It’s Wednesday. Time for Girl Talk. We always thought Chicago and the Quad City DJs were a natural match.

Notre Dame announces their new AD today, and he is no one. Okay, he exists, and is some one, but he is a first-time AD who’s never managed an athletic program before, which seems to go with Notre Dame’s overall “hey, you wanna try something here, guy?” approach to hiring as of late. John “Jack” Swarbrick is a lawyer and is partly responsible for the Super Bowl coming to Indianapolis, and is therefore a favorite of every sportswriter three and a half years in advance due to his creation of easy “Indianapolis sucks” columns for Super Bowl week.

Hiring an inexperienced AD usually means they get to play the part of compliant asphalt to some steamroller; whether that’s Weis, the administration, or both remains to be seen.

Little Ball of Hate: ROCK. Trey Blackmon has the finest nickname in contemporary college football: “Little Ball of Hate.” Frankly, only two names could top this: one, whoever “Big Ball of Hate” is, and two, our proposed nickname for the position Jasper Brinkley plays at South Carolina, the “Thundercock Linebacker” position. We really just want that to be spoken on air by an ESPN personality just to watch the sweat stain their collar.

698 slots available; market value, $10,651 each. Care to quantify expectations for Georgia fans? Exactly 698 slots opened up for season tickets thanks to the usual attrition (death or tightened budgets, we guess,) and the going price shot up to over ten grand for each one for 2008. Ah, angsty teeth-gnashing over the toxic mixture of cash and college athletics! Wait, we’re sorry, this is the SEC. ROCK OUR TICKETS DONE COST MORE THAN URS WOOOOOO!!!! Get money!

Further online defections. Alert the authorities. Chip Brown of the Dallas Morning-News is headed to Rivals, per our golden “sources.” Brown’s departure, along with that of Wendell Barnhouse to the Big 12’s website, takes two of the biggest names in Big 12 sportswriting to the dark side of these mean internets. [/finger tent, quiet laughing.]