You are correct. I forgot about Freeman. But, the guy before him was Jerome Collins.
Impressive that you remembered Collins though. He was an OLB for most of his career. I forgot he moved to TE.
He and I overlapped at ND (might have been classmates) and the word around campus was always that he was one of those guys who had freakish athletic ability but just couldn't find the right fit position-wise on the field. Always seems a shame when that happens.
Anyway, back to Brooks, I found this article from back in the fall. It describes how Brooks is sitting out this season to preserve 5th year of eligibility in basketball. No mention of plans to play football; that must be a recent development.
Notre Dame men's baksetball: Brooks takes anew path - South Bend Tribune
I assume switching to football wouldn't affect his eligibility and he'd still only have one year left, but there may be some weird rule I haven't heard of. I certainly hadn't heard of the four years of Bball and a degree --> 1 year of football in a grad program without sitting out a year rule until Greg Paulus.
It's an interesting idea. I'm curious about what it would mean for the TE depth chart. Since we added Smythe late in the cycle, we are pretty full at TE: Niklas, Koyack, Welch, Heuerman, Smythe. Adding Brooks could mean: a) Welch is a big question mark coming off his injury and the staff isn't sure how much he'll be able to contribute, b) the staff still plans to use a lot of 2- and 3-tight end sets this season (with the incoming RBs and WRs, I thought it was possible they might shy away from that this season), and/or c) the staff would like to redshirt at least one of Heuerman and Smythe, and having another mature, athletic body at tight end would allow them to do that. He'd have to put on some weight in the summer, probably. Intriguing prospect, for sure.
