Who Will be the Next Coach at Notre Dame

Some schools, like BC, come and go from their schedule. They'll play a series against them for a few years and then pick up a series against someone like Ohio State who they played in '95 & '96.

They play Air Force a lot too.

It's one of the nice things of being an independent. They get to play their traditional rivals -- Michigan, MSU, Purdue, USC -- which is, like you say, the equivalent of a conference schedule, and still have room to schedule a variety of opponents in different regions of the country.

As long as they can get NBC's money and don't have a hard time scheduling opponents, there's no reason to join a conference.

 

Is this kid, Trey Johnson, the one you're talking about? According to Rivals, he runs a 4.45 in the 40...pretty good, obviously, but it doesn't seem like that's as fast as you're describing.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/recruiting/player-Trey-Johnson-64123

 

Exactly. And you can throw Pitt in there too.

And then their "non-conference" games (even though they play them nearly every year) are Washington, Washington State, and a couple interchangeables (this year it was UConn and Nevada). So ND's "non-conference" games are teams from the Pac 10 and Big East while other schools' non-conference games are against teams from the MAC, Mountain West, etc.

ND only played 2 teams (Navy and Nevada) who are not in a BCS conference. That's fewer than what most schools play.

So ND's schedule consisted of three Big 10 Teams, four from the Pac 10 and three from the Big East.

 

For years Tom Lemming would move ND recruits to 5-star and drop other kids that were not interested in the Irish.

The Army-Navy game is filled with ND recruits. Why? Tom Lemming has his hand in the selection process.

 

An SEC offer will get a player moved up a couple of stars, regardless of where they started.
I've seen it happen and plenty.
I'm not even sure why it would be argued.

 

Early 90s actually. No, it doesn't compare to today, but there was about a decade where it seemed like Notre Dame signed the No. 1 class every year and it didn't result in many great teams.

 

Point still holds. Horrible comparison. The process has changed dramatically since then.

 

The point was that Notre Dame recruits have been overrated for almost 20 years. Obviously recruiting has changed since 1992. What hasn't changed is the assumption that if a kid is going to Notre Dame that he could have gone anywhere in the country. More often than not, that isn't the case at all.

 

I'll make one point.

I went to BC. Class of '91. Was friends with a lot of guys on the football team.

A lot of them were Catholic kids from Catholic High Schools -- places like St. Ignatius in Cleveland, Moeller in Cincinnati, and Brother Rice in Michigan.

I used to tease these guys that they all wanted to go to Notre Dame. Most of them admitted it was true.

That's why it's such a big deal every time BC has beaten ND. There are only two Catholic Colleges playing big time D1 college football. And kids from Catholic High Schools all over the country want to go to ND.

My friends all had good grades and could have gotten admitted to ND if they had been offered football scholarships. Most of them had a friend or teammate who went there.

ND may not get every top player they want, but they're not begging kids to go there either.

Even this year's team rarely got beaten badly.

A couple of good players and a good coach, and they'll be right there -- competing for National Championships.

 

For the most part the big guys at BC were slower versions of the ND players.

 

100% True.

 

And the point is the evidence you present is one anecdote that is nearly 20 years old, which is meaningless in that it is only one person's story and it is ancient given how much reporting on recruiting has changed in that time.