Did you know that ND alum (class of 1995) and former wide receiver Derrick Mayes has his own blog? 

Derrick just blogged about how weird it feels for football season to be rolling around the corner and not be getting ready to play and what he's up now that he's retired.

Here's his blog post: 

http://www.prolebrity.com/around-the-bend/

It's awesome to see athletes like Derrick embracing blogging!

How hard can this selection process be?  Notre Dame would truly benefit by putting a person at the helm of its Athletic program that lived the tradition, made the history, and left his sweat and blood in the house that Rockne built.  There hasn’t been a true Notre Dame man running the ship since Moose Krause in 1981.  Twenty-seven years…. that’s just the amount of time it has taken Steve Orsini to build his resume to be the perfect selection as Notre Dame Athletic Director.

He’s left his mark at Navy, Georgia Tech, Central Fla, and now SMU, with a shot of the Dallas Cowboys to start things off.   It’s time to bring him home, where he started his athletic career, first on the field as a gifted student-athlete, then in the office as Business / Ticket Manager.  Steve has “Notre Dame persona” that the fans would love to see as AD, maintaining the tradition that we know, and continually improving the Athletic program to what we know it can be.

Full circle isn’t from Dallas back to Dallas, it’s from Notre Dame back to Notre Dame.

Hey so if you havent heard by now, ron zook was making comments about how he would love to play ND in the windy city. How do you guys feel about that? I'm not by any means a ND fan, I just would like to see them play interesting matchups. I despise both teams, but I love watching intersting matchups. I think it be cool if ND could stop playing teams like duke, army, and navy (and yes I realize you have to play navy) and compete with some teams that are more on their level. I dont at all mean to be offensive, I'm just sharing my perspective and looking for your' guys thoughts

Mike
Meet Us At Kinnick

***No It wasn't a dig at ND, talk about sensitive. If I took a dig at ND it woulda been clear. I just think it be an interesting matchup because of recruiting wars and the resurgance of Illinois and what not. BTW, I don't think you're argument with Iowa's OOCS makes any sense. Navy doesn't play those guys, how can you say they'd "kick the shit outa them". I think if ND was dominating the weak Big 10 you would have the ammo for your argument. But you guys haven't done to well against us lately. Feel free to flame me back if you so choose. Yes I realize Iowa is at just about rock bottom lately given our on field problems, off- field law problems, and now the school is being investigated for covering up rape. But I can admit it and take the heat for it. Its apparent you cannot, I make one comment about your schedule and you cry. If ND has sucha tough schedule with opponents like Navy, how come they have problems with Michigan and MSU. How come they can't win a bowl game? Basically i'm saying neither of our schedules our too tough, you dont have much room to talk and really neither do I.

Baylor receives #1 seed in the first annual college baseball NIT tournament.

A few weeks ago me and a few other college baseball fans over at the College Baseball Dugout forum were lamenting the fact that there was no baseball equivalent to the basketball NIT tournament. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands….

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
After an intense round of analysis and debate the first super-official college baseball NIT selection committee announced half of the field last night. Baylor received top honors. The Bears (32-26), who finished sixth in the Big-12 and missed out on the NCAA tournament, will continue their season this weekend as the top regional host in the NIT tournament. The College of Charlestown (39-20) and Missouri State (40-17) presented solid alternatives but in the end Baylor’s state of the art home field and demanding schedule carried the day.

The five other regional hosts include: Clemson (31-27), Oregon State (28-24), Washington State (30-26), Florida Gulf Coast (38-15) and Texas – San Antonio (39-19). Charlestown, Florida Gulf Coast and UTSA earned automatic bids to the tournament after winning their conferences during regular season play, the other five teams all impressed the committee enough to earn at-large invitations. Perhaps the most intriguing entry into this year’s tournament is Oregon State. The Beavers won back to back NCAA College World Series in 2006 and 2007. They will try to make it three national championships in a row, this time following the NIT pathway.

The committee also announced the eight #2 seeds.
Waco Regional
1) Baylor (32-26) at large, Big-12
2) New Mexico (34-25) at large, Mountain West

Charleston Regional
1) Charlestown (39-20) Southern Conference champions
2) Duke (37-18) at large, ACC

Springfield Regional
1. Missouri State (40-17) at large, Missouri Valley
2. Cincinnati (39-20) at large, Big East

Clemson Regional
1) Clemson (31-27) at large, ACC
2) Canisius (41-13) Metro Atlantic Champions

Corvallis Regional
1) Oregon State (28-24) at large, Pac-10
2) UC – Santa Barbara (35-21) at large, WCC

Pullman Regional
1) Washington State (30-26) at large, Pac-10
2) Santa Clara (32-22) at large, WCC

Fort Myers Regional
1) Florida Gulf Coast (38-15) Atlantic Sun Champions
2) South Florida (31-27) at large, Big East

San Antonio Regional
1) Texas San-Antonio (39-19) Southland Conference Champions
2) Louisiana Monroe (34-24) Sunbelt Conference Champions

The remaining invitations will be announced this evening. All regular season conference champions who are not selected to participate in the NCAA tournament are guaranteed an invitation to the NIT tournament. Binghamton (29-27) AEC; Xavier (27-31) A-10; Kent State (36-21) MAC; Monmouth (37-16) NEC; Jacksonville State (37-21) OVC; Army (25-25) Patriot and Jackson State (37-22) Southwestern will take seven invitations leaving only nine at-large invitations not already extended.

