New Coaching Roster...Prepped and Ready to Go

Pretty much every major Notre Dame news source has been busy covering the new coaching staff (especially the always excellent Blue-Gray Sky blog) recently. I have particularly enjoyed The Observer’s series of articles about each of the new coaches.

If you click on the Blue-Gray Sky link above, you can check out their complete listing of the new coaching staff, which provides a run-down of what position each coach has been hired for, how many years of experience they have in that position, what BCS teams they have coached (if any), and little trivia bits for each coach.

Since I’ve already babbled on long enough, I’m just going to give a brief listing of the coaches and provide a few thoughts about things I’ve noticed so far. Here’s the basic run-down. Next to each coach’s name, in parentheses, is the title of the position they coached in 2009, and the name of the school where they coached that position:

NOTRE DAME COACHING STAFF 2010

Head Coach: Brian Kelly

OFFENSE
Offensive Coordinator / Quarterbacks Coach: Charley Molnar (Passing Game Coordinator & Wide Receivers Coach, Cincinnati)
Offensive Line Coach: Ed Warinner (Offensive Coordinator, Kansas)
Running Backs: Tim Hinton (Same position, Cincinnati)
Wide Receivers: Tony Alford (Running Backs Coach, Notre Dame)
Tight Ends: Mike Denbrock (Associate Head Coach, Indiana State)
Graduate Assistant: Michael Painter (Staff Assistant, Cincinnati)

DEFENSE
Defensive Coordinator / Inside Linebackers Coach: Bob Diaco (Same position, Cincinnati)
Defensive Line / Special Teams Coordinator: Mike Elston (Same position + Assistant Head Coach, Cincinnati)
Outside Linebackers: Kerry Cooks (Defensive Backs Coach, Wisconsin)
Defensive Backs: Chuck Martin (Head Coach, Grand Valley State [Division II])
Graduate Assistant: Bill Brechin (Graduate Assistant, Grand Valley State)


We’ve got a new Strength & Conditioning staff for the team, too, which will have a huge impact on the team and their preparedness for next year, but I don’t really have any observations to make about them, so I’m not including them here.

So, here are some things to note:

~ As you may have noticed, 5 of Notre Dame’s new staff members are direct hires from Brian Kelly’s Cincinnati staff (Molnar, Hinton, Diaco, Elston, and Painter). Of these five, four retained their coaching positions, and one (Charley Molnar) was promoted to Offensive Coordinator.

~ The lone holdover from Weis’s coaching staff is Tony Alford, who has been moved from running backs coach to wide receivers coach. This will be his first year at the new position, so we’ll see how that goes. It looks like he’ll have a pretty good resource to draw on in Charley Molnar, though; Cincinnati’s fast passing attack in 2009 not only led the Bearcats to an undefeated season, it also led to them finishing dead last in time of possession (averaging 25:46 per game). So. This seems like good news for fine-tuning receivers, but possibly bad news in terms of an overall scheme…we’ll have to see how that works out for the defense, eh?

~ The only other coach on the staff who has experience coaching the Irish is Mike Denbrock (tight ends coach), who coached offensive tackles and tight ends under Willingham from 2000-2002. He helped coach Ryan Grant and Julius Jones, and recruited the likes of David Bruton, Travis Thomas, and Brady Quinn.

~ Ed Warinner is the only coach who has no previous connections to Kelly. Molnar, Hinton, Diaco, Elston, and Painter are obviously connected to Kelly through Cincinnati; one of Alford’s relatives played for Kelly when Kelly was coaching at Grand Valley State, and Alford has also previously worked with Molnar; Mike Denbrock served as Offensive Coordinator and Defensive Coordinator under Kelly at Grand Valley State; Cooks was a teammate of Bob Diaco at Iowa; and Chuck Martin worked on Kelly’s staff at Grand Valley State and was promoted to Head Coach when Kelly was hired at Central Michigan

~ This is a highly experienced staff. Most of them have at least 5 years of experience coaching the specific positions they’ve been hired to coach (3 have more than a decade of experience), and the majority of the staff has experience at higher-level coaching positions. This is Molnar’s first season as Offensive Coordinator and Diaco’s third as Defensive Coordinator; Ed Warinner spent three years as OC at Kansas; Denbrock has served as OC & DC at the D-II level and an Associate Head Coach at the D-I level; Elston was Assistant Head Coach at Cincinnati; and Chuck Martin went 74-7 as the Head Coach at Grand Valley State.

