To my friend cclanofirish:
Here's what I've said about ND football the last 15+ years, and I'll say it here again:
-- They need to decide what they want to be. --
For some reason, they decided a few years ago that they wanted their football players to also be up to the academic standards of the university. Well guess what? Football players are as dumb as dumb can be many times. Everyone knows this. You see, you don't care if Bobby Joe and Leroy can spell their own name, you just want them to throw, run, catch, and pile-drive the opposition into the ground. ND decided they didn't want that anymore.
ND practically invented recruiting. One reason back in the 40's and 50's they had the best teams was because they had every stinkin' Catholic priest in the USA keeping an eye out for the local talent. Father O'Malley would see someone on the local high school team who could run like the wind and they call up ND, "Hey, you need to come and look at this guy." The only situation better than that was the Army teams of the mid to late 40's where if they wanted a player on their team, they drafted him into the service. Wal-la, you're coming to West Point and playing football, son.
So they have the alumni, they know how to network and get the players, they just need to drop this stupid "academic standards" crap and get the players they need. My question is will they? Because if they don't, they're missing out on a lot of blue-chip players they could easily get, but they won't, and I don't care how good the coach is. Lou Holtz wouldn't have won the NC he did there if he couldn't have recruited the dumb football players that made up that team.
So, they need to decide what they want to be; an academic university that fields a pretty good football team, or an academic university that has special classes so they can field an excellent football team.
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