Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/123805
fan forum From The Publisher To Our Readers When our company purchased Blue & Gold Illustrated in May 2009, we agreed to retain the magazine's editorial staff. As happens in any major transition, some in that group "bought in" to our vision for the publication, its football preview magazine and its website — and some didn't. Two of that original group — Lou Somogyi and Jason Sapp — have been with us since the beginning of our ownership and have both embraced our goal of continuing to improve our publications and website. Lou has pushed us to do more and more in the magazine and our football preview annual, while Jason has taken our football recruiting coverage to new levels at BlueandGold.com and in Blue & Gold Illustrated, culminating in Jason Sapp our annual football recruiting issue. This issue, though, will be Jason's last as our football recruiting editor. The former Notre Dame football player has accepted a position in medical device sales for a leader in the industry. This is an incredible opportunity for Jason and his family, and one he couldn't pass up. We wish Jason the best in his new career, and we thank him for doing such a great job for us. His attention to detail, desire to learn, positive attitude, competitive spirit, sense of humor and passion for his work made him very special. We tell the people we hire that everyone is replaceable. Their goal is to make themselves hard to replace. Jason definitely did that. Tournament Travails It was bad enough showing up for the men's NCAA Tournament Big Dance wearing clown suits (who approved those uniforms?). To reprise our all-too-familiar lame performance was too much to take for Irish fans and alumni. Certainly it is time to address the annual failure and the recurring lack of intensity of the players that has become symbolic with our tourney performances. Slow and passive is not the way to go. Notre Dame is consistently out- played in the tournament by teams that are quicker, more aggressive defensively, and play with greater confidence and desire to win. Let's get some fearless kids who will go full out every time they put on the uniform. Notre Dame deserves no less. The program cannot fill a 9,000-seat arena and encounters widespread student apathy. That's because fans and students suspect that whatever regular-season success is attained will be overshadowed by the losses to the likes of Old Dominion, Winthrop, Arkansas Little Rock, and 10 seeds like Florida State and Iowa State once the