To conclude, here are some quotes that jumped out at me from the introductory press conferences / Observer articles:

From new O-line Coach Ed Warinner:

“Football is teaching and coaching fundamentals relative to what system you’re in, and the advantage I have of coaching a lot of different systems and a lot of different places and a lot of different kids is anything we want to do offensively, I’ll have some kind of perspective on that, and the different issues each kid has.We’ll be able to find ways to make them better.

From new OC Charley Molnar:

“I would be disappointed if we went through this season without a 1,000-yard rusher at the running back position.”

“We are very aggressive in our offensive approach.We are looking to score virtually every time we have the ball. Even at the end of the half, we are looking to score a touchdown if we can. Aggressive also means the type of kids that play for us. We have turned down many good athletes that were offered [scholarships] by other schools because we did not think they were aggressive enough physically on the field to play in our system.”

“In 2008 and 2009 we were Big East Champions. The thing I learned from [those seasons] is that you don’t always have to have the very best players on the field in order to win football games,” he said. “It’s about playing harder than your opponent, and believing in what you do, and really that’s about it. If guys would just [play harder than their opponent], you have a chance to win each and every week.”

So…there you have it, folks. Now we just have to wait…and wait…and wait…and see.

T-minus 224 days until kickoff.

GO IRISH BEAT BOILERS!

Things that don’t completely piss me off: aka Notre Dame Football’s off-season

It’s not that I’m particularly fond of the off-season or anything. It’s just that the football team can’t do anything to break my heart over the off-season. (Well. Unless they decide to start going around knocking over liquor stores, getting into fights with our basketball players, stealing rosaries from little old ladies on the side of the road, etc. But since Brian Kelly is all about making sure his players are “tough gentlemen,” we’re going to go ahead and assume that he is not going to put up with that sort of hanky-panky during the off-season. Just as soon as he makes sure Michael Floyd gets whapped thoroughly around the wrists and ankles [but not the shoulder—anything but the shoulder.] for a bonehead underage drinking violation that occurred over winter break, I’m sure the team will be all in tip-top shape.)

The exciting news of the moment is that we finally have an entire football staff assembled, we’re going full-speed ahead on recruiting, we have five early enrollees on campus for spring ball, and now—it’s just a game of waiting.

Which is why I’ve got to babble about all this, because I hate waiting.


Interesting Tidbits

--So I hear the football players have all been put on diet plans. FINALLY. One would think that this is pretty much a no-brainer. I mean, come on, you’re unleashing college-age males into an all-you-can-eat dining hall three times a day and you expect them to just magically make all the right food choices on their own? Ppbbbt.

--In the midst of the coaching flux, we’ve managed to lose only two recruits. Whose names I can’t remember, but they’re lousy little de-committers, so who cares anyway?

--Our QB situation is distressing, but not as dire as it could have been. Dayne Crist will still be recovering from his torn ACL during pretty much all of spring ball, but the good news is that we’ll still have two fully healthy quarterbacks on campus for spring ball: one of the early enrollees on campus this semester is freshman QB Tommy Rees, and he’ll be competing alongside Nate Montana, who is back from his less-than-lackluster stint at Pasadena City College (35% in pass completions…youch). But hey, two-and-a-half quarterbacks competing for a starting job is better than nothing, and keep in mind that Kelly has experiencing winning games with inexperienced quarterbacks. In 2008, the Cincinnati Bearcats rotated five different quarterbacks through the lineup and still managed to win the Big East.

Also, in the fall, Crist, Rees, and Montana will be joined by freshman QB Andrew Hendrix. Hendrix was almost a lousy de-committer, backing away for a bit after Weis was let go, and he almost got himself sucked into Urban Meyer’s Evil Recruiting Vortex of Death, Lies, and Doom. (Whoops, sorry Urban, forgot you’re still busy being indefinite about your leave of absence. I’ll have to rephrase that. “The Indefinitely Absent Urban Meyer’s Former Recruiting Vortex of Statements That May or May Not Have Involved Death, Lies, Doom, and Visions from God”) But then Hendrix backed away from Florida, reconsidered, and decided he’d rather attend, to use Hendrix’s own words, “the best University on the face of this planet.” Good boy, Andrew. Way to suck it up to the alumni. You’re going to fit right in here. (You can see this quote on his blog, where he briefly describes the decision-making process involved in committing to the Irish over the Gators. It seems to involve a lot of gut feelings, but no direct visions from God.)

