Good Luck Pat Haden

U$C is obviously cleaning house. They gave the school copy of the Bush Heisman back. Thankfully dumped Mike Garrett. While they have appealed the sanctions, giving back the trophy is a clear indication that they accept the punishment. Good for the University.

Pat Haden is a great choice to be the new AD. Rhodes Scholar, law degree, bright, honest, an alum, and clear thinking enough to understand U$C. I’m not sure Mike Garrett ever officially graduated from U$C.

Suspect he will straighten up the Hollywood mentality and issues plaguing a great university.  Wonder how many fights he will get into with Lane Kiffin?

Over the years broadcasters, Pat Haden and Tom Hammond have taken their lumps from the rabid and sometimes maniacal Notre Dame fan base. I like them both. Pat has walked a tight line with his color commentary, knowing who butters his bread and where his approval rating is really coming from. He has at times been brutally honest during his time in the booth and gee, Davie, Willingham, Weis? A lot to be brutal about.

Any guy who every time is on campus, walks down to the Grotto and lights a candle for his momma is OK in my book.

Good Luck Pat.

Go Irish, beat the Trojans.

Tyrone Willingham Has Firm Grasp Of Obvious

Tyrone Willingham has decided to hang up his football cleats.  Suspect he will trade them in for a pair of golf cleats and work on getting that handicap into single digits.  Here is the story.

Terry Bradshaw Is No Fan Of Jimmy Clausen

Well sure, gee things are definitely getting slow around the college football scene.

Dog days of summer and all that it entails are upon us. Man, it’s been hot in West Virginia this year.

So Terry, why not pick on Jimmy Clausen?  Check it out here.  He can’t respond, no one else will/can defend him. He’s alone, just trying to make the Panthers.

Well SAS will come to his defense. Of course, the HUMVEE stretch limo, flashing the high school championship rings and the goofy haircut was stupid at the College Football Hall of Fame. Jimmy will never live that down. Blame it on the family and Clausen Inc. Poor decision, but we have all made them. Wish to he would have gotten his degree from Notre Dame, but the NFL was calling.

Terry is not a paper sports commentary type guy. He has to verbalize and doesn't even do that very well. He’s not the sharpest knive in the drawer. In fact, he’s a jock-idiot and a moron, at least that's my impression when I am forced to listen to him before an NFL game. He just uses hype all the time. Likes to shout, interrupt and direct his opinion to the “Joe-six pack” crowd. Just like Lou Holtz and that Mark Mays character on ESPN. Mutt and Jeff, feeding off each other to the audience and the paycheck. But no one at Fox wants to broadcast fluff, hyperbole, touchy-feely, or ho-hum static. Got to be controversy. Thus Terry is always drawing a line in the sand.

Terry has obviously done well. Bunch of money, fame, recognition, glory, rings, movies, endorsements, trophy wife, (looking at Terry’s picture and Jo Jo’s you can pretty much guess his marriage was going to be trash.)

Anyway, didn’t know that Terry was such an expert on technique and finesse quarterbacking.  If Clausen can hit a wide receiver on a fly pattern over the shoulder or lead and rifle a bullet to the tight end over the middle, who cares if the form is not perfect.  He can lead, he can listen, he can think. 

No, he never won the big game.  Of course neither did Charlie Weis.  Jimmy did take a lot of hits for the team, played hurt and kept his mouth shut with a poor offensive line and a defense that couldn't hold a lead.

Oh well, Terry got his controversy and I got fodder for another post during the "Dead Zone" time of college football.

Ten Ways to Meet Your Football Coach Behind Closed Doors

If you don't daily follow Notre Dame Football, here is the subject of the Post:  :+(                                   

Here is how you learn the functioning and harsh realities of The Office of Residence Life reviews for misbehavior and misconduct.

Here is how you learn if your new head football coach is a disciplinarian or a sucker for a contrite apology for letting the entire coaching staff and Team down.


Apparently, this is now a yearly right of passage for some Notre Dame football, lacrosse, and basketball players.


Listen up, especially all you freshman football players.


