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STAYING POWER T Nine seniors on this year's team — 10 wenty-nine seniors will run solo out of the Notre Dame Stadium tunnel Sat- urday afternoon prior to their last home game of the season. The annual tradition is becoming a can't-miss event for Irish upperclassmen. MURPHY'S LAW DAN MURPHY Six seniors enjoyed it so much last No- vember they came back to do it again this year. They are Braxston Cave, Mike Golic, Jamoris Slaughter, Kapron Lewis-Moore, John Goodman and Dan McCarthy. Five or six others will likely return next year for an encore. Senior linebacker Manti Te'o mentioned running out of the tunnel with his family in South Bend as one of the main reasons he passed up the NFL Draft last season. He and All-American tight end Tyler Eif- ert both skipped out on major paychecks to be seniors at Notre Dame. Head coach Brian Kelly has a tremendous track record when it comes to retaining his top talent. Only one player, tight end Kyle Rudolph, in Kelly's three years at Notre Dame chose not to exhaust his college eligi- bility when given the option to do so. There will eventually be others that join Rudolph for a variety of reasons, but Kelly continues to add piles of evidence to the folder he can slide across his desk when a player is trying to decide if he is too cool for school. Te'o, of course, is Exhibit A. On a sim- ple dollar and cents level, the national love fest surrounding Notre Dame's surprise Heisman candidate will leave marketers swooning after he is drafted. He has also been a more complete player this year and proved his ability to be a playmaker. Those are the arguments even before Te'o Senior linebacker Manti Te'o is Exhibit A for what an extra year in South Bend can do for a student-athlete. "I think it's beginning to become more can get to the long list of non-football rea- sons that steered him back to South Bend. Others like NFL rookie safety Harrison Smith added zeroes to their paycheck by playing a fifth year in college. Wide re- ceiver Michael Floyd repaired his image and moved up to a top-15 pick by coming back last year. Lewis-Moore and Cave made some major upgrades to their draft status this season. Even Eifert, who has dropped in production, has helped himself by returning to school according to draft analyst Mike Mayock. Kelly said patience is becoming a well- respected virtue inside his locker room. PHOTO BY JOE RAYMOND pervasive within our program that our guys are here to get a degree first, and that the NFL calling will take its course," he said. "You're not coming to Notre Dame because you're going to hang your hat here for a couple years then go to the NFL. I don't want to recruit that way." Kelly's near perfect re-recruiting record will be impossible to uphold if he con- tinues to bring in the type of blue-chip players he has convinced to come to Notre Dame in the past few seasons. That evi- dence file continues to grow, though, and will probably get even larger next fall. ✦ PAGE 21 if Slaughter is cleared for a sixth season — are eligible to return next fall. They are: Tyler Eifert, Cierre Wood, Chris Watt, Zack Martin, Carlo Calabrese, Dan Fox, Jake Golic, Tyler Stockton and Nick Tausch. There will be at least a few that put an NFL roster spot on hold to finish their college careers. Eifert will be moving on; he has already made his victory lap this season. Wood will probably join him as well. He has had no false pretenses about his eagerness to play professionally in the past. The two spots that are primed for the most positive impact from Kelly's return policy are the offensive line and line- backer corps. Senior linemen Martin and Watt would both get a shot in the NFL this summer, but it wouldn't be a shock if both stayed. Martin can become a top-tier pick at left tackle with another consistent season. Watt will have a chance to show his versatility on the interior and bump his stock higher as well. The same goes for inside linebackers Fox and Calabrese. Notre Dame has one of the best groups of linebacker recruits in school history lined up this year, but the combined six years of experience be- tween the current tag team of Fox and Calabrese are impossible to replace. Ju- nior outside linebacker Prince Shembo has turned some heads this year, but he too might pull back to the Irish side of the fence after seeing what happened to some of his teammates that stuck around. Kelly's philosophy is a 180-degree change from Charlie Weis' regime, which pitched its NFL connections as bait for recruits. If Kelly's focus on the here and now keeps helping players improve their future, everyone is going to want their chance to trot out of the tunnel. ✦ E-mail Dan at dmurphy@blueandgold.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @BGI_DanMurphy.