--Jack Swarbrick has been discussing the Irish’s future football schedules with the media. If you are like me and you despise the 7-4-1 model Kevin White came up with, you will be pleased to see this quote from Swarbrick:

We have the goal of the 7-4-1 model, but there may be some years where an opportunity presents itself that we may go to 6-5-1 or 7-5. We’re open to those sorts of modifications.

Yessssssssss. This makes it possible for us to schedule more games with schools that have great football traditions, and who aren’t willing to get skewered by the Irish’s refusal to screw people out of home-and-home series (which is the only thing that makes 7-4-1 possible). However, Swarbrick followed up this comment by saying,

I'd like to try and figure out how to keep the Stanford relationship, because in so many ways, that's an institution we like to do business with and have multiple relationships with across the university. ...I'd like to do more with Duke and Wake and some of those schools. It's really more institutionally focused - what's a good fit for Notre Dame? What sort of looks and feels like us?

Which sort of makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

That is SO not the point of football scheduling, Jack. SO not the point. I mean, okay, I have nothing against building relationships with those schools academically, but not at the cost of sacrificing games with schools that actually have decent football programs. I mean, Stanford is one thing, but Duke? Wake Forest? (Tulsa? WESTERN MICHIGAN?) You’re killin’ me, Petey, you’re killin’ me.



Upcoming: Observations on ND's new coaching staff

Coaching Carousel

Seeing as the grand majority of people who regularly peruse my posts (without leaving comments) seem to be people who only read my enraged drivel because they find it amusing (and not because they regard Notre Dame football as some sort of rare and precious elixir that will last only long enough to ensure that no internal organs shrivel up during the dry, blistering desert that is the off-season), I feel the need to post a note regarding the current activity of the college football world. Purely for educational purposes, of course, which means that obviously I should not feel any guilt whatsoever about composing this during work.

So, if you have not been paying any attention at all since Brian Kelly was hired, or since Jimmy and Golden declared for the NFL draft, or since the last time I posted a deranged Facebook note (and I suspect that the people who have not been paying attention to any of this are the same people who are unclear about what it means to say that Notre Dame’s defense will be switching from a 4-3 to a 3-4 this season)…here are a few important updates of which you should be aware:


My Least Favorite Person In All Of College Football resigned. And then un-resigned.

You may be shocked to realize that this person has never played a down of football for the Irish and also does not reside in the state of California (or rather, Washington, as we will discuss in a moment). No, my least favorite person in college football is, in fact, the walking pinnacle of un-Popeliness himself: Coach Urban MCMXCIX.

(…and he parties like it, too.)

I find this most distressing, mostly because I can no longer express my utter distaste and unfounded loathing for this conniving little slop bucket with quite as much zeal as before. I mean, it’s one thing to rail against a smarmy little sunshine-dwelling, recruit-stealing championship-winner whose players have a complete disregard for other people’s eyeballs…but there’s just something wildly indelicate about insulting a man who has just realized that he doesn’t know his family and is on the verge of cardiac arrest because his entire life for the last twenty years has consisted of yelling at out-of-breath twenty-one-year-olds who are simultaneously trying to decipher the significance of "Ace Right z-Dig x-Shallow Bananaberry Split London Bridge on-one on-one" and recall the last name of the girl whose phone number somehow ended up scrawled across their right forearm this morning.

I mean…it just doesn’t seem sporting.

Unless, of course, Meyer really is the kind of fargin’ icehole that anyone with morals / a conscience / a human soul that hasn’t been sold to the devil always suspected him to be.

Shortly after stepping down from the head coaching position at Florida, he decided to change his resignation to an “indefinite leave of absence,” which is so indefinite that he “expects to be on the sidelines for the 2010 season,” at least according to this article from ESPN.

