Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/941859
www.BLUEANDGOLD.com MARCH 2018 5 FAN FORUM OBJECTIVE POSITIVITY As a 30-plus year subscriber, I am of- fering you my post-season reflections. First, congratulations to Brian Kelly, his entire coaching, support and ad- ministrative staff, student-athletes, managers and trainers, cheerlead- ers and marching band members for their collective, instrumental roles in our extremely successful 2017 football season. Despite a few hurdles, Notre Dame rallied from last season's poor performance and truly exceeded our "realistic expectations." Hopefully, the 2018 football season will continue to build upon 2017's improvement. Second, I genuinely appreciate the objective analysis, and resulting con- structive criticism, your publication provides. Anything else would be a total disservice to your readership. Third, I am somewhat discour- aged (and frequently infuriated) by some of your readership's published commentary about the football pro- gram. I am particularly perturbed with those (cowards) who voice their "nameless" opinions online, with no real ownership other than some ob- scure social media moniker. They should "man up" if they want to ex- press their opinions publicly. Fourth, many Notre Dame gradu- ates and true fans are "sick and tired" of those self-proclaimed fans, includ- ing subway alumni, who constantly criticize the school's strict academic, moral and ethical standards. If they strongly object, they should find an- other team for which to root. Fifth, as a graduate, I admittedly have my own personal criticisms re- garding our beloved university, but I provide those privately to the ap- propriate person(s), not publicly in an independent sports publication such as BGI. Best wishes to you and your BGI staff for another great publication year in 2018. Go Irish! Beat Michigan. Michael J. Stenger, '78 Franklin, Tenn. Mr. Stenger, thank you for your sup- port all these years, through the thick and thin. BE HEARD! Send your letters to: Letters Blue & Gold Illustrated P. O. Box 1007, Notre Dame, IN 46556 or e-mail to: lsomogyi@blueandgold.com On National Signing Day, every school in the country is joyful about the new additions. On BlueandGold.com, Irish fans were no different, although many also took a pragmatic view of the future. BaltimoreIrish: Very happy with this class as a whole, but definitely lacking some top end talent at DE, OL and RB. We have plenty of 4-star type talents on the team, but if ND wants to start competing with Clemson/ Bama/UGA/OSU, they need to start landing a lot more 5-star, top 50, top 5 at their position types (Phil Jurkovec, Derrik Allen, Kevin Austin, Houston Griffith). Those other programs have those types of guys all over the field. StlIrish2578: Overall the best class of Kelly's era due to needs/depth/athleticism! Apegambino: I could see our future at DE very similar to the mess we have had at safety the past two years. When you sign all of two DEs in two years you are asking for trouble. ND needs a slam dunk DE class in 2019 with numbers and talent. Pmur6215: The class appears solid overall, but no better or worse than classes from the prior three or four years — just larger. It probably means more guys transfer out in two years time when they realize they're not up to snuff to compete with the better players. To believe it's a much better than average ND class, you have to believe that the staff has gotten better at finding hidden gems. Not complaining, just trying to avoid "shiny new toy" biases and introduce some metrics into the discussion. 4-4-3: Pretty much the kind of class one would expect given ND's stricter requirements. And, of course, the absence of a single 5-star is notable. This class should also confirm Kelly's legitimacy as a competent coach of an excellent second-tier pro- gram, which should consistently win between 8 and 10 games, ranking anywhere between 10 and 30 in a given year. Unless, of course, Kelly falls off the rails as he claims to have in 2016 by "not doing his job." He's like ND, itself — a shade off first-tier. FROM THE WEBSITE THANKS FOR A JOB WELL DONE! Since Coman Publishing Co. purchased Blue and Gold Illus- trated in May 2009, Gail Evans has answered your calls, input your orders, sent you missed issues, changed your addresses, pre- pared mailing lists and pushed the post office to improve its de- livery of BGI. We hired Gail as our circulation manager in September 1993. What has stood out about her from day one is she cares about you, our customers. For the last 15 years, she has handled her duties while dealing with the painful effects of mul- tiple sclerosis, never complaining and rarely missing work. This February, after nearly 25 years on the job, Gail will retire. We appreciate all she has done for our small company and wish her the best in the next stage of her life. Some Irish fans were pleased with head coach Brian Kelly's 2018 recruiting haul, while oth- ers believe he needs to take it to another level for the Irish to compete against perennial pow- ers such as Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State. PHOTO BY JOE RAYMOND