Tag: robby toma

Notre Dame football: When Golden Tate shot his shot with Taylor Swift

It wasn’t a ‘Love Story’ afterall, unfortunately

Long before pop icon [autotag]Taylor Swift[/autotag] and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce became an item there was another football player after her young heart.

Or at least her attention.

Flashback to 2009 when Swift’s brother was attending Notre Dame.  It was the freshman year of former Fighting Irish receiver Robby Toma and the Hawaii native recently remembered a time that Swift showed up at a Notre Dame practice.

It was at that practice that one of the best receivers to ever come through Notre Dame tried to get Swift’s attention.  Toma and none other than [autotag]Golden Tate[/autotag] remembered the moment on social media earlier this week – check it out below.

To which Tate responded:

It wound up that Tate’s move didn’t ultimately have “Love Story” written all over it but props to the man for shooting his shot.

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Manti Te’o documentary: the world reacts

Have you watched? If so, what are your main takeaways?

You don’t have to be much of a college football fan whatsoever to recall the Manti Te’o catfishing story.  Us being a Notre Dame based website means we’re plenty aware of it and how incredible of a player Te’o was during his time at Notre Dame, but the story of his girlfriend dying and then ultimately not actually ever existing meant it went from a sports story to a national news story.

I don’t think anyone ever forgot about the craziness that was around that story and it never really went away but for almost 10 years now there hasn’t been anything new that we’ve learned about it.  At least until now.

Netflix recently released “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist,” a two part documentary on the entire story of Te’o, Lennay Kekua, and Naya Tuiasosopo and the catfishing scheme that took place.

The Twitter world reacted to the documentary and we’ll get to that in just a second but I wanted to next share just a couple of my initial takeaways.

NEXT: My initial thoughts after watching the documentary

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Marcus Freeman bringing back a Notre Dame game day tradition

Happy to see this returning to game day?

When [autotag]Brian Kelly[/autotag] took over as Notre Dame’s head coach he changed a few things on how game day went to on campus.  For one, players no longer attended mass before the game and walked across campus to the stadium, instead they attended mass the evening before and had all of their energies focused on the game on hand come Saturday.

It should be noted that players did a walk on game day, just that it was done a little differently through the library (Touchdown Jesus) to the stadium.

[autotag]Marcus Freeman[/autotag] met the media for his weekly spring practice availability on Saturday and let it be known that the tradition of attending mass and doing the walk through campus is making a return, something he was actually surprised wasn’t taking place when he arrived this past year.

For those who enjoy college football traditions (myself included here) its met with happiness.  Now does it give Notre Dame a better chance of winning a given game is another question, one that a player who played under both the Charlie Weis and Brian Kelly regimes offered his answer to Saturday night.

Toma played at Notre Dame from 2009-2012 (was the hero in surviving a scare from Purdue in the 2012 home opener) and is certainly more qualified to offer an opinion on how it effects the preparation and ultimately the outcome of a game more than I ever could.

Personally I’m a fan of the move like I said above but am left a bit more curious what others who have made that walk would say about it after reading Toma’s thoughts.

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Notre Dame Offers Star Hawaiian Linebacker

Notre Dame has created a nice pipeline to recruiting Hawaii and just made a new scholarship offer to the state’s top prospect in 2022.

Notre Dame’s recent pipeline to recruiting Hawaii is well-documented with Manti Te’o, Robby Toma, Alohi Gilman and the late Kona Schwenke being just a few players that came to South Bend, Indiana from the islands.

Now Notre Dame has their eye on another defensive star as they’ve made a scholarship offer to 2022 outside linebacker Tevarua Tafiti.

Tafiti is listed at 6-3, 205 pounds.  He may have a bit of a narrow build but packs a huge punch as a pass rusher as 247Sports ranks him as a four-star talent.

Notre Dame is the 13th team to make an offer to Tafiti as the Irish join Arizona State, Colorado, Hawaii, Louisville, Michigan, Nebraska, Oregon, Oregon State, Utah, Washington, Washington State and Wisconsin in doing so.

Tafiti had 27 tackles for loss, 11 sacks and three forced fumbles as a sophomore at Punahou High School in Honolulu.

Related:  Way too early game-by-game predictions for 2020 Notre Dame football