And then there’s the wild rumor surrounding the recruiting of Sharrif Floyd, one of the top defensive tackles in the country, who was recently named National Football Player of the Year by the Maxwell Football Club. He had offers from Penn State, Ohio State, North Carolina, South Carolina, and the Trojans, but after a long and stressful decision-making process that apparently involved Urban Meyer receiving visions from God, he settled on Florida.

Now, of course, these comments are so outrageous that they are most likely complete hogwash. The following quote apparently surfaced first on a South Carolina blog, and skipped around the blogosphere for a while before being refuted by Floyd himself, via a Florida Gators blog.

The following quote purportedly came from Floyd’s high school coaches, describing the decision-making process behind Floyd’s commitment to Florida:

Sharrif was really confused and put a call into Coach Meyer. When they spoke Coach Meyer told him that he had a ‘dream’ the night before, and that Coach Meyer saw himself on the sideline coaching Sharrif. Told him that is was a “message from God that I should come back and coach, as I guess if it’s my time to die, I’d rather die on the sidelines coaching you than anywhere else in the world.

Sharrif talked to us the next day and said Ohio State is great and all, but Coach Meyer said he would DIE for me. That’s pretty intense…

Oh, Internet. The things you come up with.

The rebuttal from Floyd is posted on this here Gators fan message board:

I read those comments and when I did I immediately spoke with my head coach Ron Cohen. Coach Cohen told me that it was not true at all and nothing like that was ever said. I immediately called Urban Meyer to let him know what was being said on the internet. I wanted to let everyone know that this is total and false information. I never said that to my coach because it did not happen and my coach never said that to anyone. I am going to the University of Florida because that is where I want to go. I have a great relationship with Urban Meyer and I am a Gator. A lot of schools tried to hit me with the religion pitch but not Florida, not at all and that's how it is and I am not going to change my mind. I have talked to a bunch of my friends and they think this is something that started on one of the Ohio State boards. People are trying to get back at me for not going to Ohio State and not going to their team but I know what I am and that is a Florida Gator.

So what do we believe here? Was it irate Ohio State fans – or perhaps irate South Carolina fans—making things up to get back at Floyd? Is Urban Meyer really just an unholy corksoaker who will stop at nothing to land recruits? Are the Florida fans just trying to cover their team’s ass by blaming everything on the Ohio State fans? (The Internet reports: You Decide.)

Whatever the case, I’m going to try to tone down the Urban Meyer-related rage until the fargin’ bastige is actually back on the sidelines again.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to find another target at which to direct all the impotent anger I feel for coaches who get away with being walking penises simply because their players actually win football games. Speaking of which,


The World’s Largest Walking Penis Has Officially Departed from Condom Land.

It is possible that, in the course of this insult, I have inadvertently paid Pete Carroll a compliment. (I understand that men are quite sensitive about this whole “size” issue.) But let me assure you that no kind intentions were meant. Any lapses in my ability to properly lambast this man for being a licentious piece of weasel dung with all the aged dignity of a man whose face / integrity looks like it has been slowly reduced to a pulpy oozing mess by a never-ending string of BB pellets, apparently being fired at him by his own inner child, result from the sheer frustration of knowing that this man never lost a football game to the Irish.

And now he’s bolting for the NFL.

Yes, it seems the Amazing Walking Penis caught a whiff of changes afoot in South Bend / the cantankerous scent of justice being spewed forth by NCAA Violations Committees (well. perhaps that’s stretching it a bit.) and decided to head north, toward the scent of several million dollars being thrown in his general direction by the overzealous management of the Seattle Seahawks, who apparently decided that lusting after Carroll was a better game plan than holding onto Jim Mora, Jr., whose first and only season with the Seahawks resulted in a lackluster 5-11 record. (And people say Notre Dame’s too hasty with its coaching turnovers.)

What a skeaze bucket. Skeaze. Bucket.

There’s been so much change already in this off-season. I can’t handle it. I feel like the college football landscape just jump-shifted slightly to the left and now all the sportswriters (read: Sports Illustrated) are falling all over themselves to talk about how good Alabama is, because apparently they’ve lost all faith in Florida, USC, upstart teams like Cincinnati, etc.

