Morning Wood

Happy Blue-Gold Day! Just a couple of quick hits before we here at OC Domer get going on a day full of lacrosse and Angels Baseball.

The BIG NEWS is that Cierre Wood, listed by many as the nation's top running back prospect for next year's recruiting class, verbally committed to Coach Weis and Notre Dame during his unofficial visit to campus this morning. If this is true, it would be a HUGE way to kick off the new recruiting cycle (no disrespect to young Jake Golic, who already committed but who doesn't carry the same cache'). Hopefully the reports are true, and this will get the ball rolling!

The other "news" is the unveiling of the "The Shirt" for 2008. Background on the shirt is here. Best pictures of the shirt are here.

I just have a hard time getting into "The Shirt." Who's the flabby, slow-looking white guy? Is he supposed to be a kicker? A symbol, perhaps, that our kicking game will improve to just mediocre (instead of God-awful) this year? You couldn't throw a picture of a determined David Bruton on there? Or a pumped up Robert Hughes? Or a snarling Coach Tenuta? Sheesh.

ND will rise again? Sounds like "the South will rise again", which is a sad joke because folks in the South have been vowing to "rise again" for 150 years, without success. (There's a great "South will rise again" parody at TheOnion.com which I can't get out of my head when I look at The Shirt).

"The Shirts" were better when they were done by the students, spontaneously, and when they were for specific big games and had a real edge to them (usually involving a nasty insult to the opposing team). It meant something to have "the shirt" that was made for a big USC game, or a Miami game, or an important Michigan contest. The Shirt today is so darn corporate vanilla that I just can't get into it.

But I like the blue.

Pat at BGS informs me that students still make "bootleg" shirts for big games. Bootleg?! What does that mean? The student shirts used to be the only "real" shirts. Now they're considered "bootleg"? What's the world coming to?!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great day at the "2008 Blue-Gold Spring Football Festival, presented by Home Run Inn Pizza!"