Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1541906
24 JANUARY 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED BY ERIC HANSEN M ike Martin's natural inclina- tion after a formal 33-min- ute session with the Notre Dame football core media on National Signing Day for high school recruits Dec. 3 was to stick around for some informal chit-chat. Duty had other ideas. "I've got to head out to go scout one of our portal targets," the Irish football general manager said with a smile. Portal — as in transfer portal — still a necessary staple of Notre Dame's ros- ter building. That's even after the Irish signed 27 high school players that col- lectively ranked as the nation's No. 2 class in the 2026 cycle — the school's best ranking in the internet era of re- cruiting rankings (2004-present). The new later, shorter and once-an- offseason transfer portal opens for 15 days starting on Jan. 2. The Irish added a record eight-scholarship transfers last offseason, with only defensive tackle Elijah Hughes and tight end Ty Wash- ington having 2026 college eligibility as well among that group. "We've been working on that for a lit- tle while," Martin said of Notre Dame's transfer strategy, which starts in July with amassing large databases of play- ers at every position, regardless of per- ceived need at the time and availability of those players. "We've narrowed our focus on some targets. And when we're able to reach out to them, we will at the appropriate time." THE BIG PICTURE AROUND MARTIN Speaking of time, the 44-year-old Martin spent roughly seven minutes and 45 seconds of his allotted media time Dec. 3 thanking people involved with him in the recruiting/roster-building/ retention process since he was hired in mid-February to replace Chad Bowden, now with the same title at Southern Cal. Had Martin been doing his thank- ing at the Academy Awards as an Oscar winner, he would have been walked off to orchestra music drowning him out about seven minutes sooner. But the long list of people shows just how many tentacles the recruiting operation has these days and how deep it rolls. An eyebrow-raiser in Martin's list of thank yous — Pat Garrity, Notre Dame's first-year general manager for men's and women's basketball who's involved in the football operation through his NIL expertise. But then Martin's football general manager job by definition is having to navigate cascading surprises and some- times thinking so far outside the box, you can't see the box anymore. As these GM jobs popped up across college foot- ball in the past couple of years, there was very little uniformity in how they looked from program to program. Or even within the same program from month to month. That constant morphing hit the ac- celerator in July, when the new revenue- share rules and roster/scholarship lim- its went into effect without meaningful guardrails and enforcement, prompting one athletic administrator to describe it as a "s--- show." A MORPHING WORLD Notre Dame general manager Mike Martin goes behind the scenes on recruiting, NIL valuation and the transfer portal Martin, a former NFL personnel executive, was hired in mid-February to replace Chad Bowden, who took a similar position at Southern Cal. PHOTO BY KYLE KELLY