Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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10 MARCH 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED NUMBERS AND QUOTES BY STEVE DOWNEY UNDER THE DOME 10 Athletes are competing in the 2026 Winter Olympics in a sport that was different from the one they participated in at the NCAA level, per NCAA.com, with Notre Dame track and field standout JADIN O'BRIEN among them. The 23-year-old O'Brien was a four-time ACC champion and three-time national champion in the indoor pentathlon, and a 10-time All-American for the Fighting Irish from 2020-25. However, she is competing in the 2026 Winter Olym- pics in Milan and Cortina, Italy, as a member of the U.S. Olympic bobsled and skeleton team. O'Brien is the 119th student- athlete from Notre Dame to compete in the Olympics since 1912, but the first woman to do so in the Winter Games. In fact, of the previous 118 Golden Domers — who won 48 medals, 24 of which were gold — to com- pete in the Olympic Games, only one other competed in the Winter Games: Márton Gyulai, who competed in the bobsled for Hungary at the 2002 Salt Lake City and 2006 Torino Games. O'Brien's incredible journey began when she started receiving messages via social media from Elana Meyers Taylor, one of the most decorated athletes in U.S. bobsled history, encouraging her to try the sport. Meyers Taylor is the most deco- rated Black Winter Olympian with five medals in her first four Olympic appearances. Prior to that, she played softball at George Washington and set records in nearly every offensive category for the school. O'Brien finished her last track meet on Aug. 2, 2025, and started training for the bobsled Aug. 4. Ten days later, she went to the rookie camp in Lake Placid, N.Y. Two weeks after that, she tried out and made the U.S. World Team. A month after that, she flew out to Europe and has been there since No- vember. On Jan. 19, she was officially named to Team USA and will team up with Meyers Tay- lor as the push athlete in the two-woman bobsled. O'Brien will compete Feb. 20-21 in the two-woman bobsled event at Cortina d'Ampezzo. 86 Games was all it took for Notre Dame junior point guard Han- nah Hidalgo to tally 2,000 ca- reer points. She is the fastest in ACC history to reach that milestone. Through 91 career contests, she had 2,148 career points (23.6 per game). 382 382 Career steals for Notre Dame junior point guard Hannah Hi- dalgo after her 10 thefts in the Irish's 74-66 victory over Miami Jan. 22. That put her at No. 1 on Notre Dame's all-time steals list, surpassing Skylar Diggins (381). Current Irish head coach Niele Ivey (348) is third on the list. Hidalgo had 409 steals in her first 91 games (4.5 per contest) with the Irish. 4 Games with 25 or more points and 10 or more steals for Notre Dame junior point guard Han- nah Hidalgo, after her 27-point, 10-steal effort in a 74-66 win over Miami Jan. 22. It was the third time she did it this season, against Akron (44 and 16) in November and versus Bellarmine (30 and 13) in December. She also did it as a freshman in her second career game with 26 and 12 against NJIT. Per OptaStats, no other NBA, WNBA, or Division I men's or women's player in the last 15 years has done that more than once. I was annoyed that the Fighting Irish were left out of the 2025 CFP, both because of the logic involved … and because I thought they were good enough to win the national title. They lose key players like everyone else, including star run- ning backs Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price and receiver Malachi Fields, a huge difference-maker in 2025. But the defense appears loaded, quarterback CJ Carr was dynamite for much of the season and, well, Notre Dame always has good running backs. … "I never know which teams I think the highest of un- til I force myself to make some predictions. Apparently 2026 is Notre Dame's year. You heard it here first." — Bill Connelly of ESPN on picking Notre Dame to make the 2026 College Football Playoff Field, earn a bye and ultimately win the national championship No. 6 Was where Notre Dame was slotted in the com- posite way-too-early 2026 college football top 25 rankings put together by On3. Nine outlets and experts were part of the process: On3, Crain & Cone, ESPN, CBS Sports, USA Today, The Sporting News, Yahoo! Sports, FOX Sports and The Athletic. The Fighting Irish (182 points) were behind only No. 1 Ohio State (210, 2 first-place votes), No. 2 Indiana (204, 4 first-place votes), No. 3 Texas (203, 1 first-place vote), No. 4 Georgia (200) and No. 5 Oregon (193, 2 first-place votes). The Irish were as high as No. 2 (Sports Illustrated) and as low as No. 12 (FOX Sports). A total of six media outlets had Notre Dame in its top five. 6 College football programs signed top- 15 classes in both Rivals' 2026 recruit- ing rankings and On3's transfer portal rankings: Notre Dame (No. 2 recruiting and No. 9 transfer portal), Texas A&M (No. 3 and No. 7), Texas (No. 10 and No. 10), LSU (No. 12 and No. 4), Miami (No. 8 and No. 14) and Flor- ida (No. 14 and No. 12). 12 Teams that improved their 2026 Col- lege Football Playoff chances with their offseason roster moves, per ESPN, were Georgia, Indiana, Miami, Ohio State, Oregon, Texas Tech, LSU, Michigan, Notre Dame, Texas, UNLV and Southern Cal. ESPN listed the Irish's 2026 recruiting class ranking No. 4 and their 2026 transfer class ranking No. 15. "After missing the College Football Playoff field in 2025, Notre Dame has stocked its 2026 roster like a program intent on making sure that doesn't happen again," wrote Craig Haubert of ESPN. "Help is on the way at virtually every position. The Irish landed the nation's No. 4 recruiting class, featuring 18 SC Next Top 300 prospects, including running backs Javian Osborne and Jonaz Walton, who could play a role in helping replace Jeremiyah Love's production. "Notre Dame also added four of the top-100 transfers, featuring several big bodies who could immediately help along the defensive front." It's crazy how fast this transition has hap- pened. But I've loved every second of it. Going to the Olympics has always been a dream of mine." — Former Notre Dame track and field standout Jadin O'Brien on earning a spot on the Team USA bobsled and skeleton team