Feb. success nice, now time to win
Where the level of anxiety inside a school's football offices is concerned, only the season opener may come close to matching the approach of national signing day.
And that is especially so this year at Notre Dame, where the Irish not only went 3-10 in calendar year 2007, but also lost three key recruits at the 11th hour last February, two on the morning they were supposed to fax in their national letters of intent.
"The coaches are all freaking out," said current recruit Brandon Newman, a defensive tackle from Louisville, Ky. "They're worried."
No need. Unless something very unexpected happens today, Irish coach Charlie Weis should deliver an extremely healthy bouncing baby 2008 recruiting class, a class that has competed for the No. 1 spot in most analysts' rankings well into these final few days. For all the heat he has endured the last few months, Weis deserves whatever credit is coming to him for that. Recruiting is a grueling endeavor anyway, and this could not have been easy.
But, at the same time, remember this: After just a season on the job, Weis wrote an autobiography called "No Excuses." And never has that title resonated the way it will beginning today and continuing through the 2008 and, if he remains, 2009 seasons.
Weis has played his one mulligan and his roster is now well-stocked. There will be no excuse this fall for anything resembling the abomination Notre Dame put on the field last season. None. Looking at the way the schedule sets up, anything less than eight victories in 2008 will be an extreme disappointment. The Irish actually ought to get to nine.
That might sound like crazy talk to people who dropped in a few times on 2007 and watched an utterly discombobulated unit stumble through 12 weeks of games. But the talent is there now. Sophomore linebackers like Brian Smith and Kerry Neal flashed star potential in the fall. Neither running back Robert Hughes nor wide receiver Duval Kamara could have wanted the season to end when it did. And receiver Michael Floyd, defensive end Ethan Johnson and linebacker Steve Filer, all incoming freshmen, shouldn't have to wait long to make their marks.
Since taking over the Notre Dame program in time for the 2005 season, Weis has turned around a lot of what had ailed the program for many years. He brought the offense, at least temporarily, into the 21st century. He assembled an experienced and energetic coaching staff, one he should probably trust more than he seems to.
And, finally, he changed the recruiting culture. Now Notre Dame aggressively establishes contact with high school juniors, and the staff extends offers early in the game. This seems like common sense, but it wasn't happening before. The players that Weis brought all the way through the rough waters of last season to today make up his third consecutive mythical top 10 recruiting class.
The coaching staff's alleged ongoing nervous breakdown is proof that even control-freak football coaches who want to stage-manage everything that occurs in their orbit understand that they can't manufacture raw ability with schemes and rigid itineraries.
That's common sense, of course, but not everyone gets it. To borrow a phrase, it can be an inconvenient truth.
As a national opinion begins to coalesce about the state of a college football program, the direction of recruiting is almost always utilized as a chameleon-like trump card. For the pundits, recruiting matters as much or as little as the preconceived narrative requires it to.
When the national media began to think Bob Davie over his head at Notre Dame, we were informed that the Irish didn't "have the athletes" to compete. Recruiting mattered, and Notre Dame was lagging behind.
Then, in late 2004, one of the reasons most credited by fans to justify ND coach Ty Willingham's quick dismissal was the program's ongoing recruiting woes. Columnists and talk-radio hosts suddenly rolled their eyes at recruiting rankings and such. They had decided Willingham was an outstanding coach undeserving of his fate, and no evidence to the contrary was going to get in the way.
Then came last year's Irish nosedive under Weis.
Two contradictory "truths" emerged:
# Lack of depth and talent in the upper classes, all on Willingham, was apparently irrelevant.
# Weis had brought in two great recruiting classes in a row and should be succeeding with them.
The reality was somewhere in between -- Notre Dame was short on experience and depleted in numbers. But Weis still should have been able to coax more than three wins out of his players, and the lack of progress by late in the season was inexcusable.
Another reality is that recruiting does matter, because talent matters, and Weis has gotten better and better at bringing it in.
Then again, Gerry Faust could recruit, too. Weis has now proven he can lure difference-makers to South Bend, but the time has come to produce results.
After all, who wants to see all this talent go to waste?
[More at www.southbendtribune.com]
