IRISH ITEMS

4) Oxnard (Calif.) Santa Clara High School running back Cierre Wood, who averages, like, 73 yards per carry (why should Tom Lemming have all the fun?) will visit Notre Dame for the first time this weekend. Wood is considered the top running back out west and his YouTube videos suggest a certain Reggie Bush-league type player. Wood actually averaged 14.7 yards per carry while scoring 42 touchdowns last season--or 16 more than the Irish.

5) Nose tacke Pat Kuntz and tight end/lacrosse All-American Will Yeatman have been spotted at a few spring practices. The return of Kuntz, who is not enrolled this semester, is the single most-pressing issue for this football team personnel-wise. He's the fiercest player amongst the front seven and is absolutely a vital presence on what will be a very inexperienced defensive line.

6) Incoming center and Mishawaka native Braxston Cave will, I predict, set a modern record for most family members to attend Notre Dame football games over the next four-five years. Irish officials are already considering just blocking out Section 115 and renaming it "Cave Dwellers".

7) Well, as long as we are at number 7, let's discuss Jimmy Clausen. Last spring Notre Dame had four quarterbacks (though Clausen was injured) and no starter. This spring the Irish basically have one: Clausen. Two have transferred and Sharpley is busy impersonating Jeff Samardzija on the diamond (albeit not from the mound). Clausen is healthy and has had plenty of reps. It'll be fun to see how much progress he has made.

8) Don't expect any of the three running backs--James Aldridge, Armando Allen and Robert Hughes-- to win the starting running back job outright any time soon. In Notre Dame's final four games of the 2007 season--oddly, yes, after his brother was murdered in Chicago-- Hughes was easily the most impressive rusher in the Irish stable. But Aldridge battled an injury or two then as well. Expect all three to get a similar number of carries on Saturday.

9) There's an old episode of "The Odd Couple" in which Felix and Oscar are accidentally tethered together (I believe Murray the Cop's handcuffs were to blame) and had to learn to coexist at close range and work in synchronicity with one another ("synchronicity", by the way, is a word that no one used prior to the summer of 1983, when The Police released the album by that name...summer of '83: MTV was never bigger than it was then). Anyway, this was not only an excellent idea for an episode, but I'd like to see Notre Dame's starting offensive line attempt this for a day or two this summer. This unit needs to work in terms of the old "five-fingers-one-fist" approach this season.

10) Redshirt freshman Harrison Smith always impressed me last season--in just pre-game warmups-- as having excellent size for a safety. Apparently, Jon Tenuta and Corwin Brown agree, as Smith has been seeing plenty of reps at outside linebacker this spring. This allows for the possibility next fall of an "All-Smith" linebacking corps for the Irish: Harrison, Toryan, Scott and Brian.

11) Lost in all the misery of Notre Dame's offense last year was just how productive a season true freshman Duval Kamara had. The sophomore-to-be finished with 32 catches and four touchdowns. When you consider that the two players who started at wide recevier the year before Kamara arrived, Samardzija and Rhema McKnight, are ranked 1-2 in career receptions at Notre Dame, you've got to like the 6-4 wideout's chances of leaving South Bend as the most productive receiver in school history. Shark didn't catch his 32nd pass until his junior year, while McKnight had nine catches and zero TDs as a frosh.

12) The Blue-Gold game will not be scored like a normal gridiron contest. Because of depth issues, particularly at QB, tight end and defensive line, the game will be run, in terms of scoring, as Offense vs. Defense. Here are the different ways in which points can be produced:

POINT SYSTEM
OFFENSE

DEFENSE

Also...

10 points- Quaffle through a goalpost
150 points- Catching of the Golden Snitch by the Seeker.

6 points--Failing to stop and give identification at the scene of a crash

4 points--Failure to yield for emergency vehicles

Wally Kleine

Former Notre Dame defensive tackle Wally Kleine died earlier this week of a massive heart attack. Kleine, 43, played during the Gerry Faust era and was a physical beast. He stood about 6-8 and had long blond hair; only teammate Eric Dorsey's tree-trunk arms were a more impressive sight. Kleine, whose cousin Joe Kleine had a lengthy NBA career as a backup center, played two seasons with the Washington Redskins before retiring.

Lasting memory of Kleine from this writer: I'm a freshman, studying late at night inside LaFortune Hall. Nature calls, and I head to the men's room to use the urinal. I'm doing my thing when the door opens and another students sidles up to the urinal next to me. As all men know, this is a time for using one's peripheral vision. So I do. And instead of spotting a face next to me, I realize I'm looking at someone's ribcage. I'd never stood next to someone that tall and imposing before. And I made sure to stare straight ahead for the rest of that little episode. 

Softball in the Park

The NBC Sports "Must See Prancing Peacocks" played our first game of the season last night in Central Park. If you exclude everything that occurred after the 2nd inning, we won 1-0. (if you don't, we lost 17-1). Far more impressive than anything we did on the diamond was the presence in the bleachers of our high commander, Dick Ebersol. Oh yes he was. We were shocked, too, and I'm sure my Eddie Gaedel-like walk on four pitches impressed the heck out of him. 

Yankees vs Cardinals

Interesting item in yesterday's "New York Post" concerning the assignment of dressing rooms for the upcoming papal mess at Yankee Stadium. After the Yankees play Boston tonight, training room attendants will clean out their lockers so that the cardinals (that's Catholic cardinals, not St. Louis Cardinals) who are concelebrating the mass can use it as their dressing room. What are the odds that the cardinals trash it? I mean, how funny would that be?