Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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the fifth quarter lou somogyi ball game he scored 20 points, grabbed 33 rebounds and blocked 11 shots. Would you classify that as a pretty good nucleus on which to build? If so, I just described what entering this season was Notre Dame's third- or even fourth-team defensive line. The four players were, respectively, senior Justin Utupo, junior Anthony Rabasa, fifth-year senior Tyler Stockton and sophomore Jarron Jones. I bring this up because of the rash of injuries along the Irish defensive front for the better part of the last eight months. It began with losing juniors Tony Springmann (knee) and Chase Hounshell (shoulder) even before the season, and in the past several weeks having front-line players such as Louis Nix III (knee), Sheldon Day (ankle), Kona Schwenke (ankle) and linebacker/end Ishaq Williams (knee) shelved for at least one game. Consequently, there were many stories about how the Fighting Irish defense was down to the bare bones in an attempt to field a lineup. Yet a lot of Football Bowl Subdivision schools would be elated to have players with the kind of background I just listed. It's at times like that when I think of my ol' late friend, Beano Cook, better known at ESPN as The Pope of College Football. He grew up in a time in the 1940s when Notre Dame's second or even third teams could have ranked among the top five or 10 squads in the country, and sometimes he had a mistaken notion that even today Notre Dame's second teams could regularly beat his Pitt teams, or a Purdue, Boston College, etc. When you look at the high school résumés of people such as Utupo, Rabasa, Stockton and Jones, you can understand why many might share that opinion. There is a reason why they were offered scholarships in the first place. It's a special feat that an extremely small percentage in America can achieve — but it's also easy to get lost amidst an ultra-competitive college football world. High school rankings or fanfare might not always tell the full story. Someone like Jones, for example, was considered a better offensive line prospect by most scouts and not from a good football area. At 5-11, Stockton didn't possess prototype size, while a Utupo or Rabasa eventually might be classified as "tweeners," not quite big enough for the line and maybe not quite mobile enough for a specific linebacker role. Injuries and surgeries, among other factors, also can hamper a football career. And, of course, sometimes even better players might be recruited. Too often we await the new batch of recruits to elevate the program, but overlook that many of them arrive with no more the dossier or promise of the ones already here. And there is one other blasted problem: Other schools give about 85 football scholarships, too. Competition never ends. ✦ Senior Editor Lou Somogyi has been at Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 1985. He can be reached at lsomogyi@blueandgold.com