Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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MURPHY'S LAW DAN MURPHY the college football arms race on many fronts in the past two decades. Most measures they have adopted in recent years, such as a bigger facility for the team, accepting early enrollees and training table meals, have been made in catch-up mode. Now, Swarbrick and head coach Brian Kelly seem de- termined to be pace setters. Notre Dame's new contract to wear Under Armour products is unique in multiple ways. It's the richest of its kind in college sports history, report- edly around $90 million for a 10-year deal. It gives the athletic department stock equity in the surging 18-year- old company. Swarbrick said he'd also like Under Armour to consider the Notre Dame teams to be its guinea pigs while developing new technology to help performance. That arrange- ment has the potential to put Notre Dame on the cutting edge of training techniques and safety. The $400 million stadium expansion announced a week later is another change that will allow Notre Dame to leapfrog several other universi- ties in its ability to dazzle. When it's completed five years from now, the construction project will create better facilities for the football and basketball programs. The imaginative decision to include significant classroom space in the design makes the hefty price tag easier to stomach for the university. There's a good chance that two more stubborn speed bumps of tradition will be leveled in the process, too. The construction will add some type of video board to the stadium, and nine- story towers bookending the stands will block out a significant amount of sunlight and all but guarantee the Irish will be playing on artificial turf in the near future. These changes can lead to better results on the field for two reasons. First, new technology and facilities at- tract the most talented young athletes. More importantly, the changes will generate a whole lot of money. "You need resources to compete and to compete effectively," Swarbrick said. "We'll do what we need to do to make sure our student-athletes and coaches have those resources." More resources for Kelly will trans- late into better coaches' salaries and a bigger support staff. A team of re- cruiting directors helped bring Notre Dame up to speed with its social me- dia presence in recruiting and massive direct mail marketing ploys to high school prospects that went unmatched in the lead up to National Signing Day. When Kelly finished introducing his 23 new recruits for this upcoming year, he said it was a priority to continue to expand that staff and its ability to spread Notre Dame's sales pitch. The results aren't guaranteed, but mold-breaking behavior has almost al- ways been rewarded on the otherwise conservative campus. College sports is at the brink of a new era, and Notre Dame is once again in a position to usher it in. The Irish are changing. It's what they have always done. ✦ Dan Murphy has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since August 2011. He can be reached at dmurphy@blueandgold.com