1. Go to an underage, underclassman drinking party in South Bend Indiana.


2. Mingle among the other 50-100 Notre Dame students.


3. Park all over the place, private driveways, yards, double park in the streets.


4. Crank up the music so they can hear it in Ann Arbor.


5. Show the girls your newly acquired body from punishing workouts and training, causing them to scream as loud as possible.


6. Yell, holler, sing the Notre Dame Fight Song, and really have a boisterously good time.


7. Decide you can pretty much lick anyone at the party and start walking around looking to prove it. Can’t find anyone? Then pinch the butt of a senior defensive lineman’s girlfriend really, really hard.


8. Break something that makes a lot of noise, a window, throw a chair (preferably with your best friend sitting in it), rip-off some deck railing or throw a bunch of empty glass beer bottles into the street.


9. If the party residence has a swimming pool, all the better , start tackling people into the pool.  Show off your football talent.


10. Start an impromptu touch football game in the front yard. What the heck, it’s only 3 am.


If the sun rises in the East, then rest assured, the South Bend Police and the dreaded Indiana State Excise Police will eventually get enough complaints and will have to abandon their jelly donuts and coffee at the all-night diner and respond. They will not be happy, especially if it is close to shift change and they are going to have to stay over and write reports and book a bunch of morons.

The Fighting Irish Lose Two Freshmen From The Secondary

Chris Badger                                  Spencer Boyd



Which is worse? Losing two freshmen who have never played a down but who you have been recruited for the future OR losing two seasoned players looking to start elsewhere?

Coach Brian Kelly will contemplate the latter. He will have at least one more and possibly two slots in his next recruiting class.

Safety Chris Badger is going on a two-year Mormon Mission and only time will tell if he returns to Notre Dame.

Corner back Spencer Boyd is leaving Notre Dame to be closer to his two year old son in Florida and will play for Skip Holtz at USF in 2011.

Interesting that both Badger and Boyd were early enrollees this past January. SAS is going to appoint someone from the staff to research how the early football enrollment has been working at Notre Dame. 

Charlie Weis was able to convince the administration to go along with what just about every other football program in the country had been doing for years.  Attrition, success on the field and graduation will all be taken into account. This is something that the NCAA should be doing instead of wasting three plus years with the obvious Bush scandal at U$C.  It may be that early enrollment should be added to the recent ban on early high school juniors verbally committing before 1 July of their senior year.

ANNA CHAPMAN TELLS ALL IN HER NOTRE DAME PREDICTIONS FOR 2010!

It took some serious $$ for the phone call to Moscow. We here at SAS are on a tight budget.  Her E-mails and Twitters went unanswered. She was not easy to locate as you can well imagine. Anna was so extremely busy with debriefings and considering some very important and lucrative offers with her agent from Playboy and Penthouse magazines concerning a centerfold and certain exposure.                   

We here at SAS are not talking about exposing spy secrets though. Although, when I finally tracked Anna down, we did have some frank and useful discussions about 2010 predictions for the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

Here is what she predicted, although I’m not sure she knows the difference between the Notre Dame in South Bend and the one in Paris………

In a nutshell Anna quickly stated: 8-4 with obviously a non-BCS bowl appearance.

Losses include; U$C, Stanford, Pittsburgh, Utah.

Her analysis is a bit sketchy but still you have to give the redhead spy her due.

Anna points out:

** Notre Dame lost six games last year by a total of 28 points and no more than 7 points in any one game (U$C and Stanford). Where the heck was the defense?  Notre Dame could be a sleeper team this year she mused.

** New coach, new scheme, new defense, new towels in the locker room.

** Easy (cupcake) schedule.

ARMY Army's coming off a 5-7 season with a win over the SEC's Vanderbilt.

WESTERN MICHIGAN WMU is coming off a 5-7 season, without a good win.

TULSA Tulsa's another team coming off a 5-7 record in 2009. They lost 46-45 to top 25 Houston.

