Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/83107
Five Questions With … National Football Recruiting Analyst Tom Lemming Tom Lemming was one of the first analysts to cover college football recruiting on a regular basis more than 30 years ago. Currently, along with publishing his own magazine, Lemming hosts a weekly recruiting report on CBS Sports Network each Friday. He joined Blue & Gold Illustrated last week to discuss the current state of Notre Dame’s recruiting and a broader look at the national landscape. BGI: Allen Pinkett came under fire recently for saying Notre Dame needed more “criminals” on its roster. Do the academic requirements for the Irish present their coaches with a deck stacked against them? Lemming: “Not anymore. They’ve bent a little bit academically. They still go after good students, but I would say out of the top 100 players right now nationally, Notre Dame could go after 75 or 80 of them. It’s not as bad as it used to be.” BGI: What position group is the most difficult to accurately project to the college level? Lemming: “I always thought it would be either offensive linemen or cornerbacks would be the toughest position to figure out. Offensive linemen, you could take a big guy who’s 6-6, 300 pounds, who dominates the little guys he goes up against in high school and you could project him. … But you rarely see them go up against guys their own size until they get to college. That’s when the heart and determination come in. “Cornerback is the other position because these guys have to run backwards as fast as guys run forward.” BGI: Notre Dame’s most recent commit, linebacker Doug Randolph, is the third player from Woodberry (Va.) Forest Prep to pledge to the Irish in the past two years. How important is it for teams to develop pipelines like that in the recruiting process? Lemming: “Having pipelines like that is everything, really. I was hoping Notre Dame, when they got Manti Te’o, the biggest name ever to come out of Hawaii, they’d continue that pipeline. I think that pipeline is everything. “Notre Dame being a Catholic school and being the Catholic school in the country it’s important for them to get pipelines going to Catholic schools.” BGI: How beneficial is it from a recruiting standpoint to get off to a 2-0 start like Notre Dame did this year? Lemming: “Everybody always talks about the personality of the coaches, the great facilities and the enthusiasm of the crowd, but winning probably is the No. 1 key ingredient to making a successful recruiting group.” BGI: With so many recruits making early decisions — Notre Dame already has 20 verbal commitments — will we see more players change their minds than normal in the next few months? Lemming: “That’s going to happen to a lot of schools. It could happen to anybody. It happened to Notre Dame a lot last year. I think most of them were acceptable except for perhaps Ron Darby. I think they could’ve handled that a little bit better. “I believe that it could happen again this year. They’ve got to stay on top of these players and make sure that all their questions are answered on a consistent basis.” — Dan Murphy