The fine folks at SBNation have given us a lot of gifts here at Rakes, and one of the newest is providing us with a top-notch store to sell whatever sort of random shirts we can think up.  You can find that reasonably priced corner of the internet right here.  We've only got a few in now, but more are coming down the pike.  Anything the community here wants, we can probably get made up*, so let us know if you have any ideas.

* Obviously there are copyright and trademark issues, so just be creative.

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Great news for Irish hockey fans and fans of ND athletics.  The University announced plans on Thursday to construct a new hockey facility on campus.  This new plan supercedes the old one that would have renovated part of the JACC North Dome to become slightly less-crappy, but still far away from where they should be.  Here's a snipet from the university's press release:

The University of Notre Dame will begin construction next year on a new, freestanding, on-campus ice arena designed to meet the needs of both the nationally ranked Irish hockey team and the local community, Notre Dame executive vice president John Affleck-Graves and athletics director Jack Swarbrick announced jointly today.

Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2010 on a projected 5,000-seat arena - with the venue ready for play to start the 2011-12 season.

The University's Board of Trustees approved the project at its meetings last week on campus.

"We're thrilled about the plans for a new ice arena on our campus, particularly based on the superb job Jeff Jackson and our hockey team have done to position our program as one of the best in the nation," said Swarbrick.

Obviously a lot of the thanks has to go to Jackson for producing some terrific hockey teams over the past few seasons, but Irish fans should really be thanking new AD Jack Swarbrick for his contributions to this project.  Here's a great quote from Coach Jackson about Swarbrick's involvement over the past 6 months:

"I give Jack Swarbrick a lot of credit for having the vision to see that it was something that was probably necessary," Jackson said. "I wish he would've been here three years ago to push this idea because we might be so much further ahead".

And even more, from a great interview with Coach Jackson in College Hockey News.

Jackson: He (Jack) started in August. And he came to me and asked what we had to do to make the program as great as it can be. And I think he did that with all the programs, not just ours. I think he saw an opportunity to go beyond what was planned before. ... There is still more fund raising they're going to do, but the commitment is there. It was time to make it public that this was a committed project.

He asked if I was willing to wait another year in order to have a facility on campus. I said absolutely. The only thing is, I feel bad for the kids who I told were going to have a new place in 2010.

If that's not a shot at former athletic director Kevin White, I don't know what is.  Still, this is a great success for the Irish hockey program as a whole and for Jack Swarbrick, who has shown his willingness to give Notre Dame athletics what it needs to succeed.  He'll be making a lot of big time decisions in the next year or so and it is refreshing to see that he's not afraid to make a statement with his decisions.  Congrats to the hockey team and coach Jackson and AD Jack Swarbrick.

Leading an American sweep of the podium, Mariel Zagunis, who helped Notre Dame to a fencing national championship in 2005, won the gold in individual saber over teammate and countrywoman Sada Jacobson.  You might remember Mariel from 2004, when she also won the gold medal, becoming the first individual to win gold medals in back-to-back Olympics since some French guys in the 80's (that's a rough citation of what the color commentator said after her victory). 

USA!  USA!  USA!  USA!

While it's always the point in time where you wish the college offseason would end, when it gets this close, people start going crazy and just desperately trying to fill the time before the first inaugural kickoff.  Case in point: The Big Lead tossing up some pictures of Jimmy Clausen, Brian Smith and James Aldridge participating in Beer Olympics and Notre Dame apparently taking steps to investigate it.  Cue the pointless hand-wringing, moaning and groaning:

A Notre Dame football spokesman said Monday there was no comment from the team for the time being. But du Lac, the school's guidebook for personal conduct, says that underage drinking and/or the participation in drinking games is cause for potential disciplinary action.

"The office of Residence Life will investigate possible violations of university policies when it is made aware of them, such as in this case," Notre Dame school spokesman Dennis Brown said Monday.

Join me in asking "Who honestly cares about this?".   College kids drink.  99.9% of the time it doesn't hurt anything other than their liver, sometimes your pride, your wallet and/or whatever stuff you break when thrasing out to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" at the after party.  Now at a normal school, this would get cast aside because there there isn't a single, normal, non-PTC person who would care that a group of friends got together, dressed up as different "countries" and competed in a series of drinking games for an afternoon.  I'd like to think this is just a creation of a blogger at the Tribune, but who knows, because ResLife was recently responsible for kicking a guy out of school for the most minor of minor drug violations that nobody else would or should care about. 

