Notre Dame

What's great is they don't have a jumbotron because they like to preserve that tarditional college football feel, yet they've started pumping up Dropkick Murphys, AC-DC, Black Sabbath, Insert Butt Rock Band Name here on third down, timeouts, opening kick, etc. Umm, I'd rather have replays.

 

Insert Butt Rock would actually be a pretty good name for a band.

 

I know what you're saying, but you're not exactly right on the bowl-ban effect on USC.
I don't have time to look it up, but as I remember, they lost 6 upperclassmen who took the free transfer opportunity and 4 recruits who de-committed when the bowl ban came down. That's 10 supposed mainstays no longer in the program.

 

Stanford and ND don't recruit from the same pool -- or at least Stanford can only recruit the deep end of the pool while Notre Dame can take the kid who's just sitting on the steps over in the shallow end. I'd wager that a third to a half of Notre Dame's players would have no chance of making Stanford's academic minimums.

Stanford is one of the most successful programs in the nation in recruiting -- of the kids their admissions office allows them to go after, they get almost all of them.

Notre Dame's academic restrictions are a bogus excuse. They bring in some smart kids. They bring in plenty of dolts, too.

 

I thought Notre Dame would get either Gunner Kiel or Maty Mauk. Not getting either (with both relatively in his back yard) is not a good sign for Kelly's stay in South Bend, in my mind. I can't see that team winning more than 8 or 9 games without an upgrade at the position.

 

Kelly's sideline antics did great harm to his program development.

One thing yet not to really come up is that Kelly pretty much fabricated his own college football playing experience.
playing experience.

 

Anyone who thinks ND's academic limitations for recruiting is the reason it is struggling is not very knowledgable about the subject.

Charlie Weis had a very good to excellent offense for four of the five years he was at Notre Dame. The school's biggest problem is its defense -- specifically defensive line and cornerbacks. The last good cornerback duo Notre Dame had was Vontez Duff and Shane Walton in 2002, and Walton came to Notre Dame as a soccer player but was recruited by the football staff to try out for the team.

Kelly had his worst year of coaching this year, but he knows what ails the program.

Last year, he signed 3 of the top-6 or top-10 defensive line recruits in the country: Aaron Lynch (offers from Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Miami, Ohio State, South Carolina, and West Virginia); Stephon Tuitt (LSU, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina); and Ishaq Williams (Alabama, Florida, Miami, Oklahoma, Penn State, South Carolina, Stanford, USC, West Virginia).

This year, he has verbal commitments from Ronald Darby and Tee Shepard, who are the No. 1 and No. 4 rated cornerbacks by Scout.com. Other services rate them differently, but the offer lists clearly demonstrate they are top-flight recruits: Darby (Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, Michigan, Penn State, USC, West Virginia) and Shepard (Alabama, Miami, Oregon, USC, etc.)

Although there are quotes about Shepard picking between ND and USC from a hat, he's clearly joking to get reporters to stop asking him if he will defect from ND, considering he photoshopped the following last night: https://twitter.com/#!/tshepard08/status/153326965691133952/photo/1.

Notre Dame doesn't have academic qualification issues that are so burdensome as to be major factors. Notre Dame also still can recruit big-time players. The recent question was, "Can Notre Dame attract top-flight defensive linemen and defensive backs?"

The answer is "Yes."

 

Blanton was a top-flight corner out of high school.

Darrin Walls was a top-flight corner out of high school.

Gary Gray was a top-flight corner out of high school.

Until someone doesn't bust at that position, the jury's out on the next group through, as well.

I wonder if it's just a tough position for the recruiting services to gauge? It would be interesting to look back and see. Maybe I'll take that on if I have some spare time one day.

The quarterback thing is a joke. Texas Tech seems to be able to throw any mope back there and the offense hums. Same with other spread programs. But Notre Dame can't find one guy out of three to run it halfway competently? That's stunning. Particularly since Crist was a five-star recruit out of high school. Now that doesn't mean that he's a sure-fire NFL star or even a clipboard holder. But the fact that he couldn't even be trusted to run that offense with those receivers is baffling.

 

Let's look at two programs. LSU, to me, has four top-flight corners in Claiborne, Mathieu, Simon and Brooks. The first three are from Louisiana and Brooks is from DFW. All of these places are in LSU's recruiting wheelhouse.

The top three are, without a doubt, the best trio of CBs in the country. And LSU did not have to leave the state to get them (Claiborne from Shreveport, Mathieu from New Orleans and Simon from near Lafayette).

Notre Dame, on the other hand, has had a line of busts at CB, many of whom were better players according to the recruiting services than, say, Mathieu.

My suggestion is the more fruitful your recruiting "base" is, the better you are going to be at evaluating your talent. The more national you have to be, the more misses you'll have. It's harder to evaluate when you are comparing players from coast-to-coast and having to introduce yourself to people to get into the mix. If you are Michigan State and you are going to look for speed players in Texas,it's going to be tough to break in with high school coaches who may already have a great relationship with Mack Brown, Stoops, Gundy, Sumlin, etc. If this is what you ALWAYS have to do in recruiting, you're at a serious disadvantage.

And one result from this may be that you don't get as accurate of a picture on a kid's abilities as does the more local college coach who has a long history with a network of coaches in his backyard.

 

So what will the excuse be if/when this group flops like the rest have flopped? Will it be "academic restrictions", or the laughable assertion that Notre Dame is limited in the caliber of recruits it can draw and is somehow a level or 2 behind places like Stanford when it comes to high school football players these days? It seems the ND fan base has risen to the level of Cubs fans when it comes to the mantra of "wait til next year." Only with them, it's "wait until XX recruit gets here".

I think some of the problem lies with the unrealistic expectations fans and the media place on the program. I remember most years during the Weis era, and again this season, to start the year all the talking heads and message boards were filled with predictions (even from "experts") about how the Irish had the inside track to a BCS game and that this would be their breakout season. Then when they hit the unsurprising bump in the road, the wheels completely come off.

It's reasonable to link that pressure to Kelly's sideline demeanor when things go wrong. And then when players like Gunner Kiel (who should have been a slam dunk for Notre Dame) see the way Kelly treated his QBs this year when they made mistakes, is it a surprise that they decide to go elsewhere? It's a bad cycle that Kelly is helping to keep going.

 

That's the point: It's coaching and player performance. There shouldn't be any excuses. I'm trying to tell you to disbelieve the excuses because they are not true. Notre Dame can and will get good players. Does the school have disadvantages? Sure -- no natural, local recruiting base; cold weather; no conference. But it has advantages to make up for that -- historic and recent success recruiting Catholic high schools; good facilities; good academics; national TV contract.

It's on the school, coaches, players if they fail.

 

Oh, I've never bought the excuses. I think the biggest factor is that they whiffed on the Ty hiring, whiffed on the Weis hiring and the jury is still out on the Kelly hiring - though that doesn't look particularly promising right now. They can get all the top-rated recruits in the world, but if the staff can't develop that talent, you'll see happen what has happened. You hear people talk about coaches that "do more with less", but I think the last few ND coaching staffs have "done less with more" than anyone around.

The one thing I don't agree with is the disadvantage of no natural recruiting base. If you're talking strictly about Indiana, OK. But add in Chicago/Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, and those are pretty fertile states where ND should be able to get its share of top-flight players. And that's where the national name comes in, too. You can't tell me that ND can't go coast-to-coast and get into enough living rooms to get the talent it needs to win. It's not like you're coaching at Minnesota or Vanderbilt and trying to beat the Gators for a kid from Florida.