Big, and good, news for Notre Dame Law School: Professors A.J. and Patricia Bellia have turned down tenured offers from the University of Virginia Law School, which is ranked in the U.S. News Top 10, and will stay at NDLS. Brian Leiter calls this a "major retention coup for Notre Dame."

My impression is that it’s almost an article of faith among some NDLS critics, skeptics and detractors that the school’s young superstar professors, such as the Bellias, will inevitably be "poached" by other, higher-ranking law schools in due course. This development appears to contradict that belief, which is a very good thing.

As Leiter says, "Notre Dame has long had a strong reputation among practitioners … but the school
has also noticeably strengthened its faculty from a scholarly point of
view in the last decade." Indeed, during last year’s unfortunate "Paulinogate" incident, one thing that became crystal clear was that pretty much everyone, even those who strongly criticize the law school for various things, totally disagreed with Jimmy’s criticisms of the faculty: there was almost universal agreement among Irish Trojan commenters that the NDLS faculty rocks. And the Bellias are a big part of that, so it’s great that they’re staying put. Indeed, I daresay this is a much bigger deal than last week’s news that NDLS had climbed back to #22 in those flawed U.S. News rankings. Those numbers may vary from year to year, but if profs like the Bellias are staying put, the law school will be just fine.

If you want to see some non-#1 seeds in the Final Four, look no further than the women’s NCAA Tournament.

#2-seed LSU upset #1 North Carolina last night, and #2 Stanford upset #1 Maryland, to earn spots in the Final Four. The ACC is out, and Stanford is the first Pac-10 team to reach the women’s Final Four since 1997.

Admittedly, both #2 seeds were playing closer to home than their top-seeded opponents (LSU in New Orleans, Stanford in Spokane), and both had reasonable cases to be #1 seeds in their own right, so these are not exactly stunning results. Nevertheless, the women’s Final Four is officially less "chalky" than the men’s.

So, what does this mean for the 11th annual Living Room Times women’s basketball pool?

(more…)

…no such thing. April Fools! (Again!)

There has been some Brey-to-Indiana speculation, but I’ve got no reliable information that any such thing will actually happen. Commenter yea gave me the idea for the April Fool’s joke.

So… did I fool anyone twice today? :)

Click here to go back to the original thread and comment.

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UPDATE: NDNation head honcho "El Kabong" says IU has contacted Brey’s agent, and that "getting this done is of paramount importance" to Indiana. But it’s not clear whether El Kabong is himself playing an April Fools joke on his readers (see also here). He’s done it before. (Hat tip: NDLauren.)

I hadn’t seen El Kabong’s post when I published mine. Either we’re playing parallel jokes, or my joke has eerily accurate timing.

Sen. Hillary Clinton will suspend her campaign for president, sources tell CNN.