The Week In News: Reports, Watch Lists and Video Games

It has been far too long since I last wrote TWIN and I'm a day late. Time to jump right back into the seat.

Starting elsewhere and ending in South Bend.

The Freeh Report was released this week and the interwebs quickly melted. There are so many discussion points surrounding the Penn State scandal that they are almost too numerous to take on. Finding out that your heroes are anything but is a difficult thing. I remember shedding a few tears as a kid when Dwight Gooden got busted for cocaine. How could he do that? It was a tough lesson to learn.

In the realm of "bad things" Gooden's first cocaine bust was a joke compared to this. There were 1,000s of columns and posts written about the Penn State scandal this week by the mainstream media and bloggers alike. Bobby Bowden even took the time to suggest to tWWL that Penn State remove Paterno's statue. He's right. One of my favorite bloggers, Scipio Tex, posted his thoughts on the report and the conversation surrounding it. Pray for the victims and their families. Moving on to less tragic subjects.

On a significantly more positive note Chris Brown wrote a fantastic post on the Air Raid offense this week. All X's and O's geeks need to go check it out. I also highly recommend that you buy his book if you haven't already. It is fantastic.

Gregg Doyel sat down with Lane Kiffin this week and came away with a man crush. How perfect.

More after the jump.

College Football award watch list mania is underway. These lists really are a little bit ridiculous. Why not just say that every player is on their respective watch list? Are you not eligible to win if you weren't on the watch list in the preseason? The Notre Dame players that have been included thus far are below. Manti Te'o and Tyler Eifert make multiple appearances.

Rimington (Center)- Braxton Cave

Lott (Defensive Player)- Manti Te'o

Maxwell (Best Player)- Tyler Eifert, Cierre Wood

Bednarik (Best Defensive Player)- Manti Te'o

Mackey (Tight End)- Tyler Eifert

Groza (Kicker)- No representation

Guy (Punter)- No representation

Nagurski (Defensive Player)- Manti Te'o, Kapron Lewis-Moore

Outland (Interior Lineman)- Braxton Cave, Zach Martin

Thorpe (Defensive Backs)- No representation

Did I miss anybody?

Moving on.

NAIA Lindenwood University took ridiculous looking playing surfaces to a whole new level. This should be against the rules. Seriously.

The Honey Badger isn't cocky at all. This week he took to the Twitterz and called himself "the best defensive player in college football." Nice. He has since removed the Tweet.

Chuck Weis told the Kansas City Star this week that former Irish QB Brady Quinn would have started for him in the NFL. Of course he would have. Hopefully things work out for Quinn with the Chiefs.

Maker's Mark is going to put a photo of Charlie Strong on a limited edition bottle. I wonder if we can get BK's mug on a bottle of Jameson or Bushmills? You Photoshop types should put together some prototypes and post them in the comments. That could be a good time.

Speaking of CBK und.com hung a mic'd up feature on the Notre Dame front man this week. This one follows him around during spring practice. I'm a big fan of these und.com videos. Great work by @oaknd1 and his crew.

On Monday John Heisler confirmed that Jack Swarbrick has been discussing an Orange Bowl tie in for Notre Dame with the ACC. Hopefully this gets locked up shortly. I will then be very curious to see what 2nd and 3rd tier Bowl Game relationships the Brick is able to line up.

NCAA Football 13' hit the shelves this week and prompted several discussions. Here on OFD CW got everyone going with his hypothetical piece on RGIII as the ND quarterback in 2011 and Murtaugh followed that up by starting a pretty fantastic discussion about all time favorite video games in 5WF. Both posts made me miss playing video games quite a bit, especially the NCAA Football series. There was a time in my life when I would take a few days off after the new NCAA Football came out just to fix the ND Roster, tweak the player equipment to make sure every little detail was right, then roll through the first couple of seasons of my dynasty. Mark my video game retirement as one more thing in my "being a grown up sucks" column.

The guys over at HLS got in on the action as ND Tex put together a post on his NCAA 13' simulation of the upcoming Notre Dame season. He ended up with some pretty interesting results.

Elsewhere in the Notre Dame blogosphere Keith Arnold wrote a great piece on the current Notre Dame recruiting machine and the always entertaining Subway Domer continued his dominance of the ND Twitterverse.

Speaking of Twitter if you don't already follow One Foot Down on Twitter or Facebook you should. Both are great ways to keep up with everything that goes on around here.

The comment of the week came under the commitment post on Alex Anzalone. I try to leave the staff out of these but Alstein dropped a comment that was too enjoyable to pass up. Have a great Sunday.

Best DC ever...