Welcome to TWIN. It has been another busy week here at OFD and our lights out team of writers have been all over it despite the fact that Murtaugh gave his phalanges a week off for some much needed rejuvenation. I suspect that he will be on fire when he returns to duty next week.
This week we watched the Notre Dame Women's Basketball Team take an admirable shot at the National Title and the news continued to flow from Spring Football Practice.
The rest of the country has also provided us with several stories this week that merit some discussion. Let's get to it.
Starting elsewhere and ending in South Bend.
Arkansas Head Coach Bobby Petrino had a rough week. Petrino wrecked his motorcycle on Sunday Night and showed up for a press conference on Tuesday after being released from the hospital rocking a neck brace and looking pretty rough. As of Tuesday afternoon it was nothing but well wishes for the Arkansas front man. Then on Thursday news broke that he had a female passenger on the back of his hog when he took a tumble.
By Thursday Night he was issuing an apology for having a "previous inappropriate relationship." I assume he means the relationship ended when he lost all cool points with 25 year old Jessica Dorrell when he crashed his bike with her on the back. Turns out that Petrino had actually just hired Dorrell to be the Student-Athlete Development Coordinator for the football program on March 28th. Petrino is now on administrative leave. Where is Gus Malzahn when you need him? Soooooooooeeeeeeeeee Hogs!
More after the jump.
Sunday was also April Fools' Day and several humorous stories flowed across the blogosphere but the one that I enjoyed the most was Bill Connelly's season preview for the Eastern State Timberwolves. The post is based on the fictitious major college football squad from the movie The Program. That's one of those movies that is so bad that it's good.
Somehow this one fell off my radar last week. Bret Bielema has gone back to the well and acquired himself another wayward ACC quarterback. This time is it former Turtle Danny O'Brien. Since O'Brien will have already graduated when he shows up he can play right away and has two years of eligibility remaining.
Over at the mother ship Jason Kirk put together a master list of all the must watch college football games of the 2012 season. This is pure goodness that makes me miss football season even more. Notre Dame made the list for matchups against Navy, Michigan, Stanford and Oklahoma.
Mike Leach is still colorful if nothing else. Our boys at Coug Cener have the transcript of him breaking down who would win in a battle to the death between Pac-12 mascots.
Jim Moore: In a battle to the death among Pac-12 mascots, which animal or person wins?
Mike Leach: The Cougar absolutely. Let's go through this a little bit. A cougar obviously kills a duck and a beaver. A cougar against a husky ... that's pretty well a massacre. A cardinal or whatever: I don't know exactly what a cougar would either climb it or I wouldn't want to think of what else he'd do on it. Now Golden Bears could be kinda tough. I think you'd want to be a little fast and loose with them. You don't want to get caught by that bear. The Ute ... you gotta dodge some arrowheads, but I still like the Cougar. Buffalo ... I think the buffalo would be pretty tough to beat. Wildcat: Cougars are bigger than wildcats . Sun Devils, that's mythical anyway. Trojans, they may be as well. I think you gotta look out for the Bruins and the Buffalo. The Golden Bear, Bruin and Buffalo .. I think those are the tough ones.
On a one degree of separation note, four Houston area recruits tried to find their way to Lubbock, Texas last week to attend the Texas Tech spring game. The kids hopped in a car and took off for what should have been a 550 mile drive to the Hub City. The only problem? They forgot to take a navigator. The four recruits didn't realize how lost they were until they ended up in Nacodoches. Rumor has it that Leslie Miles called all four of them up and offered them scholarships moments after hearing the story.
Miami is apparently in the market for some offensive linemen.
via media.zenfs.com
I'm thinking that the Notre Dame front seven would have a good time against a few 6'1" 230 pound guys.
Still smarting from getting pantsed in the Orange Bowl Dabo Swinney took a minute this week to toss out an idea about Spring Football Games that I really like. Why not scrimmage against another team?
Arizona State is looking at putting a gigantic canopy over the top of Sun Devil Stadium. Interesting.
The inevitable changes to the BCS surfaced again this week as USA Today broke a story disclosing four separate options that are on the table. It is worth checking out the full 2 page document. Changes are expected to take place for the 2014 season. The options include the following.
1. BCS with adjustments. The current format with some minor tweaks that include reducing conference tie-ins to specific games, reducing the total number of teams eligible from a single conference and playing the games closer to January 1st.
2. Original "plus one" where two teams are selected to play after the bowl games are complete.
3. Four Team Event with seeded semi-finals and a championship game. There are multiple options on the table for this one with assorted options for home fields, neutral sites and the inclusion of existing bowl games.
4. Four Team Plus which is essentially #3 with an extra ridiculous clause where the Pac-12 and Big Ten Champs would still meet in the Rose Bowl even if one or both of them were among the top four teams. This plan would essentially bring teams #5 and 6 into the mix and the title game matchup would be selected from 2 of the 3 winners. If this happens there will be a revolt.
Some additional language at the bottom of the document indicates that a 10-20 team "event" is being considered wherein matchups in multiple bowl games would be selected by committee in an effort to put together "evenly matched and attractive contests that make geographical sense for the participants."
The burning question that this document doesn't address is just how these participants are going to be chosen. That's the question that will potentially make all of the difference for Notre Dame.
As we continue to make a push to try and cover Notre Dame Football and the rest of the sports on campus there really isn't anything that we haven't already discussed this week.
Our own 4pointshooter was all over the Women's Basketball win over UCONN and subsequent loss to Britney Griner.
We have sorted through all of the practice reports, the results from Tuesday's Pro Day, and celebrated the commitment of Washington D.C. Cornerback Devin Butler.
So I took another good look around the interwebs for some other perspectives on some of the things that we have already discussed and found a couple of things that you all might appreciate.
Keith Arnold wrote a good piece on the Aaron Lynch drama. His last paragraph is particularly good.
Have you all seen these ND Stadium concept drawings? Miesle dropped one shot in the comments yesterday.
Who is coming to the spring game? We will have more details to follow next week but we hope to get the chance to meet some of you in person before the game. Bonus recs if you are wearing an OFD T-Shirt.
The Comment of the week is brought to you by OFD regular commenter alstein. There were a lot of great comments this week but I really enjoyed this one from him under the April 4th practice report.
That 3 v 3 video damn near brings tears to my eyes...
I love football so much. I wish I was better at it.
What did I miss?
Have a great Easter weekend!