Oh, SI preseason poll. You are smoking the hardest kind of crack there is. Ohio State at number three? Ha! Ha ha! Please stop trying to pretend like the Big 10 is good, or that anybody outside the state of Ohio actually cares about teams from Ohio. (I mean, there may be 110,000 people sitting up in Ann Arbor’s ass crack who possibly care about a certain team from Ohio, but their opinions aren’t really worth endorsing, either.) I cannot believe somebody gets paid for coming up with the outrageous horseshit that is a preseason poll in January.

Sigh.

Upcoming: Actual commentary on what's going on with ND's football program.

BRIAN KELLY!

It's a mixture of relief and--dare I say it?--optimism: Brian Kelly is the 29th head football coach at the University of Notre Dame. For a lengthy, in-depth recap of Kelly's coaching credentials, I recommend the always superb Blue-Gray Sky.

For now, all you need to know is that this is a man who just coached the Cincinnati Bearcats to a perfect season, and now they're going up against Florida in the Sugar Bowl. (Although popular opinion seems to be that Cincinnati's going to get smeared all over the Superdome. I offer no opinion on this except to say that you all should know how I feel about Urban Meyer by now, so--Go Bearcats!) And now Mr. Kelly is forgoing the chance to coach in New Orleans by taking up residence in the Gug's big, cushy corner office.

Before I get going on the new coach and start paraphrasing everything I just heard in the press conference, I just want to say: mad props to Jack Swarbrick for keeping the lid tight on this thing right until the very end. I commend you, sir. Also, I found it a very classy move that you presented our new head coach with a medal of Mary instead of a helmet or a football jersey. Way to be true to the spirit of Notre Dame.

Coach Kelly--apparently a Boston Irish Catholic--seems to get the spirit of Notre Dame, too, which is pretty much essential for anyone who's going to attempt to lead the football team at Our Lady's University. He spoke of the university's tradition, its high academic and athletic standards, and approached the university not only as a fan but as a coach. He spoke of developing players who work hard on the field and are gentlemen off the field. He spoke of Notre Dame in a way, I thought, that represented Notre Dame.



Plumes of reactionary optimism

For as despondent as I've felt since the end of the season, I have to say I was pretty darn pleased to get that e-mail announcing Brian Kelly was our new head coach--because if it wasn't gonna be him, who else WAS there? I think, at this current moment in time, we actually did get the best man for the job. And I have to say, I'm way more up-in-the-clouds about all this than I thought I'd be.

Part of this, I think, is reactionary: looking for (and finding) things in the new head coach that were lacking with the last. This sort of amplifies the feeling of all-around glee at the thought that Notre Dame finally has a coach who
A) comes in with a .747 win percentage after 19 years of coaching
B) has proven he can turn limp programs into national champions (Grand Valley State, D-II) and conference champions (Central Michigan, Cincinnati)
C) has been a head coach--IN COLLEGE--for almost two solid decades

This man has a proven track record. He's not being sucked in through the NFL. He is not a gamble. (You know, so I assume.)

In case you've missed out on my biggest beef with Charlie the last couple seasons, here are the two things I've griped about the most:
1) Lack of fundamentals
2) Having a head coach who's still learning how to be a college head coach. (And by that I mean--watching in agony as he figures out that no, you can't treat college kids the same way you treat guys in the NFL, and no, college players don't come pre-conditioned with great fundamentals, and no, no matter how clever you think this play is, if your players aren't disciplined and consistent, all the scheming in the world isn't going to help you.)

And pretty much right off the bat Brian Kelly proved that he understands the nature of being a head coach in the college game.

Two little words that one reporter called "vague," but which were music to my ears: player development.

Ah, yes--YES! There it IS! College players have to be DEVELOPED! That is the why college football has become so crucial to the success of players in the NFL, is it not?

This is not to say that Charlie didn't know how to develop a player. I mean, he developed Brady Quinn. I'm just saying--Charlie came from the pros, he ran a pro-style game, he's a pro-style man, and I...

You know what, I'm just going to stop talking about Charlie. He came, he did what he did, he helped turn the program in the right direction, I wish him the best.

Back to Brian Kelly and player development. I liked this quote:

...it's not just about being bigger, faster, stronger, it's getting your players to trust. It's getting your players to be accountable on a day to day basis. It's developing them as young men, and you have to do that through relationships.

