Right Kinda Cracks

Let’s start with a positive before I start bitching. Michael Mayer.

More good news! We won’t have to come up with a new name for this exchange for at least another four years.

ND’s faculty members didn’t buy all of their available tickets. I guess more than a few don’t want tickets that can’t be resold. That’s something to remember when we return to merely abnormal times.

Ian Book finished with a good stats line - 19/31, 263 yards, a TD, and an interception; but I’m dismayed by the number of passes he missed because of poor throwing mechanics. That’s the kind of fundamental activity that coaches are supposed to fix.

Dismayed but not surprised. Rees, Golson, Zaire, Kizer, Wimbush, Book... All of them peaked quickly and failed to improve as upperclassmen. Common theme - erratic accuracy because of poor throwing mechanics.

"What I had said to Ian on the sideline was he has to make some of the easy plays, the layups, if you will," Brian Kelly said after the game. "He missed a screen and he missed an easy drive route and he did some really good things, too.” Maybe that’s the problem… too much telling guys what to do and not enough time teaching how to do it consistently.

I wonder if Book has been told that he’s allowed to throw the ball out of bounds instead of taking a three yard loss when he’s flushed out of the pocket. Knowing the rule, he wouldn’t take the loss time after time, would he?

NBC finally put someone in the Booth with Tirico who doesn’t piss me off.

Braden Lenzy’s number choice was a harbinger.

Nebraska gets the first Pinkel Award of 2020 for playing nobody in the opener… just like it has since 2015.

I saw this week’s Hardin Award nominee (citing a nominally true but worthless statistic) as I channel surfed while waiting for the NFL opener to get to the football part of football. Stopping at the WNBA game for a minute to see how the ND women were doing, I heard the game announcers heaping praise on Crystal Dangerfield for having the sixth best rookie scoring average in the last ten seasons. Sixth. Out of ten.

The stubble beard almost makes Tommy Rees look like a grown-up.

Jack Swarbrick has done many puff interviews since he became Notre Dame’s athletics director, but Saturday’s sit-down at halftime is the new puffery gold standard.

Interesting stat: The crowd was the third-smallest to watch a game in Notre Dame Stadium since it was built in 1930. Only the fourth quarters of the 2003 USC and Florida State had fewer fans in the stadium.

Will the fans start chanting, “ACC! ACC! ACC!” if the Irish are leading as the fourth quarter clock winds down next week?

Kayo