So it appears much like Clausen's Lame Summer Alcohol Problem: 2007 Edition, even those that generally take much glee in picking apart Notre Dame quarterbacks for their various transgressions aren't getting too worked up about it.  Orson is upset, and when the new, Leitch-less Deadspin isn't take a crack at somebody, you know it should probably just be let go.  So do you hear that, ResLife?  Just let it go.  You probably can't prove anything anyway, and if you start persecuting every Notre Dame student that drinks underage you won't have enough time to go after those that break parietals or are playing beer pong in their dorm room, and I know nobody wants that.

So let's just pretend this didn't happen and move along to more serious matters.

Mike Frank at Irish Eyes was probably the first to have it, but Blue-Gray Sky has confirmed that Notre Dame is set to hire alum Jack Swarbrick as Athletic Director sometime in the next few days.  Notre Dame, who many thought would bring in experienced alum Steve Orsini, will hire a 1976 graduate of the University who has some serious credentials in the NCAA-world, but none as athletic director.

He was a finalist for the NCAA top job a few years back and had this to say about the job:

"The one thing I came away from absolutely certain of, because it was important to me and I asked it at every stage, was: 'Are you prepared to really have someone lead the organization?' I didn't have any interest in the job if they were looking for an executive director of a membership association. I became very convinced that both at the search committee and executive committee levels they had an absolutely desire to make sure they brought in somebody who was prepared to take the initiative to try and lead the association."

Swarbrick has been a partner at Baker & Daniels in Indianapolis and is a 1980 graduate of Stanford law.  More to follow...

First Tim Russert last Friday and now George Carlin, both relatively young (Big Russ was 58, Carlin 71).  The world is turning into a significantly less interesting place.

More on the NBA Draft (Kurz Watch 2008) as the day progresses.

The search for a new athletic director has begun.  President Fr. John Jenkins gave no timetable for an announcement, but we expect to see something in the next few weeks.  There have been numerous outlets throwing names around, but no one has any real idea about who might be involved.  Here’s a few names that have been floating around as of late and the good and bad about these candidates, alphabetically.

Mike Bobinski (ND ‘79) – AD, Xavier University

The Good: He’s had a successful two stints with Xavier over the past decade.  He’s guided a successful basketball program and Xavier just started a club football team which could become bigger in a few years.

The Bad: He has no experience with directing a football program.  If he wants a chance, he’ll probably have to move from Xavier, something I’m not sure he will be comfortable doing.

Rick Chryst (ND ‘83) – Commissioner, MAC

The Good: Many say that Notre Dame’s AD is similar to a conference commissioner, so Chryst would have a great deal of experience (9 years) in that role.  He’s been successful in creating a popular conference tournament for basketball and has secured 3 bowls for MAC teams in college football.  Being a conference commissioner, he is well-connected and respected among the college athletics world.  He also looks to be an intelligent guy, graduating Notre Dame as a Rhodes Scholarship candidate and attending Duke University for Law School and graduating with honors.

The Bad: He has no athletic director experience at all.  And while Commissioner of the MAC is an impressive position, it’s not on the same level as a BCS commissioner.  Some MAC fans are also disappointed with his inclusion of Temple as a football-only program.  Getting Temple to switch conferences for basketball would be huge for the MAC and many fans were upset at that.

Missy Conboy (ND ‘82) – Deputy AD, Notre Dame

The Good: She has been around Notre Dame for a long time.  She also has a law degree and would be a monumental hire since female AD’s are still rare.

The Bad: No athletic director experience.  She also has ties to many of the failed regimes (White and Wadsworth) and there’s no guarantee she would have a different philosophy.  Way too big of a chance for Notre Dame at this point.

Bubba Cunningham (ND ‘84) – AD, Tulsa University

The Good: He’s considered to be an up and comer among college athletic directors.  His biggest hire was last year when he replaced Louisville-bound Coach Kragthorpe with Rice University football coach Todd Graham.  Graham led Tulsa to successful 10-4 record after having one of the best seasons in Rice history.  Before Tulsa, Cunningham was at Ball State for 3 years and at Notre Dame for 15 years.