Boom! Right there. This is a man who knows he's dealing with college kids, knows he's dealing with people who are still maturing and learning how to manage themselves, and that is as crucial a part of the college game as anything else. Another choice example:

Eating at Burger King at 3:00 in the morning is not going to make you the best for your 8:00 workouts. Not being on time, not paying attention to detail, not being purposeful in what you do on a day to day basis. Attention to detail is absolutely crucial in this process of winning, and so when I talk about working on winning, I mean you do that from the first day you step on this campus if you want to win.

This is not me accusing the players or the previous coaching staff of anything in particular. This is just me saying that the new head coach is talking like a man familiar with success, familiar with making success happen in a college system, and familiar with how college kids work. And that, to me, is extremely promising.


Another comment that I particularly liked was this one, which almost certainly struck a chord with me because it's exactly the sort of thing I've been griping about for the past few seasons:

You don't win on Saturdays with Xs and Os. You win on Saturdays because you've been working on it all week, and so it's that attention to detail. It's morale, it's camaraderie, it's one voice.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! THANK YOU. Thank you thank you thank you. You have NO idea how good that is to hear. No idea.

(Once again, not trying to disparage anybody. I'm just sayin'--when your life for a few years is X's and O's, like Charlie's life was, you tend to approach the game in X's and O's.)

Something else that pretty much made me want to jump up and down and pump my fist in the air:

I think it's important to point out that you win and lose football games as a whole.

Yes. YES. YES!!!! I mean, I know this is sort of obvious to anyone who pays attention to the fact that football is a team sport--but it strikes me that, too often these days, people don't really approach it that way. I mean, theoretically head coaches do, but speaking as a lay person, it seems like teams are often lopsided--strong on one side or another--due to the leanings of whatever position their head coach happened to coordinate before he became the head coach.

I have this problem as a fan, too; I expect teams to be lopsided one way or another. For example...when I'm watching the Indianapolis Colts, I pretty much expect Peyton Manning to go out there and win the game for them. I know, somewhere in my head, that of course the defense has to do its job, and Peyton would be nothing without his O-line and his receiving corps of thrifty ballcatchers. But let's face it--when the game's on the line, I expect Peyton Manning to go out there and win.

It's the same problem watching defensive teams--you know, like how Da Bears used to be. How many teams can you watch throw six picks against Arizona on Monday night and still expect them to be able to win? The Bears did it a couple years ago. It was absurd.

Anyway, the point is--at the very least, Brian Kelly is approaching football the way a head coach needs to approach football: as a head coach, one who will oversee ALL aspects of the game:

So offense, defense and special teams has been what I'm an expert at. And when I talk about expert at it, I mean I don't just rely on one side of the ball. As a head football coach, you are responsible for all those areas, and as you can tell probably from my experience in Division II, we had when I started two full time coaches. So you couldn't just be the offensive coordinator; you couldn't just be the defensive coordinator; you had to be involved in all those areas. I will be intimately involved with what we do defensively as the head football coach.

Now, of course, we don't know how any of this is going to translate, but I hope for the best.

I look forward to our special teams next year.



Enough about the past. Let's talk about the future.

First off, Brian Kelly is a living-in-the-present type of guy:

Well, we go to work right away. We don't get a five year plan. This is a five minute plan. I mean, we're working on it immediately, and we expect our football players to play at a high level immediately.

Boom! Hit the ground running. I like it.

Second, let's focus in on our immediate future: recruiting. Kelly said that recruiting would be the first thing on his docket: calling our recruits, trying to keep the commits, going out there and fighting for the future of the Irish. I'm curious to see how this goes, and if any more of our recruits will end up falling through the cracks. Some players commit because of the coaches and then de-commit once they're gone; not all of them can be total badasses and commit after the head coach has been fired like Louis Nix.

In a related note, it will be interesting to see which Irish coaches are retained for the staff, too. Coach Ianello's already taken the head coaching job at Akron, and considering the state of our defense I think pretty much everyone expects us to have a new defensive coordinator...but I'm curious to see who of the remaining staff will stay, and what kind of impact that will have on recruiting.

