Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1246464
8 JUNE/JULY 2020 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED UNDER THE DOME A Notre Dame captain in the mid-1980s, a nine-year NFL defensive lineman, and now working his 20th year as a well-known ESPN Radio host and analyst, Mike Golic Sr. has almost 40 years of knowledge to pull from when speaking on any football-related topic. Yet nothing in the sport prepared Golic for the uncertainty COVID-19 wreaks as the clock ticks on the prospects of a 2020 college football season. "I know football coaches love control, and that is one thing they don't have right now: control," Golic said. BGI: The question on everybody's mind: From your personal knowledge and what you're hearing, do you believe there will be a football season in 2020? Golic: "I'm still confident there will be a season. I am less confident there will be a normal season. All I know is that once something is settled, we just have to accept where we are when it's decided and do the best we can from that point on, no matter what it looks like." BGI: Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly set July 1 as the deadline date to have his guys back on campus, working out and preparing for an on-time start to the football season (scheduled to begin Aug. 29 against Navy in Dublin, Ireland). Why does Kelly need two months to prepare for a three-month season? Golic: "I do think it is very difficult to actually put a date on it. But I am also not a coach who is trying to plan out — like Coach Kelly is — for the time he needs to prepare his players. You can't just have everybody show up and im- mediately put them in pads. "There has to be a build-up even before you get pads on. Is July 1 that date? Brian Kelly has been doing this a long time. I'm sure he is counting the weeks while still looking at that first game at the end of August." BGI: In addition to the obvious benefits of cardio and strength training, is injury prevention another important element to these preseason workouts? Golic: "Huge! And here, we're going to be talking about soft-tissue injuries. If you're not running enough and training enough, what you're going to see is hamstrings, quads and calves. That's where you're going to get pulls without adequate training. "If you hurt something before the season starts, a soft-tissue injury, those usually linger and can hang with you for a long time." BGI: What other concerns do you hold as players and coaches try to operate under an abbreviated preseason workout schedule? Golic: "The only way to simulate the football part of it on the field — as far as the physical part — is to hit. And you obviously have to wait to get pads on for that. But for your body, you typically can get the speed work in, the change of direction, the slow to fast. "You can get a lot of that work in to get your muscles ready for when the pads go on. That is something the players can't do right now, and maybe even into the summer, with that close supervision. That's a monster concern." BGI: With so many unknowns, any other particular storylines you'll be watching? Golic: "This is new to everybody, but this is where the coaches are going to have to really show a little bit of patience and maybe they can't jump as quickly as they want to speed this thing up. "They have to go through the process of getting the players physically ready. I'm sure that's why Coach Kelly is looking at the July 1 start date." — Todd D. Burlage Cost, Time Savings Make Video Recruiting A Win-Win By Todd D. Burlage From financial hardships, to canceled sports sea- sons, to home schooling, the COVID-19 pandemic is changing every aspect of college life. And with no immediate foreseeable end to social distancing and other limit-contact orders, online video visits have become the new normal for Notre Dame coaches, university administrators and athletic support staff wanting to track current Irish student-athletes or contact potential recruits. Obviously, virtual engagement through Zoom, Skype, FaceTime and other online methods have their kinks and aren't as personal as the traditional in-home face-to-face visit coaches and players share. That said, video correspondence is the best evolution to recruiting since air travel, both fiscally for schools and personally for coaches. Notre Dame recruiting coordinator Brian Polian often jokes and laughs about his familiarity with Hawai'i because of his countless recruiting trips to the islands. Here's betting his wife and family didn't find those long trips amusing. Irish running backs coach and ace recruiter Lance Taylor ardently pursued prized running back recruit Will Shipley at Weddington High School in North Carolina, twice visiting in December. Shipley ultimately chose Clemson, and Taylor's time proved wasted, as did the thousands of dollars Notre Dame invested into this intense but fruitless recruitment. Virtual recruiting may not provide the intimacy of an in-home visit. But couple the time savings for coaches with the budget savings for schools, and this new recruiting method needs to become the primary recruiting method. No Substitute For The Real Thing By Lou Somogyi Would you be comfortable marrying your spouse based on communicating mainly via video? How about purchasing a home where you don't get to see or feel it inside, even though the video produc- tion of it looks wonderful? Those are important long-term decisions, as is a student-athlete deciding what school best fits his or her needs over the next four or five years — and then especially the next 40. There is noth- ing like actually being there to get a sense of true interaction and community. There is undeniably enormous waste in collegiate athletics on both the extravagant and frivolous, par- ticularly when it comes to the never-ending arms race with facilities and the like. However, when it comes to a student-athlete deciding on a school, it can- not be limited to such impersonal contact via video. It's not only about the coach-player relationship, but meeting with academic advisors, deans, walk- ing the campus, touring a potential future dorm and getting an overall sense of what "feels right" in person. Especially at a place such as Notre Dame, which recruits nationally, prospects from all over the country will either feel it or they won't. A good step to eliminate budget waste was taken a couple of years ago in football with the early signing period in December. Coaches then no longer had to spend time "re-recruiting" all of January before the February signing period. Other regulations to stop such waste also can be implemented by the NCAA. Limiting recruiting to a "virtual" event isn't one of them. Point ✦ Counterpoint: SHOULD RECRUITING BE LIMITED TO VIDEO CHATS TO SAVE MONEY? Five Questions With … ESPN RADIO PERSONALITY AND FORMER NOTRE DAME FOOTBALL CAPTAIN MIKE GOLIC SR. MIKE GOLIC SR.