This is a quote from Brian at the beginning of his recruiting process.
"I really want to go to Notre Dame." Smith told Scout.com. "Notre Dame has always been my dream school. My dad went to school there, played football there, and I never missed a game growing up. My favorites right now are Notre Dame, Michigan, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Florida and Michigan State."
I am still a bit mystified that Brian Smith was not offered a scholarship a year ago. I know that the recruiting philosophy at the time was to go after only the most elite players on both sides of the ball, but it seems as though the coaching staff should have made an exception on this kid because of his pedigree and desire to go to ND. Hopefully they have realized by now that you can not recruit only elite D players until you have an elite D, but this kid is not chopped liver anyway. I beleive he was only a 3 star everywhere at the beginning of the recruiting process, he is now a 4 star on Rivals and the last member of the ESPN 150 so he must have had a great senior year. It just seems that if you have a legacy kid who is at least a 3 star, whose first choice is ND, and who plays a position that you really need help at like LB, should have received an automatic scholarship offer. From his quote it sounds as though Brian would have been willing to come to ND to provide depth even if the Irish had been able to recruit the Chris Donald's of the world. I am not saying that every 3 star legacy kid should be an automatic. For example it would have been foolish to recruit another QB this year, or a WR next year just because they are a 3 star legacy, but at positions where you either lack depth or talent, which basically applies to every Defensive position right now, it just does not make sense to have let a kid like Brian Smith slip through the cracks until this late in the game. The coaching staff really dropped the ball on this one, but maybe they will get lucky if ND is still Brian's dream school despite everything.