Regarding the approach to recruiting and the kind of players Kelly is going after, the one big thing he mentioned was passion:

They have to love to play this game. So in the recruiting process, as we go from coast to coast in finding that right profile, I want to be around players that love to play this game. I love being around it. If you're not passionate about what you do and how you do it, you probably won't connect with me. So I'm looking for that passion, and it's got to resonate with me in the recruiting process. Yeah, we'll look at the profiles, but I've never gotten caught up in profiles as much as making sure that that passion is there.

After the effort the Irish team put forth this season, I think everyone's pretty much zipped their mouths shut Re: accusing the team of not playing with passion. So it's nice to see that the requirement for passion is there. (You would assume that anyone willing to kill themselves to play at the level of D-I football is passionate about the game but, you know, based on the clearly 100% accurate storytelling of the movie Rudy, not everyone who suits up on Saturdays always has their full heart in the game.) It might seem a little iffy to hear him talk about not getting "caught up" in the profiles of players, but for now I'm willing to ride with him on this one. In recent years, coaches at programs like Boise State, TCU, and (dare I say it?) Cincinnati have proved that you don't have to have a team full of top-rated, emu-faced recruits to win games. You've just got to make sure you can make the players you've got work as a team.

So...we'll see how it goes.

The last snippet I want to post has to do with our team--the current collection of next year's Fighting Irish. As I said, I think our team proved this season that they are hungry for victory--hungry for excellence. The letdown at the end of this season (UConn?? Really? UCONN????? Sorry, I still can't get over it.) will become a blip in Irish football history if Coach Kelly can turn this team's drive and potential into the one thing that matters most in the world of college football: wins.

As I've said all season, potential is frustrating. Potential is maddening. Potential, if unmet, eats you up from the inside.

And that, I think, is at the core of this whole idea of player development, of taking the potential of each player, and then moving them, as Kelly says, "to a level they can't get to by themselves. That's player development. That's at the core of what I mean, to get people to do things that they normally wouldn't do on their own."

So let's see how it goes. Let's see if we can get there. Let's see what Coach Kelly makes of the players we have here, and the players that we've yet to gain.

And of our team, the new head coach says this:

They want to win. They want to win. They're like any other football program that I've been around; they want to win football games, and they want to be led. They want to be developed. I could tell that immediately.

You do not come to the University of Notre Dame because you want to be average. You want to be the best of the best. And that's why I'm here. It inspires me to be around young men like I had in front of me today.

In the words of Rocket, kids: GO GET IT.

GO IRISH BEAT BOILERS!

National Signing Day and the Future of ND Football

Setting aside Super Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, the Chinese New Year, the happy re-activation of my credit card, and the two papers I've written in the past several days, let's talk about what's really important in the world this week: NATIONAL SIGNING DAY.

For those of you un-obsessed with the world of college football, National Signing Day is the day when high school football players all across the country officially commit to their chosen schools. Prior to National Signing Day, most players make verbal commitments, so schools have a pretty good idea of what their recruiting class is going to look like long before National Signing Day rolls around, but verbal commitments aren't permanent, so players can still change their minds at the last minute--which happened last year, with ND losing some of its promising recruits to schools like Florida (which, for some reason, thought that it was important last year, for some delusional reason like...I don't know, they won the national championship. Pfbt. Whatever).

This year, however, recruiting has been much more intense, with most of our recruits verbally committing before the start of this year's football season, and all the work seems to have paid off. Yesterday, ND signed 23 of the best high school football players in the country, hailing from 17 different states (that's right...17), and according to Coach Weis's presser, we have now signed: "five defensive linemen, four linebackers, three DBs, four offensive linemen, two tight ends, three wide receivers, a running back and a quarterback."

Excellent haul. But I have a question for you, Coach Weis: WHERE'S THE EFFING KICKER?????

Is it really THAT HARD to find a good--heck, I don't know, even halfway decent--kicker to come play for the Irish? Is there any reason that Notre Dame, with all its history, accolades, reputation, and scholarships, should continue to play WALK-ONs at the most crucial special teams position on the field? I mean, IS THERE?

Just asking.

Right, so, this year's recruiting class. There are too many to go through accurately (and let's face it, if you all really cared you'd be reading through Coach Weis's presser and surfing the real ND football blogs just like I did to hear about all the new recruits in detail), but there are a couple things I want to highlight.