The Bad: Like most of the other candidates, he lacks big-time college football experience as an AD.  Tulsa and Ball State, while fine institutions, are nothing like that of Notre Dame.  There are also concerns over his past experience with ND under Monk Malloy.  He was also involved in an interesting, but unpopular move to buyout a home-and-home against Texas Tech and schedule a one-and-done game against Arkansas next season.  The main reason was money, something that might be okay at Tulsa but would be looked at as inappropriate at Notre Dame.

John Heisler – Associate AD, Notre Dame

The Good: He is familiar with the program after being at Notre Dame for over 30 years in a variety of different roles.

The Bad: He is more of a publicist than an AD.  In his short time in charge of scheduling, he has been a disaster.  Not a good choice at all.

Joel Maturi (ND ‘67) – AD, Univ. of Minnesota

The Good: Maturi inherited an athletic program that was in disarray and has rebuilt it since landing there in 2002.  He spearheaded an impressive campaign to build a new and separate stadium on campus, to be completed in 2009.  As AD at Miami University, he hired the late Terry Hoeppner who guided the RedHawks to successful seasons before leaving to go to Indiana University.

The Bad: He is probably one of the older candidates for the position, in his early 60’s.  He made a questionable hire in football last season, bringing in an inexperienced but talented recruiter in Tim Brewster.

Bob Minnix (ND ‘72) – Associate AD, Washington State

The Good: African-American candidate who played football for the Irish in the 70’s.  He’s led the compliance office at FSU (err…wait a minute) and has had a lot of experience in college athletics.

The Bad: Bob has no head AD experience and his work at FSU might throw some red flags.

Steve Orsini (ND ‘78) – AD, SMU

The Good: He’s had two successful stints as athletic director at Southern Methodist and Central Florida.  At Central Florida, he hired George O’Leary, which looks to be good choice.  This past winter he hired June Jones from Hawaii to head SMU’s football program, a huge get for the university.

The Bad: While he’s worked at two decent sized programs, he doesn’t have experience at a big-time stop.  He also hired Matt Doherty as his basketball coach, which most veteran college basketball fans would question.

John Paxson (ND ) – General Manager, Chicago Bulls

The Good: A recognizable face to many, John is a high-profile guy in the NBA.  Under his leadership, the Bulls made a quick turnaround before having a tough season last year.  He is a famous ND graduate with impressive experience and an interesting portfolio.

The Bad: He has no experience in college athletics.  A number of Bulls fan also question some of his personnel decisions which have been questionable to say the least.  If offered the position, he’d be looking at a decrease in salary, something he might not be willing to do.

I hope you're all enjoying the new site as much as I am, because the despite the narrower main body, everything is much cleaner and shinier I can't help but love it.  Trei and the guys who are upgrading the entire SBN network to this are doing a great job, and I think you're all really going to appreciate it once we get out of the cold, dark period of the offseason.

One of the best features is that the entire network is now connected, meaning that when I write a story up on Brady Quinn or anyone drops a Fan Post about him (Diaries have been renamed; think of this as "action figure" to "doll," or "Coke Zero" to "Diet," it's just manlier) and tag it as so, you'll see posts on Number 10 from all over SBN, whether that's from a Cleveland fan or a Pittsburgh hater.  Once I get done with finals week, I'm going to go through and retroactively tag a bunch of stuff in an attempt to fully get things connected.

Posting is also so much easier for all of us, as we're on a Blogger interface where bolding, inserting hyperlinks and italicizing is as easy as it would be on Word.  This might not be a big deal for those of you who "understand HTML," but after writing online for over six years, I still struggle with the simplest stuff.

Before I leave you for the afternoon, just an update on a few Notre Dame sports heading into their final stretches.  Both the men's and women's lacrosse teams have made the NCAA tournament, although in slightly different positions.  The ladies will be on the road to take on juggernaut Northwestern (just seems odd to say), while the men will be hosting their first game in the history of the tournament against Colgate on Sunday.  I know what everyone is thinking, and no, I don't know why they aren't playing one-and-done games against arbitrarily assigned opponents in random cities across the south with funny names.  I always like to settle my champions that way, but sometimes you just have to play it out on the field.

So take the time to claim your old accounts (it's really, really easy) and explore all the fun stuff you can do here.  Like this: