Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/156066
Eclipsing Expectations An unheralded senior class makes the most of its talents T By Lou Somogyi here are some unofficial rules among the average Notre Dame "recruitnik" when it comes to the popular star ratings employed by football recruiting outlets. • First, sign a minimum of one of those rare, consensus "five-star" players on offense and defense each season, a la outside linebacker Jaylon Smith or running back Greg Bryant (although not consensus) this year. • The bulk of the recruiting class should be comprised of "four-star" prospects to give the team a chance to be in the top 10. For example, of Notre Dame's 23 freshmen who are on grant-in-aid this year, 18 were fourstar prospects in 247Sports' ratings. Among the 17 verbally committed to the Fighting Irish (as of Aug. 22) for next February, 12 are 247Sports fourstar recruits while the other five are deemed three-star prospects. • Three-star players are quality major college prospects, but a major program probably is less likely to vie for top-10 or Bowl Championship Series status if more than half of the starting lineup is made up of threestars. (Certainly there are always exceptions, such as 2013 first-round pick Tyler Eifert at tight end.) On National Signing Day, there is never such a thing as a disappointing recruiting class, yet head coach Brian Kelly was the first to acknowledge that the class Notre Dame signed in February 2010 — when he was barely three months into the job — was probably not a typical top-10 haul the program is acclimated to harvesting. Of the 23 Notre Dame recruits who signed in 2010, none was deemed a five-star player, and only four were classified by every major recruiting service — including ESPNU, Rivals. com and Scout.com — as a four-star prospect: wide receiver TJ Jones, offensive tackles Matt James and Christian Lombard, and nose guard Louis Nix III. Tragically, James died in a spring break accident before he ever could suit up for the Fighting Irish. "You need time to recruit," Kelly said at the time of the 2010 haul without saying it was a subpar group. "You need success [on the field] if you want to be able to continue to recruit