Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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"You are starting to get down to very detailed decisions about how things look, what you're putting in spaces, it's exciting. It's a great project that is going to serve so many university interests. The vast majority of the space we are building has nothing to do with foot- ball. It has to do with using an athletic facility to benefit the whole university." BGI: From an outsider's perspective, the $90-million apparel and equip- ment deal with Under Armour looked mainly like a chance for Notre Dame to secure a big check. But it appears now there is much more to that part- nership? JS: "Absolutely. The starting point for the analysis was giving our student-ath- letes the best resources to compete. Both where Under Armour is and where it is headed gives me great confidence that they will do that. "Under Armour is so fundamentally a performance company and one of our priorities is sports performance and how do we get better. I think they are innova- tive and have great expertise and I think they will be a great partner for us. "We're trying to work through these issues and figure out where can we get a competitive edge." BGI: Two years removed from the foot- ball team making a run to the national championship game, a bit of a slip up last year, what can we expect this sea- son? JS: "Generally speaking, at Notre Dame you are going to have very good facilities in which to prepare and com- pete, and you are going to attract very talented athletes. There are three things that ultimately determine the fate of the season. One you can't control — it's in- juries, it's all the things that impact the availability of young people and you just have little control over that. But the other two are what really excite me about this team. "One is the relationship among the staff and how they work together. This staff is a tight-knit group. A lot of people have been with us awhile now, under- stand this place and have a passion for it. Both the continuity and cohesiveness of the staff. And the other is the student- athlete leadership." BGI: Would you expand on the leader- ship dynamic? JS: "I think this team has the potential — you never know — but it has the po- tential to have very good leadership and that is so important to success. There were a lot of differences between our run to the championship in '12 and a less positive finish in '13, but leadership was a big factor in that. "It has to emerge and you never know until you have it there. And because of those things I think have the potential to be there, I am excited about the year. Now, the schedule is very daunting but you don't come to Notre Dame to play an easy schedule." BGI: And as far as the new playing sur- face, the FieldTurf is obviously a tre- mendous safety upgrade for the players, anything else in the works in or around the stadium? JS: "We haven't stopped, the field won't change but we have some ideas for other things around it to sort of add to the character and tradition of the place. "We are done for this year, but as we move forward with Campus Crossroads we'll do some other stuff." ✦