Notre Dame Football: New Rules

Submitted by jdog on

Article about the support Kelly is getting from admissions and the school administration to bring them back to glory:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-0731-brian-kelly-notre-dame-fo20110731,0,4988667.story

 

"And it appears Kelly can get a player if Kelly wants a player. That perhaps is no departure from indulgences that brought, say, Tony Rice to campus for Lou Holtz — but, again, Holtz never enjoyed Kelly's total package of resources and breaks elsewhere to amplify the admissions concessions."
 

 

wildbackdunesman

July 31st, 2011 at 11:51 AM ^

A lot of Notre Dame's tough admissions standards for football players is just hype and excuses for why they aren't winning.  Notre Dame let in players with awful ACT/SAT scores in the past including Blanton, whose 1st retake was literally not much better than randomly guessing and that was an improvement.

Awhile back the Orlando Sentinel ranked school's academic admission standards for football on a 1-10 scale.  Notre Dame got an impressive 7.  However, literally 2/3rds of their opponents in a typical year had a 7 or higher.  Typical opponents with a 7 or higher included Michigan, Army (which is really West Point), Air Force, Navy, UCLA, Penn State, BYU, Stanford, Boston College....so "we stink because we have tougher academic admissions standards" is whining.

LSAClassOf2000

July 31st, 2011 at 12:56 PM ^

......if they really wanted to do so,  they could make their admission standards on par with, say, Florida. As it is, they've put together pretty good top-tier classes over the years, so unless   ND's plan is to be about as relevant as, say, Harvard or Yale in the modern game, nothing needs to change, I think. 

hart20

July 31st, 2011 at 2:12 PM ^

I don't care who commits today, this will be my favorite moment. I've grown up with ND fans making that excuse everytime they lose a game (well, that excuse and "the refs hate us" excuse too). I'm glad I can finally tell this to all my ND friends now so they can finally shut up about that.

 

The article isn't available online anymore but I found it on a forum from a guy who copy and pasted the article back when it came out. It's legit, it has links to the Sentinel's website and the information matches with wildblackdunesman's post. Here it is:http://ncaabbs.com/showthread.php?tid=61131&pid=497176

The Baughz

July 31st, 2011 at 12:03 PM ^

A guy I coach with, who is a huge ND fan, always uses that excuse as to why "they" are losing. Im going to send him this link so he can read your response wildbackdunesman. I tried telling him this same exact thing and he just rolls his eyes.

IrishLax

July 31st, 2011 at 12:58 PM ^

There are quite a few athletes (mostly outside of football) who take academics very seriously.  A good example would be Tim Abromaitis who is ridiculously impressive student and Chris Stewart who was a full-time law student in his 5th year at Notre Dame.

People are 100% right that admissions "standards" being a recruiting issue is largely total bullshit.  But there are things (for instance, having to take a foreign language in high school or you cannot qualify) that are non-negotiable and bar recruits from admittance.  We saw this recently with Jordan Prestwood who had to take summer school courses in Spanish to qualify and a CA RB named Byron Marshall who is electing to take optional summer courses in high school to qualify for ND because right now he cannot be admitted.  A lot of times a kid will scoff at these requirements and go to USC or Alabama or wherever instead of spending their summer taking optional classes to qualify/

Other points of note: Notre Dame also takes no JUCO transfers because the administration, forces all 5th year players to be full-tim purusing a grad school degree or 5 year dual-degree program (i.e. no Matt Leinart taking ball room dancing as his only class), and pushes all students to graduate in 4 years in real majors with a lot of success.

Also, there are no majors aimed directly at athletes.  That doesn't mean there aren't easy majors available to all students, but as an athlete who went through ND I can assure you there aren't set-aside programs. 

Irish

July 31st, 2011 at 1:50 PM ^

The standard I keep seeing repeated is the recruit must show the ability to graduate within 4 years and I don't have a problem with it.  There isn't a specific ACT score or GPA cutoff line, which is what I think other fanbases latch onto as a disqualifier for having "higher admissions".  Each recruit has their own set of expectations from admissions, its case by case.

When was the last time you were worried about a ND commit getting past the clearinghouse? That alone should tell people something but it doesn't sell the same number of newspapers either.

hart20

July 31st, 2011 at 2:22 PM ^

anyone is accusing ND of having horrible standards for admission, they're just saying that the standards aren't as great as most ND fans make them out to be. There's no denying that the support Kelly is getting is different than any other era of football at ND. You can see that just by looking at Floyd being allowed to play again without any (most likely) suspension, while previous student athletes were kicked out for the same offenses.

 

blue note

July 31st, 2011 at 5:58 PM ^

Nothing in that article that hasn't been written/said many times before. ND has slightly higher admissions standards than most schools and takes a few that barely qualify each year.

Even the most delusional domer can see the reason they haven't won much over the last 15 years: Davie, Willingham, Weis.

Tater

July 31st, 2011 at 6:49 PM ^

Lou Holtz is somewhere between a bad joke and self-parody now, but he was a great coach. He improved every team he went to.  ND's problem was the book "Under the Tarnished Dome," which cast Holtz as a total prick.  After that book came out, Holtz couldn't pull in the same classes to which he had become accustomed, and he left.  

Really, ND hasn't been the same since.  Kelly is about to change that.  If you take ND's typical schedule and have a truly elite team play it, it suddenly looks like a very easy schedule with a few tough games spread out enough that they can get up for each tough one.  

 For example, Sparty has had a good record against mediocre ND teams because they play Michigan the week before and MSU is a letdown game.  With a good coach, a good scheme, good to great personnel, and a great schedule, ND is about to become the ND that NBC paid for back in the 1980's.  

As much as I hate to say it, ND will be playing in the title game soon.  

BlueTuesday

July 31st, 2011 at 9:46 PM ^

I would argue that Notre Dame's football destiny will never, at least for the time being, be in their own hands. I could easily see ND going undefeated and not making the national title game. The reason being is because they don't play in a conference championship game... While every major conference in the country is playing their respective title game, ND will be sitting back with their season already complete, praying the best team loses because that's going to be their only shot. No coach or respected journalist is ever going to vote ND ahead of say a undefeated LSU team that just beat the #4 team in the country at SEC title game.
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Bat0342

July 31st, 2011 at 8:27 PM ^

Holtz actually mentioned "Under the Tarnished Dome" in one of his books.  I wouldn't have bought/read it if he didn't mention it.  Did seem like the author was fishing though, so i took everything he said with a grain of salt.  Good read though.