Jimmy Clausen wears dark helmet visor to hide shiner, fight crime

Mark Tuesday as the day that Jimmy Clausen turned to the Dark Side; he’s more machine now than man. Sad. We still don’t know which eye was blackened when he reportedly was sucker-punched outside of a South Bend bar at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday night, because on Tuesday coach Charlie Weis wasn’t talking about the incident. He also relaxed the Notre Dame visor policy and let Clausen wear a tinted windshield.
It was just this August that Weis broke with tradition and announced that he would let his team wear visors at all (see fifth graph from the bottom). But they had to be clear plastic, because he didn’t like “the Darth Vader look.” I’m not making any of this up, by the way.

But Clausen’s new look doesn’t remind me of Darth Vader at all. I’m thinking more of this. Clausen can now use the helmet in his spare time to fight crime on the streets of South Bend.
The visor thing marks just the beginning of apparent wholesale changes with the Notre Dame football program. Weis is on his way out, and now Clausen may be gone as well, to the NFL. His family home was recently sold. (Update: Chicago Tribune is retracting that).
Meanwhile, details are emerging about what happened on Saturday night. Apparently — and I say apparently because it sounds somewhat fishy — Clausen and a group of friends were leaving the bar when his date went back in to get her purse. Some guy supposedly shoved her, Clausen pushed the guy, and the guy clocked him. In no way was our quarterback involved in a drunken brawl. Please disperse!
Why detail your helmet? Wear that black eye — or two black eyes, whatever — if you can’t be the prettiest girl at the party, at least you can be the toughest looking.