Recruiting and Coaching News

Lets catch up on a few Irish football tidbits:

 

• Former Notre Dame All-American and future NFL Hall of Famer Bryant Young has accepted a graduate assistant coaching position for Coach Weis and the Irish. Bryant Young played 14 seasons in the NFL, all in San Francisco. Was one of the most dominant defensive lineman ever at ND, starring in the early 90s for Holtz's stout Irish squads. A great addition, who will be a major asset in coaching our defensive lineman, as well as a limited role in recruiting. Always a good thing to have Hall of Famers around your program.
• As many of you know, National Signing Day is two days away, Wednesday February 4th. ND's class is currently ranked from 20 to 25th by the major recruiting services (Scout.com, Rivals.com, and ESPN), largely due to the small size of the class (16 recruits). ND is still pursuing and likely to land at least one more top 100 recruit, while being seriously considered by 3 to 4 candidates at this point. Safety Jawanza Starling from Tallahassee is down to FSU, Georgia, USC, and the Irish, safety Byron Moore is down to USC and the Irish, and last but most important, #1 linebacker in the country Manti Te'o from Hawaii, is narrowed down to USC, UCLA, and ND. If the Irish get 1 of these 3, its good, 2/3 is great, and 3/3 is a grand slam. Te'o is in my opinion the most heavily recruited player in the Weis era, as Weis himself has gone to Hawaii numerous times in addition to the Hawaii bowl trip. Other coaches have made trips to Hawaii as recently as last week. This recruitment in many ways has been and all sellout blitz by Weis. We will know on all of these cats Wednesday morning, so lets just hope for the best. This class might be small, but there are some impact offensive players as good as any we have signed yet. Still looking for more impact defensive players, which is why these final 3 recruits are huge being all solid defensive talents (on top of who we are going against for each  -  the Trojans)
• Rumors and rumblings have Romeo Crennel penned as a possible ND defensive line coach. Wow. How awesome would that be, having Charlie and Romeo back together. Crennel may not have had success with Cleveland, but having another experienced defensive mind and coaching star like Crennel on the staff would be tremendous. Likely this is a pipe dream, but the rumblings have been strong enough to print in the South Bend Tribune, apparently.

More recruiting thoughts to come on Wednesday after signing day. Long story short, is that the Irish recruiting class will be the lowest ranked class of the Weis era. The reason, in my opinion, are very apparent:

• The Irish signed the #1 class in the country last season, which reveals itself in a young and talented depth chart. Even Florida's recruiting has slipped a bit this year, although still high on quality. The Irish were bound to fall outside the top 5, but should certainly have stayed in the top 10 if not for . . .
• The 3-9 2007 season. We signed the #1 class in the nation in February 2008, just after a 3-9 season. How? Because during the formative months of these recruits college decisions, the spring/summer before their senior year (2007), ND was just coming off two straight BCS games and things were looking up. The current 2009 signees had a formative recruiting period during the spring and summer of 2008  -  when the Irish were coming off a 3-9 season. Irish recruiting this year got off to a much slower start, and this class shows.

All this being said, 2010 recruiting is off to a great start, already with 2 commitments and numerous top talent on the board. Unless Weis has another disastrous season, his recruiting should easily be in any top 10 list from here on out.