PURDUE Purdue finished 5-7 last year but beat Michigan and Ohio State. Everyone remembers their loss to Notre Dame in the last minute (24-21). They also lost close games to Oregon (38-36) and Michigan State (40-37). This one could be an upset for Purdue.

MICHIGAN Everyone remembers last year's 38-34 road loss to the Wolverines.  Michigan finished 5-7 with tough losses to Iowa (30-28) and Purdue (38-36). They also finished strong with a gutty performance against Ohio State. Rich Rod could have his job on the line this year, especially with some dumb record keeping on practice time. Sanctions and a losing season will be it for Rich.

NAVY Navy finished 10-4 last year with a Texas Bowl win over Missouri. They lost in the last minute to Ohio State (31-27), and some thought 2009 was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the Middies. Anna suggests a couple extra Hail Mary’s in the locker room before the game.

MICHIGAN STATE Sparty finished 6-7 in 2009 with a three point road loss to Notre Dame (33-30). The biggest question for them is if there will be repercussions from last year's infamous rumble, where 11 players were arrested. They have got to stop recruiting street thugs.

BOSTON COLLEGE The Eagles finished 8-5 last year with a 20-16 road loss to Notre Dame. They play Notre Dame tough and hate their Roman Catholic guts.

STANFORD The Cardinal finished 8-5 in 2009 with a close Sun Bowl loss to Oklahoma (31-27). They beat Notre Dame (45-38) at home. Jim Harbough is a nasty but effective coach. He’s not long to stay with the Cardinal. A top tier school is but a year or two away.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA USC finished a disappointing 9-4 last season but managed to beat Notre Dame in South Bend (34-27). The Poodle is gone but the new coach is capable of self-destruction at any time. Watch out for flying body parts.

PITTSBURGH Pitt finished 10-3 in 2009 with a Meineke Car Car Bowl win over North Carolina. They beat Notre Dame in a very close game (27-22) in Pittsburgh.

UTAH Utah went 10-3 in 2009. They went undefeated in 2008 and 2004. They haven't had a losing season since 2002 (5-6). This loss could hurt. ND has trouble from schools from Utah.

Anastasia Kushchenko

Pssssst! Wanna Buy Some Notre Dame Football Tickets?

Thanks to the internet, the buying and selling of Notre Dame Football tickets has become quite a lucrative business. Sure, the same game-day transaction rituals are still quite plentiful in South Bend and on campus.

Get off the Indiana Toll Road at the Notre Dame exit and standing on the shoulders are the inevitable ticket scalpers. Walking on campus to the Book Store you can observe individuals holding fingers up signaling how many tickets they have for sale. Others walk around with cardboard signs reading, “Needs Tickets.” Every college campus has the same time-honored system of obtaining tickets.

The ND administration enforces a no-scalping policy on campus with limited results. Basically, you can resell tickets at face value only. Many people are unaware that it’s always a good idea to try the ticket office when it first opens on game-day, they usually have single tickets and even some seating in pairs.

When eBay entered the scene, like everything else but the kitchen sink, tickets quickly went on sale there. Buyers of course wanted to know the section, row, and seat. Who wants to bid a couple hundred bucks for a nose-bleed seat in the North end zone?  It didn’t take the ND administration long to start matching seats with season ticket holders names on record and revoking buying privileges of the holders. Now it’s section and row advertised only.

A number of years ago, gee it may go back to when the stadium was renovated, I’m dating myself. The athletic department finally purged the season ticket holder list of those long dead and buried individuals going back to Rockne. There were many cases where the family continued to buy the tickets and distribute or sell them accordingly. A number of changes were made to whom among the staff, facility, employees at both Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s could buy tickets, either season or individual.

All this was done to increase the availability of the alumni ticket pool as the number of lottery ticket requests skyrocketed over the years with more and more graduates being added to the pool year after year. I’ve even heard band alumni have a separate lottery and are guaranteed at least one set of home game tickets. same goes for former cheerleaders, monogram club members and former Irish Guard. Of course, football team members, trainers and coaches get extra tickets as well. The Mayor of South Bend even gets 10-12 tickets. It doesn’t take long to go through 80,000+ seats.  Got additional questions?  Here's the Notre Dame Official FAQ.

