an offseason football week if someone doesn't switch conferences.

Female LSU soccer star Mo Isom is trying out to be a kicker on the football team. This should go over well with the rabid fans in Red Stick. Too bad Melissa Henderson doesn't have any eligibility left.

More after the jump.

Bruce Feldman wrote a really interesting article about what Kevin Sumlin is up to in College Station. The article is Murtaugh long and covers a few different topics. It would seem that high on Sumlin's priority list is making the aTm facilities more like those at Oklahoma State. This is what happens when you take away T. Boone's basketball scholarship after one season TAMU!

It seems like just yesterday Mike Gundy was 40. Now he's just about 45 and feeling old. Gundy discussed his energy level and a few other things in a candid interview earlier this week.

"Honestly, I hope to coach about 10 years. I just don't know if I'll have the energy to do it at 55 and do it the right way. You have to have a lot of energy to perform at a high level at this school. I don't know if anybody wants to hear that or not, but that's a fact."

The band Chicago has apparently dedicated their 2012 tour to Brian Kelly's wife Paqui. The tie in is the band's relationship with the American Cancer Society and Paqui being a two time breast cancer survivor that is friends with the band.

Notre Dame Tight End Tyler Eifert caused a bit of a stir when he referenced recruit Jaylon Smith in a Tweet last week. The minor infraction really isn't a big deal. At all.

BGI ran a story this week about Brian Kelly adding Ernest Jones to the staff this week. While an official announcement has yet to happen it is expected that his role will be something along the lines of "Director of Player Development." Jones has apparently been on campus for a few weeks and interestingly his presence has been pretty low key. I actually like this move by Brian Kelly quite a bit. Jones is a BK guy that has good history with him. He knows how BK likes to operate and this gives Kelly one more trusted assistant in the mix. I could also see Jones sliding into an assistant coaching position down the road.

In the unlikely event that you missed it Miesle and Murtaugh have our 2013 Recruiting Central Widget updated and running. Those two guys set the OFD lab on fire this week making sure that they are all set to bring you everything you need to know about Notre Dame Football recruiting in this cycle. The widget will remain in our left sidebar through the duration of this recruiting cycle and you can expect all things recruiting to be linked there so that you can quickly find them later.

The OFD comment of the week is brought to you by OFD regular commenter fishoutofwater. I briefly considered trying to pull a comment from the ashes of the discussion underneath Meager Reader's Fan Post then waved off. I was drawn back to the one comment that really stuck with me this week. I thought that fish's two cents about numbers along the offensive and defensive lines in the discussion under Miesle's position needs post made a really interesting case.

Here's another slightly simplistic way I think about it:

We can think about the lines in terms of "man years" in the same way we think about "man hours" (i.e., if something takes 3 "man hours" to accomplish, maybe you have one guy do it in 3 hours, maybe you have 3 guys do it in 1 hour, etc.).

If you have 15 o-line players who each have about 2 years playing time in them (since it takes a lot of time to develop them), that gives you 30 "man years" among them, spread over 5 on-field positions. (15 × 2) / 5 = 6 man years per position

If you have 12 d-line players who each have about 3 years playing time in them (or even more), that gives you 36 "man years" among them, spread over 4 (sometimes 3) on-field positions. (12 × 3) / 4 = 9 man years per position

If that equation makes any sense, you can see that 15 o-line players on a roster is, in terms of playing time, "fewer" than 12 d-line players on a roster. (I realize this may not actually make mathematical sense and am open to correcting it or abandoning this way of thinking entirely.)

Man years. I like it.

Best of luck to Coach Brey and the basketball squad against Louisville tonight. Just win baby! Our own 4pointshooter is on site at MSG to bring you all of the details.

Have a great weekend and stay thirsty my friends.