Several teams still on the bubble will certainly be gathering this evening hoping to see their names called. Tension is already very high in the Central Florida (31-27, C-USA) clubhouse. San Diego State head coach Tony Gwynn tried to take some edge off the wait by throwing his team a pig roast in his back yard. "We are just going to kick back, have a little food, and hope it all turns out well at the end of the night," the major league Hall of Famer said. "We did all we could this year (31-28, MWC). Now it is up to the wisdom of the selection committee. Far be it from me to second guess their deliberations."

Notre Dame (33-21, Big East), Creighton (37-21, MVC), West Virginia (35-21, Big East) and Purdue (32-26, Big-10) all plan to stage full practices today. The only note of discord recorded came from Air Raid TT 33. "Texas San-Antonio isn’t very good to be honest." Within minutes this quote was painted in huge red letters across the Road Runners club house. "Smack like that only motivates the team," said head coach Sherman Corbett. "I don’t know who this Air Raid TT 33 guy is, but he would best steer clear of this clubhouse for the next few days."

Disclaimer - This stuff is all made up. Tony Gwynn wouldn’t really take my call, and Sherman Corbett has no idea who I am. But AirraidTT33 really did write that smack, so that part is true. Anyway, follow the tournament. It will be fun. Visit the College Baseball Dugout to join the debate.

This post was copied over from Rock Chalk Talk , one of two offical sponsers of this fake tournament!

Michael Lewis' incredible college football book The Blind Side tells the amazing true story of professional footballs talent search for someone capable of blocking Lawrence Taylor. This search leads to inner city Memphis, where an incredibly athletically gifted young man who has been in and out of foster care and from the most difficult possible of circumstances improbably gets the opportunity to attend a private school and is adopted by a wealthy family. If Michael can get eligible to play college football, he will probably earn millions protecting the quarterback's blind side in the NFL.

The Blind Side is put into the context of the debate over IQ and education reform here:

http://jaypgreene.com/2008/05/10/charles-murray-vs-michael-oher/

Hey Rakes Of Mallow,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Rakes Of Mallow from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Rakes Of Mallow and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Rakes Of Mallow now has all the basic information about the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Notre Dame Fighting Irish material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

And of course there's a story behind that headline.  Anybody who was at ND in the fall of 1981 will remember Gerry Faust's first game, a defeat of LSU leading to our only # 1 ranking for a long while.  We didn't know it at the time, but we'd just witnessed the zenith of Gerry Faust's college coaching career.  We were fans then, and young.

Anyway, the day after that game, someone hung a banner outside Alumni Hall, reading, "Hey Gerry!  Does Moeller Have a Basketball Coach?"  Less well known is the fact that it was hung on the side of Alumni facing the Law School, and in particular the side on which Digger's wife had her office; I have it on good authority that she came tearing into the dorm, demanding the banner be removed, and telling all who would hear that that was the kind of thing that broke up families.  The Phelps', I think, was never a model marriage.

But I digress.  The sentiment could well be applied today as the Irish prepare for their first-ever NCAA hockey championship game.  Because, simply, hiring Jeff Jackson was perhaps the smartest thing ND has done in the athletic arena in recent memory.

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Seriously?

Cutliffe is gonna go coach duke according to ESPN.  Also, Kirk Herbstreit heard from Les Miles's gardner that Senor Miles is now leading towards going to Michigan to coach Women's Lacrosse.

The site is making me add more lines to post my diary.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa

Well, we managed to go out on a "positive" note, winning our last two games for the first time since 1992.  Being a glass-half-empty kind of a guy, though, I'm not as enthused about the finish as some might be (bearing in mind that it doesn't seem that anyone is exactly doing cartwheels over the finish).

As I've said before, strong finishes have not been our long suit over the last several years - the Davie, Willingham, and Weis teams seemed to just run out of gas near season's end.  This year's schedule (for which we were roundly derided pre-season) should have been an antidote to that, closing with relatively weak teams calculated to let us ride four easy victories into whatever bowl we thought we'd get into.

Instead, we only went .500 over that four-game stretch (after going .143 for the eight-game stretch that preceded it).  I'm not sure that counts as a "strong finish" in anyone's book, hence the scare quotes around "positive" in that first graf.

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Where have you gone?

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