Open Access | by Pat

This past Saturday the Irish held the only practice of the spring that was completely open to the media. You can get some impressions from beat writers like Michael Rothstein of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and Eric Hansen of the South Bend Tribune. Now, the team had a full scrimmage the day before on Friday, which certainly would have been interesting for prying eyes, but Saturday's practice was more subdued. Still, it was the first time for the media to see Jimmy Clausen throwing the football more than a few feet during warmups.

UND.com put up over an hour of video of the practice so there's plenty to dig through for those that want to see things for themself. After starting with the practice overview, you can study the offense and the defense, or, concentrate on the one-on-one drills featuring all four QB's fighting for the starting job. For now I'll leave the breakdown to those that want to leave their opinions in the comment section as I'm hesitant to try and glean too much from a few isolated clips. But I will say that the team looks like they are having fun. From Zibby and Carlson having some fun trash talking to the team mobbing walk-on (and possible new starter?) Nate Whitaker after he hit the final field goal that kept the team from running a final set of sprints, there seems to be a lot of energy which hopefully carries over to the Blue & Gold game and into summer workouts. What caught your eye?