First of all, we have a local kid signing up for the squad this year--Braxston Cave (good football name) from Penn (sssssssssssssssssss) is going to be joining the O-line (and, hopefully, improving it). Apparently his parents have been inviting all the new recruits over all season long for pasta nights or whatever, so there's been a lot of good ol' team bonding going on already (we can only hope).

Sean Cwynar, a defensive lineman from Illinois, has enrolled a semester early* (along with a couple other recruits, I think--but I can't remember which at the moment), so he's already on campus soaking up the ND lifestyle (quarter dogs at midnight!) and hopefully hitting the weight rooms in preparation for spring practices.

Favorite New Football Player Name This Year: Jamoris Slaughter. Defensive back, Georgia. Last year's fave was Golden Tate. We're racking up an excellent list of quality football player names.

Favorite new recruit overall: Mike Golic, Jr. He was the first player to commit to this year's recruiting class, and apparently he faxed in his signature to the Mike & Mike show yesterday morning announcing his commitment to ND (at least, this is what I hear...didn't actually tune in for the Mike & Mike show, but let's assume this happened, because it's nifty). Basically, Mike Golic rocks. He's on the O-Line as well, slated to compete for the position at center**. I get a good feeling from this kid. He reminds me of Bobby Morton, which is the highest compliment I can currently think of. Time will tell if he is as cool as Bob Morton, or as nice to the band.

And, most importantly: NEW QB ALERT!!!
I'm pretty sure you're all well-acquainted with my opinions on Jimmy Clausen (the little pustule). I could not be happier that we have a new excellent quarterback who will be competing (and actually competing, not just competing-because-he's-bee

n-around-Coach-Weis's-system-for-three-years competing) for the top spot at QB--especially by the time next year rolls around.

Dayne Crist hails from Notre Dame high school in Sherman Oaks, CA, and in his high school uniform bears a striking resemblance to my Favorite ND QB Of All Time (see inserted photo).

Yeah. No joke. Number 10.

So anyway, you can plainly see where my allegiance lies as far as the QB situation is concerned in the future. For this season, we have to assume that it will be Jimmy Clausen all the way, and though I still think he looks like an emu and has the charming personality of a narcissistic twat...if he's the guy who's going to lead us to a winning season this year (should I even dream of a bowl game?!), then so be it.

Last tidbit before I rush off to class: Aaron Taylor, former ND great, has been talking about this year's recruiting class on his blog. I'll leave you with his thoughts on what makes this year's recruiting class particularly intriguing and promising:


"...it’s hard to ignore the accolades that this Notre Dame recruiting class is piling up as Feb. 7, aka “National Signing Day”, fast approaches. In fact, we haven’t heard this much talk about an incoming Irish class since, well … since the class I was a part of back in 1990.

If you followed the site last year, you’ll remember the podcast of Kevin McDougal and I talking about how special our class was, (it’s still up under “Exclusive Interviews” if you want to check it out). The 1990 recruiting class consisted of eight High School All-Americans, and no fewer than a dozen of us made it to the NFL, including five in the first round of the 1993 and 1994 Drafts (a group that yours truly was fortunate and proud to be a part of). Two of those guys, B. Young and RB Jerome Bettis, are almost certain locks for the NFL Hall of Fame, and other guys like C Tim Ruddy, DL Jim Flanigan, S Jeff Burris, DL Oliver Gibson, WR Lake Dawson and LBs Pete Bercich and Anthony Peterson certainly had their moments in The League.


That class was truly special, and not just because we went 40-8, including Notre Dame’s last three bowl wins (I still can’t believe that when I write it). No, it was special because we all formed an instant, tightly knit bond ... a bond that has lasted to this day among many of us. And as talented as the incoming class is, it’s the bond between them that has me more excited than anything else."



*My friend Holly informs me that according to the Observer I am wrong, that only Trevor Robinson is on campus early, but I find this interesting considering I got the detail about Cwynar enrolling early from Coach Weis's presser...and let's hope for the sake of the team that Coach Weis knows which of his players are on campus and which aren't.
**Holly informs me that Braxston Cave is like the best center in the country, so who knows if Mike Golic, Jr. will ever see time at center? I maintain that he will have an impact, because he really seems to Get the whole ND thing. Not that I have any basis for an argument one way or another, I'm just throwing out nonsense like I always do.