Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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THE FIFTH QUARTER LOU SOMOGYI which he might have envisioned as a slow day's work when he arrived from high school. He refers to the current running back rotation as a "coach's decision" but … "I don't want to be just a third-string running back ever," Bryant said. "I'm just going to keep making plays and see what the coaches do from there. If you make plays, they got no choice." While taking a medical redshirt season as a freshman in 2013, Bryant was constantly on the rumor mill as a player most likely to transfer. Some- times still is. Yet another metamorpho- sis also began to take hold. When Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., in- side linebacker Tevon Coney — the nation's No. 11-rated inside linebacker by 247Sports — came up for his official visit to the Sept. 6 Michigan game, Bryant, from the same area, was made his host. No sugarcoating was pro- vided. "I basically told him that it's not go- ing to be easy," Bryant said. "It's going to be a tough transition, the weather and everything. … When I first got here it was tough — it was real tough." After Bryant had honestly fore- warned Coney of the perils at Notre Dame yet still had his attention and didn't scare him away, he went into the crux of his salesmanship. "Being around the people here at Notre Dame, it just makes you a better person, makes you a man and makes you want to be successful. … I adapted to living the lifestyle of a Notre Dame student-athlete," Bryant said of the message he delivered to Coney. "Wak- ing up, going to school, knowing that I've got to do stuff that I don't want to do every day. It turned me into a man now and made me realize the big pic- ture. It's not all about football. It basi- cally made me the person I am today. "I'm in class raising my hand, trying to just get my teachers' attention. They actually make you want to be better, and make you want to be a better per- son and make you succeed in stuff you never thought you would. … If you come here, then you'll want to be suc- cessful, it will be in you." Turn to the Drew Mahalic story in this edition, and the same senti- ments were echoed 40 years ago, and 40 years before that … right up to the time Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., took residence here in 1842. The black cloud that has hovered over the Notre Dame program since Aug. 15 with the limbo of five players for academic reasons has been unset- tling, lambasted as ridiculously slow, and maybe even draconian. We don't know the whys and whats, and it leaves us shaking our heads — maybe even our faith — in the pro- cess and methods. Why is everything harder and seemingly more compli- cated at Notre Dame? Some answers we might never know. What we do know is making a living, while also learning how to live, will never be easy. Notre Dame does offer a primer on trying to help show the way. ✦ Senior Editor Lou Somogyi has been at Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 1985. He can be reached at lsomogyi@blueandgold.com