A random check of eBay (on 7/6) came up with 10 hits for individuals selling 22, 2010 Notre Dame Football season tickets. Bids were generally starting at $1,999.99 for one set of two tickets. There were 519 hits for individual 2010 games, anywhere from one to at least eight tickets per game. The 519 number is somewhat misleading as it included old ND ticket stubs in a number of cases and I couldn’t figure out how to cull them out of the result total.  Still it was a lot of tickets and kickoff is two months away.

A Google search came up with at least 20 websites selling Notre Dame tickets, after that I quit counting. Of course most of these sites sell other sports, teams and different events as well. It’s obviously a big business. I had no earthly idea.  My intention was to count up the 20 site offerings to get a ticket total, but it would have been more trouble than it would be worth just to get a number that changes daily as tickets are sold and others added.  Trust me, it's a bunch.

Of course this year the premo thing is a pair of tickets to the ND vs. UM game AND a parking pass.  Who wants to ride a crowded shuttle to and from the White Lot?  Parking passes are gold dust.

Some of the sites are more elaborate and user friendly than the Notre Dame Ticket Office site.

TicketCity is a good example and so is Ticket Liquidator.  (Note: SAS has no association with these or any individuals or websites selling Notre Dame tickets)

One, "Onlineseats" needs to clean up it’s site, it still lists Charlie Weis as head coach.

This business about us non-alumni becoming a Sorin contributor for $1,500 (see FAQ) and pretty much being guaranteed the right to buy a pair of individual game tickets seems to be true. In past Blue Gray Sky ND ticket survey results showed, it seemed to work. I read the same thing on other ND sites like NDNation's bulletin board.  However, why plop down $1,500 clams for two tickets to ND vs. Utah or WMU? Plus you still have to pay for the tickets!?  You know you are not going to get the Skunkbears or the likes of U$C. Why not spend less on-line and get those U of M tickets instead?  They are out there.  Both my sons got pairs of tickets that way and one is a ND graduate who has had crappy luck in the alumni lottery over the years.

Couple other closing comments…….

It appears to be a good idea to price-shop around. The better seats cost more but you still may end up with something different that you thought or paid for. I would try my luck with a site rather than an individual on eBay. Also, what’s that old saying, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is". 

I've sat in the nose-bleed sections, the wooden bleachers on the field in the South end zone and even in the box seats (ND vs. U$C, thank you very much).  They are all good seats, especially when we win.

If the good fathers at Notre Dame are interested and serious about cleaning up the scalpers and making the Notre Dame visit a family and more memorable affair, here is something else they can do. Spend a little money. Most sites selling Notre Dame season tickets sell them individually by game as well. Buy the cheapest game ticket in the season ticket offering (Normally Navy). Then inform the season ticket holder, they have been dropped from the list. Randomly do the same with some of the individual tickets for sale on eBay. See if that doesn't put a dent in those trying to make a buck. Maybe every five years make half the season ticket holders reapply and have to go into a special lottery to buy season tickets.  The hassle and the sky-rocketing cost will help cull the list.

I’ve always thought that half the reason Notre Dame Stadium is so quiet compared to riotous places like Knoxville and the Big House is because too many casual ND fans get there hands on tickets to attend one game and do it just for the lifetime experience.  All the polite clapping you hear in the stands when Notre Dame makes a first down or Michael Floyd makes a nice catch, well those are the folks.

Anyone have other thoughts?

BTW, is anybody out there reading any of these posts?

Notre Dame Official Colors are Blue and Gold

Notre Dame Official Colors are Blue and Gold

Although Notre Dame's official colors for athletics long have been listed as blue and gold, the color of the Irish home football jersey has switched back and forth between blue and green for more than 50 years.

The origin of school colors can be traced back to the founding of the University. At the time of its founding in 1842, Notre Dame's original school colors were yellow and blue; yellow symbolized the light and blue the truth. However, sometime after the Dome and Statue of Mary atop the Main Building was gilded, blue and gold became the official colors of the University.