I think it’d be a diss to MY MAN Matt Fortuna to call these “Irish Links” with him giving me the ESPN.com shoutout on his feature of the same name not far back. I guess the name of this piece will be under construction. I’m still figuring out how I’ll be sharing my work moving forward, which has moved on to SubwayDomer.com if you didn’t hear, but a little note from me and links to Notre Dame articles I’m reading is probably what you can look forward to.

After enjoying July mostly free of podcasting and writing articles, I flexed the writing muscles this week and cranked out my debut piece for Subway Domer. I’ve heard the statement on radio, TV, and many blogs over the past 5+ years about “Notre Dame being irrelevant for 20 years” and I felt it was time to quantify it in some way. I compared the last 20 regular season records of Notre Dame to USC, Oklahoma, LSU & Alabama to see how “relevent” they’d been over the same span. Did you know LSU has been under .500 for 25% of the past 20 seasons? That and other great stuff in:

20 Years Of Irrelevant Notre Dame, USC, LSU, Alabama & Oklahoma Football Statistics

Some other great stuff from my new SubwayDomer.com locale:

• Notre Dame’s 2012 Football Gloves have our Stamp of Approval … What’s next?
• My man @SteveinIowa1 pulls out all the top bloggers 2011 Preseason predictions. It wasn’t pretty.
• @BlogDavie broke down some of Tommy Rees ability and inability in audibling at the line of scrimmage in the appropriately titled: Tommy Rees Caught On Tape
• Also, for those clamoring for fake football games involving ND, @GreatShaneND has been taking notes while simulating the Irish season on NCAA 13. We headed to South Bend already sitting at .500 for the Miami game.

Also around the Notre Dame community:

• Brandon Newman, former Irish DL now a grad student finishing his career at Ball State, made some pretty aggressive comments regarding the QB race & inability to “put stock in what the coaches say”. Then he explained why he never played at ND and it wasn’t because he isn’t awesome
• Over at Her Loyal Sons, NDtex is exploding in blogger profile and pieces like this on Newman’s comments are why. A well thought, articulate breakdown of what Newman said and meant.
• Keith Arnold of NBC’s Inside the Irish is working with, of all people, NDtex and other prominent names in the ND online registry to compile Notre Dame’s Top 25 players for 2012. He’s posted 25-21 & 16-20. Plenty of debates raging over there folks.
• Really enjoying, if that’s possible, One Foot Down’s 30 Defining Moments in Notre Dame History 1987-2011. Eric Murtaugh does good work.
• AD Jack Swarbrick will be holding a first of it’s kind Google+ Hangout where he will take questions from all the ND writers I’ve listed above & quite a few others. If you have Google+ you can tune in and watch the interactions of the panel. NDNation got an invite, so this could get interesting.

Ever wonder what former Irish teammates sound like when they get together and reminisce? Here’s Oscar McBride & Marc Edwards doing just that: