Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM AUGUST 2024 7 UNDER THE DOME BY TYLER HORKA T he more things change, the more they stay the same. Upheaval in college athletics is every- where. Running rampant. The College Football Playoff has four teams one year, 12 the next and then, possibly, 14 a cou- ple years after that. Just more than three years ago student-athletes would have been penalized for selling an autograph. Now they're enticed to attend certain schools with promises of luxury vehicles and profitable perks high school kids of yesteryear couldn't have imagined ob- taining in their wildest dreams. But again — the more things change, the more they stay the same. At Notre Dame, anyway. The Fighting Irish haven't jumped as far into the deep end of the new col- lege athletics landscape as other schools have. At a recent recruiting weekend at Texas, for instance, the entrance to the football facility in Austin was lined with lavish sports cars. The very same weekend, prospects got out of a bus and walked into the Guglielmino Athletics Center in South Bend through a narrow concrete walkway with normal shrub- bery flanking their shoulders. Notre Dame head coach Marcus Free- man, somehow, at 38 years old, has be- come a bit of an old-school recruiter. He's still selling kids on what he and Notre Dame can do for them on the football field and in the classroom. Not in the driver's seat of a Ferrari. That's because four-plus years of playing college football is hardly ever a 0 to 60 sprint. It's more of a marathon. And at Notre Dame, it's a pivotal period of time that sets someone up for a pro- fessional football career or a successful entrance into the real world. Or both. Freeman has not lost sight of that through name, image and likeness (NIL) funds, profiteering through conference realignment or the transfer portal. None of it. He's still dead-set on building Notre Dame the traditional way. "We have a philosophy now; we're going to double down on high school recruiting," Freeman said on May 31. "I believe in that. We have to build our foundation on high school recruiting." It's feasible to "buy" a new roster ev- ery offseason with the combination of NIL and the transfer portal. Scour the country, find a promising player — or a dozen or more of them — who isn't getting enough playing time some- where and offer him plenty of it at your UNDER THE DOME STAYING THE COURSE Notre Dame continues to operate on its own terms in a chaotic collegiate landscape Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman has not wavered in his beliefs during his tenure, and he believes it's ultimately going to pay off. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER