Recruiting Stars, Fauria finds a new home, and Congress... oh, Congress (LOTD 7/7)

The big news from yesterday is obviously the commitment of defensive end Justin Utupo. Utupo becomes the tenth commitment to the Class of 2010, and his decision bumps the Irish into the top 10 of the Scout rankings. The Irish are currently ranked at #9 in the nation, but the highest rated school with 10 or fewer commitments.

The Irish currently are averaging 3.7 stars per commit, which ranks right up there among the highest averages by school. Currently, Texas leads the pack with an average of 3.79 stars/recruit, with Ohio State, USC, Oklahoma, and Penn State ahead of ND, though not by much. That's not bad company to be in, especially considering the fact that many top prospects who may be leaning to the Irish have not decided yet. I was worried about recruiting early on, but this recent wave of recruits has calmed some of my fears to this point.

Joseph Fauria has decided on a new locale, transferring to UCLA (as expected). In all reality, UCLA is probably a better fit for Fauria socially, which he admitted in interviews.

"It's a great atmosphere. It was my second choice coming out of high school, got a good coaching staff and the arrow is pointing up for the direction of the program.''

I'd make a cheap joke about Fauria being able to participate in the UCLA undie run, but I'm still kind of pissed at ResLife for mucking things up so badly. I hope Joseph kills it at UCLA, and hopefully he beats SC regularly.

Basketball news: Martin Ingelsby has been promoted to the empty assistant coaching position. Ingelsby is blue and gold through and through, so it's nice to see him progress in the Irish coaching staff. Ingelsby wouldn't be a bad coaching candidate to replace Mike Brey when the time comes, granted he gets some more seasoning as an assistant.

Non-ND news: there's a collection of stories of interest today, so let's roll them off.

Stewart Mandel has a nice story previewing the waste of time that is today's senate committee hearing of the BCS. Mandel comments:

"Yet with all that said, Tuesday's Senate hearing will almost certainly be a complete and utter waste of time. Not only will all these self-serving efforts by Sen. Orrin Hatch (who is orchestrating Tuesday's hearing on behalf of his disgruntled constituents back in Utah), Rep. Joe Barton (the big-talking Texan who oversaw a comical May 1 House hearing on the BCS) and Mark Shurtleff (the Utah attorney general who keeps threatening to sue the BCS) prove futile in terms of bringing about a major-college playoff, they may in fact hurt the sport's chances of ever adopting a true championship."

Mandel is spot on. This hearing has attracted negative attention at almost a 100% rate. If anything, the anti-congress reaction will result in some swaying to a pro-BCS reaction, simply to combat the nonsense going on in congress's halls. I'll have some sort of report on the hearings tomorrow, though I bet you can guess which side I will fall on.

Dr. Saturday's Holly Anderson takes a look at the eight (!) USC Trojans on the pre-season All-American watch list. Anderson points out that this is a result of actual talent on the roster and percieved talent of the ever-present USC "dynasty". Some players on the watch list, such as Aaron Corp and Joe McKnight, have barely had any playing time on a college football field and much more to do with the hype they collected out of high school. Nevertheless, SC will be a tough play this year, and undoubtedly the toughest team on a weak ND schedule.

Everybody's favorite type of nut, Houston Nutt, will apparently be getting his own reality television show this year. TruTV (which I believe used to be Court TV in the days of OJ Simpson) will host the show, titled Gridiron U, which will look at the Ole Miss program this year. I can't help but think of the second year in Ty Willingham's regime, where the Irish were supposed to be decent and then sucked it up. The show eventually moved from the primetime slots in the first couple of weeks to a 2:30 am time slot, before being cancelled before the end of the season.

Finally, former NCAA passing leader and NFL journeyman Timmy Chang is being investigated for robbery. Chang was allegedly involved in an altercation with someone, presumably outside of a bar (that's where these things tend to happen). A woman filmed the ordeal, and Chang took the woman's camera and (allegedly) used that NCAA record arm to toss it on top of a roof of a nearby building. It's good to see that he is still using the skills he learned in college in his post-collegiate life.

That's all for today. I was going to do a live-blog for the senate hearing today, but I think it would just result in my head denting the walls of my apartment, so I've given up on that idea. Until tomorrow Blarneys.