Welcome back, everyone, everyone, to another episode of the Irish Breakdown podcast brought you by our friends over at

Fanduil. Happy Wednesday. We have an absolutely loaded Notre Dame football rundown coming your

guys' way today. We're going to... Even more than Notre Dame football today, baby. We got a little hoops

we're going to talk about here in a second, my man. But yes, lots of Notre Dame football topics today.

I am glad, Trev, that the... This is not IBE Nation Sportsbeat, that midweek rundown is back. I'm very excited about that. We got a lot of stuff to talk about this week, man. If we were still doing our state of the program stuff, I'd have to call an audible and be like, hey, bro, we're doing a midweek run down again like we did last week.

So we got to do it.

We got to do it. So I'm ready to rock and roll today, Trev. As of my man, I love the midweek rundown format. This is going to be a really, really fun show. And so part one of today's show, it's going to be more so like a news and notes. There's been some breaking news recently just across the Notre Dame athletic sphere.

The women's basketball team signed a huge five-star commitment Eve Long to the 2027 class. That's going to be absolutely huge to talk about. And then Notre Dame added two teams to their schedule in 2027 and 28. They added Stanford and Kent State. We're also going to talk about that. Part two, we're going to be talking about the comments that Pete Bovacqua made in his support of the 2014 college football playoff expansion. So we're going to be diving into what he said, our feelings about it, the feeling on the 2014 playoff as a whole. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Now we're going to talk about, Brian, I'm excited that we're talking about this today, the biggest wins of the Marcus Freeman era. And we separated it into two different

buckets because obviously the postseason wins are going to take the cake. But he's picked up

some really meaningful regular season wins along the way. So we'll be talking about those.

And then in part four of today's show, we're going to be talking about the different

tiers in college football. We're going to define what we believe the three tiers are, teams on

the cusp, and then sort out which teams we believe fall in each tier. And then, you know,

if we have time for it today, obviously we're going to wrap everything up with a daily

mailbag like we do every single day here. And then the theme for today, folks, you want to talk about the 2014 playoff. You want to talk about some of Marcus Freeman's best wins or if there's any that we, you guys think we left off the list. Go ahead. That will likely be the things we choose the questions from today. So is the stuff that we're talking about today. You can ask anything, but we're going to definitely give precedence to the questions that are related to the mailbag. Because we also want to know your guys' thoughts when we talk about our tears. Look, Trev and I had some debate on that stuff, you know, and there was one team that we literally just could not decide on where they are. So, like, they're kind of stuck in between two different tiers, and we didn't know where to put them. So, you know, there's certainly some debate to be had. And, and again, we'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on the 2014 playoff, the arguments that we're going to make about the comments and different things. And then obviously, it's going to be a of fun today. But it's going to be a long show today, Trev, and we are hoping to get a mailback in. So I think we should probably just dive into it. This first section of the show is going to look at some quick news and notes that have happened around the Notre Dame universe today, Treve. And the first one is a, is basketball related.

And the second one is schedule related with Notre Dame getting close to five as

their schedule.

So we should probably hop into it because it's going to be a lot to talk about today, man,

a lot to talk about.

Well, let's talk about Eve Long then.

She's a six foot three center from Kansas that the Notre Dame women's team just got a commitment from today. Five-star player, one of the best in the 2027th class. This is going to be an absolutely huge pickup for them. And obviously, Neil Ivy is doing everything that she can to get Notre Dame's women's team back into championship contention. I took a look at it before the show today. As things stand right now, they have the seventh best odds on Fandall to win this upcoming season's championship. And they made a better, a deeper run this year than what they did with that roster they had in 2025. So hopefully adding recruits like Eve Long can can keep that ball rolling. Well, this is a huge one, Treb. I mean, she's ranked as the number five player in the country by ESPN. She's ranked as a consensus top 10 pick. I think the lowest she's ranked as eighth by rivals and on three. Six foot three, as you mentioned, very long athletic player. She was the Gatorade player of the year in the state of Kansas last year. She's from O. Late South. Big time, big time player. This is a big one, Treb. They've had her on multiple times. And when you look at the Nurtame class, the last three years, last year's class was amazing. At a tremendous five-girl class, J.C. Abbey, you had Jenica Lewis, who were both McDonald's

All-Americans, Amari Biles, is a top 20 player. I love Amari Biles as a player. I think she's exactly what they're in need. She's a post player that can kind of be a stretch for, but she can run the court. She can play in the post. She does a lot of the dirty work, which I think they need. And then, of course, they got Bella Ragon, who's the daughter of former Louisville quarterback, Dave Ragon.

...