Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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FAN FORUM FROM THE WEBSITE One of the regular contributors to the BlueandGold.com board is former Notre Dame All-American quarterback Terry Hanratty (1966-68). Here was his take, and some responses, prior to the Wake Forest game: TerryQB: All I heard for the past 20 years is that Notre Dame will never win unless it lowers its academic standards. I would like to tell the talking heads we did not lower our academic standards — and we are 10-0 and counting. All we needed was coaching staff with relentless recruiters, and we with Charlie Weis, too — you should be able to stay in the top 10 or 20. You just need the coaching and you don't need to change aca- demic standards. ZWiesen: Paul Longo and the player development are the reasons Hiestand, this line has been able to adapt to the different game situ- ations and keep up the quality of play in front of the very different styles of quarterbacks Everett Golson and Tommy Rees. I really appreciated Under coach Harry have them. The other missing part to the puzzle is Paul Longo, and we have him. Simscj2001: When your recruiting is top 10 or top 15 — as it was is building a powerhouse program the right way: slow and methodical. Mr. Rice: I've been preaching the same message for years. I've been laughed at for it. Now, it's fun to mildly gloat while the Irish haters everywhere begin to realize that we've been right all along — and that they're in for at least 10 years of this. IrishCedar: I have never advocated lowering academic standards. we are 10-0. These guys are strong and don't get tired. 100 percent agree. Hodges: What we're seeing is not a flash in the pan — 2005-06. Kelly What I have always objected to were the governors preventing suc- cess that the administration put on the football program: • Lack of a training table pre-2010 • Facilities pre-2006 • Prevention of early entrants pre-2005 • Restriction of early offers and other administration obstacles pre-2003 2011, and the general lack of cooperation between the academic and athletic sides of the school for 10-plus years despite the football program having massive pressure on it to succeed. Thank heavens for Father Jenkins, Jack Swarbrick and Brian Kelly. • Coaching salaries pre-2005 • Res-life pre-2011 • Scheduling insanity, some of the tenured internal staffers pre- Dan Murphy's excellent article "Right on Pace" (Nov. 12, 2012 edition). Clearly, any of those achievements (over 32 minutes of possession and 200 rushing yards per game) have been the result of some out- standing play by the OL. Zack Martin, Chris Watt, Braxston Cave, Mike Golic Jr. and Christian Lombard al- ready deserve a place in the great history of the Irish. Luca Rossi Bologna, Italy Blue & Gold Illustrated P. O. Box 1007 Send your letters to: Letters BE HEARD! Notre Dame, IN 46556 or e-mail to: lsomogyi@ blueandgold.com