Greetings, Subway Domer literati. Steve in Iowa is back after an extended sabbatical to fill your long and dreary off-season with football knowledge. Yes I am finally coming out of my post-January depression, thanks for asking. To get back into the swing of things, I fired up the Kindle and cranked out the syllabus below. Every other Thursday this summer, I’ll post a book review at SubwayDomer.com. (C’mon, people, SubwayDomer is not all Wu-Tang Clan all the time.) That evening I’ll also hang around with Blog Davie on the comments page for discussion and chat. Steve in Iowa’s Summer Book Club should offer something that appeals to any Notre Dame football fan: biographies of colorful Notre Dame personalities, analysis of X’s and O’s, social commentary, and some Michigan schadenfreude. Most titles are available for download. So check out these great books and "I'll see you next time."

June 6: The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing by Michael J. Maubboussin. Maubboussin explores that perennial question what part of success is luck and what part is skill? As humans we are hard-wired to look for simple, comforting narratives to explain events, and almost nowhere is this more obvious than in the world of sports. Since most of us don’t naturally think in terms of say, Bayesian statistics, Mauboussin offers a helpful primer.

Day 2 of this countdown series just got crazy as all fuck with the departure of Everett Golson from the University of Notre Dame.

Wow.

Enter Tommy Rees and his brand of family crazy. I don't know if anyone (other than Tommy's sister) is rooting for Rees as much as I am. I love a good redemption story and have no problem admitting that I may choke back some tears after witnessing one here of there.

Let the shouts of "TOMMY FUCKING REES" & "REESMAN TROPHY" & "TOMMY MOXON" reign down upon thee.

97 days y'all!

Everett Golson is no longer enrolled at the University of Notre Dame. I'm sure you already heard the news by now, but by all means, please take this time to let that sink in for a moment. Come on back after you smash all your fine china against the wall and have wept in the shower and crying, "I'M SO STUPID! I'M SO STUPID! I'M SO STUPID!"

Now we can sit down and talk like adults.

For Notre Dame Football fans, the wait for the start of the 2013 football season is just 98 days away. So, after much debate, prayer, fasting, and hallucinogens, I have decided to breakout the COUNTDOWN MACHINE OF TERROR on Subway Domer.

Obviously, this is not an original thought. Perhaps even more obvious, is that your Emperor & Warlord may accidentally miss a day or two. Whatever. I'm going to try and do this anyways and head down this random rabbit hole that appeared out of nowhere.

These will be very simple posts, but as you can already guess by the image above, some of them may hurt- badly. Or to put it another way... Some of these days are going to be counter traps WITH A GOD DAMN FULLBACK.

Why Syracuse 2008? Despite all of the angst after the BCS title game, the Te'o situation, and some recent news about transfers (or whatever you want to call the Vanderdoes situation); all we need to do, is look at how far the program has come since that game against Syracuse, and we should feel really good about ND, the football program, and the future of both.

C'mon guys... I wasn't going to start this thing on a down note!

GO IRISH!

Eddie Vanderdoes is causing quite the stir within the Notre Dame fanbase right now. You all know the story, and most of you should also know the different routes that this story may end up taking over the next month or couple of months.

Honestly, no matter the outcome, none of this is a good thing. It sucks.

I have some thoughts about the situation and thus I break out the podcast machine to spill my beans.

You can listen to it on the player below, or you can download it from iTunes.

For those of you who like X's and O's, the folks over at Spread Football were kind enough to post notes from the 2013 Notre Dame Coaches Clinic on their site. The notes are very informative and fun to read during the football-starved offseason. While there are a number of interesting tidbits from this year's clinic notes, I found the diagrams of the Switch concept particularly interesting.

Welcome back to the 'Wu Am I?' series on Subway Domer. This is where we cut the shit and peel back the curtain to see who will be the 36 players of impact for Notre Dame football in 2013. Depth charts are a thing of the past, and they are especially inaccurate with Notre Dame in the front 7 of their defense and within the skill positions on offense. There is flexibility, and more players see more significant playing time. 

Make sure you have seen Part I before you dive into Part II of the 36 Chambers...