A lot of fun stuff to sift through, but let's start with the long arm of the law coming down on a slew of Notre Dame students, including a bunch of athletes.  I have faith following Mike Ragone's quietly handled return to the team that a bunch of underage violations shouldn't cause too much of a stir beyond some bonus wind sprints, and nor should they.   My consistent stance on this for all programs, not just Notre Dame, is that stuff like underage drinking and marijuana possession shouldn't result in any suspensions or significant punishment unless a whole bunch of stupid activities are repeatedly tied to them.  Once you get into stuff like DUI's, by all mean , start tossing people off the team and out of school, but if you're a college kid and you can't party in the summer?  Hardly seems American.

Hopefully Brian Kelly, Jeff Jackson and ResLife take the same approach Mike Brey is to this in the article I linked to above:

"The one thing I'll say is a lot of sweating will be involved," he said. "What you look at is teaching moments for young people. I've had a few. We'll have that with these two guys."

Brey used a similar tone discussing the incident this week with his players as he would take when addressing concerns with his 20-year-old daughter and his 23-year-old son.

"He's done a few knucklehead things in his life," Brey said. "As a parent, you live and you learn and you treat them fair. Sometimes it's a kick in the pants and sometimes it's a hug and sometimes it's both."

Anyway, this lets the Indiana Excise Police keep up their great work of stopping college kids from drinking while no other serious crime takes place in the state and gives Notre Dame a bump on the Fulmer Cup board.  We've got a lot of work to do to catch up to those rascals down in Athens, Georgia, but there is still some offseason left.

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Continuing the long arm of the law theme, it appears Reggie Bush is going to have to return his Heisman as USC goes to work cleaning house, replacing their athletic director and attempting to establish some sort of order over their football team.  This continues the fallout from the unfair persecution of the NCAA, now apparently being run by Elliott Ness as it attempts to correct a decade of apathetic policing.  This is just another black mark on Southern Cal's offseason, which now includes the loss of top recruit Seantrel Henderson along with a host of other players on an increasingly shrinking roster transferring.   While it is certainly fun to laugh at Troy and drink up every ounce of schadenfreude soda, it's not going to mean a whole lot if the Irish don't actually win this coming Thanksgiving weekend.

(And don't worry, folks, because Pete Carroll's book tour is going fantastically and his jump to Seattle has absolutely nothing to do with the hellfire that's been raining down on Los Angeles for the last month and a half.)

UPDATE: To include Dan Wetzel's column on Carroll and Garrett fiddling as Troy burned.

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Congratulations to Notre Dame great and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown, who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend this weekend.  Brown had a great career for both the Irish and the Raiders, so hopefully it's just a matter of time before he adds a bust in Canton to his extensive resume.

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In a behind-the-paywall interview with Irish Illustrated, former Irish QB Evan Sharpley opens up about a number of things, including the least surprising revelation of all-time.

"That three-win season, we definitely should have won more than that. We came into that season with kind of a new offense, similar to West Virginia's. The only problem was that we didn't have Pat White or Steve Slaton running it. Once that didn't work, we didn't - at least in my opinion - have a lot of options to go to. In a lot of those games, I thought we had great game plans and personally, I wish I would have been able to play more."

Having attended the majority of games that season, I think we can all agree Sharpley can strike the "at least in my opinion" from future versions of that quote.

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Remember how I mentioned above that Southern Cal was getting a new athletic director?  In a blessing sent down from high, this means that Notre Dame games on NBC are getting a new color commentator as Pat Haden heads to his alma mater to take over ADing duties.  Who should fill his spot in the booth?  John Walters has a lot of ideas, some of them particularly appealing. 

I think Cris Collinsworth would be fantastic.  He's the best in the business, a total pro who is already part of NBC's expansive football team.  One issue impeding his placement in the booth is that his son is an incoming freshman on the Irish.  That could potentially be an issue, but I saw plenty of Laker games with Bill Walton on commentary while Luke was playing and believe that if you're enough at your job, there's no chance of nepotism slipping into the commentary.  (Please don't start even begin comparing Collinsworth to the idiot Craig James.) 

The other, more pressing issue is that Collinsworth is the lead analyst for the Sunday night NFL broadcast, meaning he'd be going back-to-back seven times a year (six home games and Army - NFL starts a week later than college so it wouldn't be an issue for Purdue).  Again, I think Collinsworth is good enough that it wouldn't be a problem, but if he didn't want to dilute the quality of his work, I wouldn't blame him.

Other names that intrigue me include John Madden and Bob Davie, just because of how hilarious either of those choices would be, and Charles Davis, who seems competent enough to do well in the role but isn't so high profile that he'd be unattainable.  Please no Matt Millen or Joe Theismann, and if we're cleaning out the booth, why not go get the silver fox himself, Ron Franklin, to take over play-by-play duties?  I don't think NBC should go with an alum, but Steve Beuerlein would be solid if they decided to go that route.  We can build on this, folks.  Great day, all around.

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In some odd news, former Irish ubercommit Chris Martin has announced that he's leaving Cal, the school he committed to in the wake of the Weis-Kelly transition.  No word on where Martin is going to end up or what the outside distractions are that forcing him from his home in the bay area, but I'm sure Brian Kelly would gladly welcome him into his 3-4 scheme with open arms if he wanted to come back into the fold.

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And finally, Ty Willingham is retiring from coaching football.  Since he has been practicing for retirement with eighteen holes a day since 2003, he should be awesome at it.